J. J. McCool, a prominent real estate and insurance man of Augusta, is a real Kansas pioneer. He was born in Ohio in 1847, and is a son of David and Eliza (Johnson) McCool, both natives of Ohio, and now deceased. They were the parents of five children, two of whom are now living: D. S., Los Angeles, Cal., and J. J., the subject of this sketch. The McCool family were early settlers in Kansas, coming to this State in 1859, and locating in Lyon county seven miles west of Emporia. When the Civil war broke out the father enlisted and served throughout the war, the wife and children remaining on their Lyon county farm. After the father returned from the army he removed to Ohio with the family.

J. J. McCool did not remain in Ohio very long before he came back to Kansas and, after a short stay at Emporia, settled in Butler county, where he bought 160 acres of land, just south of Augusta. Shortly afterwards he sold this place and rented land for a time and later engaged in the grocery business at Augusta, which he conducted for four or five years. He then followed farming again for a period of about ten years when he again took up the grocery business in Augusta, and followed

that line of business until he engaged in the real estate, loan and insurance business at which he has been unusually successful. Mr. McCool just missed being a veteran of the Civil war but it was not his fault. During the war he was enrolled in the Eleventh regiment Kansas cavalry at Emporia, but he was only sixteen years old at the time, and his father, who was then in the service, refused permission for the boy to enlist.

Mr. McCool is one of the pioneers who saw Butler county in its primitive period. He was here in 1861, and has a distinct recollection of many of the early day landmarks. He saw the old log house on the trail, near the ford of the Walnut river at El Dorado, which was the first house in that section, and he recollects Jacob Landis who had a cabin at the forks of the Walnut river where he conducted a trading post with the Indians. He says that after they located in Kansas that his father made regular hunting trips a short distance west, about as far as the present location of Hutchinson, and killed any number of buffalo and thus kept on hand a supply of buffalo meat. He saw the Walnut river in 1860, the dry year, when it was perfectly dry, with the exception of a few little pools. He has a vast store of interesting reminiscences concerning the early history of Butler county, and possesses the faculty of narrating them in an entertaining way. Mr. McCool is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and has an extensive acquaintance in Butler county.

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