My Genealogy Hound

A. J. Childers, editor of the Osage County Enterprise, of which he assumed control March 1, 1888, was born in McNairy County, Tenn., in 1847, and is a son of A. T. and Rebecca (Rhodes) Childers, natives of Tennessee and South Carolina, respectively, the former born in 1825, and the latter in 1827. The parents were married in Henderson County, Tenn., after which they removed to McNairy County, subsequently returned to Henderson County, and in 1859 removed from Decatur County to Gasconade County, Mo. The mother died in Callaway County, Mo., in 1863, and the father died in Nashville, Ill., in 1884. He was of English descent, but for several generations the family have been natives of America. A. J. Childers was the eldest of a family of eight children, and received his education in the common schools of Missouri and those of Washington County, Ill. He began working for himself on a farm when seventeen years of age, and afterward was employed as a store clerk. The following three years he worked as a common laborer at contract work on the ‘Frisco Railroad, which he abandoned in 1873, and a few years after taught school in Osage County, Mo. In 1882 he became editor of the Chamois Liberalist, which he successfully conducted until February, 1888, when he purchased the Osage County Enterprise. In February, 1873, Mr. Childers married Samantha M. Bryan, a native of St. Charles County, Mo., and a daughter of George W. and Melvina Bryan. Mr. Childers is a Republican in politics, and is a member of the K. of P. Lodge No. 108. His paternal grandfather, William Childers, was a native of South Carolina, and built the first log house in Memphis, Tenn., which was then known as Chickasaw Bluffs. Thomas Rhodes was the maternal grandfather of our subject. He was also a native of South Carolina, and died in Henderson County, Tenn.