My ancestors on my father's side were French, on my mother's side were English. His people (as I have attempted to write the history of the Wagers family) were French Huguenots and his immediate family was banished from France sometime during the seventeenth century. They came to America and located in Virginia and from there migrated to Kentucky and settled in Estill County a little east of the center of the state. My grandfather's name was James Wagers. He married a Miss Park there. I never saw her, but from what I have heard, she was a typical Kentucky mountain woman, fearless, and a hard worker. They were the parents of thirteen children, my father being one of that family.

Grandmother passed away and my grandfather married again. From that union there were seven childern. Grandfather was killed in an accident during the Civil War. My father's name was Simpson Wagers and my mother's maiden name was Martha Ann Gentry, a member of the famous Gentry family of America.

I was born the twenty-first day of March 1856, in Estill County, Kentucky, near a small stream known as Station Camp Creek, but when I was about a year old, my parents moved to a valley known as Red Lick Creek.

My family were all farmers, the farm my father bought was comprised of about 129 acres and was considered a mighty good farm for that country. When my father and mother were married, he was the proud possessor of a horse, a saddle, and twenty-five cents in cash. My mother brought as a dowry, a good milk cow, a feather bed, and the clothes she was wearing. Father had gone to school only three months and mother did not have the privilege of attending school a single day, although she could read a little.

The first thing they did after their marriage was join the Christian Church, called Reformers in those days. My father was chosen a deacon at once and remained one until his death. They both worked very hard and reared a family of six children. In order to support this sizable family, they raised and sold tobacco, bacon and apple brandy. We lived mighty common but had plenty of everything as my father was a good provider. We used sorghum molasses for our sugar, but occationally we rented a maple orchard and made about 15- pounds of maple sugar a season. We ate cabbage, turnips, onions, potatoes, mustard greens, roasting ears, beans, corn bread and bisquits on sunday morning. We took our lunch to school, and it usually consisted of back bones, sow belly, corn bread and sorghum mollasses.

We wore home made jeans made from the sheep's back by my mother. In the winter time she would spend the long evening hours carding, spinning and weaving the wool cloth. We also wore tow trousers and tow shirsts, and slept on tow sheets in the summer time. We never wore any shoes in the summer, and in the winter got our shoes by turns. Father always butchered a beef every winter and took the hide to a tanyard where it was prepared during the summer for the family's shoes the following winter. A shoe-maker went the rounds during the fall making shoes. First my father would get his, then my mother followed by the oldest child and so on down the line. Since I was the third child in rank, often it was very late in the winter before I received my shoes. In traping snow birds, I often had to attend my trap in bare feet running though the snow two inches in depth.

I could write volumes concerning the activities of my self and my younger brother, but I will mention only a few of them. One of these acts that makes "Mother's grow gray" was stealing honey. We would cut a limb with a fork and one would hold the other one up so he could put the stick down in the honey jar and twist it around until it had rolled a good big gob of honey, then he would get down from the cupboard and we would both run around the smokehouse to devour the purloined sweet. Another thing we would do was go out in the feed yard where the hogs and cattle were, and catch a big hog by the tail so he would run. And of course when he started to run we would fall down and hold on. The hog was not very particular as to what kind of obstruction he dragged us through, and there were plenty of them in a feed yard where there were a number of cattle.

These antics and multitudes of others made up our lives while we were small childern. Our schools those days were called "subscription schools". My father (who was always a director) and two other directors stood good for the teachers salary. We sure had some great teachers in those days. They were not very efficient, although some of them were called good for that day. We had one man teacher who brought a bottle of whiskey to school every day, and during the recitation of some of the classes, he would slip out into the vestibule and take a drink. One teacher we had would go home friday evening and lay drunk until monday morning. This condition prevailed until the directors employed a young girl about fifteen years old to teach a term. She was just out of an orphan's home at Midway Kentucky. She was a mighty good teacher. She opened school every morning with the reading of a chapter of the New Testament and offered up a prayer. She closed the school in the evening by singing a nice little song joined by all the pupils. She was very efficient and all of the pupils liked her very much and progressed very rapidly under her tutorship.

