Charles W. Lovelace

CHARLES W. LOVELACE. - The present incumbent of the dual office of municipal purchasing agent and license inspector of Kansas City, Kansas, is a scion of well known and highly honored pioneer families of Wyandotte county, of which he is a native son, and here both his paternal and maternal grandparents established homes when the county was on the very frontier of civilization. Special emphasis and significance is given to this statement by the noteworthy fact that the mother of Mr. Lovelace was the first white child born within the borders of the county. He has well upheld the prestige of names long prominent and highly honored in connection with the history of Wyandotte county, and thus is distinctively worthy of representation in this publication, whose province is the consideration of the history of the county and its people.

Charles W. Lovelace was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on the 9th of September, 1881, and is a son of Eldridge H. and Maggie (White) Lovelace, the former of whom was born in Raytown, Jackson county, Missouri, and the latter of whom was, as already noted, the first white child born in Wyandotte county, Kansas, where her father, Isaac N. White, took up his residence when this section of the state was practically an untrammeled wilderness. He was one of the first settlers of the county and here developed a farm, besides which he was a most influential factor in public affairs in the pioneer days, during which he contributed in generous measure to the social and material advancement of this section of the state, where he passed the residue of a long and useful life. Charles Lovelace, the paternal grandfather of him whose name initiates this review, was likewise one of the early settlers of the county, to which he removed with his family from Missouri. He is still living, secure in the high esteem of all who knew him. The names of both of these worthy men merit enduring place on the roll of the sterling pioneers of Wyandotte county. Eldridge H. Lovelace was a boy at the time of the family removal to this county and here he eventually became one of the representative business men and influential citizens of Kansas City, where he was engaged in the retail hardware trade at the time of his death, which occurred in 1906. He was a man of fine character and marked ability, broad minded and public spirited as a citizen, and he contributed his full quota to the upbuilding of the greater Kansas City, where his widow still maintains her home. The genealogy of the Lovelace family, whose name has been identified with the annals of American history since the Colonial era, is traced back to distinguished English origin, the family having been one of patrician order in the "right little, tight little isle," as Max O'Rell entitled England.

Charles W. Lovelace is indebted to the public schools of Kansas City, his native place, for his early educational discipline, and after his graduation in the high school, in 1900, he entered the University of Kansas, at Lawrence, in which he completed the prescribed course in mining engineering and was graduated as a member of the class of 1904. Thereafter he devoted his attention to the work of his profession until the death of his honored father, in 1906, when he assumed charge of the substantial hardware business that had long been conducted by his father in the section of the city known as Argentine. This was a thriving town at the time of the annexation to Kansas City, within recent years. To this enterprise Mr. Lovelace continued to give his attention until May, 1910, when he was appointed to his present municipal office, the affairs of which he has administered with marked discrimination and carefulness. He is a stalwart Republican, as was also his father, and he is affiliated with the Tribe of Ben Hur and with the Masonic fraternity. He has a secure place in the confidence and esteem of the people of his native county and is popular in both business and social circles.

In the year 1908 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Lovelace to Miss Eva Hirst, daughter of J. A. Hirst, a representative citizen of Kansas City.