Ed Wilkins and the Kingsley News-Times – Part 2

The narrative of Ed Wilkins’ life as depicted through the posts in the Kingsley Times-News begins in January 1905 with a notice that he is having a close out sale on his farm located 2 miles north and six miles east of Kingsley.  In March the paper reveals that he and his family have moved into the Dearinger  residence in East Kingsley.  July 6 lists Ed as one of the residents who has gotten a new phone (the phone number is 32) and on November 16 of the same year, readers learn that “The firm of Lillie and Wilkins have been mutually dissolved Mr. Wilkins retaining the business.”  This year seems to show a major shift in Ed Wilkins’ life, one in which he became the sole owner of an implements business and a resident of the town.

During the subsequent year, Ed appears to be working to build up his business, both by placing short ads  in the newspaper and also by making business trips with other business owners.  A typical ad of this period is short, for example, from  April 12, 1906 reads, “Buy your machine oil or axle grease of Ed Wilkins.”  Most of the business trips appear to be to Omaha or other places in Nebraska and on one occasion it mentions that he is looking after some land interests.   In addition to these trips he made a trip to the state fair and also, interestingly, to attend the “democrat convention” in LeMars.

The business must have been doing well because in 1907 the ads began increasing in size from short one sentences, to most polished ads which were obviously created by a large company but tailored to Ed’s business as the salesman.  In fact, in January of 1908 he was elected to take the place of one of the county supervisors who was retiring.

1908 appears to have been a busy year for Ed. It was the first year in which he mentions visiting South Dakota to look after “business interests.”    Perhaps he was already thinking of relocating because in February, he mentions that a deal had been made to sell the business. The new owner’s son would be supervising the store together with John Ebelhauser, whom the article notes, was employed by Ed Wilkins.  Interestingly, though, there is an announcement in March that the deal had fallen through and that Ed would be retaining the store.  He posted a large ad inviting all of his customers to return to his store.

At the beginning of 1909, Ed was elected to take the place of the retiring town supervisor from the fourth district, representing the town of Kingsley in Plymouth County.  He  appeared to throw himself into his work as a supervisor and was responsible for repairs to city and roads.  He held an auction for lumber from two bridged that the town had taken down.  He also served on the committee for the poor. As mentioned in the last blog post, this was the year that Ed purchased his first automobile.  The automobile seems to have allowed the family to make more visits to LeMars to see relatives (these would have been his wife Katie’s family since Ed had no discoverable relatives).  On one occasion, when some relatively famous lecturers came to town to give talks, the paper editor, J. H. Beardsley (apparently the host) organized an “automobile party” in which Ed and other prominent citizens drove the guests around the area.

In February of 1909, Ed took on John Ebelheiser (who we know worked for him) as a business partner.  The announcement notes that Ebelheiser had been living in the area for six years.  This transaction may recapitulate  the way that Ed himself was able to come into the ownership of the store, possibly first as an employee in then later as a partner in the business and finally as owner.  Ebelheiser’s name also appears on ads now and he accompanies Ed on business trips.

During 1909 Ed continued to make trips to South Dakota and on February 24, 1910, we read, “Ed Wilkins and son Victor and D. Murphy loaded several cars of stock and machinery last Monday and shipped to South Dakota where they will put in a crop on a farm that Mr. Wilkins bought near Redfield last year.”

Increasingly during that year, Ed finds himself in South Dakota where he seems to be working to get a farm up and going.  There is also the mention of his making trips to Northville, South Dakota.

A short entry from the LeMars Semi-Weekly Sentinel reports, “Ed Wilkins arrived Tuesday evening from Ethol , S.D. where he now resides to look after his business interests here.”  Curiously, when the Sentinel reports Ed’s trips to South Dakota, they say that he is coming from Ethol (i.e. Athol), but when the News-Times reports it, they speak of his going to Northville.  Perhaps he was farming in Northville, and staying in Athol.  Redfield, Athol and Northville are all located in Spink County.

Throughout 1909 and 1910, Ed and his family worked on the farm in South Dakota.  Apparently the plan was to get the farm up and running, then rent out the property and return to Kingsley to live.  He was not able to rent out the farm in South Dakota in 1909, however, so he continued to stay there.  He traveled back and forth to Kingsley looking after business and attending to meetings of the board of supervisors.  As mentioned in the prior blog, in June of 1910, he sent word back to his constituents in Kingsley saying that he would be participating in the fall elections.  In fact, on July 7 he was selected as one of the delegates to attend the state Democratic convention.    Even as late at December of 1910, he planned to return to Kingsley permanently and farm a plot of land west of the town that he had his eye on, even announcing that he was getting ready to sell all of his farm equipment in Northville.

Between his work as town supervisor and working the farm in South Dakota, Ed was quite busy. Probably anticipating this, he went into partnership in his store with his long time assistant John Ebelheiser in February 1909.  No doubt, Ebelheiser was the one who was basically running the implements business during this time period.

Between December 1911 and February 1912, though, there was an abrupt change.  Ed was not able to purchase the land that he wanted to outside of Kingsley and for whatever reason, decided to remain in South Dakota.  He gave up his seat in the board of supervisors and transferred the implements store to Ebelheiser who not only took over the business but moved into Ed’s old house.

