SIXTH GENERATION

582. Isaac Barber Kirkpatrick was born on 5 Feb 1856 in Mulkeytown, Franklin Co., Illinois. He died on 11 Dec 1923 in Oswego, Labette Co., Kansas.⁽³⁵⁴⁾ He was buried in Mound Valley, Labette Co., Kansas. ⁽¹²⁵⁾ For centuries each generation looked ahead confident that life for them w ould be very similar to the lives of their parents and of their grandpa rents before them.

When twenty-one year old Isaac Barber Kirkpatrick left his father's far m at Mulkeytown, Franklin County, Illinois to follow his eldest brothe r west to Mound Valley, Labette County, Kansas, he was exhibiting the p attern of his family since the 18th century. Scots-Irish, with a bleak f uture in the British Isles, at least one of them decided to try the Eng lish colony of Virginia ( Editor's Note: this line enter the colonies a t New Castle, Delaware and thence to South Carolina by way of Pennsylva nia and North Carolina).

After the American Revolution, in which some of the Kirkpatricks served , they moved to Tennessee. Other generations went to Texas, some to Io wa, and I.B.'s father, John Foster Kirkpatrick, married Hester Ann Dial a nd farmed in Illinois. They were neither frontiersmen nor true pioneer s, but were always looking for better opportunities and gravitated west a s they heard that this or that region was developing.

John and Hester's oldest son, William Ashley, saw Kansas coming under t he plow at the same time as two railroads, the Frisco and the Katy, thr ust their lines into it, and he recognized his golden opportunity. He b uilt a storage elevator along the Frisco track at Mound Valley in Labet te County and started buying grain. A number of his numerous siblins f ollowed him, the boys to work for William Ashby and the girls to find h usbands among the men who were developing Kansas. Some of the men stay ed in the business but at least one became a lawyer and State Senator.

I.B. was seventeen years William Ashby's junior, so by the time he arri ved in Kansas in 1877 or `78, there had been substantial development. H e learned the grain business from his brother and in 1888 he felt confi dent enough of himself and the region to borrow money from the Condon B ank at Oswego, Labette's county seat, and opened a business of his own t here. Before he left Mound Valley, he married Mary Jane Tanner, the tw enty-year old daughter of Dr. Eldred E. Tanner, and within months estab lished a home in Oswego from which he started branching out.

I.B. and Mary were the last generation of the old order. World War I e ffectively terminated it and the Modern Era began. They never had to r elinquish their world, although it frayed badly before their deaths, bu t their children - Sibyl (Sybil), Ashby, Alfred and Shelby - had to mak e the transition. They were launched into the modern world with a map p repared for the old one - and so, to a large extent, has been each gene ration which followed them.

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According to Ashby, his father was "all business", delegating the runni ng of his home and the raising of his children to his wife, and except t o back up her authority, had little to do with either. When he did hav e a demand, it was met. Mrs. Kirk saw to it that his meals always incl uded meat, potatoes and desert and were served on time - dinners at noo n sharp and supper promptly at six.

The Kirkpatrick's home, a two-storey frame house, stood on a quarter of a b lock amidst shady trees and a lawn giving four children plenty of space f or active play. In the rear were a barn for the horse and buggy and a k itchen garden. For years the family kept a cow for the dual purpose of p roviding milk and cropping the large lawn short.

Mr. Kirk was generous with his family, according to his station. He pr ovided his wife with a colored woman to help with the cooking and house work and allowed Mrs. Kirk the money to furnish the house with suitable a nd good quality appointments. When Mrs. Kirk needed a new dress or the c hildren shoes, they were purchased as a matter of course.

But being generous did not mean that Mr. Kirk believed in conspicuous c onsumption or "spoiling" people. He was not a man to lavish furs or je welry or flowers upon a wife nor to buy children expensive toys. When t hey wanted bicycles or guns, they went to work to earn the money for t hem themselves. Ashby recalled, with some wonderment, that his father D ID buy him a pair of ice skates once, however.

