Butler County KS Archives Obituaries.....Taliaferro, Robert Young July 5, 1933 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ks/ksfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Peggy Luce pegsue59@cox.net and December 28, 2006, 6:04 pm The El Dorado Times, July 5, 1933 ROBERT YOUNG TALIAFERRO DIES HERE TODAY END COMES THIS AFTERNOON TO LEADING BUSINESS FIGURE AFTER BRIEF ILLNESS R. Y. Taliaferro, El Dorado merchant and a former city commissioner, died at 1:25 o’clock this afternoon at Allen Memorial Hospital following an illness of only several days. His death came with shocking force in the town where he had been an active figure and a highly respected neighbor and friend for a third of a century. Mr. Taliaferro complained of illness on Friday but was able to be at work part of that day and as late as Saturday evening. His condition gradually grew worse over Sunday and became so critical that early Tuesday morning he was removed from his home at 621 West First Avenue to the hospital. From that time on, no hope was held out for his recovery. His trouble was uremic poisoning; in recent years, Mr. Taliaferro had suffered from attacks of rheumatism but apparently had recovered from that ailment. FUNERAL ON FRIDAY The funeral services will be held Friday morning at 10 o’clock at the Byrd Funeral Home, conducted by Rev. W. D. Jackson, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church. Burial will be made in Belle Vista Cemetery. Only two of Mr. Taliaferro’s children were here at the time of his death, the son Robert being at home and a daughter Mrs. Cloyd Guinn, having arrived this morning from St. Louis. Mrs. Phil Doane the other daughter left with her husband Sunday for La Gunda Beach, Calif., arriving there at noon yesterday. Being apprised of the condition of her father, she at once took airplane passage for her return and is expected to arrive in El Dorado this evening. Mr. Taliaferro, who was 57 years old, had been in business here since 1900. His first association was in partnership with his brother, Stuart, and they conducted a men’s furnishing store on South Main street. Later this became Taliaferro & Miller and so continued for several years. Mr. Miller sold out in 1927 and Mr. Taliaferro closed the business early in 1930. For a year or two he was active vice-president of the Mid-Continent Building & Load Association of which he was a director. In March this year, he re-entered business by establishing a women’s ready-to-wear shop in his own building at 114 South Main street. A more extensive account of the life of this fine citizen, whose passing has thrown a mantle of sorrow over El Dorado and Butler County will be published in The Times of Thursday. The El Dorado Times Friday, July 7, 1933 SIMPLE SERVICES FOR R. Y. TALIAFERRO Impressive in simplicity were the funeral rites this morning for the late R. Y. Taliaferro, held at the Byrd Funeral Home and attended by a large concourse of relatives and friends. Rev. William D. Jackson, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, read the Episcopal services for the dead and also several passages of scripture, including a portion of the eighth chapter of Romans, beginning at Verse No. 14, T. C. Kingston sang feelingly “Requiem,” by Robert Louis Stevenson. A short prayer concluded the ceremonies. The casket, which was opened from 8:30 to the funeral hour, was banked with masses of summer flowers, beautiful in their designs and profusion. A long procession of friends attended the burial at Belle Vista Cemetery. Many came from out of town to pay their final respects to the memory of Mr. Taliaferro. The courthouse, city hall, all banks and most of the places of business in El Dorado were closed from 10 to 11 o’clock. The active pallbearers included Will Noble, C. C. Shelden, W. R. Brown, W. E. Dillenbeck, J. H. Sandifer and H. G. Sandifer. The honorary pallbearers were George Miller, of Colorado Springs, Colo., Judge George J. Benson, Joe D. Turner, J. B. McKay, A. G. Haberlein, J. W. Kirkpatrick, T. B. Ellsberry and Robt. H. Hazlett. El Dorado Times Thursday, July 6, 1933 RITES FRIDAY FOR R. Y. TALIAFERRO FUNERAL FOR REVERED EL DORADO MERCHANT TO BE HELD HERE TOMORROW Funeral services for the late R. Y. Taliaferro, whose death occurred yesterday afternoon following a brief illness, will be held Friday morning at 10 o’clock at the Byrd Funeral Home, and will be conducted by Rev. William D. Jackson, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church. Burial will be made in Belle Vista Cemetery. The casket will be open to friends from 8:30 to 10 o’clock tomorrow morning, but will not be opened after the services. The active pallbearers are: George Miller, of Colorado Springs, Colo., former business partner of Mr. Taliaferro, who arrived today; Judge George J. Benson, Joe D. Turner, J. B. McKay, A. G. Haberlein, J. W. Kirkpatrick, T. B. Ellsberry and Robt. H. Hazlett. The Chamber of Commerce has requested that all places of business in El Dorado be closed tomorrow morning during the funeral hours between 10 and 11, out of respect to the memory of Mr. Taliaferro. WAS BUSINESS LEADER The death yesterday of R. Y. Taliaferro – after an illness so brief that many of his friends had not even heard of it – left a great gap in the business ranks of El Dorado. For ever since 1904 when he first came to this town and first entered business, Mr. Taliaferro had ranked by sheer merit as one of El Dorado’s foremost business figures. Not only was he a shrewd and