One of the early pioneers of the Solomon valley is S.P. Franks, who came to Washington county, Kansas with E.C. Davidson in 1869, and the following winter took a homestead in Cloud county, three miles northwest of the present site of Glasco, where he built a dugout, and as he dryly remarked "batched with the coyotes and rattle snakes" until he was married in 1880.

Mr. Franks lived in Ohio, the state of his nativity, until he was fifteen years of age. He was born on a farm in Franklin county, in 1849. The Franks are of German extraction and settled among the Pennsylvania Dutch in the pioneer days of that state. His father, Jacob Franks, moved to Illinois, in 1864, and five years later emigrated to Kansas, where like all the early settlers, they experienced many hardships.

S.P. Franks has killed numerous buffalo on the Kansas prairies, bringing down as many as a quarter of a hundred in one expedition, thus helping to "keep the wolf from the door." In 1875, he was one of the fifty or sixty men who hauled goods sent by the government for the grasshopper sufferers. He held his homestead and managed to eke out an existance by doing masonry and stone work which he learned soon after coming to Kansas. In 1884, he sold his original homestead to E.C. Davidson, and bought a farm on Third creek, in Solomon township, where he has lived sixteen years.

Mr. Franks was married, in 1880, to Carrie A. Billingsly who came with her parents from Iowa to Kansas, in 1876, and settled in Solomon township. Her father is William Billingsly, now living in Mitchell county. She is one of eleven children, all of whom but one are living in Kansas.

To Mr. and Mrs. Franks have been born five children, viz: Gertrude, wife of Augustus Teasley, a farmer of Solomon township; Amy, Nora, Edith, and Raymond, a little son of six years. Mr. Franks has considerable fruit on his farm. He has a herd of about fifty head of native cattle. He still works at his trade and has assisted in constructing some of the best buildings in the Solomon valley. He is an honest and industrious man. When asked about his politics he replied "I think I am, and always will be, a Democrat." He is a member of the Glasco lodge of Odd Fellows. Mrs. Franks is a member of the Rebekahs.