A lot of roughnecks, who were very low in mentality, became disgruntled about her taking time in reading the scripture and praying in the morning before the beginning of classes. Of course they had a right to voice their opinions since they were legitimate subscribers to the teachers salary. The spiritual standing of the school board was as follows: My father was a church member, one of the others was an infidel, and the other was an agnostic. The infidel was the president of the Board of Directors, so he called a meeting of all of the patrons of the school as well as the directors to discuss the matter of Bible Reading. They all gathered at the school house and when the meeting was called to order the president stated the object of the meeting and asked each patron to state his complaint, which was that they did not propose to contribute to the pay of a teacher who used up so much time reading the scripture and praying, that if they wanted such training they could send their childern somewhere else for that purpose, and if the practice was continued in the school they would not pay their subscription.

Then the president asked the agnostic what he had to say, and he replied that it did not make any difference to him. She could keep it up or she could discontinue it as she saw fit. Then he asked my father what he thought about it, and my father replied, "Now, Billy, You know where I stand," So the president of the board being a very profane man broke out in a rage and "Kussed" those fellows to ever thing he could lay his tongue to. He told them, that girl could and would read the scripture and give that prayer just as long as she wanted to and if they didn't pay their subscriptions to take their childern out of the school and he would pay it if it took every horse in his barn. So that settled the matter then and there. They all went home and that was the last of it. She taught there for two years and was one of the best we ever had. Her name was Minnie Smith.

We had another splendid teacher in the person of an ex-confederate soldier, who at the close of the war, had to leave Tennessee during the night time to escape assassination at the hands of some rabid Unionists. he was one of the best teachers we ever had. He had his right hand crippled from a gun shot wound, and the boys thought that he couldn't wield a switch, but we soon found out differently.

Having been born in the year 1856, I was five years old when the Civil War broke out. I remember when President Lincoln issued a call for 75000 volunteers to put down the Rebellion. A few days after that a recruiting officer advertised a meeting at our neighborhood church. When the day came everyone was on hand. The officer made a fiery speech denouncing the South's effort to secede from the Union.

In our community there lived an old gentleman whose name was Basel Baker and his son named Gillie. Basel had a bass drum about the size of an oil barrel and about the same shape. Gillie had a snare drum which was about two feet long and very near dragged the ground when on parade. Another man name White could play the fife. After the speaking was over the speaker with the famous fife and drum corps and a young lady started on the march around the grounds exhorting the people, I mean the men to fall in and help save the Union. The young woman carried the flag.

The war got started in good shape with a lot of excitement, which was terrifying to a child. Many things happeded of which I will mention only a few. At one time during the war my uncle "Nazer" Park, who was an ardent Abolitionist, lost all of his feed bacon and tobacco. The confederate raider general, John Morgan, came along with about fifteen hundred men and stopped at my uncle's place and fed their horses his hay and oats, wheat corn and fodder. His men ate up all his flour, cornmeal, bacon and hams....just cleaned him out. The general gave my aunt about $3000.00 of confederate money which was not of much value at that particular time, and told her to have her husband send it to Richmond Virginia for exchange for good money.

Another funny thing happened with a regiment of federal soldiers who were camped at our county seat. There were about five hundred of them they were cavalrymen. So one day the pickeer (scout) gave the alarm that there was an army of rebel soldiers coming up the pike. They all became panic stricken at once and jumped on their horses and started out on a road leading into the country. They rode for three or four miles before they found out the cause for their alarm was a bunch of mischievous boys. Everyone thought that was pretty funny and a joke on the commanding officer.

That happened early in the spring. A few days after that, I think it was a month or so, while we were planting corn, we heard a horse neigh but paid no paricular attention to it. In a day or two the neiging became more frequent and attracted us to make every effort to locate the horse so the next day as the wind chanaged we finally located the horse up on the side of the mountain. My father detailed my two older brothers to go up and get the horse and bring it down. They went up on the mountain side and found the horse all tangled up in a bramble of vines, unable to extricate itself. He was without saddle or bridle and had been there twenty-nine days without food or water except the leaves he ate from the bramble and the water from several showers that had fallen on the foilage.

It developed that one of the soldiers had becomed so frightened at the appearance of the boys that he never put the saddle or bridle on his horse, but jumped on his back and beat it, rode his horse onto the mountainside and abandoned him. We also found a musket sitting against a tree. It was filled water from the rains that had fallen over a period of several months.

