This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Adams, Bareus, Brown, Carson, Cavaness, Clayton, Cole, Corey, Dewey, Edwards, Gaddis, Gaither, Hall, Horner, Jellers, Lane, Lough, Maclary, Martin, McCane, McFadden, Mulvaney, Mulvaney, Penny, Rogers, Spencer, Stevens, Swallow, Taylor, Woods Classification: Obituary Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Fm.2ADI/336 Message Board Post: Obituary from the “Chanute Tribune,” 14 June 1919 J. M. Cavaness Passes Away Newspaper Pioneer in Kansas, Well-known Author. Funeral at Methodist Church Monday Afternoon – Mr. Cavaness, a Resident of Kansas Sixty-three Years. J. M. Cavaness, a pioneer Kansas newspaper man and well-known author, died at 8:20 o’clock last evening at his home, 220 North Steuben avenue, where he had lived for twenty years. The funeral services will be held at 2:30 o’clock Monday afternoon at the First Methodist church. They will be conducted by its pastor, Dr. B. F. Gaither, and the sermon will be by Dr. S. A. Lough, president of Baker university, from which Mr. Cavaness graduated in 1866 as a member of its first class. Friends who wish to look upon Mr. Cavaness’s face for the last time may do so by calling at his late home from 10 to 12 o’clock Monday morning. His death came as the end of an illness which began two months ago following an injury which Mr. Cavaness considered at the time so slight that he paid no attention to it, but came to his desk in The Tribune office as usual. Two or three days later his condition became such that he was compelled to take to his bed and by that time his vitality was exhausted so that he was unable to recuperate. He had been in a critical condition for six weeks before the end finally came. Mr. Cavaness was 77 years of age, having been born in Monrovia, Morgan county, Indiana, March 29, 1842. Sixty-three Years in Kansas. Mr. Cavaness had been identified with Kansas from the time of its existence as a commonwealth before that time, in fact as his parents settled within the present border of the state in April of 1856, less than two years after the Territory of Kansas was organized and more than four years before Kansas was admitted to the sisterhood of states. It was doubtless the impressions and impulses thus thrown around him in his early manhood, spent in a region which two great idea made their battleground, that influenced him to take up newspaper publishing as a career and an opportunity for the expression of his interest in and views upon public affairs. A Well Known Writer. By nature and temperament, however, he was scholarly and literary and when he retired from newspaper publishing in 1903 there began for him a joyous Indian summer in which he enjoyed As a newspaper publisher he had become known as one of the best writers in the state. The late F. G. Adams, who as secretary of the State Historical Society handled all the papers of Kansas, regarded Mr. Cavaness as one of the ablest editors of weekly papers in the state. It is as a writer of verse, however, that he is bet known in the literary world. His poems have appeared in the Kansas and the religious press with more or less frequency for two score years. His first volume, “Poems by Two Brother,” issued in collaboration with his brother, the late A. A. B. Cavaness, came from the press in 1896 and the edition was soon exhausted. Author of Four Volumes. It was subsequent to this time that Mr. Cavaness retired from newspaper work and since then he has published four volumes. The first was “Jawhawker Juleps,” clever comments upon human nature which were so popular that two edition met with ready sale. In 1911, he issued “Rhythmic Studies of the Word,” rhymed commentaries upon the truths revealed in Scripture. This was much the best work he had done and the interest it aroused encouraged him to continue, a second volume of “Studies” being issued in 1916. This was followed by “Rhythmic Studies of Life,” issued late last year. He Saw Lawrence Sacked. Upon coming to Kansas, the family settled first in Lawrence, where it witnessed the sacking of the city, when two newspaper offices were destroyed, the month after they arrive there and the Border Ruffian raid in September. The father and the elder son were under John Brown, in command of the forces that day. They both belonged to the Free State militia under General Lane, and the son was with Lane at the surrender of Lecompton. In 1857 the family moved to a farm in Anderson county, but because there were no schools there and no prospects of any being established soon, they went to Baldwin, the seat of the new college, Baker University, established the preceding year. In Baker’s First Class. In the fall of that year, 1859, Mr. Cavaness entered this college. Prior to that time he had not gone to school more than twelve months because of poor health. He remained in college caring for his mother and his two sisters, while his father was in the army under Col. John A. Martin of the Eight Kansas Infantry and his brother in the First Kansas battery. He graduated in 1866, in the first class of Baker University and the fist class in the