T. J. Fell, a Butler county pioneer, residing at Augusta, is a native of Ohio. He was born in Trumbull county in 1843, and is a son of John R. and Sarah (Rathburn) Fell, the former of Pennsylvania, and the latter of Ohio. They were the parents of ten children, four of whom are living, as follows: Mrs. Winnie Howe lives in Alabama; Jasper, a merchant, at Linneus, Mo.; Allen, a farmer in Livingston county, Missouri, and T. J., the subject of this sketch.

T. J. Fell received a common school education in the State of Ohio and in 1864 removed to Missouri with his parents and the family settled in Livingston county. While there Mr. Fell served in the Forty-third regiment, Missouri State militia, from October, 1864, until the close of the war, in April, 1865. After the war he followed farming in Livingston county until 1870, when he came to Kansas and settled near Osage Mission, Neosho county. After remaining there about two years, he returned to Missouri. In 1874, he went to Harvey county, Kansas, and from there he came to Butler county and took a claim six miles southeast of Augusta, near Pine Grove postoffice, and also rented a farm in that vicinity. When he first visited Augusta it was a very small settlement, there being but two stores there. In 1885, he sold his Butler county claim and went to western Kansas, where he bought a half section of land, but the bottom soon fell out of the boom and he lost his investment. He then came back to Butler county, and after renting land a few years, bought 160 acres, seven miles east of Douglass, where he lived for seventeen years, and in 1912 removed to Augusta, where he has since lived practically in retirement.

Mr. Fell has been twice married. In 1867 he was united in marriage in Lynn county, Missouri, to Miss Sarah Shifflet. Mrs. Fell died at Linneus, Mo., in 1872, leaving three children, as follows: Mrs. Ida Smith, of Montgomery county, Kansas; Walter, a ranchman near Beaumont, Kans., and Mrs. Katy Leavis, Seattle, Wash. In 1876 Mr. Fell married Miss Mary Primm, of Bradford Mills, Butler county, and to this union have been born four children: Cora, Rose, Mabel and Leah, all living at home except Mabel, who is now Mrs. Powell, and resides at Enid, Okla.

Mr. Fell is one of the Kansas pioneers who has experienced many incidents in the early day life of this State. He vividly recalls the year of the great grasshopper plague, when many of the early settlers left their claims, and returned to their former homes in the east and elsewhere. He says that in 1876, Butler county had a frog year, that dserves honorable mention in connection with the grasshopper carnival which preceded it by two years. When he speaks of the epidemic of frogs, he doesn't mean, just a few, or any ordinary aggregation of

frogs, but says that they were here by the millions, and that on one occasion, he drove for a distance of twenty-five miles through a veritable sea of hopping frogs.

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