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he became quite an expert in all the outdoor games of quoiring, bowling and curling and was taken into all the county matches; when twenty years of age he won the single handed Caledonian gold medal in one of the crack clubs in the south of Scotland and kept it for two years in succession.
When leaving for America in 1852 he was given a public dinner in the King's Arms lnn, Newton Stewart, by the curlers of the section (curling is the great Caledonian game played on the ice, and resembles billiards on a large scale.)
He secured an apprenticeship to the drug business in Glasgow; came to Canada in 1862, located in London, then Canada West.
He married Mary P. Beattie in 1854. Their daughters, Mrs. Anna Kimball, Mrs. Frank Road and Mrs. E. Kirkpatrick were born in London.
He moved to Cloverport, Kentucky, in 1863, during the war where W. R. McCrea was born in 1865.
At the close of the war he sold his farm to an oil company in St Louis and then moved to Washington county Indiana, near Salem, where Mrs. James L. Wallace was born.
In 1868 he sold out and moved to Manhattan, Kansas, where he clerked for some time for Higinbotham &; Purcell, then formed a partnership with the Rev. Alexander Sterrett, of the Presbyterian church there, and bought a large herd of Merino sheep, two thousand head came from Saginaw county, Illinois, wintered there the first winter back of Agricultural college Manhattan.
Next spring they only had four hundred head left. After shearing them he brought the balance of the herd to Cloud county, settled at the mouth of Salt creek, near Lawrenceburg.
Hostile bands of Indians were then roaming all over the country. A company of soldiers from Fort Riley was then stationed at Lake Sibley.In 1870, he attended the county convention which was held in Captain Sander's saw mill between Lake Sibley and where the town of Concordia now is. Every delegate almost without exception wore a large navy revolver strapped around his waist and never took them off. The convention was held in the open shed around the saw mill. He was elected justice of the peace in 1871. His first case was holding an examination on Dan Lussader for murder, he having shot and killed a friend of the McNulty family, who had jumped one of Dan's claims. The McNulty party was determined on lynching Lusseder, but Dan was a member of the Methodist church and they all turned out armed to defend him. The excitement in Clyde was very similar to what it was in Norton when Capt. Landis was killed. In 1872 he sold the farm at Lawrenceburg and commenced business at Clyde with Frank McNulty, drugs and groceries. Maud, now Mrs. N. A. Davis was born at Lawrenceburg. The justice of the peace business become so pressing in Clyde that he opened a store room, fitted it up for a court room and |
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