Marshall County KS Archives Biographies.....Warnica, William D. 1848 - living in 1917
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@gmail.com July 21, 2005, 6:15 pm

Author: B. F. Bowen

WILLIAM D. WARNICA.

    William D. Warnica, one of the real pioneer farmers of Marshall county, now
living retired in his pleasant home in Frankfort, is a native of Canada, but has
been a resident of the United States since he was a child and a resident of
Kansas since the year 1869, when he became a homesteader in Wells county, this
state, where he made his home, one of the foremost pioneers of that part of the
county, until 1907, when he retired from the active labors of the farm and moved
to the nearby city of Frankfort, where he since has resided. He was born at
Berry, near Toronto, in the Dominion of Canada, December 19, 1848, son of Joseph
and Melvina (Denure) Warnica, both natives of New York state and the former of
German descent, who had settled in Canada after their marriage.

    Joseph Warnica was a carpenter by trade. In 1857 he moved with, his family
from Canada to Michigan and located within six miles of Grand Rapids, on the
plank road between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, and there opened a tavern, also
continuing to follow his trade as a carpenter. When the Civil War broke out he
enlisted his services in defense of the Union and in 1861 went to the front with
the Michigan Engineer Corps, only to find a nameless grave on some battlefield
of the South. The last heard of Joseph Warnica was in 1863. He left a widow and
seven children. Of these children the subject of this sketch was the fourth in
order of birth, the others being as follow: Peter, an early settler in Kansas,
who is now living in Texas; Joseph G., who also enlisted in the Michigan
Engineer Corps for service during the Civil War, went to the front with his
father, received his honorable discharge in 1864, later became a pioneer in
Kansas and is now deceased; Mrs. Melvina Crandall, who died in Colorado in 1911;
George A., a substantial farmer living near St. Joseph, Missouri; Calvin, a
farmer living west of Frankfort in this county, and James, of Junction City,
Kansas. In 1873 the Widow Warnica left her home in Michigan and came to Kansas,
taking a homestead five miles west of Frankfort, in this county, where she spent
her last days with her three youngest children, her death occurring there in 1876.

    In 1869, some little time before his twenty-first birthday, William D.
Warnica came to Kansas with a view to finding a home in the then rapidly
developing state. He found conditions in Marshall county to his liking and
homesteaded an "eighty" in Wells township, four miles west of Frankfort. At that
time he had very little money and the beginning of his operations there was on a
very modest scale. He put up a log "shack," twelve feet square, for a claim
shanty and started in developing his homestead. In 1872 he married and
established his home on that tract, gradually continuing to develop and improve
the same until he had an excellent farm. Though, in common with all the settlers
throughout this part of the state, he suffered many hardships and privations
during the days of the grasshopper plague and the destroying hot winds, he had
the courage to "stick it out" and in time was amply rewarded. As he prospered in
his operations Mr. Warnica gradually added to his land holdings until he became
the owner of a fine farm of two hundred and forty acres, on which he erected a
substantial and commodious dwelling and good farm outbuildings, having one of
the best-appointed farm plants in that part of the county. There he made his
home until 1907, when he retired from the active labors of the farm and moved to
Frankfort, where he is now living and where he and his wife are very comfortably
situated.

    Mr. Warnica has been twice married. It was in 1873, about four years after
coming to this county, that he was united in marriage to Hannah Osborn, who was
born in Illinois, daughter of Robert Osborn, who came to Kansas in 1867, and to
that union four children were born, namely: LeRoy, a farmer of Wells township,
this county, who married Florence Ettenboro, a daughter of Charles Ettenboro,
and has five children, Thelma, Everett, Wayne, Marvin and Freda; Alfonso, a
clerk in a hardware store in Montana, who married Eunice Rogers and has one
child, a son, Earl; Bessie, who married Wilbur J. Land, who is farming the
Warnica home farm in Wells township, and has three children, Vernon, Fletcher
and Geneva, and Robert, also farming in Wells township, who married Edna
McConkey and has two children, Evelyn and Etta May. The mother of these children
died in December, 1910, at the age of fifty-six years, and in November, 1914,
Mr. Warnica married Mrs. Mary E. (McElroy) McLain, widow of Lloyd McLain, a
farmer, merchant and former postmaster of Frankfort, and a davighter of Benjamin
and Mary (Thomas) McElroy, who came to Kansas from Wisconsin in 1856 and
homesteaded a place in Vermillion township, this county, thus having been among
the very earliest settlers in that part of the county. Benjamin McElroy was a
veteran of the Civil War, having served as a private in Company G. Thirteenth
Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Infantry, in which he enlisted in 1862 and with which
he served until discharged on a physician's certificate of disability, his
service having been rendered in Arkansas and Missouri, serving under Captain
Blackburn. Upon settling on his homestead farm one and one-half miles west of
where the city of Frankfort later sprang up, Mr. McElroy put up a log cabin and
established his home there. His wife died the year following, in 1857, and he
continued to make his home there until 1875, when he moved to Frankfort, where
he died in 1894. Mrs. Warnica was but six months old when her parents came to
this county and was still but an infant when her mother died. She has an elder
sister, Mrs. Ann J. Rountree, now living in western Kansas.

    Mr. Warnica is a Republican and during his long residence on the farm in
Wells township held various township offices, having been a member of the
township board for thirteen years and holding the position of clerk and
treasurer of the same. In other ways he gave of his services to the public
welfare and was helpful in promoting the interests of his home township from
pioneer days. Mr. Warnica is a Mason and a member of the local lodge of the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and of the Daughters of Rebekah. Mrs. Warnica
also is a member of the latter order and of the local chapter of the Order of
the Eastern Star and both take a warm interest in Masonic affairs and in the
affairs of the Odd Fellows. Both have been witnesses to the development of
Marshall county from the days of the unbroken prairie and the open range and
have performed well their part in that development, ever helpful in promoting
such causes as were designed to advance the common welfare.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

History of Marshall County, Kansas: its people, industries, and institutions
by
Emma E. Forter

Indianapolis, Ind.: B.F. Bowen & Co. (1917)

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/marshall/bios/warnica41bs.txt

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