A newspaper article in the Kingsley New-Times, announcing Ed’s vacating his supervisor’s seat noted that he must have been a popular and successful supervisor because he was a Democrat but re-elected twice from a district that was heavily Republican.  In an interesting twist, upon leaving the office, even though Ed himself was a Democrat, he nominated a man named Lyle who was a Republican – and apparently well qualified  – to succeed him.  However, when Lyle went to the auditor, clerk and recorder, who actually did the appointing of vacancy replacements, they refused to seat him because they were Democrats and could not see their way clear to appoint a Republican. Guess some things haven’t change.  In the next election, though, Lyle won so he probably got the last laugh.

Whatever was going on, by the end of February 1912, South Dakota seems to have been Ed Wilkins home.  He and his family came back to Plymouth County, Iowa to visit his wife’s family occasionally, but the family story at this point moves on to South Dakota.

Ed Wilkins and the Kingsley News-Times – Part 1

I’ve mentioned several times that despite not being very far back in history my mother’s grandfather, Ed Wilkins is one of the most mysterious characters in the family tree.  He seems to have shown up out of nowhere as a thirteen year old farm hand in Plymouth County, Iowa in 1980. The early part of Ed’s life is still shrouded in uncertainty, but thanks to a small town newspaper, The Kingsley News-Times, a portion of his life, the years from 1905 to 1912 has come into light.

Ed Wilkins and family lived in Kingsley, Iowa large part of his early adult life.  In 1900, Kingsley had a population of 720 and by 1910 it had a whopping 977 people.  Just as today, people enjoyed getting into each other’s business, but before Facebook and Reality television, they used other means.  In towns as small as Kingsley, those that were lucky enough to have a newspaper, could keep up with the Joneses through certain sections of the weekly paper.  In the case of the News-Times, it came out on Thursday. Many of the events recorded were one-liners that we’d probably confine to our weekly planners. A typical example from April 4, 1907 says, “Ed. Wilkins was a visitor at Omaha a couple of days last week.”

In the period of time from 1905 to 1912, there were several dozen references to Ed. While a good half of these were ads for products he was selling in his store and many were the kinds of pedestrian observations noted above, taken together these form an outline of some of the formative events in his life during those years which basically extend from the time that he became the sole business owner of his farm implements store until the time he was established in Northville, South Dakota and no longer a resident of Kingsley.

While most of the individual references to Ed are pretty bare bones, there are a few instances that flesh him out a bit more as a person and gives some feeling for what his life was like.  For instance, Ed ran a large ad in the paper for “The Great Western Manure Spreader, ”  and one of my favorite stories from the newspaper is the following from January 14, 1907:

A book has been published entitled “Practical Experience with Barnyard Manures.”  It is actually worth $100.00 to any farmer who has 100 pounds of manure to spread per year.  The distributing agent for this book is Ed. Wilkins where the book may be had for free.

We earnestly request every subscriber to this paper to call on them at once and get one of these books and follow out the good advice given therein.

I love the title of the book. I guess the Northen’s having been spreading manure for a lot longer than I’d realized.

There are a number of other articles, that give some insights into Ed Wilkins’ life.  Here are a few more examples.

June 25, 2008:  Last Thursday  while putting up hay D. Koegan had the misfortune to have his hand caught  in the pulley to the hay rope crushing it so badly that it was necessary to have the thumb amputated.  Ed Wilkins and Wm. Koegan took him to Lemars in the automobile where we understand Dr. Reeves performed this operation.  This will lay Mr. Koegan up for the rest of the season at least.

June 16, 1910: Ed. Wilkins and his family left this week for Northville, South Dakota where they will remain until the harvest.  Mr. Wilkins is a candidate for the office of County Supervisor  on the democratic  ticket and desires to inform his friends through this newspaper that he will be in Kingsley in ample time to participate in the fall election.  He has been in South Dakota considerable this season putting in his crops on the farm. The place not being rented he did not want it to remain idle so decided to crop it himself.

And the very last newspaper post that mentions Ed, Dec. 11, 1911 (The Victor, mentioned in the article is my grandfather):  Many of our citizens will indulge this Christmas in the luxuries of turkey and cranberry sauce made possible by the fact that Ed Wilkins shipped from his farm in South Dakota a lot of fine young turkeys which were raised by his sons Victor and Raymond this season.  In the past the national fowl has been conspicuous by its absence in Kingsley and these birds will be quite a treat to many.

 One of the interesting things about reading these short articles is that they also give a flavor of what life was like at the time that might not register when thinking about it out of context. One example is the advent of the automobile. Prior to 1908, a typical post about Ed Wilkins ran, “Ed Wilkins transacted business at Sioux City last Friday.”  On March 26, 1908, an item ran that said, “J. A. Shade and Ed. Wilkins went to Sioux City on business Wednesday. They made the trip in Mr. Shade’s automobile.”  The following August, we read that, “Ed Wilkins is now the proud possessor of a fine new forty-horse Rambler touring car.”  Subsequent  entries about trips, such as “Ed Wilkins made a trip to Correctionville last Saturday night in his automobile” unfailingly mention his automobile.  It seems clear that, as an up and coming businessman, having  car was a real status symbol.  Ed, who seemed to be friends with the newspaper’s editor, J. H. Beardsley, no doubt made it a point to make sure his success was out there where everyone could see it.  The form of social media may have changed, but people – not so much. Interestingly, in all the references to automobiles, the word “car” is never used.

More about Ed. Wilkin’s life in “Part 2.”