FIFTH GENERATION

24. * Thomas Luther CONE ^{(25) (76)(77) (78)(79)} was born on 24 May 1837 in Athens, Athens, OH. He died on 11 Oct 1917 in Preston, Jasper, MO. ^(2)(80) Mr. Cone suffered a stroke of paralysis three weeks before he died. This was the cause of death. The following children survived him; Mrs. Lucia Dryden, of California; Elmer C. Cone and James H. Cone, of Idaho; Mrs. M. H. Stafford, of Topeka, Ill.; Luther P. Cone and Augusta E. Cone, who reside at home, and Mrs. Yola Culton of Joplin. He was buried in Bradford Cemetery, Jasper County, MO.⁽⁸¹⁾ As a representative of the class of substantial builders of a great commonwealth who have served faithfully and long in the enterprising west, who is a pioneer of Missouri, and nobly has he performed his duty in the work necessary to produce the wonderful development which has taken place. He is the pioneer merchant and postmaster of the town.
A native of Athens county, Ohio. Thomas L. Cone, the ninth child and fourth son in the family, was reared to manhood in his native county, there enjoyed the educational advantages afforded by the district schools. In January, 1860, he came to Jasper county, Missouri, locating at Sherwood, near Carl Junction. He had learned the carpenter's trade in his youth, and after his arrival here he began working at the trade, and since that time he has erected many of the substantial buildings of the locality, among the number being the old stone residence of Judge Hunt. In December, 1861, he removed to Fort Scott, Kansas, where he was engaged in farming and in buying and selling stock until February, 1866, when he returned to Jasper county where he lived till his death. Here he embarked in the mercantile business, putting in stock of dry goods in a old log school-house at Preston, and thus became the pioneer merchant of the town. After the close of the war he still continued his mercantile interests in the old log school-house for six months, when he moved into the concrete building, but in 1889 he erected a store building at Brest, into which he moved his stock. In 1872, however, he sold his store and for the following seven years he followed the tilling of the soil in Preston township. He then repurchased his dry-goods store, and has since been engaged in that business until 1912, being the oldest merchant in the county. For many years Mr. Cone had his goods hauled in wagons from St. Louis to Preston and later from Sedalia. He also owns a fine farm of one hundred and twenty acres in addition to his store property, which consists of ten acres.
Mr. Cone was the second postmaster appointed in Jasper county after the war. In February, 1866, he was appointed postmaster at Preston. He served as postmaster from that date until 1906, when the rural mail routes to Preston were established and the Postoffice was discontinued.
Unto our subject and his wife have been born eight children, four sons, and four daughters. Mr. Cone is a stanch supporter of Republican principles, and had taken and active interest in the work of his party, having attended many of its conventions and has held many local offices, including those of register and justice of the peace. He was one of the oldest citizens of the county and was well known throughout its length and breath, having a host of warm friends. With all he was very popular.
Since Missouri was one of the few divided states during the Civil War it was a very tumultuous place to live. Both Thomas and Millie were Abolitionists living in the southern part of the state which had sided with the Confederacy. The area was home territory for several Confederate guerrilla bands including Quantrill's Raiders. These groups raided against farmers and townspeople who sided with the Union and killed more than 150 people. It is easy to imagine that Thomas and Millie had some concern for their safety. One night the family wrapped their wagon wheels with gunny sacks to silence the noise and fled across the state line to Kansas which was a free state. They settled in a sod shanty near Hutchinson, Kansas until the war was over. It was here that their first two children were born. After the war they returned to Missouri and settled in Preston, a small village near Carthage. Thomas was a blacksmith and owned and operated a general store. Their last six children were born in Preston.:
Town of Preston. -- Preston, one of the ante bellum towns of Jasper county, was laid off on the west half of lot No. five, of the northeast fractional quarter of section 2, township 29, range 32, by the original proprietors, Luke E. Ray and Jacob Nicholson, Jan 27, 1860. The town of Preston was re-platted Sept. 10, 1867, in lieu of the original plat made in 1860. The new plat was made by G.A. Cassil, Thos. L. Cone, John Prigmore, W.G. Alexander, and W. M. Berry. It is nine miles northwest of Carthage. Dr. Patterson put up the first building ever erected in the town and kept store there. Shortly after
L. E. Ray put up a stone building and also used it for a store. The large stone building now standing in the town was erected by Daniel Higgins and was used as a store-house. The town was in a thriving condition previous to the war and had considerable trade, but during the Rebellion it was all burned excepting the two stone buildings to which reference was made. For several years after the war the place was little more than a wreck. During the last half decade, however, some buildings have been erected and the town is now having a good local trade.