Many things happened during the war that made their impression, one of these still remaining in my memory I will mention. A Mr. Jeff Park being a southern sympathiser, went away to the confederate army and left his wife and her sister to run the farm and take care of things while he was away. They had a sheep barn up the hollow, back of the house, which she had permitted the local school board to use as a school house and her niece was employed to teach the school. She was my first teacher and lived until about seven years ago. It was three miles to the school and we had to wade two creeks to get to it. One day this Mrs. Park wanted to build a fire to get dinner when they attempted to start a fire by placing a hand full of tow on the hearth, striking a flint with a piece of metal. This crreated a spark with fell on the tow that had been sprinkled with gunpowder. The tow didn't ignite readily so Mrs. Park poured a little more from the powder horn. There was a little fire there and it followed this stream of powder from the horn. About a half pound of powder exploded with a terrible noise and blew the hoad out of the horn. We children and the teacher heard the explosion and two women screaming. The teacher dismissed the schoool hurriedly and we all ran down to the house to see what had happedned. The woman who held the powder horn was burned a little, but the other lady was not harmed.

A company of confederate soldiers came along one day and one of them whose horse was very poor, stopped and went into the pasture and got one of our favorite horses, turning his old horse into the pasture in place of the horse he had taken. As he passed my father, who had been confined to his bed with the "yellow jaunders" grabbed his "six-shooter" and went out on the porch declaring that he would shoot him off the horse. My mother interfered and armed him back into the house. These soldiers went about forty miles down the road and were taken prisoner by the union soldiers. While they were riding down the street to the guardhouse, one of my father's cousins, who was a federal soldier recognized the horse. He went to the commanding officer, who told him to write his cousin and tell him to come get his horse. A few years after that a boy about fourteen years of age and I worked the little horse all summer plowing corn. He was a well trained animal as he readily responded to the commands of "gee and Haw".

My brother and I worked hard all week to get the plowing done by friday night. It was nearly dark when we finished so we turned our horses into the pasture and headed for the house. That night a negro stole it but we could not produce enough proof to file charges and so we lost the little horse after all.

During the war, it was no unusual thing for my father to be called to the door late at night by some drunken soldiers, of either the North or South, and challenged as to where he stood on the issues of the war. He would always answer that he was "in favor of the Union as it was", which always satisfied the questioner, let him be a Rebel or a Unionist. These were bad and dangerous times when my father would be called up at night. My mother was always at his side, as was his old "six-shooter", which was kept handy in the bureau drawer right along side of the door.

We had a neighbor by the name of Durbin who had a bunch of pretty girls. One of these wanted to get married to a young man of the community. Since he was a Protestant and the Durbins were Catholics, they objected to the marriage. They didn't despair, but went ahead secretly making arrangements to run away and go to the state to get married. The time set for the get away was in the spring during corn planting time. One day were busy planting and noticed two men riding up and down the road which ran alongside our farm. It was quite a distance from where we were working and we could see they were leading a horse with a saddle on his back.

Then in an hour or so we would see one of the men on the road that bordered our farm giving signals to the other. This kept up until late in the afternoon. My father recently had purchases a tract of land and had the money to pay for it. Mother carried the money sewn of the inside of her dress. There were no banks in those days. So, inasmuch as we were not close enough to recognize these two men, father thought they were going to rob him and steal some horses from the community. Since it was Court day and every one of our neighbors had gone to town. My father realized it would be an opportune time to carry out such a plan. We quit work early that afternoon and my father sent us children with our mother to my uncle's house which was about a mile across the valley in plain view of our house. My uncle was in town with all the other neighbors, but he had left his hired hand at home. He was a boy about fifteen years of age. My father armed this boy with his squirrel rifle and took his old six shooter and went up above the house to the public road to await some move by these two men.

The young couple made their get away while her family was eating their supper and went to the Catholic Church which was always open, and changed her clothes, mounted the horse and came down the road laughing how they had out-witted the old people.

My father had stationed the boy with his squirrel rifle behind a big tree that stood near the road end instructed him to shout "Halt"! to these people three times. That was required by law, and if they didn't stop he was to shoot, throw his gun and beat it down the hill to safety. My father took up his position close by, behind a big flat rock.

So pretty soon, here they came and my father gave the boy his last instructions and cautioned him to wait until he had challenged them the third time before shooting. My father cried out, "who comes there?" and they spurred their horses into a gallop. Again my father cried "Halt!" And just as he said "Halt!" the third time, little Charlie Cliff let go his rifle but didn't throw his gun down as he was instructed since he was a game little scamp. At the same time my father turned loose his old six shooter. He emptied the revolver at them as they galloped past and down the road.

