By RENA JEAN TESCH
Courier Staff Correspondent

Osage, Iowa — June 1 will mark an epoch in the lives of the Kingsburys of Osage, for it will be the first year for an entire 66-year period that a Kingsbury has not been owner and manager of the hardware store in Osage.

The key goes to Jack E. Cooksie, Mason City, a former GI, who, with his family will move to Osage as soon as housing facilities are available.

Joseph Biscoe Kingsbury, born in Londonderry, Vermont, on March 9, 1827, fatherless at 11, and with strenuous family financial conditions, ceased his education to make a living for the family.

In 1852 he married Hannah Brown at Jamaica, Vt., and the couple started fpr the frontier" in the far west to establish their home. They came to Cherry Valley, Illinois, where he worked for four years as a carpenter and joiner.

Then in 1857 they treked to Iowa, coming from Dubuque by stagecoach to Fayette County. Here three of their four children were born, including Wayland, their only son, who went into business with his father in Osage later. Wayland was born in 1858.

Established in 1885

In 1885 the hardware store was established in Osage, in the old Hitchcock building, where now is the location of the new Watts theater. Wayland married a daughter of the Professor Alva Bush of Cedar Valley seminary, Flora Bush.

She died in 1900, and he later married Anna Walker, who now resides in Seattle, Washington. J. B. Kingsbury died at the age of 82 in Osage, leaving his only son Wayland, and a son-in-law, J. D. Berger, in charge of the flourishing hardware business.

Five sons were born to the Wayland Kingdburys, two of whom went into the hardware business.

Formerly in Bank

They included Dean, now in Omaha, who sold out to Hugh S. Young in 1939, and Frank W. Kingsbury, who now relinquishes the store.

Frank, born in Fayette County in 1894, worked in a bank at West Union prior to coming to Osage in 1916 to the hardware store. The store, which had been in the Hitchcock building until 1910, was then moved to it's present location. Frank married Anna Carter in 1909, and there were three children born to them - Mrs. Edson Moore, Fort Dodge; Capt. Robert in Japan, and Bruce, manager of a milliner at Minneapolis, Minnesota. Later, after the death of his wife, Frank W. married Mrs. Avis Bell Pingry McNulty in 1939.

The completely modern store is one of the finest in a town the size of Osage, in all Iowa.

Special feature in the store is an antiquated stove, which will remain in the store. The stove was made in 1831, and is still servicable. It was purchased by Wayland Kingsbury, on one of his country trips, whe took out a new stove. He liked the stove, negotiated for it, and it is now an object of curiosity.

Lives Active Life

Kingsbury has been busy in communtiy life too and still plans to be acive. Says he is retiring early enough to really enjoy life, and that is what the couple plans to do - to vacation much at the Lakeshore cottage near Faribault, Minnesota.

He is past patron of OES, member of Coeur de Lane commandery, has been prelate for the Masonic order for 20 years, is an active member in the Sunday school of the Baptist Church, member of Osage Chamber of Commerce, and for eight years during the busy war period was Mitchell County Director of Home Service for the Red Cross.

Webization by Kermit Kittleson, 9/15/2009