Page 789-790, transcribed by Carolyn Ward from History of Butler County, Kansas by Vol. P. Mooney. Standard Publishing Company, Lawrence, Kan.: 1916. ill.; 894 pgs.


  HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY 789 cont'd

Peter Fostnaught, a prominent farmer and stockman, of Benton township, is a native of Indiana, and a son of Moses and Sarah Fostnaught. The father was the farmer and died there in !865. The mother died in 1905. Peter was the only child by his mother's first marriage, and after his father's death, she married a man named Wolf. Three children were born to this union, as follows: Mrs. Sarah Blair, who lives in Michigan: Sherman Wolf, lives in Indiana, and Adam Wolf, lives in Michigan.

Peter Fostnaught came to Butler county, Kansas, in 1879, and at first worked as a farm hand for $15 per month, and about ten years later, rented land, and engaged in farming on his own account. During his first years in Butler county, Mr. Fostnaught labored under many difficulties, and had a hard time to get a substantial start in life. He had no capital, but he was industrious and thrifty and possessed a


790 HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY  

determination to succeed. Not unlike the experience of the average man, after he got a little start, success soon followed, and today he is one of the well-to-do farmers and stockmen of this county. He owns one of the best farms in Benton township, consisting of 240 acres, well improved and an ideal stock farm.

In 1889, Mr. Fostnaught was united in marriage with Miss Anna Miller, a daughter of John P. and Kate Miller. Her father was a native of France, and came to this country with his parents early in life. He died in Illinois, and in 1875 the mother came to Kansas with her children, and preempted 160 acres of land in Benton township, Butler county. There were six girls in the Miller family, as follows: Mrs. Mary Long, deceased; Mrs. Susan Cole, Kingman county, Kansas; Mrs. Kate Hammon, Greenwich, Kans.; Mrs. Rosa Lane, Benton, Kans.; Ada F.; Mrs. Lydia Campbell, deceased.

After Mrs. Miller and her girls came to Kansas, they endured many hardships and privations, common to the lot of early settlers during the formative period of the West. But the experience of the Miller family was more difficult than that of their neighbors. There were no men in the family, and the heavy work of the fields fell to the girls and their mother. They all did the work of men, and bravely struggled to build a home in the new country, and were glad to have an opportunity to do so. The girls all grew up to be women of force of character, and an honor to American womanhood. The mother was a capable woman, and the possessor of high ambitions, and a spirit of industry. She possessed the courage of the typical pioneer woman. On one occasion while fighting a prairie fire which threatened to destroy her home, she was so severely burned that she nearly lost her life. Prairie fires were frequent in the early days, and, during their first year here, the Millers lost their hay in one of those periodical devastations of the plains. Another incident in the life of Mrs. Miller worthy of mention here, is that when she was a young woman and lived in Illinois, she was at one time in the employ of Abraham Lincoln, and was well acquainted with the great emancipator and his family.


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Pages 789-790,