Biographical Sketch of L. C. Merritt, Holden, Johnson County, Missouri 

>From "History of Johnson County, Missouri," by Ewing Cockrell,
Historical Publishing Company, Topeka, Cleveland, 1918.

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L. C. Merritt, of the L. C. & A. Merritt Furniture Company of Holden,
Missouri, is one of the well known and leading merchants of Johnson
county.  Mr. Merritt is a native of Indiana and the only child born to
his parents, William C. and Sarah (Cullum) Merritt, of Lafayette, Ind-
iana.  He was born in 1852 in Lafayette, an old, historical place, the
scene of the famous defeat of the renowned Indian chief, Tecumseh, by
William Henry Harrison in 1811, and a college town since 1874, when
Purdue University was opened there.  William C. Merritt was born in
Pennsylvania.  His parents both died when he was a little child and 
the orphan boy was reared in Cincinnati, Ohio, by a neighbor, a well
to do shipowner who operated a line of steamboats.  The elder Merritt
learned the brickmason's trade and in later years became a very succ-
essful contractor.  In early manhood, he moved from Ohio to Indiana and
settled in Lafayette.  Jane (Cullum) Merritt was a daughter of Harvey
Cullum, a prominent pioneer of Cincinnati, Ohio.  The Cullums moved
from Ohio to Indiana in 1829 and settled on a farm in Tippecanoe county
near Lafayette.  The first year they failed to raise any crops and were
obliged to rely upon the uncertain friendliness of the treacherous 
Indians of the vicinity to obtain food.  William C. Merritt and Jane
Cullum were united in marriage and to them was born one child, a son,
L. C., the subject of this review.  The father spent his mature life in
Lafayette, Indiana.  His death occurred in 1874, in the same year that
Perdue University was founded at Lafayette.  In the public schools of
Lafayette, Indiana, L. C. Merritt obtained his preliminary education.
Early in life, Mr. Merritt received a most thorough course in business
training in actual work in a mercantile establishment in Lafayette.
September 15, 1900 he came from Lafayette to Holden, Mo., and entered
at once the furniture business in this city engaged in business with
Stephen Ball, a former Lafayette man, who had opened his furniture
establishment at Holden in 1882.  Mr. Ball was born and reared on a 
farm in Tippecanoe county, Indiana, and when a young man learned the
work of a telegraph operator and was employed in that capacity at Fort
Scott, Kansas, for several years prior to his coming to Holden, Mo.
L. C. Merritt and Stephen Ball were associated in business until 1903,
when upon the death of Mr. Ball the business was left to Mr. and Mrs.
Merritt.  The firm was the first in the furniture business to be estab-
lished in Holden.  Recently, Mr. Merritt has renewed and increased the
splendid line of stock carried by the company and in addition to furn-
iture they are fully equipped with a complete stock of supplies needed
in the undertaker's work.  October 17, 1880, L. C. Merritt and Alice
McNeal, of Lafayette, Indiana, were united in marriage.  To this union
has been born one child, a daughter, Mrs. Myrtle Eldredge, who resides
on a farm located one and a half miles west of Holden, Missouri.  Mr.
Merritt's mother came with Mr. and Mrs. Merritt to Holden in 1900 and,
in June of the following year, her death occurred here.  Mrs. William
C. Merritt's remains were taken back to Indiana for burial and she was
laid to rest besdie her husband in the burial ground at Lafayette.
Politically, Mr. Merritt has always been a stanch Republican.  For many
years, he has been a member of the Odd Fellows, with which lodge he
affiliated at Lafayette.  Mr. Merritt is also a member of the Modern
Woodmen of America.  He is widely known and highly respected in the
business circles of this part of Missouri and during their residence of
seventeen years in Holden both he and Mrs. Merritt have made a host of
friends, not solely in their immediate community by in all Johnson
county.

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