Camiel De Bover

CAMIEL De BOVER, although only a resident of Wyandotte county during the last two years, has already shown that he possesses practical knowledge of agricultural work of all kinds. He showed his sagacity by confining his operations to truck farming, rather than engaging in general agriculture. In this age of specialization the man who concentrates on one special phase of his work, whatever it be, is more apt to realize success than the one who attempts a more wholesale knowledge and more extended operations. Mr. De Bover has proved to himself the wisdom of his choice in the prosperity that he is beginning to enjoy as a truck farmer.

Camiel De Bover was born in the kingdom of Belgium in 1866 and is the son of John and Teresa (Speiet) De Bover, both natives of Belgium and life long residents of the little kingdom. The father was a basket maker of considerable ability and taste, an art which he followed until his death in 1899. His widow survived him four years and they were the parents of six children, three of whom are now in America, all reared in the Catholic faith of their ancestors.

Mr. De Bover, Jr., was reared in his native land, now the country of religious freedom, but in his boyhood the scene of much disturbance and persecution. After concluding his school training the young man was engaged in various occupations until his father died and he himself was thirty-three years old. At that time, in 1899, he left his home and came to America, direct to St. Charles, Illinois, where he worked in a foundry, later to Kansas City where he gained employment in a pipe factory. Ten years after his arrival in America he made his first appearance in Wyandotte county in the guise of a truck gardener. He raises all kinds of vegetables, for which he finds a ready market in Kansas City, and, as noted above, he is rapidly making a name for himself in the community.

In 1896 Mr. De Bover married Lena Brunniel, a Belgian by birth and parentage. Mrs. De Bover did not accompany her husband to America, but followed him three months later and the husband and wife, with their five children - Morris, Fred, Catherine, Mary and Josephine, have remained together since that time. Mr. De Bover is a Republican, with no desire to take any part in political affairs. He has remained true to the religious faith in which he was reared, that of the Catholic church.