EDWIN TAYLOR SHELLY, M. D.
For thirty-five years Dr. Edwin Taylor Shelly has been a successful medical practitioner in the city of Atchison. Dr. Shelly was born in Quakertown, Pa., February 6, 1859, and is a son of William N. and Anna (Taylor) Shelly, both of whom were natives of Bucks county, Pennsylvania. Rev. William N. Shelly, the father, was a United Brethren minister, whose ancestors came originally from Saxony, Germany, in 1765 and settled in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania. He departed this life in 1893, at the age of seventy-nine years. Mrs. Anna (Taylor) Shelly died in 1881, at the age of sixty-four years.
Edwin Taylor Shelly was the only child by the second marriage of Rev. William N. Shelly. He received his early education in the Quakertown high school and then taught school for two years. He began the study of medicine in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1878, graduating therefrom in 1881. After practicing his profession for a few months in his home county Dr. Shelly removed to Eden, Kan., where he practiced for three years. He then moved to Huron, Kan., where he remained for two years, previous to locating in Atchison in May, 1886, where he has since maintained offices.
Dr. Shelly is a member of the Missouri Valley Medical Society, the Atchison County Medical Society, the Kansas State, and the American Medical associations, and is a member of the Kansas Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has twice served as president of the Northeastern Kansas Medical Association. He has endeavored to keep pace with the progress made in his life profession and has pursued post-graduate courses in the University of Pennsylvania, the Post-Graduate School of Chicago, and the Sloan Maternity Hospital of New York City. Dr. Shelly has been an occasional contributor to the various medical journals, and articles from his pen have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New York Medical Record, and other medical publications. He has always devoted himself exclusively to the practice of his profession. In politics, the Doctor is an independent Democrat, and has always taken a great deal of interest in civic and economic questions.
Dr. Shelly has been twice married, his first marriage occurring in 1885 with Miss Mary A. Schletzbaum, of Eden, who died in 1897, leaving two sons, namely: William L., a farmer, residing on rural route No. 1, south of Atchison, and who is a graduate of the Manhattan Agricultural College; Ralph A., a graduate of the engineering department of Manhattan College, and now employed in the Buick automobile factory at Flint, Mich. His second marriage was with Miss Lillie E. Allen, of Atchison, in 1899. To this union have been born two children, Esther, aged thirteen years, and Allen Parker, seven years old.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE.
Edgar Watson Howe, journalist and author, was born at Treaty, Wabash county, Indiana, May 3, 1854, a son of Henry and Elizabeth (Irwin) Howe. In 1857 the Howe family moved to Harrison county, Missouri, where Edgar was educated in the common schools until twelve years of age, when he began working in his father’s printing office. Henry Howe, a Methodist minister, was described as a “fierce abolitionist,” and published a paper at Bethany, Mo. At the age of fourteen the strict discipline of his erratic father became too much for the spirit of the boy and he left home. E. W. Howe is next heard of in Golden, Colo., as editor and publisher of the Weekly Globe, at the age of eighteen. A year or so afterward he was connected with a paper at Falls City, Neb., where in 1875 he married Miss Clara L. Frank. Five children were born to this union, and three are living. In 1877 Mr. Howe came to Atchison, Kan., where he established the Atchison Globe. This paper was not long in finding its way to recognition among the newspapers of Kansas on account of the personality injected into it by its editor, and for more than thirty years it has been one of the most widely quoted publications in the whole country. The recent edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica refers to it. Mr. Howe has the happy faculty of being personal in his comments without giving offense. The informal way of dealing with matters in his paper has always been relished by Kansans and has attracted favorable comment in the more conventional parts of the country. The magazines, in reproducing some of his refreshing paragraphs, have referred to “Ed” Howe as the best country-town newspaper reporter in America. He has the faculty of seeking the points overlooked by the majority and of working them up into paragraphs having a combination of sarcasm and good humor that is irresistible.
Mr. Howe’s first work of fiction was “The Story of a Country Town,” published in 1882, which has been for more than a quarter of a century among the standard books of America. It has been classed by such eminent critics as William Dean Howells as one of the ten best American novels. This book did not run its course as the average popular novel does; its human interest has taken lasting hold on the public. Other works of fiction which Mr. Howe has since written are: “The Moonlight Boy,” “The Mystery of the Locks,” “An Ante-mortem Statement,” “The Confession of John Whitlock.” His “Lay Sermons” contain a great deal of good, sound philosophy of life, and from the pages of this book may he deducted a very practical code of ethics. In 1900, at the time Dr. Sheldon edited the Daily Capital in Topeka for a week in the way he thought Christ would do, Mr. Howe added to the gayety of Nations by accepting an invitation from the Topeka State Journal and running it for a week the way he thought the devil would run a newspaper.
In 1906 Mr. Howe made a long trip abroad, which resulted in “Daily Notes of a Trip Around the World,” in two volumes, which has been praised as highly as any book of travels in recent years. Two years later he wrote “The Trip to the West Indies,” as a result of a winter cruise. His latest book is “Country Town Sayings,” a collection of his paragraphs in the Atchison Globe.
Mr. Howe’s country home at Atchison is one of the most carefully and artistically arranged homes in the State. It is a bungalow, overlooking what is said to be one of the three finest views in Kansas. It was built by its owner as a place to retire when he became old, as he believes that too many people stand around in other people’s way. True to his instinct of the unusual he named it “Potato Hill.” At the age of fifty-six years he retired from active management of the Globe. It was predicted by those familiar with his tireless energy as a newspaper man that he would soon be back at his desk in the Globe office, but such was not the case. After revising the “Story of a Country Town” for the stage he began the publication of Howe’s Monthly, which, within a few months became the western rival of the Phillistine, published at East Aurora, N. Y., and is considered by many to have out-classed Elbert Hubbard’s magazine. The Edward Howe paragraphs have been syndicated, and appear in the leading dailies of the country. In an attempt to account for the popularity of these paragraphs and the other writings of Mr. Howe, Walt Mason in the American Magazine, says: “There is always, in everything Ed. Howe writes, the element of the unexpected. It is present in all his books—one of which ranks with the best in American fiction—and it is in his briefest paragraphs, and that is why he is inimitable. Others may adopt his style and mannerisms, but they can’t borrow the strange, original intelligence that eternally ignores the obvious and seizes upon the bizarre, showing how much of the bizarre there is in every-day commonplace life.”