About that time the neighbors had begun arriving home from town and heard the shooting. They all came to our house to see what was the trouble. My uncle swam the creek to get there as he had put his horse in the barn and hadn't gone to the house yet. In less than an hour there were thirty or forty men in our house milling around all excited getting ready to follow these supposed bandits. All of a sudden the door opened and in came the father and brother of the girl, the madest man imaginable and said what had happened. It scared my father so bad, fearing that he had shot some of them, they had to put him to bed and give him a big snort of Apple Jack to revive him.

These men and the girl, when they heard the challenge to halt, thought it was her father and brother. Thinking they had passed the church while the girl was changing her clothes, the couple thought they were trying to stop them. If they had known it was my father they would have stopped and told them the joke.

The little boy's rifle shot out a little bunch of whisckers from one of the men and raised a blister, but my father's aim was fortunately very bad, he missed them entirely. My mother and aunt, as well as we children, could see the fire from the discharge of the guns, as we were just across the valley and the men were on the side of the opposite mountain. My aunt was a large flesher woman and every time a gun would shoot, she would go down on her knees and scream, "Oh My God!" Even though there was a great deal of excitement during the shooting, it was mighty funny to see my aunt cut such capers.

During the Civil War, we children had to pass through two picket lines to get to school and a great part of the time there was regiment of Union soldiers camped between our house and the school building. On our return from school in the evening, we children would go through the camp and our larger boys would wrestle the soldier boys, two out of three falls. The soldiers would take sides, some championing our boys, others would support their comrades in arms. Sometimes our boys would throw the soldier three times, then he would want to fight, but the older men would quiet the mad boy down.

This camp was on a well to do farmer's premises and there were several barns near the camp grounds where the farmer stored several hundred bushels of wheat. There was one big bin built up off the ground about ten feet where one of the soldiers had been sleeping at night. He would crawl in on top of the wheat and be quite comfortable while others would sleep on the ground underneath. One night the support under this bin gave away and came down on the boys below killing one of them. The soldier in the bin never awoke.

School those days, was a crude system compared to that of the present day. The first thing required of a pupil was that he learn the alphabet, or as we called it, "learning the ABC's" It was the first milestone toward getting an education. The next milestone was to get our A B abs, "then on through the old Blue Back S;elling Book" After we had finished or advanced far enough we were given lessons in writing,

The first pens I used were made of a goose quill, and the juice of polkberries was used ink. During one vacation, when I was about twelve years old, a writing teacher came along and opened a writing school. My father signed for about three pupils including myself. I am glad to say that I improved very fast, and now I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me. One of the words given me to copy was the name of an Indian Chief and here it is. I never forgot it: Shrim-shram-pmadadle-ars-boberink-dum-bully-mitti-kime. This man was an expert with a pen and I have never met one since who I thought could excel him.

So my early life was made up of various experiences and labor, for they put me to work at an early age and my father, while he never appeared displeased at the amount of work we turned out, had the faculty of keeping us busy without grumbling or scolding. We ate a great many things that were never found on the dinner table, such as mulberries, pawpaws, red hewd, ginseng chinkapins, acorns, may apples, hickory nuts, and walnuts.

Mother's kitchen utensils were made up of such things as iron dinner pots, skillets with long legs and long handles, and a lid like a man's hat with the brim turned up so as to hold the hot coals, which were piled on top. A coffee mill was nailed to the wall. The skillot was to bake bread in as we had no cook stove. Our wash tubs, dish kellers, milk piggins, wash noggins, were all made of red cedar with hickory hoops.

And so it went on year in year out until I was about twelve years of age. My brother and I slept in a trundle bed in the same room with my father and mother. One night I awoke and heard my parents talking about a letter they had recently received from Northeast Missouri. I heard my mother say to my father that this was no place to raise a family as there was a great deal of misdemeanor going on, such as drinking, fighting, killing. She suggested that we sell out and go to Missouri.

So they agreed to do that, but it took two years for that resolution to crystalize into action. Finally the sale day was set and we began to get the things together in piles and bunches ready for the sale. We had a few books, mostly agricultural reports, and a history of the Civil War and some school books. My father began to assemble the books, but my mother protested against their sale. My father contended that he could not afford to pay two dollars and fifty cents per hundred pounds on a few old books, and that they probably had books in Missouri where they were going. I wanted to bring all of my school books. The Testament was of large print, and my mother could read it to a certain extent. My father and mother comprised on a proposition that we take the New Testament and my school books. One of my books was Peter Parley's History of the world, and another was Well's Science of Common things. We shipped the books along with our bedding and clothing, but my father, when packing wrapped a ten gallon keg of good four year old apple brandy in a feather bed, placing it down in the middle of one of the big boxes. My mother called his attention to the inconsistency of paying freight on the brandy, but not on the books. He justified him self by saying that he understood there were lots of rattlesnakes and a powerful sight (ague) out in Missouri, with was the truth.