progressive merchant but a skillful trader in other lines as well, an excellent judge of values of all sorts, and ever alert to a real business, opportunity. While he was indefatigably devoted to his business, he found time to take part in all worth-while activities of his home community. He was a civic leader and no circle of business men was complete without Bob Taliaferro present. His counsel was wise and timely and men learned to respect and revere his judgment. He had served as a member of the city commission but after his citizen’s duty and public office, he was always the same – zealous and faithful to its best interests, honest, reliable and exercising the unusual capacity of his business mind toward its welfare. Above everything, he was a fine neighbor and friend – and the loss of his cheery personality and his alert, aggressive manner is one of the keenest this town has had to withstand in many a day. DEVOTED TO BUSINESS “Bob” Taliaferro had but few diversions. His active business and civic life absorbed much of his attention but he was devoted to his family, and the Taliaferro circle was a rare one of kindliness and deep, sympathetic understanding. He never learned to play golf, scorning it as a diversion for which he was not temperamentally fitted. But he liked baseball, boxing, wrestling and horse-racing and few events in those lines of sports failed to find him absent from the ringside or grandstand, a keenly interested observer. His final sickness came with appalling suddenness. Several years ago, he suffered severely from attacks of rheumatism but this ailment apparently had been cured. He had suffered from a chronic stomach trouble, but was careful of his diet. He was stricken with uremic poisoning the latter part of last week. While he was down part of the time, he was able to go to his place of business both on Friday and as late as Saturday evening. However, the malady persisted and by Tuesday morning it was necessary to remove him to Allen Memorial hospital. There the end came at 1:25 Wednesday afternoon, with the most devoted medical attention of no avail to stem the encroach of the infection. BORN IN ATCHISON Robert Young Taliaferro was born in Atchison on October 16, 1876. He was educated in the public schools of Effingham, and was graduated from the high school there in 1894. He later enrolled as a student in the State Teachers College (then the Kansas state Normal School) at Emporia. After leaving school, it was natural that he should enter the mercantile business for during his vacation periods he had worked for the P. J. O’Meara general mercantile store at Effingham since he was 13 years old. When he was only 20, he opened a clothing store in Effingham, and was probably then the youngest merchant in the state-actively conducting his own business. In 1896 he went to Oskaloosa for four years operated a general store there. El Dorado, then as now, being a thriving, hustling and highly substantial community, attracted his interest and he came here in 1904. In partnership with his brother, Stuart, he leased a centrally located building and opened a store of men’s furnishings. This partnership continued successfully for ten years, at which time Stuart Taliaferro sold his interest to George Miller and the firm became known as Taliaferro & Miller. No business in El Dorado flourished as well or as consistently as this one did for 17 years. In 1927, Mr. Miller desired to leave El Dorado and Mr. Taliaferro purchased his interest. Three years later, or early in 1930, Mr. Taliaferro closed out the store and retired from active merchandising for a period. OPENED NEW STORE His business qualities soon were called into employment again. Having been a director of the Mid-Continent Building & Loan Association since its formation, he was persuaded by fellow members of the board to become active vice-president in charge. For a year or two, he held that position. Retiring from the directorate early this year, he was idle for a short while only. Then the lure of merchandising again became too strong for him to resist, and he opened a ready-to-wear store in his own building at 114 South Main Street. It is significant of his high faith in the permanent stability of this community and his belief that the country is sure to return to normal ways of prosperity that he opened his new store during the banking holiday – at a time when business of all sorts was largely paralyzed. He was welcomed back into business by scores of friends, and his store had prospered to a marked degree. Mr. Taliaferro was the owner of the business and office building, above mentioned which housed both his own store and that of Woolworth’s as well as numerous offices on the second floor. He had acquired several tracts of farming and grazing land, was the owner of the building in which the S&H Baking company is located at Eureka, as well as another building on South Main street here and several small properties. During the years of oil development in this locality, Mr. Taliaferro made numerous investments and many of them were profitable ones. WAS CITY COMMISSIONER During his residence here he took a consistent interest in the Chamber of Commerce of which he had been a director at various times. He was industrious in committee work and generous as a contributor to all public enterprises. He helped always to make the Kafir Corn carnival one of the most successful affairs of its kind in the country. In 1917, when the city adopted the city manager commission form of