DIOGENES S. JAMES

DIOGENES S. JAMES

Ex-County Clerk D. S. James is one of the pioneers of Montgomery county.  July 4, 1870, he settled in Rutland township, where his father, Joseph L. James, took up a claim on the Osage Diminished Reserve, made a farm of it and still resides there. Ohio county, Kentucky, is the native place of our subject and he was born February 4, 1857. His family was one of the old ones, being settlers there in the early years of the nineteenth century and emigrants from the State of Virginia, where Samuel James, the grandfather of Diogenes S. James, was born. The last named was a soldier in the early Indian war, under General William Henry Harrison, and participated in the famous battle of Tippecanoe, in 1811.

Joseph L. James was born in Ohio county, Kentucky, in 1827, grew up on the farm and served in the Kentucky Home Guard. When he emigrated from there, he made the trip to Kansas with three yoke of oxen and began life in Montgomery county in a primitive way. He has conducted himself as a plain honorable farmer here, has taken some interest in local politics and was a Republican till the formation of the Greenback party, when he joined issues with it. For his wife, he chose Martha Shelton, a daughter of a Kentucky farmer. In 1893, Mrs. James died, being the mother of Sylvanus, of Rutland township; Mary, wife of John Sewell, of Bolton; Diogenes S., Harvey K., a teacher of Montgomery county, Kansas; Aurora, who married W. C. Sewell, of Bolton; Sarah, now Mrs. A. J. Puckett, of Woodward county, Oklahoma; Laura, wife of John Findley, of Bartlesville, Indian Territory; Dora, wife of Waltham Hudson, of Montgomery county; Alice, who married C. E. Koberts, of Oklahoma; and Joseph B., of Montgomery county, Kansas.

D. S. James acquired a common school education and, at nineteen years of age, married Martha Hall, a daughter of the venerable Mexican war veteran, Joseph Hall, of Caney township, Montgomery county. Mr. Hall was also a soldier in the Civil war, being a lieutenant of a Kansas regiment. Mr. James engaged in farming in his native county and resumed it in Montgomery county, Kansas, in the sparsely settled region of Rutland township, upon his advent here. He was in uninterrupted and quiet possession of his calling till November, 1897, when he was elected Clerk of Montgomery county, by the Fusion forces of the county. He succeeded John Glass in the Clerk's office and was reelected, in November, 1899, for another two years' term, and when this expired, he inherited the extra year of 1902 — on account of a change in the law of succession — and held, therefore, five full years. He retired from office, in January, 1903, with a record of duty faithfully performed, and, in the spring of the same year, took his family to the Bristow, Creek Nation, his future home.

Mr. and Mrs. James have a family of seven children, as follows: Floyd, who married Carrie Terry; Mittie M.; Etta; Charles; Roy; John; and Forest. Mr. James is an Odd Fellow and a Workman.

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS, Published 1903

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