The sale day came and we sold farm and all the same day. The day finally came when we had to leave our old home. People came from far and near to bid us goodby. It was indeed a very sad day. There were no dry eyes and it seemed more like a funeral than a business move. We lived about twenty miles from the railroad and what household goods we were taking were transported by oxen to the station the day before. My father and mother and we children went horse back, going only about half way the first day staying that night with one of my uncles.

We got up early the next morning and visted until after noon the next day and then rode to town that night where we stayed with some more relatives. I had never seen a train and as we went into town that evening I saw a cattle car and I wondered how people could keep warm riding in that thing. The next morning we rose early again so we would be sure to get to the depot in time to take the train. We arrived in time and when the train came in I saw my first passenger car. It has been said that they had to blindfold me to get me aboard and it may be true. In those days trains were a crude affair. They burned wood mostly and when they would stop to take on wood the whole crew conductor engineer firemen and brakeman all engaged in the operation. A brakeman was stationed at every coupling and the speed limit was twenty miles an hour for freight trains and thirty miles an hour for passenger trains. Transportation was very slow. It took us nearly three days to come from Richmond Kentucky to Osborn Missouri. There were no bridges over the Ohio or Mississippi Rivers, at Louisville Ken. or St. Louis Mo. We had to disembark and take an onmibus which ran to the river and onto a ferry boat.

At the Union Station in St. Louis there was a big sign which said, Look out for pic-pockets. All kinds of fakers were permitted on the trains. Among them were peddlers. Three Card Monte Men, modernly called the shell game, blind fiddlers and popcorn peddlers. Near Herman Missouri, a dutch girl came in the coach selling cakes. They looked so nice and brown and I supposed they were sweet, so I bought one for ten cents, and I broke it open I found it to be an old black sour rye bread bisquit, and I couldn't eat it and threw it out of the window. I have always been mad at the Dutch since.

Arriving at Osborn, Missouri in the afternoon sometime in October 1870, we engaged a livery man to transport us out about six miles north to a Mr. Reynolds, who was an old acquaintance of my parents. My father set out at once to find a house to rent but none could be found, so they divided up the family, and it fell to me to go and live with a family where there an old man whose wife had passed away recently. He had two grown daughters and a son. That suited me just fine for those women made over me a great deal and they were good feeders. I enjoyed my stay with them very much and I have to this day cherished the memories of those six weeks in their home.

My father finally found a little house in Maysville which he rented. It consisted of only three rooms. We must have been a sight to the natives with our jeans clothing homespun and home made clothes, linsey shirts and home made shoes or boots.

We spent the winter there and it was mighty cold. We cut wood on shares and shucked corn for the shucks as we had finally purchases a team of mules and a wagon. My older brother and I took a job digging a man's potatoes. I didn't Have any gloves and my hands got so sore that I couldn't button my clothes of a morning without the assistance of my brother.

The next spring my father rented a small farm near Osborn, Missouri. He was able to tend the crop alone and told us boys to get jobs and we could have what we made as it was the custom those days for a boy to turn his earnings over to his father until he became twenty one years old. I went to work for a Mr. 'Thompson just across the road from our house. He was a fine man to work for and his wife was as near an angel as it is possible for a woman to be. She fed me good and cooked everything that I liked. He gave me thirty five cents at first and later raised my wages to fifty cents a day. When we plowed corn he raised my daily wage to seventy cents a day. I plowed corn with a double shovel. I never had any shoes to wear that summer, but I was making more money than I knew what to do with.

