INDEX TO
BIOGRAPHIES
LEVI HART LANE
| When a new town was started it simply doubled or more greatly multiplied the work of the capable men in the community. So when Prescott got agoing in 1870 it asked Levi Hart Lane to be mayor and justice of the peace in addition to running his drug store, and as the place was small the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad (commonly called the Gulf Road) announced that it did not feel able to keep a salaried agent, so to save the young town from embarrassment this same Levi Hart Lane acted as station agent without compensation, getting up at unearthly hours to sell tickets to parties going on the early train, lugging mail bags to and from the postoffice, pushing a freight truck to get freight and baggage in and out of the weather and added to these activities were his duties as postmaster all the years of his residence in the town. In addition to all this he was the great humanitarian of the town, helping financially many who could never repay. In 1872 a cyclone swept the town, reducing a number of good frame business houses to a greater number of separate pieces than the carpenters used in putting them together originally. This storm was a sensational thing and almost every Prescott home has a set of photographs taken of the "remains." It wiped out much security for Levi Hart Lane's generous loans but he never winced. He took on more local burdens by being elected to the legislature taking part in the election of John James Ingalls over S. C. Pomeroy as United States Senator. From this you get the idea of what Mr. Lane was-a really high class man. He was born in Louise county, New York, April 1, 1830, son of Lyman Lane and his wife Hancy Hart. The Lanes came from Scotland, intermarried with the families of Stephen Hart and John Lee who came from England to Connecticut as early as 1634. These early pioneers were real fellows serving in the Continental army and holding various public positions. Our Mr. Lane in 1854 married Emily Jane Kendrick whose father was a Congregational minister after graduating from Harvard University and serving a time on the Harvard faculty. The four children of L. H. and Emily Jane Lane were Edwin Carlos (well remembered as Ed. C.) now at Clarinda, Iowa; Charles Edward who was editor of the Prescott Eagle and deputy county clerk under John Madden, and who married Mary Burks of Prescott (and had four children: Roy E., Frances E., George M., and Josephine, the last two born in Illinois. This child Josephine has the distinction of being the first woman in the state of Illinois to hold the combined offices of clerk of the circuit court and county recorder, in Kendall county.) Another child of L. H. was Frances who was with her father at Prescott and married John W. Shirley, the station agent and who in after years was an important employee of the Santa Fe system. Frances and her husband had seven children (Maurice, Edna, Edith, Linda, Harry, Charles, and Frances G.) A brother-in-law of L. H. Lane, Asa Deland Perrin, also brought a good family to Prescott. Their son Herbert L. Perrin now lives at Fort Scott, after many years in Prescott.
(History of Linnn County, by William Ansel Mitchell, 1928, Pages 356-357) |