GEORGE E. HENDEE.
Mr. Hendee is an automobile salesman, machinist and garage proprietor, is one of Atchison’s hustling business men who has made good in the automobile business. Seven years in the motor industry in Atchison has seen him advance in his chosen work until he now owns the largest and best equipped garage in the city, and has a plant including equipment and cars in stock valued at over $15,000. Mr. Hendee is salesman for the Regal, Chalmers and the White automobiles.
He was born on a farm in Lancaster county, Nebraska, July 31, 1872, being a son of George and Loretta (Kistler) Hendee, who were the parents of five children: William, deceased; Mrs. Margaret Bennethy, of Logansport, Ind.; George E.; Delbert, of Logansport, Ind., and Leona, at home with her parents. George Hendee, Sr., was born in Canada, in 1846, removing from his native country to Indiana with his parents when a boy. He was reared to young manhood in Indiana and served as a soldier in Company G, Twenty-first regiment, Indiana infantry, until the close of the war, in 1865. After the Civil war he migrated to Lancaster county, Nebraska, and homesteaded on 160 acres of Government land. He built up a splendid farm from the raw and unbroken prairie and prospered as he deserved, living on his acreage until 1891, at which time he started a general store at Panama, Neb. He retired from active pursuits in 1898 and moved to Royal Center, Ind., where he is now living. The Hendee family is of French origin, and the founders of the family first settled in the Dominion of Canada. The mother of George E. was born in Pennsylvania in 1842, a daughter of Pennsylvania Dutch parents.
He of whom this review is written was reared on the Nebraska farm and received his elementary schooling at Panama and York, that State. Early in life he displayed an aptitude for machinery and determined to fit himself to become an expert machinist. Accordingly, in 1895, he enrolled as student in the State University at Lawrence, and pursued the machinist’s course, having previously studied electrical engineering at York, Neb. When thirteen years of age, George started out to make his own way, educate himself and at the same time earn his living. While a student in the York Technical School, he worked nights in the electric light plant. For a period of three years he was a fireman on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad and the Santa Fe System, being promoted to the post of railway engineer while in the employ of the latter system, He was then employed by the General Electric Company, of Chicago, in the installation of and erecting mining machinery. his duties requiring him to travel in the South for over a year. He was employed by the Chalmers company for one year erecting heavy engines, and was employed as engineer of the Pearsons’ Flouring Mills at Lawrence, Kan., for seven years. For a time he served as master mechanic at the Leavenworth coal shaft on the Government grounds at Leavenworth, Kan. In the year 1901 he built and operated a machine shop at Cripple Creek, Colo., but his plant was destroyed by fire in 1902. He then moved to Grand Junction, Colo., where he worked in the oil fields and was round house foreman for the railroads in that city until he resigned his position and located in Denver, Colo., where he worked as a machinist in the Missouri Pacific shops until he took employment as engineer on the Colorado & Southern railway. After this he was employed as a machinist in the shops of the Santa Fe railroad, but resigned this place to become foreman in the plant of the Locomotive Finished Material Foundry in Atchison. Following this he was chief engineer for the Blair Milling Company, resigning to take employment as an expert machinist with the Atchison Motor Company until 1908. In that year he engaged in business, and has made a name for himself in the motor and business world of Atchison. Mr. Hendee is looked upon as one of the rising and successful young business men of Atchison, and justly deserves all of the success which has come to him.
His marriage with Laura Hall, of Lawrence, Kan., occurred in 1902 and gave him a faithful helpmate who has assisted him in every way to achieve his present success. Two children were born of this marriage, Velva and Kenneth, both deceased. Mrs. Hendee was born in August, 1879, in Wisconsin, a daughter of John and Nettie (Crow) Hall, natives of Wisconsin. She is a well educated lady and is a graduate of the college at Burlington, Kan. Mr. Hendee is an independent in political affairs, and is fraternally allied with the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Modern Woodmen of America.