That fall my father bought a farm about six miles north of Stewartsville, Missouri. It was an unimproved farm. The first thing we did toward improving it was to dig a well. We hauled the rock with which to wall it a distance of nine miles. We hired a man to dig and wall the well. He dug down and down while we boys drew up the dirt with a windlass. He had to curb it as he went down to keep it from caving in. When he had dug down to what he thought was the proper depth to quit the wall was falling in badly. So he wanted to finish hurriedly and so inasmuch as I was small and could not have strength enough to help one of my brothers draw the digger and a helper up from the well. It looked as if we might lose the well if we didn't get it finished pretty soon. The digger called for some one to come down to help him. So on account of my siza it fell to me to go down and help him. They let me down in the bucket amidst loud protest but my brother said for to go down as there was no other way, as we might lose the well in the next few minutes. Down I went about sixty feet. I would hold the curbing and hand him the nails. I saw that he was excited and that didn't help my morale any. The dirt was falling in fast and I thought that we might be buried. On looking up the entrance didn't look any larger than a nickle and right then I registered a solemn vow in heaven that if I got out of there alive I would never be caught again in a well. I have kept that solemn vow to this day.

The next thing we did was build a shelter to live in. So we erected one with the view of using it for a barn after we had built a dwelling. We lived in that barn for two hard winters, but kept very comfortable and lots of fun as there was no plastering to mar.

My mother insisted that we fence the farm and after that was done, we would build a dwelling. After the proper amount of fencing was done, my father proceeded to build a six room house, and it was a nice one too. All painted white with green shutters and is still standing today. A nice planting of evergreens was made. We moved into the new house in the early winter and the next April my beloved mother passed away. The loss of our mother was a terrible blow. My father continued to keep house with my two little sister. We continued to improve the farm by building cross faences and out building. We hauled our fencing materials four miles after it had been prepared, that is split by hand into post and rails, as there was not any barbed wire in the world. We also hauled all of our fuel from the same piece of timber.

One day my brother and I went to the timber after fire wood. We started early and it was about ten degrees below zero. On the road I froze my feet and didn't know it I worked all day in the six inch snow. We got our wood loaded on to our sleds and started home. The weather had moderated during the day and so on the road my feet began to thaw and of course they began to pain me and burn like fire. I would take off my boots and socks and wade in the snow for a little while and then get back into the sled. Then they would begain hurting again and I would repeat the performance. Finally we arrived home and I found that both feet were badly frozen and I was laid up for about a month.

After getting the farm fenced the next thing was to break the sod. This was done with two big mules and sod plow. We had no shoes so we had to take our chances with the rattlesnakes as there were many of them, but never was I bitten by one. It stood us in hand to watch for the rattlers as we had used up all the good apple brandy that we had brought with us for snake bites.

I attended school at the "White Dove" school house and also the "McCartney Cross Road" school house. My teachers were Mr. Willard Sisco, Johnnie Stration, and a man by the name of Thornton and one by the name of Massey. I also canvassed for maps and books. One book I remember that I sold was "Aunt Eliza Young" (Brigham Young's nineteenth wife) I made a few dollars at that. I also taught a term or two of writing school. Finally, I got married to a young damsel by the name of Lydia Jane Cunningham.

I began farming for myself on my father's farm. I had accumulated something near five hundred dollars and feeling that the work was too hard for me, I bought a little store. I kept on farming while my wife ran the store. When it began to appear that the location of the Rock Island Railroad was going to kill my store, I found a buyer for it and sold out. The road located and they established a station at Amity which of course ruined the store.

After selling my store in the year 1883, I engaged in the Farm Insurance Business. Meanwhile we decided to leave McCartney's Cross Roads and move to King City Missouri. We went to King City and bought a lot from Joseph Taylor in what is now known as Taylor's addition. We built a three room dwelling and moved in about the fourth of July 1883. I kept on in the insurance business until October of that year. Realiziang that a cold was ahead of me, I took a job with the leading general store of McCarty and Millen, owned and operated by James McCarty, William Millan and his brother James. At that time we had three little girls and it made us figure closely to make ends meet on a salary of thirty five dollars a month. But that was better than riding the country during the winter storms and probably not making more.

Not long after my connection with the firm, I was assigned the job of bookkeeper. We put in long hours those days, all worked hard, but everybody kept in good humor and so we had lots of fun, as well as plenty of hard work, yet the time passed fast.

There was another young fellow working for the firm by the name of Fred Severs, who didn't have a lazy bone or muscle in his body. Fred and I would get to the store and open up before daylight many times and saw enough wood to burn in the old wood stove all day. It took a lot of wood for the old store was as cold as a barn and all hands waited on customers with overshoes and hats on all day.

