Page 568-569, 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 568 cont'd

C. C. Jamison, a prominent contractor and builder of El Dorado, is a native of Indiana. He was born in White county, in 1850, and is a son of William and Eliza (Gill) Jamison. The were the parents of ten children, three of whom are now living, as follows: Mrs. William Shriver, El Dorado, Kans.: Mrs. Joseph Brown, Braman, Okla., and C. C., the subject of this sketch.

C. C. Jamison was reared in Indiana, and educated at LaFayette, Ind., and in 1875, came to Kansas with his parents, who first located at Hutchinson, They remained there, however, but a short time, and in the spring of 1876, went to Pratt county, where the father homesteaded a claim, and later sold his interest in it and came to Butler county in 1879, locating at Augusta. The father was a mechanic, and worked on the construction of the Augusta opera house and the Ettison building, and several other buildings in Augusta. He died in Hobart, Okla., in 1903, and his wife died at El Dorado, in 1885.

C. C. Jamison began his career as a contractor and builder when he was about twenty-four years of age, his first work being a forty foot stone arch bridge, across Dry Creek, between Bruno and Augusta. Prior to this he had superintended the construction of the electric light building at El Dorado. Among the most important works that Mr. Jamison has done as a contractor and builder are the following: A forty foot stone arch bridge, one mile west of Latham; the piers for the iron bridge across the Walnut at Augusta: a thirty-six foot stone arch bridge, in Bruno township; a thirty-six foot stone arch bridge, across Hickory creek, near Leon; a thirty-six foot stone arch bridge in Chelsea township, near Chelsea; a thirty foot stone arch bridge at Brainard; and a thirty foot stone arch bridge, across Turkey creek, five miles south of El Dorado. Mr. Jamison has probably built about fifty county bridges in Butler county, and 200 township bridges.

Mr. Jamison was married April 7, 1892, to Miss Lucy Rayburn, of El Dorado, a daughter of William K. and Amanda (Dungan) Rayburn. The Rayburn family came to Butler county in 1885, and settled in El Dorado, remaining here three years when the father bought the Chesney ranch of 300 acres, where he lived until his death in 1903. The mother died in 1909. They were the parents of the following children: Calvin, an attorney, Bloomington. Ill.; Edgar, farmer, Towanda, Ill.; James, superintendent of the State asylum farm at Topeka, and has held that position for the past twenty years: Mrs. Ada Crawford, Fairbury; Ill., and Lucy, wife of C. C. Jamison, the subject of this sketch.


  HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY 569

To Mr. and Mrs. Jamison have been born three children, as follows: Rayburn, associated with his father in the contracting and building business, married Hazel Herron, of Belle Plaine, Kans., December 25, 1915; Mary, a student in the El Dorado schools, and Sarah, also a student in the El Dorado schools.

Although a young man, Mr. Jamison has seen frontier conditions on the plains of Kansas, which has never been the privilege of many of the present generation to witness. When the Jamison family went to Pratt county, that section of the country was one broad expanse of prairie, with few settlements, and the buffalo was still to be found there, although not in large herds. Mr. Jamison has seen as many as nine in one herd.


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