Biographical Sketch of J. B. Kitchen, St. Joseph, Buchanan County, MO

>From "History of Buchanan County, Missouri, Published 1881, St. Joseph
Steam Printing Company, Printers, Binders, Etc., St. Joseph, Missouri.
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J. B. Kitchen, one of a firm of Kitchen Bros., and manager of the
Pacific House in St. Joseph, Missouri; was born in St. Louis County,
Missouri, May 25, 1832. His parents emigrated from Virginia to
Missouri in 1829. Henry Kitchen, his father, was by occupation a
farmer. He died in Leavenworth City, Kansas, in 1862, at the age of
sixty five years. His mother, who still lives, is now seventy six
years of age, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. No mother
was ever more highly or deservedly respected. She raised ten child-
ren, five sons and five daughters. Six of these still live. James
"Butter", the subject of this sketch, named after his mother's family
was the fifth child. He moved with his parents from St. Louis in the
fall of 1848 to Platte County, Missouri. In 1854 he left his parents
and went to New Mexico without pecuniary means, but with great ambi-
tion, a restless energy, and full determination to become a successful
man. Arriving at Santa Fe, he obtained a situation as clerk in a large
mercantile house. After a year's experience in this position he sec-
ured from the government a hay contract at Fort Union, New Mexico. He
filled this contract from the Ocate Bottom, about twenty miles from the
Fort, workin all the summer in water over his shoe tops. The grass,
after being cut, was hauled on the high upland, where it was cured and
stacked. The result of this, his first business venture, was a profit
of $900. In the meantime, he had made a friend of Dr. Connelly, a rich
merchant of Albuqurque, who set him up in business in a small town
called Tecolate, in New Mexico, with a stock of merchandise worth
$15,000, on which not a cent was paid for two years, the doctor, in the
meantime, furnishing as required, the merchandise necessary to keep up
the stock. At the end of seven years the doctor received his money in
full, and Mr. Kitchen had made a few thousand dollars. In the meantime
his brother Dick, who was yet with his parents in Platte County, went
to Kansas and settled on a quarter section of land, the claim to which
he sold, in 1860, for $2,000. About this period J. B. sold out his
business in New Mexico and returned home. The two brothers then joined
capital, bought a few teams, and engaged in the freighting business. In
this they met with excellent success, at times, during the war, having
contracts with the government amounting to over a million dollars. The
two brothers have now been doing business together twenty years, in all
of which time they have never kept an account against each other,
everything being held in common. The completion of the railroad ruined
the freighting business on the plains. They were forced, in consequen-
ce, to learn a new trade, and today the Kitchen Bros. are known to the
world as the leading hotel charge of the four houses on the Union Pac-
ific Railroad; J. B., of the Pacific, in St. Joseph, and Richard, the
youngest, who is in charge of the Withnell House, in Omaha, Nebraska.
It is a remarkable fact that J. B. Kitchen during his long period of
residence in New Mexico, never indulged in gambling, drinking or even
smoking, a course which, while it rendered him unpopular with the
common herd of humanity there, accomplished for himself the great ob-
ject he sought when he went out, and he returned to the home he had
left an honored son and brother. The Pacific, under his management,
has become one of the most popular houses in the West.

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