When Ashby wanted a rowboat to put on the pond, he and his brother Alfr ed built it themselves, stretching canvas over a wooden frame. A photo o f the boat suggests they had great fun building it but not great succes s. In fact, it looked distinctly perilous.

Mr. Kirk kept a horse and buggy for the use of himself and his wife, an d the horse was a terrible temptation to the children who wanted despar ately to ride it. Their father said no, a stance the children tried to c ircumvent.

"We just want to play with him," they begged.

Mr. Kirk explained that the horse performed his assigned work quite sat isfactorily every day, and hauling children on his back in addition was n ot play for the horse.

"But what about Sundays?" they begged. "The horse doesn't work on Sund ays."

To which their father responded that if people had a day of rest, it wa s only fair to grant the same to the animals that served them.

When he said something, he expected obedience and he only said it once. O ne summer when the tart cherries were nearly ripe, Mrs. Kirk asked her h usband to tell the children they were not to pick them as she wanted th em for pies. He told them.

Several days later he came home to find Ashby feasting in the tree. Wi thout a word, he cut a switch and thrashed Ashby's legs.

"What did I do?" bawled Ash.

"You known what you did. I told you once," said his father.

Although all three of his sons were ardent outdoorsmen, all of their li ves, I.B. had no interest in it. Whatever walking he had to do in a da y was all the exercise he ever needed or wanted. His evenings were spe nt reading the newspaper or 'cheap' novels. (In that day almost all no vels were considered 'cheap' and an abuse of the intellect. The Intell egensia read poetry, religious, philosophical or political essays, hist ory and only such fiction as could be classified as educational and upl ifting.)

Mary Kirkpatrick, on the other hand, was a devotee of good literature, p articularly the poets, so much so that in a fit of romantic fancy, she n amed her second son Alfred for Lord Tennyson and Emerson after Ralph Wa ldo. Why I.B. allowed this I cannot think, unless he felt is was only f air to give her a turn after he had named his first son for his beloved e lder brother.

But when a third son was born, Mr. Kirk insisted he be called after him , Isaac Barber, Jr. Mary pretended to acquiese but secretly mounted a p sychological campaign against it. She instructed her female relatives a nd friends, her maid and her children to make a point of calling the ne wborn "Isaac" in front of I.B., which they did until he relented. He w as, after all, a fair man and admitted the name was inappropriate for a n infant. he was never called Isaac himself, but always I.B. or Kirk b y family and friends. Mary presented a compromise - Shelley, after Per cy Byss Shelley, and Barber in honor of I.B. As time went by, Shelley b ecame Shelly by common usage.

I.B. expanded his business over the years, first getting rid of the Con don connection, which was not strictly speaking a loan, but a partnersh ip which gave Condon 50% of the profits. He bought Condon out, then es tablished elevators and collection points throughout southeastern Kansa s and Northeastern Oklahoma. His network included Oswego, Mound Valley , Fredonia, Afton, Vinita, Claremore, Tulsa and Mounds.

Overseeing this business network caused him to travel a good deal. It w as his custom to hop aboard the Frisco and go up or down the line for u nexpected spot inspections. He knew to the bushel how much grain shoul d be on hand in each and woe to the manager if his inventory didn't mat ch Mr. Kirk's books. he figured that being honest with his property wa s not a thing he needed to tell a manager even once!

On one such inspection in Fredonia, he knew there was trouble before he e ven got to the elevator. He didn't pay any manager a salary sufficient t o support the motor car, clothes, house and family the Fredonia manager e xhibited. Before he could complete an inventory, the elevator burned d own.

Now I.B. knew to a certainty his manager was responsible, but if the in surance company learned there had been an embezzlement, it would never p ay off on the total inventory. Hence, I.B. kept his suspicions to hims elf, impounded the car, an International Harvester, fired the manager, c ollected the full amount of insurance and drove the car home to Oswego.

Thus the Kirkpatrick's acquired the third car in town. One of the bank ers already owned a Maxwell and Dr. Liggett had a Dorris. For the boys , that car was a key to the modern world. Ashby comments that his life time coincides with that of the automobile, from it's inception to fuel i njected engines.

