Lewis M. Egan

LEWIS M. EGAN certainly deserves representation among the men who have been instrumental in promoting the general welfare of Kansas City, Kansas, where he has maintained his home since 1892. He has aided materially in the development of business activity and energy wherein the prosperity and growth of the state always depend.

Mr. Egan is secretary and treasurer of the Woods-Egan Live Stock Commission Company and as such is promoting one of the most import business concerns in Kansas City. He was born in Hancock county, Illinois, on the 7th of December, 1861, and is a son of Samuel T. and Cordelia M. (Maynard) Egan. The father was born in the state of Indiana and he died in 1890, at the age of sixty-eight years, while the mother, whose nativity occurred in Ohio, died at the early age of thirty-eight years. Of the seven children born to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel T. Egan, but six are living at the present time. The father removed from the old Hoosier state to Illinois as a young man and there he purchased a fine estate, was married, and continued to be identified with the farming and stock raising enterprises until his death. He was aligned as a stalwart in the ranks of the Republican party in all matters of national import but in local affairs he maintained an independent attitude, preferring to give his support to men and measures meeting with the approval of his judgment rather than to follow along strictly partisan lines. In their religious adherency he and his wife were devout members of the Methodist Episcopal church, in whose faith they reared their children.

On the old homestead farm in Illinois Lewis M. Egan passed his boyhood and youth and he received his preliminary educational training in the district schools of Hancock county, later supplementing that discipline by a course of study in Carthage College, at Carthage which he attended as a member of the class of 1885. That same year he severed the ties which bound him to home and journeyed to western Kansas, engaging in the cattle business in Gove county for a period of seven years, at the expiration of which, in 1892, he established his home in Kansas City, Kansas. After his advent in this city Mr. Egan turned his attention to the live stock commission business, with which enterprise he has continued to be identified to the present time. For fourteen years he was secretary and treasurer of the Northwestern Live Stock Commission Company and when that concern was sold out to Evans Snyder Buell, Mr. Egan worked for that company, until January, 1910, at which time he and Mr. Woods organized the Woods-Egan Live Stock Commission Company. This concern was incorporated under the laws of the state of Kansas with a capital stock of twenty thousand dollars and it is officered as follows: S. P. Woods, president; William M. Ott, vice president; and L. M. Egan, secretary and treasurer.

On the 20th of May, 1891 Mr. Egan was united in marriage with Miss Lu Verna Stone, who was born and reared in Missouri and who is a daughter of William and Lucy (Hill) Stone. The Hill family settled near St. Joe many years ago, and have been prominent and progressive Democrats, and one of the younger, an uncle of Mrs. Egan, is now judge of that district. Mr. and Mrs. Egan have three children, namely: Maynard, Lu Verna, and Alfred B., all of whom are attending school in Kansas City. In his political proclivities Mr. Egan is an Independent and in a fraternal way he is a valued and appreciative member of Wyandotte Lodge, No. 440, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Religiously the Egan family are members of the Christian church.