The old home was still standing in 1941 when William H. Cone returned there for a visit. (In 1992 the only part of Preston Township still standing was the Presbyterian Church.)
The Church On The Corner - Preston
Each Sunday morning the church bell rings at Preston Presbyterian Church, announcing Sunday School and Church Services. Across the peaceful countryside, the bell can be heard for miles. Here - for more than a century - however, it was not always so quiet and peaceful. A corner was given by Thomas Cone, from his lot, for this church. This information was from a small story written by Arthur Harbison, Elder and sent to Aubrey Cone. He was married to * Amelia Mahalie "Millie" PRIGMORE on 4 Sep 1861 in Preston, Jasper, MO.

25. * Amelia Mahalie "Millie" PRIGMORE ⁽²⁵⁾ was born on 24 Jul 1842 in Carthage, Jasper, MO. She died on 21 Dec 1911 in Preston, Jasper, MO. She was buried in Bradford Cemetery, Jasper County, MO. Children were:

i. Charles Edward CONE^{(82) (83)} was born on 9 Aug 1862 in Hutchinson, Reno, KS. Also have him born in Uniontown, Bourbon, Kansas. He died on 27 Oct 1938 in LaPush, Clallan, WA. He was buried in Forks, Clallam, WA. The family moved back to Missouri from Kansas when he was about four years old. At the age of twenty, the roving spirit of Uncle Ed, as he was known to his family, got the better of him and he left home for the West. He maintained infrequent contact and only returned to Missouri one time to visit his family. In 1886 he got the wanderlust again and moved on, this time to the wilds of Alaska, twelve years before the Klondike gold rush. The loneliness of Alaska apparently brought out a dormant literary talent as he expressed his thoughts in poetry over the years. Over 500 of his poems were published and in 1923 he published a book of poetry "Beyond the Skyline". A poem with the same title expresses his roving spirit.
For forty years, fat and lean, Ed prospected through the wilds of Alaska. Shortly before the Russian revolution he took a stake of $300, 000 to Siberia and invested it in a mining operation. But the Bolsheviks got wind of the mine and robbed him of $23,000 in gold dust and $14,000 in currency, blew up his hydraulic mining equipment and ordered him to leave Russia. With Alaska 173 miles away, Ed hiked across the frozen Bering Sea to an Eskimo village on the Alaskan coast. As this was in April, he had to remain there until he was able to board a US Coast Guard ice breaker in August and return to civilization. He landed without a dollar to his name.
Undaunted, he was again able to make a small fortune, about $40,000. This time he came to Seattle to "blow" his money. He spent a great portion of his fortune on a children's home, which never materialized. One year later he returned to Alaska for the last time. Around 1925 he returned to the "lower 48" and in 1932 built a cabin on remote Jackson Point near La Push, Washington. He died there October 27, 1938 and is buried at Forks, Washington. He never married or had any children.
In 1922 Sunset Magazine published an article in the April issue about interesting Westerners called "The Bard o' the Kuskokwim"
It was a day of occasional sunshine and much shadow on the outskirts of the far northern town of Anchorage, Alaska. The director of a moving picture company on location was bawling instructions and cursing as he tried for the fifth time that afternoon to get the scene before another cloud blotted out the famed midnight luminary.
Before the camera the old northern prospector once again prepared to say farewell to his little daughter. The camera clicked. All was ready. The old prospector, so intent on his acting that he was oblivious to the warning yells of the interested spectators, advanced with outstretched arms and pathetic mien, registering parental love and anguish and the next instant was nearly bowled over by the sudden rush of joyous, tail-wagging huskie dogs that sprang upon him and pawed him with wildest affection.
