Biographical Sketch of S. M. Markle, 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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S. M. Markle, real estate agent.  Few citizens of St. Joseph have 
attained such a wide spread and richly deserved reputation at home
and in Europe than Major Markle.  He is a native of Butler County,
Ohio, and was born July 15, 1830.  He graduated at the Miami Univer-
sity, in Oxford, attending the same period that Ben Harrison, and
other, now prominent, officials were preparing for the voyage of
life.  At the breaking out of the rebellion we find him in the field
as First Lieutenant of the Forty seventh Ohio; after a time he re-
cruited and became Major of the Sixty ninth.  During his term of 
active duty he was at Pittsburg Landing and many other notable events.
During the latter part of the war he was inspector of provisions at
Cincinnati.  In the spring of 1866 Mr. Markle came to St. Joseph, MO.,
engaging in the real estate and government claim business.  He was
railroad commissioner for the Denver Railway, and made the first sale
of their land.  In 1872, in company with Moses S. Beach, of New York,
he purchased one hundred and four thousand acres of timber land in
Arkansas, one of the heaviest transactions in real estate record, and
it must be conceded that it was a venture of more than ordinary con-
sequence.  The panic of 1873 coming on so affected the money market
that they were obliged to keep it all entirely on their hands.  They
engaged in getting out large amounts of black walnut timber, and ex-
ported it to Europe, and latterly have been supplying the Wheeler &
Wilson Sewing Machine Manufacturing Company with enormous amounts of
material.  Mr. Markle made three trips to Europe to make a sale of 
this vast domain to foreign capitalists, the first time remaining a
year, the second time six months, and the last time a shorter period.
He negotiated with the moneyed men of London and Glasgow, and several
times was on the eve of effeecting a sale, when some trifling tech-
nicality would arise and retard its progress.  However, property is
becoming more valuable, and in the near future will handsomely compen-
sate the gentlemen for their venture.  Mr. Markle has been twice
married, first, in 1852, to Mary R. Give, who died, leaving two child-
ren: Charlie and Effie.  He was again married in 1867 to Miss Lucy G.
Give, and by this marriage they have four children: Frank, Willie,
Jennie and Miner.

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