LOUIS R. KUEHNHOFF.
Louis R. Kuehnhoff, farmer and stockman, of Lancaster township, Atchison county, Kansas, was born January 1, 1880, on the farm where he now resides. He is a son of Charles and Caroline Kuehnhoff, and is one of nine children, six of whom are living. The father was born in Germany in 1841, and left there when a boy of sixteen years and sailed for New York. He remained there a short time when he went west, arriving at St. Joseph, Mo. He had not been there very long when the Civil war broke out and he enlisted at St. Joseph in Company B of the Volunteer infantry. After the war was over he was mustered out at Lexington, Mo., having won a praiseworthy military record in his country’s service. He then returned to civil life in St. Joseph, Mo., where he worked for a time as a laborer, receiving eight dollars a month. Shortly afterward he came to Atchison county, Kansas, and bought eighty acres of land in section 10, Lancaster township. Using oxen, he broke the ground on his newly acquired farm and began to improve it as rapidly as his resources would permit. In 1894 he retired and went to live at the National Soldiers’ Home at Leavenworth, Kan., where he died in 1903. The mother was born in Germany in 1845, and died in 1899.
Louis R. Kuehnhoff grew up on his father’s farm, and attended Eden district school, and also District No. 3, Lancaster township. He remained at home until he was nineteen years of age, and the next five years worked as a farm hand, and then he bought the old home place of 200 acres. Louis Kuehnhoff is an industrious worker. He keeps graded stock of all kinds and takes a special interest in fine mules. He always attends the county fairs in Atchison county and occasionally makes entries. On April 26, 1905, he was married to Lena Werner, who was born in Germany November 2, 1881. Her parents were John and Marie (Earhart) Werner. The father was born in Germany in 1815. He belonged to the Masonic lodge in Germany. In 1889, when he was quite an old man, he came to America and settled at Leavenworth, where he died in 1891. The mother was born in Germany January 17, 1843, and is now living with her children, of whom there are six, as follows: Adam, teamster, Leavenworth, Kan.; Martha Nolan, deceased; Lizzie Loman, Bowling, Kan.; Katherine Weimer, Wallula, Wyandotte county, Kansas; Lena, wife of Mr. Kuehnhoff, of this review. Mrs. Kuehnhoff attended the Pleasant Ridge school and the German school, north of Potter, Kan. She is a good, loyal, hard-working mother, and has three children: Marie, Edna and Edwin. The last two are twins and are three years old. In politics Mr. Kuehnhoff is independent. He is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He is a progressive farmer and is constantly on the lookout for improvements in agricultural methods. He has a fine eight-room house and a large barn equipped with modern conveniences. He also has a stone milk-house which was built by his father years ago. He has a small but thriving orchard and has twelve head of fine cattle. Besides these, he has four horses and a span of excellent mules. Mr. Kuehnhoff takes a lively interest in his stock and in his farm generally.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SANDERS.
All honor to the pioneer settlers of Kansas. It was they who broke the way in the unpeopled wilderness and endured the hardships and privations on the frontier of advancing civilization in order that the path of empire might be pushed steadily westward, ever onward toward the setting sun. Their work is done; the halcyon pioneer days when this broad land was but a vast unbroken wilderness of waving prairie grass, dotted here and there with belts of timber along the streams, is no more; towns and cities have sprung up; the locomotive shrieks its way over the ribbon-like rails, hauling the products of the land to the millions in need of sustenance, where once the hardy freighters drove their mule teams and guarded the precious freight overland to the homes of the settlers in the West. Benjamin Franklin Sanders is one of the few remaining members of the “old guard,” who sixty years ago began the task of reclaiming a wilderness. He is one of the ranking old pioneer settlers of Atchison county and has lived a record which is thrilling and interesting to a high degree. He is the only living “ye old time fiddler” in Atchison county, who with his comrade was wont to play at the old-time dances and “hoe downs” in northeast Kansas fifty years and more ago.
Benjamin Franklin Sanders is now living retired in Center township, Atchison county. He was born August 8, 1833, in Franklin county, Missouri, and is a son of George and Elizabeth (Graham) Sanders, who were the parents of the following children: Nancy married William McQuillan, and by her second marriage became Mrs. William Burns, and died in Benton county, Missouri; Robert, deceased; Oliver died in Jewell county, Kansas; Lydia married Fred Wilming, and died in Shannon township, Atchison county; William died in Franklin county, Missouri; and Benjamin, the subject of this sketch. Benjamin F. Sanders was sent to the country school in Franklin county, Missouri, but the school was poor and the roads were bad in the winter time, and, altogether, he had little opportunity to learn. His whole time in school, he estimates, did not amount to more than three months. His father was a Kentuckian and followed farming all of his life, and died in 1856, at the age of fifty-five years. The mother was a native of Missouri and of Scotch descent. She died in Kansas, in 1872, at the age of seventy-six years.
B. F. Sanders
B. F. Sanders and His Great-Granddaughter, Gail Maxine Keirns, Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Art Keirns.
At the age of twelve Benjamin F. Sanders was apprenticed to a carriage and wagon-maker in St. Louis, Mo. He remained there twelve years, coming to Kansas in 1856. He returned to Missouri for a short time and then came back to Kansas the following year. He opened a wagon-maker’s shop at Monrovia, Atchison county, which he operated for two years. He then engaged in farming, taking up a claim near where Effingham now stands. This was ten miles from any settlement then and Mr. Sanders, fearing that the district would not be settled, gave up his claim and preëmpted eighty acres one and one-half miles north of where he now lives, in Center township, and began his life as a real farmer. He hired a man from Iowa who had six yoke of oxen to break up his land. He lived in the most primitive way during the first years on this place. Coffee, for one thing, was very high in price at that time, and there also was very little money in the territory, so a substitute for coffee was used. They mixed wheat and rye, calling it essence of coffee, and used this as a beverage in place of the regular coffee. It was the same way with flour. When he needed flour he would take a quantity of wheat to the gristmill where it would be ground into coarse flour, nearest mills being at Valley Falls and Kickapoo. His nearest postoffice was at Oceana, just north of Pardee, where the postoffice was located later. In 1860 Mr. Sanders bought more land. At one time he owned as high as 400 acres of land in Center township, Atchison county, Kansas. He went through the whole evolution of civilization, beginning in a little log house on his first eighty acres of land and passed through the wild days of the border war. In 1863 he was a member of Captain Whittaker’s company of Colonel McQuigg’s regiment of the Kansas State militia. He participated in several skirmishes and was honorably discharged at Ft. Leavenworth in 1864.
In 1859 Mr. Sanders married Margaret Ramsey in Putnam county, Ohio, who was born in 1840. She was a daughter of John and Elizabeth (Dorothy) Ramsey, natives of Ohio. She died in 1868, leaving the following children: Ira, farmer, Whiting, Kan.; Bertha (Mrs. C. G. Moore), deceased; William and Little Joy, both deceased. Mr. Sanders was married a second time in 1870 to Mrs. Elizabeth (Ramsey) Keirns, a sister of his first wife. She died in May, 1904. She was the widow of Rufus Keirns, and by her last marriage three children were born: Henry R., farmer, Pardee, Kan.; Mrs. Etta C. Browne, Pardee, Kan.; Benjamin, Jr., died when seventeen years of age.