Samuel H. Garrigues

SAMUEL H. GARRIGUES. Some men never know how to quit. They hang on against the dictates of judgment and prudence until fortune, apparently admiring their persistence, gives them what they deserve. It has been this quality in the career of Samuel H. Garrigues, a well known rancher and farmer of Ohio Township in Ness County, that enabled him to weather the storms of adversity which beset the early settlers on the frontier, and now for a number of years he has been safely anchored in the harbor of prosperity. He had a hard job, but he refused to quit it, and no doubt it was a guess with him many times whether he would he able to secure enough to eat while another crop was growing, but he merely persevered until victory came.

He and his family have been identified with Kansas more than thirty-five years. Samuel H. Garrigues was born in Parke County, Indiana, June 4, 1867. His father, Samuel P. Garrigues, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was descended from French stock which was transplanted to the American colonies in very early times. A brother of Samuel P., William Garrigues, spent his last years in Parke County, Indiana, and there were sisters who remained residents of Philadelphia. Samuel P. Garrigues served as a Union soldier for three years with an Indiana regiment, and saw his chief service in the campaigns of Arkansas and Tennessee. He escaped wounds or capture, and in after life he seldom spoke about his army experiences except when among his old comrades. On bringing his family to Kansas in 1879, he settled in Osage County, and afterwards moved to Lane County, where he homesteaded a claim. Most of his work was done as a carpenter, and he helped to build the Town of Dighton. He was an influential and useful citizen, served two terms as probate judge, and was an active republican. He was a member of the Methodist Church, and in early life had affiliated with the Masonic Order. Samuel P. Garrigues married Ellen B. Pine, whose parents were Pennsylvanians. She died in Lane County, Kansas, in 1900, at the age of seventy-two, while Samual P. Garrigues died in 1908, aged eighty-one. A brief record of their children is as follows: William, of Manhattan, Kansas; Dollie, of Mulvane, Kansas, wife of George Kimball; Louis, of Imperial, California; Samuel H.; Minnie, wife of J. D. Wheatcroft, of Lane County; Ellen, wife of Henry Heath, of Lahoma, Oklahoma; and Sadie, who is married and lives at Briggsdale, Colorado.

Samuel H. Garrigues was eleven years of age when his parents migrated from Indiana to Osage County, Kansas. Most of his education had been acquired in local schools up to that time. He grew up on the frontier, and he was born in a log house and for many years lived, like other pioneers of Kansas, in a sod house. He remained at home until past his majority, and as his parents were not wealthy and had to exert every means to provide for their family as soon as strength permitted he also took his place among the workers of the household and contributed his wages to his parents. In those years he did teaming at the coal mines at Carbondale and performed nearly every other sort of hard manual labor. For a time he worked as a farm hand in Osage County.

In 1889 he came to Ness County and entered his homestead in the same year. He had no capital, and was without either property or cash. In order to secure the money with which to file on his claim he continued working out at day or monthly wages, and as his farm seldom repaid his labor with a crop in the early years he had to resort to similar labor in order to get a living. His first home in Ness County was a sod house, one room, plastered with native plaster, and with a sod roof. Though he added to his living comforts, he and his family resided in a sod house from the spring of 1889 until their home was supplanted by a substantial frame structure in 1908. It was his work as a farm hand that enabled him to buy his first cow, and later he took a bunch of cattle on the shares. That gave him a start in the cattle business, and from cattle more than any other one source he has acquired success. During all these years he has followed mixed farming, and has done at least as well as other Ness County farmers with wheat and forage and feed crops. The handling of grade cattle has always been a hobby with Mr. Garrigues.

Out of the results of his efforts as a farmer and stockman he bought four quarter sections of land, and put about 300 acres under the plow. The improvements he made on this land are among the best to be found anywhere in Ness County. Recently he sold his large farm, and has now reached a place where he might well be justified in retiring and taking life comfortably.

He began voting in 1888, casting his presidential ballot that year for Benjamin Harrison. Like other Kansans he is a close student of the political situation, but his political activities have been largely those of a local character. For twenty years he served his school district as a director. In 1908 he was elected county commissioner, filling the office four years, after which he was out of office for two years and was again chosen as successor of Commissioner C. Z. Miller. He is still in office, and the important work of the administration has been routine matters and in 1916 the ordering of an election for a new courthouse.

In Ness County November 20, 1894, Mr. Garrigues married Miss Erva Armstrong, who was born in Indiana April 25, 1875. Her father, Timothy Armstrong, served in the Union army with an Indiana regiment, afterward came to Trego County, Kansas, and took up a homestead, and likewise endured the hardships attendant on pioneer Kansas farming. Timothy Armstrong married Rhoda Insco. Their children were: Mrs. Garrigues; Kate, who died unmarried; and Elma, who lives in Topeka. Mr. and Mrs. Garrigues have two sons, Clifford Earl, aged twenty-one, and Herman, who is still attending school.

Pages 2454-2455.