John Sliker Bilby

JOHN SLIKER BILBY.

At this point the biographer is glad to give a conspicuous setting to the life record of John Sliker Bilby, a man who, however, needs no formal into duction to the readers of this work, being one of the notable men of his day and generation, his name being state wide and even national in its scope in view of the fact that he ranks with the great land owners of the world, therefore any attempt at laudation here would appear somewhat inconsistent if not incongruous; but aside from the positions which he occupies as a leading and highly esteemed citizen, there is added interest attached to the resume of his career from the fact that during his many years’ residence here he has seen and taken a leading part in the wonderful development of Nodaway county from the primitive conditions existing when the prairies were, many of them, lying in wild sod, to the opulent present, he having long been one of the advance guard of progress and material advancement, and while he has benefited himself in a very material way, he has never lost sight of his obligations to his fellow men, being public-spirited and loyal in his support of movements having as their ultimate aim the bettering of the locality honored by his citizen ship.

Mr. Bilby was born at Drakestown, New Jersey, January 19, 1832, his parents being John and Delilah (Sliker) Bilby. The father, 'also born in New Jersey, spent his life there; he was the son of Jonathan Bilby, a sterling Scotchman who settled in New Jersey before John Bilby was born, thus establishing this honored family in America. John Bilby was a stone-mason by trade and later in life followed farming; upon reaching maturity, he married Delilah Sliker, a native of New Jersey, in which state her parents were also born. To John and Delilah Bilby fifteen children were born, twelve of whom grew to maturity, and five are now living: Aaron died in 1908; Jonathan died in 1900; Mrs. Marilda Painter died in 1904; John S., of this review: Nicholas died of consumption contracted while a soldier in the Civil war; George was killed in the battle of the Wilderness; Jesse lives at Hackettstown, New Jersey; Mrs. Renzilla Dick died in 1908; Mrs. Mehetable Seals lives at Drakestown, New Jersey; Mrs. Elizabeth Gillinger lives at Quitman, Nodaway county; Mrs. Mary Young died in the winter of 1903; Charles lives at Nellie, Oklahoma.

John S. Bilby grew to maturity at Drakestown, New Jersey, and when only eight years old went out to work for his living. Later he worked an entire year for one hundred and fifteen dollars. In his youth he learned the carpenter’s trade and always knew the meaning of hard work. These early experiences gave him great fortitude, self-reliance and persistency, which re suited in his large success of later years. He is pre-eminently a self-educated and self-made man, therefore richly deserves the benign miles which Fortune has bestowed upon him and the high esteem of his countrymen. In the early fifties he became a sufferer from tuberculosis and, believing that a change of climate would benefit his health, came to Canton, Illinois, and there he worked for a time with William Parlin, who afterwards became a member of the great plow manufacturing firm of Parlin & Orendorph. Accumulating a little money there, he began building houses on contracts; he also built houses and sold them, and later bought eighty acres of land near Canton. He married Margaret Applegit, a native of Drakestown, New Jersey, and the daughter of Moses and Margaret (Messinger) Applegit, and this union resulted in the birth of four children, namely: Frances Ellen, born in 1862, is the wife of Dr. Rufus H. Smith, formerly a practicing physician, now engaged in the real estate business in Seattle, Washington; John Edmund, a record of whom appears on another page of this work, is the eldest son; Russell Irving, the second son, is also represented in this work; Nicholas V., who was born in 1870. married Bird McMacken, and lives at Holdenville, Oklahoma, where he is engaged in a number of enterprises, raises cotton, cattle, runs a cotton-gin and has an oil mill on his large plantation on the Canadian river.

The mother of these children died October 2, 1887, at what was then the family home in the west part of Green township, Nodaway county.

After his marriage to Margaret Applegit in Illinois, Mr. Bilby went to live on his farm in Fulton county, near Canton. He then made several trades in farm property, and three or four years after his marriage he moved to near Bushnell, in McDonough county, Illinois. He and Messrs. Day and Crider organized one of the first livestock commission firms in Chicago under the firm name of Crider, Day & Bilby. Mr. Bilby remained in McDonough county and bought and shipped stock to Chicago. Whenever an opportunity to buy land in McDonough county presented itself he availed himself of it and became the owner of nearly a thousand acres there. About 1868 he came to Nodaway county, Missouri, and bought a half section of land in the south side of Green township, west of Nodaway river. Here he rapidly increased his holdings and soon had in his possession a very large amount of land. Having a lumber yard of his own, he built a store, and a postoffice was established there, called Fairview. He also built houses and large barns. He bought large numbers of cattle from neighboring farmers and adjoining counties, fattened and sold them. Buying more land, from time to time, his holdings spread into Atchison and Holt counties. He followed farming and stock feeding on a large scale, larger, in fact, than had ever been seen in Missouri. By 1873 he was going beyond the nearby counties and brought cattle from as far as Kansas City to fatten them here. During several years he bought cattle in Oregon and Washington, driving them to the railroad, a hundred miles east of Cheyenne, Wyoming, shipping them to Council Bluffs, Iowa, from which place his sons and their assistants would drive them to their land in this locality.

