Dick Harper acquired a common school education in Missouri and also attended the State Normal School at Warrensburg, Missouri. In 1885, when a young man of twenty-two years, he took charge of a drug store for his brother-in-law at Rich Hill, Missouri, and successfully managed the business for a period of seven years, after which he came to the Pacific coast, arriving in Portland, Oregon, in the spring of 1892. In the fall of that year he came to Dayton, where he was identified with farming and with the grain trade until the spring of 1903, when he established a furniture store in Dayton and soon won for himself a place among the active and representative merchants of the city. In 1906 he purchased the Day drug store at Dayton, which he conducted successfully for seven years.
On the 27th of October, 1886, in Butler, Bates county, Missouri, Mr. Harper was united in marriage to Miss Laura A. Floyd, a daughter of John H. and Sarah A. Floyd. They have a daughter, Florence Marion, who is the wife of Lloyd R. Terwilliger, who is living in Walla Walla and is employed in the First National Bank of that city.
Mr. Harper has long been an active and helpful member of the Christian church and he has membership with the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias and the Masons. For a number of years he served as secretary of Dayton Chapter, R. A. M., and in his life has always exemplified the beneficent spirit of the craft. He belongs to the Dayton Commercial Club and is a member of its governing board. In politics he is a democrat. In 1898 he was made county auditor of Columbia county by popular vote and in 1910 and 1911 served as councilman at large. He was chairman of the street and public property committee and also of the light and water committee. In 1912 he was elected mayor of the city and in 1916 was appointed police judge. He has thus long continued in public office and those who read between the lines will recognize the important part which he has played in public affairs in Dayton, winning for himself a most creditable position in commercial and political circles. In a word, he has exercised much influence over public thought and opinion and has done much to advance public progress in his adopted city.
CALDER H. WHITEMAN.
No class of Walla Walla's citizens is more highly esteemed than the many retired farmers who here make their home and among them is numbered Calder H. Whiteman, who was born in Keokuk county, Iowa, April 29, 1851. His parents, John B. and Eliza G. (Colville) Whiteman, were natives of West Virginia and Kentucky respectively but were married in Indiana. In 1850 they became settlers of Iowa but later returned to Indiana, where the mother died. The father was subsequently married twice. In 1874 he made the long journey to Oregon and four years later took up his residence in Umatilla county, that state. He died in Milton October 5, 1910.
Calder H. Whiteman, who is an only child by the first marriage, remained with his father until he attained his majority and received his education in the common schools. On beginning his independent career he rented a farm near Salem, Oregon, having decided to devote his life to the occupation to which he had been reared. After farming that place for three years he removed to Umatilla county and took up a homestead, the operation of which occupied his time and attention until his removal to Walla Walla in 1901. In the intervening years he brought the place to a high state of cultivation and made many improvements thereon, making it one of the most up-to-date and valuable farms in that locality. In 1911 he sold the Umatilla county property and bought a farm in Whitman county, Washington, near Lacrosse, which he still retains. He and his son now own fourteen hundred and forty acres, all fine wheat land, well improved, and their holdings place them among the large landowners of eastern Washington. Mr. Whiteman of this review makes his home in Walla Walla and his residence here is commodious, pleasing in design and thoroughly modern in its appointments.
MR. AND MRS. CALDER H. WHITEMAN