Emmitt Lee Sparks Family

By Bonnie Morris Conrad

Emmitt Lee Sparks was from a small community in Morgan County, MO. named Glensted. As a young married adult he moved to Sawyer, KS with his wife Clara Duff who he married in Versailles, Morgan County, MO. He had one child when he died. According to family stories he was a boy.
On Emmet's Tombstone written by his Mother Mary A. Harmon Sparks is: Dearest loved one, We have laid thee in the peaceful grave's embrace, but thy memory will be cherished till we see thy heavenly face.
Also there is a family story that his mother rode on the train from Glensted, MO. to Sawyer, KS, with her son's tombstone which she had made in Tipton, Mo. and stayed in the little hotel there next to the Railroad tracks and had his stone set.
I visited there in July of 1999 and confirmed that story to be true. His stone with the inscription: Clark, Tipton, MO. The stone is beautiful, sets in the center of Ellenwood Cemetery and looks like new.
There was a Museum in Pratt that confirmed the story of the little Hotel that was there in 1894 when he was killed. The story was that his brother James Clay Sparks shot him in a card game in which they were gambling over $23.00 that Emmet had won on a horse race at a fair in Greenburg, KS. There were a couple of versions of this story, but this is the one that was in the local paper. It said that he left a wife and child whom I have not been able to find yet.
I think she remarried a W. P. Price. There are 2 small graves next to his which are babies. There is a rumor that his father on his death bed 4 years later, said he shot Emmet. No one went to jail and the story is still a mystery. I have a copy of the newspaper article taken from the Pratt Newspaper in 1894.

Contributed by Russell Miracle