HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                  221

is known to this day as “the Aunt Katy Tipton place.” Josiah was a
volunteer soldier of the Civil war, of the Fifty-ninth Indiana Regiment,
serving until the close of the conflict. In 1874 Josiah married Susan
Yost, and in 1876 (February 10) Robert married Fredricka Werner,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Werner, deceased. Both emigrated to
Kansas in the year 1876, locating near McPherson, the county-seat of
McPherson county, where they acquired lands, have good, well improved
farms, and are comfortably and independently situated. In the family
of Josiah, the elder brother, are three sons, and in the family of Robert,
the younger, four sons and three daughters.

    Oliver P. Grimes, native of Clay county, son of William and Eva
(- ) Grimes, born in Sugar Ridge township, October 16, 1864. Will-
iam Grimes is also a native of Clay county. The family left here and
went to Greenwood county, Kansas, in the year 1883, where they resided
until 1899, when they went to Colorado. After having attended the pub-
lic schools of his native state and of Kansas the subject of this biograph-
ical sketch took a course at the Cincinnati law school preparatory to
engaging in the practice. On the 17th day of December, 1900, he mar-
ried Minnie B. Burnett, of Rushville, Schuyler county, Illinois. On the
first of May, 1904, he was appointed sheriff of El Paso county, Colorado,
to fill out an unexpired term, then elected to the same position in Novem-
ber of the same year, and re-elected in November, 1906, his second term
of service expiring with the coming in of the year 1909. To Mr. and
Mrs. Grimes has been born a daughter, Gertrude, now seven years old.
The family resides at Colorado Springs, as do also Mr. Grimes’ parents.

    Thomas A. Morgan, native of Clay county, son of John N. and Eliza-
beth (Wright) Morgan, born and raised in Posey township, who resides
at Monmouth, Crawford county, Kansas, has twice been nominated by
the Democratic party for county treasurer. Though his party is in the
minority in his adopted county, he polled a very large vote at both elec-
tions, leading all other candidates on the ticket.

    James Hatton, Columbus, Kansas, present sheriff of Cherokee
county, was a resident of Van Buren township, Clay county, before going
to the “Sunflower state,” thirty years ago.

    Steve Travis, a native of Clay county, born at Brazil, March 5, 1860,
who attended the public schools of Center Point, Bowling Green and
Middlebury, and acquired the typographical art and newspaper habit in
the offices of the Martz Eaglet and Clay City Independent, after teaching
one term, of public school, near the historic “Boone’s Island,” went west
in the spring of 1883 to “grow up with the country.” Having home-
steaded a quarter section of land in Sulley county, South Dakota, and
“read his titles clear,” he launched the Weekly Times, at Okobojo. a
frontier town of 27 population, not enumerating prairie-dogs. In the
month of November, 1892, he went to Chicago, armed with the necessary
press compliments of the North-Western, where, on the 15th day of the
month, he met Miss Laura Sutherland, for many years a teacher in the
public schools of Kankakee, whom he persuaded to accompany him to
Scuth Dakota’s capital city (having previously disposed of the Okobojo
Times’), where he launched Pierre’s pioneer daily, The Capital. Three