My Genealogy Hound

FRED WALKER, dry goods merchant, was born May 5, 1855, being the oldest but one in a family of eight children born to Richard A. and Amanda M. (Smith) Walker, appropriate mention of whom is made elsewhere in this volume. Our subject was raised in his native town by his parents, securing a fair education from the public schools in youth, which in later years was greatly increased by much desultory reading. At fourteen years of age he began clerking in a dry goods store in Rockport, but two years later went to Arkansas where he was engaged in clerking two years longer. Returning then to Rockport he was employed a year as a clerk, and as traveling salesman for Louisville shoe manufactory one year. At twenty-one years of age he embarked in the dry goods and gent’s furnishing trade in Rockport, in which he has remained to the present time. He keeps a carefully selected, and not over-large stock of goods, and by recommending only first-class goods, placing them for sale at reasonable figures and by gentlemanly conduct has made his business a decided success. June 24, 1880, Agnes Fisher, a native of Greencastle, Ind., became his wife, and by him the mother of one daughter—Nellie F. Mr. Walker is a Republican and his wife is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.