Clay Co., KS AHGP-Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington, Clay and Riley Counties-William Blue
Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington, Clay and Riley Counties Chapman Brothers, Chicago, 1890
WILLIAM BLUE. The early pioneer of any section of country is always an object of interest to every intelligent individual. Those who have the least acquaintance with the early settlement of Kansas, will recall to mind the peculiar troubles through which she passed and the fact that those men who were willing to settle upon her frontier twenty years ago or thereabouts, must have possessed spirits of more than ordinary cour�age and fortitude.
Among these men Mr. Blue bore a conspicuous part for his steady perseverance under almost un�heard-of difficulties and his stanch adherence to his resolution of building up a homestead and staying with the people among whom he had cast his lot. The story of the hardships and privations endured by the frontiersman and his family has been too often told in this volume to need repetition here, perhaps, but suffice it to say that William Blue oc�cupies a position secondary to no man in this respect. He took up a tract of wild land upon which he labored early and late in the construction of a homestead and we now find him among the well-to-do farmers of Union Township, pleasantly located on the northwest quarter of section 10, township 9, range 3 east. Here he has effected all the ordinary improvements suggested to the enter�prising man and although making no pretentions to living elegantly, there is about his premises the air of solid comfort and content which is always pleasant to look upon.
Next to a man's own personality that of those from whom he drew his origin is a matter of in�terest. The subject of this sketch is the son of Barnett Blue, who was born on the Potomac River in Hampshire County, Va., and when a lad removed with his parents to the vicinity of what was after�wards the flourishing city of Chillicothe, Ohio. That section of country upon their arrival here was simply a wilderness, as they took up their abode as early as 1801, when Ohio was still a Terri�tory. He was there reared amid the wild scenes of pioneer life and there spent his last days engaged in farming pursuits.
The mother of our subject was in her girlhood Miss Elizabeth McMurray of Scotch-Irish extrac�tion. Her father was one of the early emigrants to America, arriving here in time to have a hand in the Revolutionary struggle on the side of the colo�nists, being under the direct command of Gen. Washington. Mrs. Elizabeth Blue departed this life twenty years after the decease of her husband, spending her last years in Indiana.
William Blue was born in Fayette County, Ohio, Feb. 25, 1827 (NOTE: 1825, per death certificate), and lived with his parents, assisting in the labors of the farm, until a youth of eighteen years. He was of an ambitious and enterprising disposition and now, anxious to do something for himself, began driving cattle from Ohio to Phila�delphia. Subsequently he engaged in flat-boating on the Ohio and lower Mississippi rivers and was thus occupied until late in the summer of 1871. He finally decided to seek the farther West and coining to the Territory of Kansas, landed in Leavenworth in August of the above-mentioned year, in the em�ploy of the United States Government in the Quartermaster's department. Thereafter he fol�lowed freighting and scouting on the plains for the next two years, frequently being on the trail of Indians and in the solitudes of that wild country met with many an interesting and thrilling experience. He also threaded his way among the Rocky Moun�tains and finally reached the Pacific Slope where he spent two years in mining.
At the expiration of this time Mr. Blue began to feel that it would be well to return to the haunts of civilization. He accordingly embarked on an ocean steamer at San Francisco and made his way by the water route to New York City, whence he returned to his old home in Ohio. Desirous now of establishing a fireside of his own he was mar�ried Feb. 15, 1853, to Miss Hannah Ann Stratton, who was then a resident of Peru, Ind., but who had been born and reared in Fayette County, Ohio. The young people commenced the journey of life together on a farm in Miami County, Ind., where Mr. Blue purchased land and followed agriculture until 1864. Then selling out he removed to Grant County, Wis., and later he was a resident of Minnesota and Iowa, but not being suited with any location as yet, he, in 1867, returned to Kansas settling on a farm in the vicinity of Lawrence. The grasshoppers soon drove him from those quarters and we next find him in Plattsburg, Mo., and there�after he followed freighting two years.
There was, however, something which constantly turned Mr. Blue's thoughts to Kansas, and in 1869 he tried again to become a resident of the State, this time successfully, settling in Clay County of which he has since been a resident. He homesteaded the east half of the northwest quarter of section 10 and the west half of the northeast quarter of the same, making 160 acres which he now owns. He had the honor of putting up the first dwelling be�tween the Republican River and Chapman Creek, on the high prairie land and here he has held the fort against droughts, grasshoppers, hard times and other drawbacks. He has 120 acres in a good state of cultivation and forty acres in pasture. He is one of the oldest settlers in Clay County as well as one of the earliest pioneers of the plains. Many and great have been the changes which he has witnessed since first venturing into the far West, and had he the pen of a ready writer, he could give to the world a tale of truth stranger than fiction.
To Mr. and Mrs. Blue there were born five chil�dren whom they named respectively Cassius, Rollin S., Elinora, Maggie and Juniata.