Despite the ethics of this episode in Fredonia, I.B. had a reputation f or integrity and couldn't have survived a lifetime in this particular b usiness without it. No doubt he and his contemporaries thought this wa s a rational business judgement. As it is today, business then was tou gh.

Mary, on the other hand, was all her life a "soft touch". She had been b orn in Owensboro, Kentucky (editors note: actually she was born in Covi ngton, Campbell County, Kentucky), and came to Mound Valley with her pa rents when she was eight. As her father was a country doctor, she no d oubt had seen a great deal to arouse compassion and developed a differe nt perspective toward life than did I.B.

Mary and I.B. very largely shared the same strict moral standards, but t hey didn't share the same attitude toward church. I.B. was against chu rches (not religion) because in his experience they were hotbeds of hyp ocrisy. Mary was a staunch Baptist who wanted to march her family off t o church every Sunday. She could prevail with the children when they w ere young, but never with her husband, to her unending regret.

Mary could not be accused of hypocrisy. She strove for spiritual exper iences, practised her moral code in her own life and had a genuine comp assion for unfortunate people. If any Negro appeared on her doorstep w ith a hardluck story, she dove into her closets for clothes and her pan try for food to carry them through. If her larder was low, she wrote a n ote to the grocery store to give them what they needed and charge it to h er account.

Her largesse finally caught I.B.'s attention when the monthly grocery b ill exceeded $100.00, a truly extravagant sum in those days. He ordere d her to stop it immediately and forever, an order which Ashby says, "n early killed her."

She was tiny, not quite five feet tall, and like a lot of small people, c harged with great energy. She was exceedingly bright, passionate, posi tive of her opinions, outspoken and direct in her dealings with people. Y ou always knew where you stood with her.

Not only did she manage her house and family, she also taught adult Sun day School classes, often served as president of the Women's Guild of t he Church and quilted with them once a week. In addition, she was ofte n involved in civic projects. People said of her that she was a woman y ou definitely wanted with you on any project because she could speak ou t with telling effect.

Before women could vote, Mary Kirkpatrick ran for the School Board and w as elected to it for several terms. At the time the Westside School wa s built, she was president of the board.

As you would expect, she was right out in front when the debate was on a bout giving women the right to vote, and she had I.B. on her side on th at issue.

I.B. served on the City Council one term, but when there was talk of ru nning him for mayor, he scotched the idea because he thought it would b e bad for his business, nor could he be lured into civic matters unless t hey had a direct bearing on his elevators.

He was not anitsocial. As a matter of fact, he was quite pleasant to p eople as a general rule, and belonged to the Oswego Men's Club which so cialized one evening a week. It's just that he literally cared about n othing but his business. He had no small talk, being quiet and softspo ken in any group. he would laugh at a joke or good story but was not a m an to tell them.

Also, there was in I.B. a streak of melancholy, and when it overtook hi m, he was want to sit alone in the dark softly singing Stephen Foster s ongs such as "Old Black Joe" and "Swanee River."

As people knew Mrs. Kirk was in town, so were her children aware of her a t home. A life-time member of the W.C.T.U.*, she, of course, taught th em that liquor was a sin. She expected them to be clean in body, cloth es, language and thought, diligent students, polite and respectful at a ll times. Disobedience brought punishment and was never allowed to sli de by. Chores, homework duty, reverence and honor were expected of the c hildren as a matter of course. It was a hard code for children to live u p to, and they often didn't, but they expected it of themselves all of t heir lives.

When her fourth child, Shelly was born, Mary relaxed a good deal and di dn't discipline him as she had the older ones. They resented it and it d rove a wedge between them and Shelly. Mr. Kirk was too little involved a t home.

For all her spunk and character, Mary had an unreasonable fear of thund erstorms. She would gather up all the children, push them in the close t and cover up herself and them with a feather mattress till the storm p assed. It didn't take too many sessions of sweltering in the closet to m ake the children more afraid of it than of the storm. They soon learne d to completely disappear at the first hint of one so as not to have to u ndergo that tortuous experience.

