TRIGG, W.A.

TRIGG

Posted By: Volunteer: Sherri (email)
Date: 5/30/2013 at 07:35:26

W.A. TRIGG FORMER V.B. COUNTY RESIDENT DIES

Elgin, Kansas, July 3. - W.A. Trigg, 88, died here early Sunday at the home of his son, T.E. Trigg, editor of the Elgin Journal.

For fifty years Mr. Trigg was a resident of Kansas and for 30 years was an active figure in the politcal and newspaper life of the state.

Mr. Trigg was born in Covington, Ky., in 1840, and at an early period moved to southeastern Iowa. As a young man Mr. Trigg worked in the once famous Meek Brothers woolen mills at Bonaparte, Iowa, a woolen factory that was known a half century or more ago throughout all the middle west. He worked for 50 and 60 cents a day, regareded then as a munificient wage, in order to gain an education and realize an ambition to become a school teacher.

He was one of the pioneer school teachers of Van Buren county, Iowa, and was a co-laborer in that field with the late George W. McCrary, former general solicitor for the Santa Fe railway. At that time the salries for school teachers ranged from $12 to $20 a month.

In 1878 when Mr. Trigg brought his family to Kansas and settled on a farm in Linn county, he was inspired with an ambition to become a farmer, and took into partnership with him his three sons in the farming business, but in Kansas a half century ago a farm with its log cabin was not calculated to produce a living for a big family and Mr. Trigg became a school teacher to help eke out a living the farm failed to produce.

He was offered the regular salary of the Kansas school teachers in that day and a bonus of $10 per month as an inducement to take the school, and the salary and bonus combined mounted to $40 per month.

In 1882 he was elected probate judge in Linn county and after holding that office for four years he purchased the Linn County Clarion at Mound City and became a newspaper man instead of a farmer. His three sons, whom he brought to Kansas to become farmers, also became newspaper men, all of them learning the trade in the Mound City News. He also purchased other newspaper properties and at one time held a seat in the Kansas legislature from Anderson county.

The funeral of Judge Trigg was held at Garrett yesterday afternoon.

Source: Van Buren Co. Genealogical Society Obituary Book C, Page 90, Keosauqua Public Library, Keosauqua, IA