Mr. Bilby built the first tile factory in this part of Missouri, located at Quitman, and for many years he and his sons have been putting in car loads of it in their land every year. John S. Bilby was also the first to sow blue grass in this section of Missouri and he now raises enormous quantities of it, selling car loads of the seed.

The Bilby ranches in this state now cover twenty-six thousand acres in Nodaway, Atchison and Holt counties, all very valuable land. To manage this vast acreage an organization and a perfect system is required, the management being divided by John S. Bilby and his sons, Russell and Edward as follows: John S. and J. Ed. Bilby are partners under the firm name of the Quitman Live Stock Company; John S. and Russell I. are partners under the name of the Nodaway Valley Cattle Company. The Missouri ranches are divided between the two management, Edward having the north and west parts and Russell that south and nearer Quitman; both use the brand “Ranch 44,” one branding cattle on the left side and the other on the right side. Each ranch has a foreman in charge of parts of the work and these foremen have their assistants. There are boarding houses on the ranches and stores where they may do their trading; these stores carry several thousand dollars’ worth of stock and many of the articles bear the brand “Ranch 44.” There are several school districts on the ranches whose taxes are voted by the employes living there and the Bilbvs pay nearly all of it; however, the men are fair and do not vote exorbitant levies. There are ice houses, traction engines, feed mills, blacksmith shops, all kind of modern farming implements and many enormous barns on these ranches to say nothing of the commodious, attractive and beautifully located residences where genuine Western hospitality and good cheer are found ever prevailing.

Formerly the Bilbys drove cattle in from neighboring townships and counties, but they now haul them in by train loads, most of them coming from Texas and old Mexico and they are widely known as the cattle kings of north western Missouri, known throughout the Middle West, especially at all the general markets, and in the great Southwest and Mexico their names are household words. But such prestige has no tendency to give them stilted manners or affected superiority of attitude toward their fellow men; on the con rary, they are plain, unassuming, straightforward, honorable and genteel, neighborly, kind, generous and treat all classes in the spirit of man to man.

In the early eighties the Bilbys began buying land in Nebraska and they now own seven square miles there or over four thousand acres; they also bought large tracts in Arkansas, partly timber land, and at the time much of it was apparently almost worthless, but it is now as fine a rice growing district as can be found, and their ranches in Kansas contain forty-three thousand acres. About ten years later they began buying Texas land and now own about two hundred thousand acres in that state, and in Old Mexico the Bilbys own about four hundred thousand acres of land. In the fall of 1902 John S. Bilbv began operations in Oklahoma and now has large ranches there, where he is engaged in farming and stock raising and feeding. He has a rare genius for land buying, seldom makes a mistake, being a man of keen discernment in forecasting the outcome of a present transaction. Such achievements are truly marvelous when the fact is considered that Mr. Bilby was compelled to start in life empty handed, making his own living even when a mere child. He has continued to work diligently, early and late, always persistently and along a well defined line. He has exercised wonderful judgment and rare foresight, and it is said he would get up in the night to buy land. It is believed that he is now the largest individual land owner in America.

John S. Bilby was married on October 2, 1909, to Eva Smith, of Good Hope, Illinois, a lady of intelligence and refinement and the representative of an excellent and influential family there. Mr. Bilby still claims northwestern Missouri as his home, but he and his wife spend nearly all their time in Okla boma, where he gives his individual attention to his large ranches. With duties that would crush the ordinary man, he has his labors so systematized that he experiences little or no inconvenience in doing them. He is essentially cosmopolitan in his ideas, a man of the people in all that the term implies, and in the best sense of the word a representative type of that strong American manhood which commands and retains respect by reason of inherent merit, sound sense and correct conduct. Measured by the accepted standards of excellence, his career, though strenuous, has been eminently honorable and useful, and his life fraught with great good to his fellow men and to the world.

As printed in Past and present of Nodaway County, Missouri (1910). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.