According to the expectations of her society, Mary Kirkpatrick was a m ost fortunate woman, well supported by a successful husband who was fai thful, didn't drink or beat her but instead respected her and gave her a l ot of authority. But Ashby does not remember his father ever kissing M ary or even giving her an affectionate squeeze, hug or pat. "He loved h er. Of course, he loved her," Ash said, "but a man of my father's clas s didn't show affection in those days. They showed respect."

He always addressed her as Mrs. Kirk and she called him Mr. Kirk in ret urn. Although Mary may have known intellectually that she had made a g ood marriage, I suspect her romantic instincts must have been disappoin ted.

Little by little she appears to have turned to her children for affecti on. Certainly she demaneded insane amounts of it from them late in her l ife, and even in her 40's it began to be a burden upon them. Ash says h e hated to come home from college because his mother's welcome was too i ntense, her lamentations on his departure too emotional. (And this sta tement is from the most openly affectionate and sentimental man I ever k new!)

I.B., on the other hand, did not show emotion. The first time Ashby ev er saw him do so was when they stood together on the railroad platform w aiting for the train that would carry him to boot camp in World War I. S uddenly suprising a tear in his father's eye, Ashby turned away greatly d isconcerted.

Ashby felt that he never knew his father until he went into business, t oo. At last he had something to say that I.B. was interested in. He w as proud of his children, but holding conversations with them wasn't hi s forte.

Mr. and Mrs. Kirk both favored college educations for their children, b ut it was another of those things I.B. believed they should be responsi ble for. It was understood that any monies he advanced for their educa tions would be deducted from their inheritance. He kept meticulous boo ks on every expenditure.

The oldest child, Sybil, had a mathematical mind and I.B. early enliste d her to help in his office. Had she wanted it, he would gladly have t aken her into the business with him, but she chose to go to college for a m usic education instead. Then Ashby disappointed his hopes for a family p artnership by going off to study banking.

As the century progressed, I.B. saw the handwriting on the wall for pri vate grain businesses. He bought at harvest when prices were lowest an d held the grain till prices rose. Farmers figuring they should be abl e to do the same, organized co-ops and began to run their own elevators . Then, too, large milling concerns started contracting with farmers t o grow grain for them exclusively at a fixed price.

I.B. started selling off his elevators, retaining only the one at Osweg o which he kept primarily "to keep his hand in." He had made a fortune , "over $100,000.00", said Ashby, a very large sum for his day. When t he Oswego elevator burned down in 1918, he retired completely.

That it burned was the result of his own depressed state. Ashby had re ported to his father that a piece of machinery at the top of the elevat or was running too hot, but he brushed it off. "It will be all right i f it's kept oiled enough," he said without inspecting it, and continued t o brush off further warnings until it finally ignited the grain dust.

Retirement was not a serene period for him. The family had problems th at fretted him, normal problems, but ones he didn't want to deal with a t his age. I.B. was over forty when his sons were born. (He was a par ent not in his mid-years but for the last half of his life.) Without a b usiness to escape to daily, he had no relief except his "cheap" novels a s he had never developed any hobbies or outside interests.

His primary concern was Mary who had earlier had a late pregnancy termi nated by tumors and ended up having a complete hysterectomy performed i n St. Louis. On the surface, and to an outsider, Mrs. Kirk appeared to h ave recovered, and if people noticed anything different about her, they a ccepted it because "everyone knew a woman wasn't normal after that."

But Mary didn't cully recover and she didn't accept it. She started go ing from doctor to doctor looking for relief. As her children left for c ollege, the service and marriage, Mary's demands fell more and more on I .B. who had never had to deal with anything like this before. He dutif ully paid the medical bills she piled up but beyond that he was helples s to do anything for her.

Not only had he to worry about the personality change in his wife, but h e had cause to worry about finances. He wasn't earning any longer and t he college bills for Sybil, Ashby and Alfred, coupled with Mary's medic als, caused him to start spending principal.