I stayed with the firm through several fires and several years until I got hold of enough money to buy an interest in the business. The first world war came on and as we thought after it was over the bottom would drop out of everything, we concluded in 1919 to go out of business, so we turned all but a controlling interest over to H.L. Yates, Harry Simpson and Charles Boyd. They operated the business until 1932 at which time they had a fire and so we all agreed to quit, and so we did. That ended the business of Millan and Wagers as that had been the name of the firm for a number of years.

I then entered the Real Estate business when Mr. Millan and I went out of actual Management of the business, in 1919. I had quite a nice business in the Real Estate Loan and Insurance business. I am still retaining my Insurance Agency, but have quit the real estate and loan business. I have the distinction of being the oldest insurance agent in the state of Missouri.

There are many happy and some doleful experiences that I have omitted as time nor space would not permit their recital. I am now in my Ninetieth year and hope to live many more and especially, I want to live to see this brought to a close and a lasting peace established.

The world has been good to me and so I have no complaint to make. I am especially proud of the host of good friends, loyal and true. I am thankful to the good lord for the many blessings he has bestowed on me. May all my good friends live to enjoy old age with good health and prosperity is my benediction.

J. T. Wagers
King City, Missouri
April 11, 1945

Grandfather Wager's memory is so good that, in writing his history of the Wagers family, he told of his earlylife but omitted several of his most interesting experiences during his middle age. Being his first grandchild to "arrive" and also spending my boyhood in King City where he lived, I naturally had the happy privilege of sharing intimately with him many years of his interesting and useful life.

Well do I remember the King City Chautauqua -- "eight days of real rest and enjoyment", as "grandpa" advertised it. Grandfather was president of the local committee for as many years as I can remember. With a tent city erected on the school grounds, the people came for miles and miles. Many rural families moved to town and lived in private tents. "Grandpa" opened every chautauqua season with an appropriate speech and then presented the "platform manager" who was the master of ceremonies.

Under grandfather's direction the King City Chautauqua secured good talent. To help make it possible to secure better talent, both speaker and musical, grandfather organized a circuit of independant chautauquas in northwest Missouri. Included among the speakers appearing in King City were Vice-President Marshall and William Jennings Bryan. Rex Maupin, now of National radio repute, got his first professional experiance on the King City Chautauqua platform as a member of the Maupin family orchestra and band.

World War I had its rationing of food and Grandfather Wagers took this rationing very seriously. He personally kept records of every sale of scarce food made by his store. Sugar and flour were the items most carefully watched. When a customer purchased flour he was required to purchase an equal amount of "flour substitue", corn meal, corn flour, etc. Many a time did I hear grandfather "lecture" someone who tried to violate the spirit of this voluntary rationing.

Granfather was one of the original good roads boosters. It has often been said he "boosted himself out of business" -- as the development of good roads made it easier for his old customers to go to St. Joseph and make their selections from larger stores in the "The City Worth While"

Through his influence the Jefferson Highway was routed through King City. This was the first marked highway through our little town. The signs read "Tree Pines to Palms", being a route from Canada to the Gulf.

One of the early automobiles in King City was grandfather's "Jackson" with a slogan "No Hill Too Steep, No Sand Too Deep". But the slogan had not reckoned with the "Jackson's" rear axle which had a habit of breaking frequently --so frequently that it became necessary to carry a spare axle under the rear seat.

When grandfather and I would start to his farm, some 18 miles distant, he would try to calculate a route that would take us over the best roads. He knew every farmer along the route, regardless of which way we would go. He knew who was likely to have dragged his roads --- for he had talked with most of them about the importance of having good roads to their farms.

Grandfather was never known as having any particular musical talent but he apparently always gave encouragement to Grandmother Wagers' sponsorship of the boys band -- the King City Cearcian Band. (Nobody ever seemed to know the meaning of Cearcian). The band frequently practiced in the Wagers' basement and grandmother made numerous trips to nearby towns and cities with the band, to say nothing of the many camping trips she gave the boys in the band.

Other evidence of grandfather's love for music was shown by the fact that four of his five children (Ada, Sybil, Frank and Jack) were musically inclined.

Grandfather acquired an extensive education largely through his own reading. I shall never forget the impression he made on me as a youngster with his explanation of the engineering principles used in the design of railroad wheels and trucks to provide for making curves in the tracks. Too, he could intelligently discuss philosophy and other substantial subjects with scholars.

The alertness of his mind as he nears the century mark in life is wonderful. I treasure the occasional letter he writes to me on his faithful Oliver typewriter. Those familiar with this typewriter know how difficult it is to write on it, but grandfather still hits the keys where they should be hit.



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