Ulysses Schuyler Wolfe
ULYSSES SCHUYLER WOLFE is sole proprietor of the Alfalfa Milling Company of Emporia. This is a business of more than local proportions and makes a specialty of converting the great alfalfa crop of Kansas into special feed and combination of feed for livestock. Mr. Wolfe has been a resident of Kansas since early boyhood and his family were among the early settlers of Emporia.
His original ancestors came from England in colonial times and many of them settled in Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania. Grandfather David Wolfe was born in Maryland in 1821 and died in Hagerstown of that state in 1873. He was a farmer and planter. Amos Wolfe, father of the Emporia miller, was born in Frederickstown, Maryland, April 9, 1841. When a young man he went to Lebanon, Indiana, where he married Mary Jane Hamilton. She was born November 16, 1834, in Indiana, and died in Emporia, January 16, 1899. From Indiana Amos Wolfe and family moved to Emporia in 1878. He was a farmer in Lyon County until 1892, then engaged in blacksmithing, but about 1898 retired. His home was in Emporia, but he died in Hot Springs, Arkansas, March, 1903. He was a republican and belonged to the Improved Order of Red Men. He and his wife had the following children: Alice, whose first husband was O. R. Hamilton, a farmer, and who is now the wife of George Byman, a merchant at Eagle Bend, Minnesota, where they reside; Ulysses S.; Louisa, who died at the age of three years; Annie Belle, who died at sixteen; May, who died at seven; and Amie, who died at the age of eighteen.
Ulysses Schuyler Wolfe was born at Lebanon, Boone County, Indiana, October 13, 1868, and was ten years old when the family came to this state. His education was begun in Indiana schools, and he afterwards attended the public schools of Emporia and the Kansas State Normal School for 2 1/2 years. On leaving the Normal School in 1891 he took up the vocation of teacher, and is well remembered in several school districts of Lyon County for his work. He continued teaching until 1901. He was then elected clerk of the District Court, an office he filled with admirable efficiency for four years. For another two years he was associated with the Corrugated Metal Company of Emporia.
It was in 1907 that Mr. Wolfe established the Alfalfa Milling Company at Emporia, with two partners, Hogle & Sponsellor. Later he bought the interests of his partners and is now sole proprietor. The mills, situated on Sixth Avenue near the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway tracks, are specially fitted up for grinding alfalfa hay and meal, though there is also machinery for grinding other grain products and the output is widely used among farmers and stock growers. The firm also handles a general line of chopped foods. The plant comprises four buildings besides an office. The product of these mills is shipped as far as St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee, and even to Milwaukee.
Mr. Wolfe is a republican, a member of the Friends Church, and is affiliated with the Knights and Ladies of Security and the Improved Order of Red Men. In 1903, at Clarinda, Iowa, he married Miss Gertrude Ham, daughter of Henry and Emma Ham, who now reside on their farm at Admire, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe have two daughters: Vineta, born November 28, 1909; and Lorena, born September 7, 1914.
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written & compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; transcribed by Dawn Genn, student from USD 508, Baxter Springs Middle School, Baxter Springs, Kansas, November 6, 1998.