"The whole blamed dog-pound's busted loose again!" yelled a voice. The crowd roared with delight. The camera man cursed, the sun went behind a cloud. But the old prospector, jerking off his false whiskers, began pulling dog-chains from his pocket and attaching them to his canine admirers.
"The Bard o' the Kuskokwim sure does have a heck of a time tryin' to act in the movies," drawled an old sourdough to a "cheechako." "He has charge o' the dog-pound this year and blamed if them animals hasn't taken such a shine to him that they break out and follow him all over town!"
As for the Bard himself, he admits with a whimsical twinkle in his eye that were he dependent on his acting for a living his dogs would probably ruin his career.
"They do seem to like me some," he says. "Last winter when a windstorm blew a big tree across the pound, about fifteen dogs got out. I went up town to report at the city office. When I got back, the whole band was in front of my cabin waiting for me to come home. Even when folks redeem their dogs I have an awful job to keep the little cusses from breaking back into the pound."
Up in the Far North, not to have a title of some kind brands a man as a nonentity. Edward C. Cone, the Bard of the Kuskokwim, is a familiar and beloved character in Anchorage where he is in demand at roadhouses, at hotels, and at all public gatherings as a teller of tales and a reciter of his own Northland verses.
"Yes, I know a little about the country," he admits. "I've been stampeding around in Alaska for thirty-six years. I saw and rode in my first automobile in this town a couple of years ago. I also saw my first moving picture show here and since then have taken part in several that were filmed here. As for poetry, I've been composing it for thirty years for my own and my friends' amusement. Why, when I was up in the Arctic a hundred and fifty miles from any other human being, I used to recite my verses to the barren tundra. I never thought then that folks would care to hear them. I made them up because I liked to do it. But when Alaska became civilized and newspapers came, the editors seemed to like my stuff, too,
"I always have a hankering to be at places where I'm not, and then of course I have to go there. Nearly every old-timer in the North knows me. I remember one spring I was coming overland from the Kuskokwim when the snow got so soft that I had to abandon my sled, camp outfit and all. I even took the harnesses of my dogs. I went back the next fall for the things and found that some wag had come along and finding that the stuff was mine, had blazed the side of a spruce and written:
Here lies the remains of E.C. Cone,
A man of genius little known,
Who scribbled verse not over well,
And now we hope he's gone to a warmer climate.
"I've been all over the Arctic and have a lot of friends among the Eskimos. They are a kindly, simple people. One winter when I was sick and nearly cashed in form lack of food and proper clothing, the took me in. It happened to be one of their lean years and they had nothing at all to eat but muck-fish that's fish that is buried in pits in the ground when caught and left there until after mid-winter and you can imagine that may stomach, thought as it is, rebelled at muck-fish. One old Eskimo he must have been nearly a hundred years old used to go miles to a big lake and fish patiently for hours through the ice trying to get me a fresh pickerel to eat. He did catch a few otherwise I wouldn't be here. They made me a chief in one of the Kobuk tribes up there, after I'd learned some of the language, so I suppose I can claim to be a 'white Eskimo'."
There are few white men living who have gone as far into the wild places of Alaska as Edward Cone. The only maps to be had today of a great scope of country about the Kuskokwim river were made from sketches, notes and drawings furnished the United States Road Commission by him in 1909, and miles of that country have never been seen by any eyes but his.
Like other Alaskan trail-blazers, it is gold that lures the Bard into the unknown places. His is the unrest of the prospector. He has put this feeling into many of his verses, but one he calls "Beyond the Skyline" is a particular favorite whenever he recites to a circle of his cronies squatted about the evening campfire:
"As we yearned beyond the skyline,
With a wistful wish to know
What was hidden beyond the highline,
Glistening with eternal snow;
As we yearned and wished and wondered
Of the secrets there untold,
As the glaciers growled and thundered,
Came the whisper "red raw gold"."
"Yes," the Bard admits naively, "I've struck it rich several times, but money just naturally won't stay by me. Once I took forty thousand dollars out of one of my claims in twenty days. I went out to the States intending to settle down in civilization, but they must have seen me coming. In no time I hadn't a cent left."