Also, they had worries about the children. Ashby and Alfred were in th e service and might be sent abroad, and Shelly was not only beyond his p arents' control, they hardly knew what he was doing at all. In 1918 Al fred got influenza and they almost lost him, and then he was discharged a nd hung around the house for months recovering.

After the war, the boys didn't seem to settle down the way he thought t hey should. Ashby tried banking, didn't like it and drifted for a time u ntil her tried the automotive business. Alfred quit college after two y ears. Sybil was having a romance with a man not good enough for her. O n top of everything else, the man drank and he fered Sybil did, too. H e knew for certain she smoked, though she still had enough respect not t o do it in front of him or her mother!

And Shelly. I.B. knew he'd never gotten a handle on Shelly, and Mary, h e felt, had spoiled him rotten. First he refused to go to college, and t hen he got married and had a baby before he had a job or career.

Following the war, I.B. lost some money in the ensuing depression, infl ation cut into their standard of living and finally he lost the profits f rom a farm because of flood. He simply could not impress upon Mary tha t the family needed to economize. She spent as though he still earned.

One evening, sitting on the porch talking with Ashby, I.B. suddenly put h is face in his hands and cried, "What are we going to do about your mot her?"

Asby couldn't tell him. He thought, "If you don't know, how can I?"

During the last year of his life, he was relieved that Ashby and Alfred h ad settled down, and he absolutely doted on his grandson, Shelly's Bill y. He died of a heart attack in December, 1923, when he was 67.

Sometime after 1917, I.B. copied this quote from "Kindred of the Dust" b y Peter B. Kyne into one of his old bank deposit books:
"As a man grows old, he grows kindlier. Those things which at middle l ife appear so necessary to an unruffled existence frequently undergo su ch a change due to the corroding effects of time that at 70 one has eit her forgotten them or regards them as something to be secretly ashamed o f. A smile, a bit of encouragement, the habit of being a little more t han decent - these travel like waves through the air."

He left no will saying, "If I leave more to one than another, there wil l be fighting. Let the law take care of it." Half went to his wife, t he remainder being divided among his children, their college expenses h aving been first deducted and given to Mary.

As Ashby recalls, his share was $4,000.00 and Sybil's being the same; A lfred inherited $6,000.00 and Shelly $10,000.00 It was a large amount o f money for the young men, enough that they could legitimately expect t o have a decent start in life.

Mary would live till 1941. She no longer was wealthy, but with care sh e could be comfortable for the rest of her life. After all, she owned h er home and had no obligations toward any of her children any more.
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*Women's Christian Temperance Union
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From "The I. B. Kirkpatrick Family; Oswego, Kansas - 1888-1941"
"A Memoir by Jane Kirkpatrick Gerard Watts, privately publishe d 1986"

On the 1900 U. S. Census of Oswego, Labette Co., Kansas Isaac B. and hi s family appear. Mary J. and children Sybil and William J. Isaac is a g rain dealer.

He was married to Mary Jane Tanner (daughter of Dr. Eldred E. Tanner and ???) in 1888 in Mound Valley, Labette Co., Kansas.⁽³⁴⁰⁾ Mary Jane Tanner⁽³⁵⁵⁾ was born on 17 Jan 1868 in Covington, Campbell Co., Kentucky. ⁽³⁵⁵⁾ She died on 21 Nov 1941 in Oswego, Labette Co., Kansas. ⁽³⁵⁵⁾ She was buried on 21 Nov 1941 in Mound Valley, Labette Co., Kansas.⁽¹²⁵⁾ Isaac Barber Kirkpatrick and Mary Jane Tanner had the following children:

1397 i. Infant Kirkpatrick⁽¹²⁵⁾ was born on 11 May 1890.⁽¹²⁵⁾ He died on 13 May 1890.⁽¹²⁵⁾ He was buried in Mound Valley, Labette Co., Kansas.⁽¹²⁵⁾
+1398 ii. Sybil Kirkpatrick.
+1399 iii. William Kirkpatrick.
+1400 iv. Alfred Emerson Kirkpatrick.
+1401 v. Shelly Barber Kirkpatrick.