Dannie K. Baty

DANNIE K. BATY is a ranchman and farmer who has acquired an unusually large and prosperous stake in Seward Township of Seward County, and is one of the men who can be looked to for the most progressive and productive enterprises in the way of farming, stock husbandry and other achievements of value to the world at large.

Mr. Baty, who is a native of Kansas and was born in Sedgwick County July 19, 1877, is of old Kentucky stock. Before they came to this country the Baty family lived in England and were colonists in Amercia[sic] prior to the war for independence. There is record of a great-uncle of Mr. Baty who attained the great age of 102 years and had spent nearly all his life in Bath County, Kentucky. A conservative calculation places the settlement of the family in that part of Kentucky as early as 1763, thus dating them back to the time of Daniel Boone.

Clark F. Baty, father of Dannie K., was born in Bath County, Kentucky, in 1843 and lived there until about the close of the Civil War. He went into Northern Missouri when still a single man and married in Andrew County, that state. He had only a very practical and common school education, and the best years of his life were given to farming and to the development on a modest scale of some of this western country. He was a member of a family of Union sentiment and two of his brothers did a fighting part in the Union Army. He was himself a politician only to the extent of voting the republican ticket and never held any official place of any kind. He is a member of the Christian Church.

Clark F. Baty has a record that classifies him among the real pioneers of Western Kansas. He first came into the state in 1869 as a buffalo hunter. He was associated with a party of business men from Western Missouri in that enterprise and they found their quarry along the Ninnescah River. While engaged in shooting and skinning those noble animals of the prairie he was also using his opportunities to investigate the country, and a few years later, about 1874, he returned to Kansas and entered land in Sedgwick County. He proved up a claim there where his son was born, and then went into Reno County and near Burton was a farmer for seven years. He gradually drifted west with the tide of settlement, finally moving to Sumner County, and about 1888 he returned to Missouri and lived in Clinton County for a few years and then came back to Kansas and was a resident of Burton County until 1912. He then returned to Missouri and is now living at Climax Springs in that state.

Clark F. Baty married Sarah E. McGlothlin. She was born in 1854, in Palo Pinto County, Texas. Her family is one of interesting experience and participation in pioneer life. Her father was a Mexican War soldier from Texas. He settled in Northern Texas after that war, in the rugged hills of Palo Pinto County, and was driven out from there by the hostile Indians. With his family he started back for Missouri, but was taken ill during the journey, died, and fills an unknown grave somewhere in Oklahoma. After this tragedy the widow drove on to her destination in Andrew County, where they had formerly lived. There she reared her family, consisting of Mrs. Clark Baty, Bettie, Amanda, and Dartha. The children of Clark F. Baty and wife are: Edna, wife of James W. Coulson, of Barton County, Kansas; Dannie K.; Ida, wife of Rufus Jackson, of Climax Springs, Missouri; Dora, wife of R. D. Smith, of Plains, Kansas; Thomas J., of Seward County, Kansas, who married Glessie Holt; and Opal, wife of Rufus Thompson, of Climax Springs.

Dannie K. Baty grew up in the various localities above noted as the home and scene of labors of his father, chiefly in Sedgwick, Reno and Sumner counties, Kansas. A common school education was his preparation for life. About the time he attained manhood he left the farm in Barton County and enlisted in the spring of 1898 for service in the Spanish-American War. He went to Kansas City to enlist, and was enrolled in Company C of the Third Missouri Volunteers. His regiment trained at Camp Algers, Washington, and at Camp Meade, Pennsylvania, and never got to the front, being kept in camp until the war closed. He served as a private and was given his honorable discharge at Kansas City late in 1898.

This experience as a soldier was followed by three years of hard work as a student in the Central Normal College at Great Bend, Kansas. He finished the course with credit and received a teacher's diploma. As a teacher he did some good work in the country schools and later the graded schools, spending about six years altogether in that location. His last teaching was done in the Claflin schools.

For the sake of recuperating his health he left the school room temporarily, as he supposed, to take up farming, his mind and ambition being intent at that time upon the study of medicine. However, his interests as a farmer became so complex and numerous that he has all but forgotten his former ambition to become a physician. Mr. Baty lived in Barton County, Kansas, until 1912, when he came to Seward County and bought the headquarters of the old Crooked L ranch, and now owns six quarter sections of that famous cattle domain. On this he has engaged in the stock business, the breeding of high grade White Face cattle and also farming. While his own farm shelters little but the high grade cattle, his operations as a cattle buyer and shipper have caused him to handle all sorts and conditions of livestock produced in this section. He is one of the most extensive shippers to the Kansas City market, and is a well known and familiar figure in the Kansas city stockyards. Mr. Baty has done much to improve his ranch and has added all the substantial farm buildings and other conveniences except the ranch house itself, which still remains a comfortable and commodious home. As a farmer he has under cultivation about 1,000 acres. In all his experience he has had but one failure as a wheat grower, and no season has failed to give him plenty of seed for his stock. Mr. Baty is a member of the Board of the Equity Elevators at Kismet and Plains.

Politically he is a republican. While living in Barton County he served his township as an officer and in 1910 was one of the enumerators of the county for the census. In 1916 he was republican candidate for representative from Seward County but was defeated in the democratic landslide of that year. In 1918 his party again made him the nominee for that office. Mr. Baty joined the Masonic order at Hoisington, Kansas, became a Royal Arch Mason at Meade and acquired the Knight Templar Degree at Liberal.

On May 2, 1912, in Barton County, he married Miss Augusta Meckenroth. She was a small girl when her mother and father died and she was reared in the home of William Shapland in Barton County, where she was born. She was educated in the public schools and for three years was a teacher in Barton County before her marriage. Her father, Max Meckenroth, was a native of Germany. He came to the United States at the age of twenty-one. He married Maria Danner. The Meckenroths were early settlers in Barton County, Kansas, and finally moved from the farm to Great Bend, where Mr. Meckenroth was a merchant and where he died. He fought as a Union soldier during the Civil War. His children were: Henry, who was accidentally killed by a gun shot at the age of fifteen; Maggie, wife of James Airhart, of Great Bend; Earl of Great Bend, Kansas; Elmyra, wife of Leon Landrum, of Piatt, Oklahoma; Louisa, of Hutchinson, Kansas; Frank, who as a young man was accidentally killed at Brinkman Mill at Great Bend; and Mrs. Baty, who was born August 7, 1891.

Mr. and Mrs. Baty have three daughters: Voda Yvonne, Elsie Elnora and Ruth Mildred.