Perhaps it was this trip which caused the Bard to write "Back to Alaska Again," verses which begin:
I'm a-lookin' tough and the trail is rough;
My dogs are sore and lame.
I'm stony broke, with my watch in soak
And I'm playin' a pretty hard game.
But I've played it before, and I'm lookin' for more,
And I don't give a hoot, to be plain.
I am right in the swim, and chock-full of vim,
For I'm back in Alaska again!
The Bard goes on: "It's only within the last seven years that I've made any real attempt at writing that is, putting my thoughts down on paper. Before I always recited as the sprit moved me. I have had almost no education and didn't begin to acquire a knowledge of words until I was fifty, consequently I'm hampered by a limited vocabulary. But I have written nearly fifty short stories and several hundred poems."
Though the Bard of the Kuskokwim has never tried to sell any of his work and has never been discovered by the publisher he gets letters from all over the United States from travelers who have heard him recite in some Alaskan road-house and who wish copies of his poems.
"If I answered all the letters I get I'd have to hire one of those cute little stenographers," he says.
It is also known the many of the fair sex, passing through Anchorage, have displayed considerable interest in the Bard for he looks but forty of his sixty years and he is a bachelor.
"I look younger because I've always been happy up here," he explains. "I was born a pioneer in Kansas and I've managed to keep just a little ahead of civilization all the time, but" the Bard's eyes took in the busy, modern streets of Anchorage "within the last five years she seems to have caught up with me. I'm about due to strike out on another prospecting trip. My feet are sort of itching to go to the West'ard to some of those little islands along the Aleutian Peninsula were the natives still tell of the gold the old-time Russian priests used to get to trim up their holy pictures when Alaska belonged to the Czar." by: Florance Willoughby
ii. Lucia L. CONE⁽⁸²⁾ was born on 13 Jan 1864 in Hutchinson, Reno, KS. She died in 1904 in Arizona. She was listed in her father Obituary (1917) as living in California at that time. So unsure of the year and place of her death. She has record # 1674. When she was two years old the family moved to Preston, Jasper, Missouri where she attended school and grew to womanhood. In the late 1890's she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis and the family moved her to Arizona for her health. They move west in 1898-9 by covered wagon.

12 iii. * Elmer Colfax CONE.
iv. James Henry CONE^{(25) (84)(85)} was born on 12 Dec 1869 in Carthage, Jasper, MO. He was buried in Apr 1946 in Dry Creek Cemetery, Ada County, ID. He died on 23 Apr 1946 in Eagle, Ada, ID. Jim attended school and later trained to be jeweler and watchmaker. While in Missouri he was employed as a jeweler in the Cities of Jasper, Sheldon, & Nevada. In 1912 he followed his brother Elmer to Idaho. The family settled near Pearl, Id., where in 1916 he homesteaded 320 acres. Around 1930 they moved to a small farm at Eagle where he lived the rest of his life.
v. Marcia CONE⁽²⁵⁾ was born on 6 Mar 1877 in Carthage, Jasper, MO.⁽⁸⁶⁾ She died on 18 Jan 1919 in Pekin, Tazewell, IL. Marcia died of Pernicious Anemia, at the age of 42. She was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Havanna, IL.
vi. Luther Prigmore CONE⁽²⁵⁾ was born on 25 Jul 1880 in Preston, Jasper, MO. He died on 7 Oct 1928. Worked as a professional photographer in Preston and Kirkville, Missouri. Luke (this was the name he went by) was killed in a mining accident.
vii. Augusta Eleanor CONE⁽²⁵⁾ was born on 11 Apr 1882 in Carthage, Jasper, MO. She died on 9 Mar 1941 in San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. She was buried in Roswell Cemetery, Roswell, Canyon, ID. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Augusta never married. In 1923 moved to southern California. She worked in many of the homes in Los Angeles and Hollywood as a children’s nurse. She came to Parma, Idaho and stay with her brother Elmer. She died after a lingering illness. She never married.
viii. Yola Delight CONE⁽²⁵⁾ was born on 9 Dec 1885 in Carthage, Jasper, MO. She died on 9 Nov 1965 in Preston, Jasper, MO.