C. Bevan Oldfield

C. BEVAN OLDFIELD, of Garden City, is secretary and treasurer of the Garden City Land & Immigration Company. Perhaps nowhere in Kansas has intensive development and specialization of agriculture being carried to a higher degree than around Garden City, and one of the chief contributing factors to this has been this company. It has steadily encouraged immigration into this region, which is one of its essential objects, but at the same time has used its own capital for the development of the land for intensive farming under irrigation. The company has carried on farming itself on an extensive scale. Its chief crop perhaps is alfalfa.

The Garden City Land & Immigration Company formerly owned the immense tract of 23,000 acres which a few years ago was sold to the Garden City Development Company, associated with the Garden City Sugar and Land Company. This deal gave the company its largest single asset and enabled that corporation to complete its plans and handle what is known as "the biggest farm in Kansas." Reference to this company will he found on other pages of this publication.

The Garden City Land and Immigration Company is a corporation with a capital of $25,000. B. M. McCue is president, with Mr. Oldfield secretary and treasurer. Mr. McCue was primarily responsible for constructing the railroad from Scott City to Garden City and also the line from Scott City to Winona. As an individual enterprise Mr. McCue is now operating 5,500 acres south of the river at Deerfield under irrigation, and 3,000 acres of this is producing alfalfa.

Mr. Oldfield has been a resident of the United States more than thirty-five years, and from his record it appears that all the time has been spent in pioneer work of different kinds. He is a native of England and was reared at Quinton, near Birmingham. His father, Rev. Christopher H. Oldfield, a native of Yorkshire, whose ancestors settled there and have lived in that vicinity from time immemorial, became an Episcopal clergyman. He was one of sixteen children, and the only brother in the family who did not have a military record. The family is in fact a war family. His brother Sir Christopher was killed at Lucknow in the Sepoy Rebellion. Reverend Mr. Oldfield married Elizabeth C. Bevan, of a banking family and connected with the firm of Barclay-Bevan & Company, a well known financial house in England. C. Bevan Oldfield is one of a family of two sons and five daughters and the only member of the family to come to the United States.

He acquired his education largely at Repton and Cambridge, and on leaving college came to the United States in 1881. His first work in this country was as a farmer near Kingsley, Iowa, and from that he went to town and into the banking business. He spent nine years at Kingsley and also entered the real estate business while in Iowa. He was identified with the Corn Exchange National Bank and the Fidelity Loan and Trust Company of Sioux City, Iowa. Then for seven years he was an individual real estate operator at Omaha, Nebraska, and he came to Kansas from California, where for three years he was in development work in the Santa Rosa region of that state. Mr. Oldfield has never identified himself with politics. He took out his naturalization papers in Iowa, and has confined his civic work to casting a vote for the democratic ticket. At Darlington, Wisconsin, he married Miss Emma Gray. Her father, Hamilton H. Gray, was a Massachusetts settler of Wisconsin and took an active part in the development of that state. The mother of Mrs. Oldfield was Harriet Peet, of Beloit, Wisconsin. Mrs. Oldfield is one of a family of five sisters and two brothers.

Pages 2197-2198.