classical course in the state, receiving the degree of Bachelor Arts and three years later the degree of Master of Arts. Teacher and Editor. As a help to get thru college he had taught school, during periods of vacation from the university, in Anderson and Douglas counties. After graduation he became principal of the Butler, Mo., school, and the year held a similar position in Paola, Kas. He began his newspaper career in 1869. Col. J. W. Horner, who was president of Baker University when Mr. Cavaness graduated therefrom, had joined with A. C. Corey in the purchase of a newspaper plant in Baldwin. They moved it to Chetopa, Kas., where they established “The Chetopa Advance,” which began publication January 1, 1869. Mr. Cavaness helped to get out the first issue, working in the office as a printer, having learned this trade on Saturdays and during vacations while attending college. In Newspaper Work 33 Years. Because of his fidelity to Colonel Horner, when Mr. Corey retired at the end of the first year, in 1870, Mr. Cavaness was presented with a half interest in the business. He held every position on the paper, in 1874 becoming sole proprietor and editor and continuing as owner until 1899, when he sold the paper to W. P. Hazen, and came to Chanute to become associated with the late Captain Dewey. Captain Dewey retired in 1900 and Mr. Cavaness conducted The Tribune until 1903, when he turned it over to his two sons, Wilfred and Herbert. Mr. Cavaness married Miss Mary I. Swallow of Garnett, Kas., March 4, 1873. They were the parents of three children, the two sons and a daughter, Ethel, wife of J. Luther Taylor of Pittsburg, Kas. He is also survived by a sister, Mrs. S. C. Clayton of Baldwin, Kas. Postmaster of Chetopa He was postmaster in Chetopa, serving two terms and resigning when President Cleveland was elected. He was an early advocate of prohibition and for two years before this was adopted as the policy of the state there was no licensed saloon in Chetopa as a result of his efforts in opposition to the traffic efforts which caused a boycott against him to be attempted in an endeavor to punish him. Active in Church and Sunday School. Mr. Cavaness was a life-long member of the Methodist church and gave it his services in the pulpit for a time, quitting his editorial work from the spring of 1886 to the fall of 1888 to take a pulpit assignment from the Sough Kansas conference, being stationed at Neosho Falls. He had also been greatly interested in Sunday school work for a long while, being superintendent of the Chetopa Methodist Sunday school twenty-five or thirty years, also superintendent of the First Methodist church Sunday school here and president of the Neosho County Sunday School Association. Parents Typical Pioneers He came of parents typical of the pioneers of Kansas. They left Indiana in the fall of 1854 and stopped for the winter in Howard county, Missouri, to visit three brothers and two sisters of his mother whom she had not seen since they left their old home in North Carolina in 1834. The youngest sister had married Sash Carson, a brother of Kit Carson, and the elder sister had married Hamilton Carson, a half-brother of Kit Carson and one of the projectors of the Santa Fe Trail and one of its heaviest traffickers in its early days. While in Missouri the mother was so outspoken upon the subject of slavery that mob action was talked very seriously on the part of the people of the village. The mother was also a strong foe to intemperance and a short time after the family settled in Lawrence she joined a company of sixty women in a temperance crusade, the party visiting every saloon in the city and causing whiskey and beer to run down Massachusetts street. Obituary from the “Chanute Daily Tribune,” 17 June 1919 The Funeral of J. M. Cavaness “I Thank God I Knew Him,” Said Dr. Lough. President of Baker University, From Which Mr. Cavaness Graduated in First Class, Spoke of Life-long Acquaintance. “A Life Hid With Christ in God” was the theme of the sermon by Dr. S. A. Lough, president of Baker university, at the funeral yesterday afternoon of J. M. Cavaness, pioneer Kansan, veteran editor and well-known author. Baker university was the alma mater of Mr. Cavaness, he being a member of its first graduating class in 1866 – the first class ever graduated from any college in Kansas. “It is of interest to note that the name of James M. Cavaness stands first on the list in the educational annals of Kansas.” Said Dr. Lough in the course of his sermon. He spoke from an acquaintance of forty-six years, beginning when he was a student in the primary department of the Chetopa Methodist Sunday school of which Mr. Cavaness was superintendent, and declared that he had been influenced by Mr. Cavaness as by no other man except his own father. “I shall always thank God that I knew this man to whom we have come to pay the last tribute of respect today,” he said. He took his text from Colossians 3:3. “Your life is hid with Christ in God,” and explained the medieval interpretation of the passage which led to the establishment of the monastic system in which men withdrew from the active life of the world that they might be “hid with God,” and then of the modern and natural view whereby men realized that God is in the world directing its affairs and that it is there they can be most of service to Him. In this connection he read from Mr. Cavanesses’s [sic] poem, “Resignation,” based on the text he had chosen, to show the author’s idea, excerpts from which follow: “I do not ask a happy lot While I may live; I shall receive, and question not What Christ may give.