government to meet new conditions imposed by the oil boom and a rapid increase of the town’s facilities, he was one of three commissioners elected to put the new system into operation. In all public affairs, he exercised the same business talents and zeal that he devoted to his own business. Mr. Taliaferro was reared as an Episcopalian but held no church membership. He was a charter member of the El Dorado County Club. He was a 32nd degree Mason, with membership in various bodies of that order including the Wichita consistory and Midian Shrine. He had served as Worthy Patron for the Eastern Star. He held a membership in the Elks Lodge. Politically, Mr. Taliaferro followed in the paths of his Virginia and Mississippi forebears and was a loyal Democrat. SON OF A VIRGINIAN He was the son of Richard H. Taliaferro, a native of Virginia and whose ancestors settled in that state during Colonial times. The father moved to Mississippi where he was a planter when the Civil war began; thereupon he enlisted in the Confederate Army and rose to the rank of captain in the quarter- master’s corps. Mr. Taliaferro’s mother was Melissa Brown, native of Mississippi and daughter of Col. Richard H. Taliaferro removed with his family to Kansas in 1869 settling in Atchison. On February 4, 1903, Robert Y. Taliaferro was married to Miss Sadie Van cleave of Oskaloosa, who survives him. Five children were born to them, two of these dying in infancy. The others are Mrs. Phil Doane, who was absent in California with her husband at the time of her father’s death but who returned to El Dorado by airplane last evening; Mrs. Cloyd Guinn, of St. Louis and Robert junior, who has just finished his first year in the law school of Harvard University. Besides these are left two grand-daughters Doris and Phyllis Doane to whom Mr. Taliaferro was singularly devoted. Mr. Taliaferro is also survived by a sister, Mrs. D. W. Campbell of Atchison, who will come to the funeral and by a brother, Stuart Taliaferro. R. Y. Taliaferro The death yesterday of R. Y. Taliaferro occasioned a bitter loss to El Dorado and to all of Butler County. During the twenty-nine years he had lived in this town, he was a forceful and dynamic figure. He possessed an outstanding business genius. He was born with traits that made him a pre-eminently successful merchant and a shrewd trader, but he bolstered these by fidelity to detail and by tireless devotion to the work in hand. He knew all about his own business; nothing escaped him; much of the time he laboriously kept his own books and knew to a penny the condition of his enterprise. Such practice might have made many men petty and introspective. Not so Bob Taliaferro. He had a broad and clear vision of business trends and tendencies. Just a year or two ago, when chain merchandising was at its height and seemed about to sweep all before it, Mr. Taliaferro said he considered this the best possible time for an individual merchant to capitalize his own name and personality. Doubtless it was considerations of this sort that led him to re-enter the mercantile business in El Dorado this year, after he had once retired. And when he made his decision, he carried it out. Few business men would have had the courage and the hardihood to open up in the midst of the banking holiday in March, but Bob Taliaferro did and saw his faith in the community justified in just a few months of daily business experience. Mr. Taliaferro was honest as sunlight and one of that selected group whose word is as good as his bond. No man ever traded or bargained closer in a deal than he. But when the transaction was closed, he carried out his part of it scrupulously and completely. He wouldn’t welsh and he was fair and straight forward in all his actions. Moreover, he was generous of his time and money. When the hat was passed, Bob Taliaferro’s name was always on the list for an adequate amount and it was given freely and modestly. No call from the Chamber of Commerce of from other public activities ever went unheeded. His own private business needed him in 1917 when the city adopted the manager-commission form of government. But he put aside his personal interests and served for two years on that body when many vital measures in the change over from a town of 3,500 to one of 12,000 or 15,000 were carried out. He used the same cool, careful, calculating judgment in all matters that he applied to his own affairs, and devoted his own energy and ability in the same degree to public concerns. He was a fine, firm friend and held deeply the gift of making friendships. He was not effusive or given to back slapping. He sought no public honors. He was a kind and faithful father and husband and his home was a place of delight. He was ever cheerful and held a simple and abiding faith in his country and its institutions. He was slow to anger and met all men on a foundation of friendliness and good will. He succeeded largely in a business way but even more so in the close human bonds that he forged with his neighbors. And now he is gone at 57, in what might have been reasonably expected to be the prime of his life and when two decades of useful service might have lain ahead of him. So there is deep and lasting sorrow in El Dorado today for the loss of Bob Taliaferro – a prince of friends and companions – which loss can never be wholly offset. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/butler/obits/t/taliafer593ob.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ksfiles/ File size: 16.8 Kb