George A. Carrithers

GEORGE A. CARRITHERS, a ranchman and farmer of Stanton County, is perhaps as well informed by personal experience of the conditions that have prevailed in this far western section of Kansas during the last thirty years as any other man. His home has been in Mitchell Township of this county since 1897, but he became a resident of Western Kansas in 1885.

The Carrithers family is somewhat numerously represented in Stanton and Hamilton counties, and George A. is one of eight sons; five of them are still active in those counties. George A. Carrithers was born in Sullivan County, Indiana, February 8, 1867, and grew up with his parents on a farm. He is a son of John A. and Sarah J. (Beek) Carrithers, who now occupy the old homestead in Stanton County which their son John proved up. It was in the fall of 1884, when George was seventeen years of age, that the family left Indiana, spending the following winter in Kiowa County, Kansas, and in the spring of 1885 moved into Hamilton County. They settled in the southeastern corner of that county, and George A. Carrithers, a sturdy youth of eighteen, was from that time forward engaged in doing a man's work either on the home place or elsewhere.

For several years he was employed in public works, railroad construction principally. His first experience was grading the line of the Missouri Pacific Railway in Greeley County, and later he was on the Rock Island road through Southwestern Kansas. He was also employed in grading the "High Line" irrigation ditch from Nepesta, Colorado, south. After this he returned to his home community and took his place on the farm and ranch. Since then his efforts have been directed to farming and stock raising, and gradually he has created a modest ranch of which he is the present owner.

Mr. Carrithers acquired his capital for ranching through strenuous manual labor. He and his brother William were associated as partners until 1914, when George took his share of the ranch and established himself at his present home in section 10, township 27, range 40. He had previously proved up the northeast quarter of section 18, township 27, range 40, a homestead which he exchanged for one of the quarter sections where he now lives. His home has been at his present location since 1913, and his improvements serve to mark out and render conspicuous this point in the broad and almost unbroken expanse of prairie. He has accumulated six quarter sections of land in a body and has 250 acres under the plow, devoted to the crops of cane, kaffir, maize and broom corn, all of which seem well adapted to this entire region. His cattle are grades of Galloway and his horses are a good grade of Percheron. All the meat that supplies the household comes out of his own pens.

As a man of public spirit Mr. Carrithers has naturally not lived in this community without taking some active part in local affairs. For several years he was treasurer of the Mitchell school district and was appointed county commissioner to fill the unexpired term of Commissioner Wartman, and was later elected for a full term. He was a member of the board with Commissioners Milam, Bullock, George Julian and George Mackey. Besides the routine matters that came before the board he helped compromise some of the outstanding bonds of the county and also to build a new vault in the court house. In politics Mr. Carrithers is a democrat, and all of his votes have been cast on Kansas soil.

On September 15, 1897, in Stanton County, Mr Carrithers married Mary R. Rhodes. Her father, Zachariah E. Rhodes, came to Kansas from Iowa. In early life Mr. Rhodes was a coal miner but is now a farmer at Willow Springs, Missouri. Mrs. Carrithers was fourteen years of age when brought to Kansas, and for several terms before her marriage taught school in Stanton County. She was the youngest of three children. Her older sister is Mrs. William Carrithers of Stanton County and her brother, Fred Rhodes, lives in Missouri. Mrs. Carrithers is an active member of the Mitchell Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr. and Mrs. Carrithers' ranch home has been made happy by the presence of seven children, named William B., Charles, Oliver, Rachel, Thomas, Iola and Marion.