My Genealogy Hound

T. A. MITCHELL. On a farm in Liberty township, Woodson County, T. A. Mitchell is engaged in the raising of stock, and his activity in business has brought him a comfortable competence. He was born in Washington County, Indiana, July 26, 1854, and is a son of Elisha Mitchell, a native of Indiana. Mr. Mitchell has records tracing their family history to a Robert Mitchell born in Scotland, October 8, 1740. Elisha, after attaining years of maturity, wooed and wedded Miss Lydia Colglazier, a native of the Hoosier state, whose people had emigrated to Indiana in 1812, settling in the midst of the woods when the Indians in motley garb still stalked through the forest. The father of our subject was a miller by trade but spent part of his time on a farm and by following such pursuits provided for his family, which included his wife and ten children, five of whom are yet living. His death occurred in 1864, when he was forty-six years of age. His wife also passed away at the age of forty-six, her death occurring in 1867.

T. A. Mitchell was the seventh of their family and was reared upon a farm where the work of the fields early became familiar to him through practical experience. His preliminary education, acquired in the common schools, was supplemented by study in the Paola Normal school of Indiana, and three years he engaged in teaching, two years in Indiana and one in the district of his present home. In the spring of 1877, he came to Kansas, settling first in Neosho Falls, where he made his home for a year. He afterwards purchased two hundred and forty acres of unimproved land ten miles north of Yates Center, where he has developed an excellent stock firm. He engages in the raising of grain and stock, and his good crops and sales of cattle are profitable sources of revenue. He is also one of the stockholders and directors of the creamery at Neosho Falls where he delivers his cream. Mr. Mitchell has given much time and attention to dairying, having purchased the first centrifugal cream separator used in Woodson County.

On the 22d of April, 1880, Mr. Mitchell was joined in wedlock to Miss Emma Williams, a native of Howard County, Indiana, and a daughter of Dr. Henry Williams, who was born in Ohio and married Harriet C. Ellis, a native of Kentucky, whence in her girlhood she removed to the Hoosier state. The doctor successfully practiced for many years in Russiaville, Indiana and also engaged in merchandising in the same town. He died in 1871, at the age of sixty-four years, and his wife passed away in 1884, at the age of sixty-eight. They were the parents of three children Mrs. Mitchell’s parents, being in a position favorable, gave her excellent opportunities to acquire an education, of which she made good use by qualifying herself for any position she might desire. She engaged in teaching previous to her marriage, having taught the year before her marriage in Severy, Greenwood County, Kansas. She, by her marriage, has become the mother of two sons and three daughters. Stella, the eldest, died in infancy. The others are Florence, who is a graduate of high school of Neosho Falls and is now teaching her first term of school in her home district in Woodson County; Thomas, E. Carl and Harriet, all of whom have completed the course of study in the common schools.

Voting with the Democracy, Mr. Mitchell, thus expresses his political belief, but he has never been an office seeker, believing that his business will be attended by better results if he confines his attention solely to the occupation which he has chosen as his life work and which is returning to him a good financial reward.