// I do not ask to be exempt From grief or pain; God never doth afflict or tempt But for our gain.// I do not ask to be at ease, From labor freed; To do whatever Christ shall please I humbly plead.// When I, concealed by coffin lid, Lie ‘neath the sod, May it be said my life was hid With Christ in God.” “To chronicle the activities of this man who lies before us and to tell the part he played in the social, political, industrial, educational and religious affairs of the state in which he had lived for sixty-three years would be a volume of itself,” said Dr. Lough, who went on to speak of the personality of his long-time friend, illustrating his interpretation by reading frequently from Mr. Cavaness’s poems. He spoke of his life-long interest in church and school and state, of his crusade for temperance which resulted in Chetopa voting dry under local option three years before Kansas adopted prohibition. “When the question was first raised in Chetopa,” Dr. Lough said, “there was no doubt as to the stand the Advance (of which Mr. Cavaness was editor at the time) would take and it consistently waged the fight until the victory was won. “Mr. Cavaness liked to mingle with people, and his “Jayhawker Juleps” disclose his play-loving spirit. They are full of vigorous, healthy laughter without blemish or uncleanness.” Of his friend’s activity Dr. Lough said: “I never knew another man with as frail a body containing such a dynamo of energy. He never retired. True, he recognized the burden of years and relinquished responsibility, but he was busy to the end, working with his pen for the welfare of his community, his state, his nation and the world,” and Dr. Lough read from some of Mr. Cavaness’s war poems revealing love of liberty and freedom and confidence that the right would triumph. “Mr. Cavaness has bequeathed to those who come after him an inheritance that will live always in his writing, which will long delight and inspire thousands of readers,” Dr. Lough said. The services were held at the First Methodist church and were conducted by its pastor, Dr. B. F. Gaither, assisted by Dr. Lough and the Rev. W. H. Mulvaney of Garnett. The profusion of flowers covering the casket showed the esteem in which Mr. Cavaness was held and brightened and perfumed the altar. Preceding the sermon Dr. Gaither read a brief sketch of Mr. Cavaness’s career and tributes to him from the Rev. J. R. McFadden, pastor of the Wichita Methodist church, who had been associated with Mr. Cavaness both here and in Chetopa during Dr. McFadden’s ministry at these two places; Judge Nelson Case of Oswego, a personal friend of Mr. Cavaness for half a century; Dr. C. H. Spencer, editor of the Christian Advocate, the publication of American Methodism, and from the editorial columns of yesterday morning’s Kansas City Times. Dr. Gaither also spoke of his association with Mr. Cavaness since the time that the pastor’s ministry began here and of the warm friendship that had developed therefrom. Mrs. J. C. Penny sang Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” and a male quartet, composed of Vincent McCane, Russell Brown, Prof. T. A. Jellers and Dr. T. R. Edwards, sang “Oh’ Sweetly Solemn Thought” and the following song written by Mr. Cavaness. “Lay him low, lay him low, Now is his spirit free; Lay where the daisies grow, Where birds sing in their glee. Sin sorely wounded and poisoned his soul; Jesus thru love made it perfectly whole, And answered his please. Sleep in Mother Earth, sleep in Mother Earth, sleep.// Sweetly rest, calmly sleep, Under the azure skies; Winds, winds do not weep Where his frail body lies. Soon shall his soul in triumph awake, Seeing eternity’s morning light break, In day that never dies. Rest till morning dawn, rest till morning dawn, rest.// Sleep and rest, sleep and rest With a soul undefiled; Woes no longer fill his breast; Father now owns his child; He has given the kiss of his love; Now no more will the prodigal rove Out on the deserts wild. Wake in blessedness, wake in peacefulness, wake.” The pallbearers were Lem A. Woods, Fletcher Maclary, H. L. Cable, George Bareus, Arthur Cole and Floyd Hall, members of The Tribune force, all of whom had been in daily association with Mr. Cavaness for a decade or more. Activity in the business district was suspended during the funeral. Those from out of town who were here for the services were: J. Luther Taylor and family, Mrs. T. L. Taylor and Mrs. H. H. Rogers of Pittsburg; Misses Eleanor and Crete Gaddis, Kansas City; Miss Elizabeth Swallow, Garnett; Dr. Charles Stevens, Muskogee, Okla.; the Rev. W. H. Mulvaney, Garnett, and Dr. S. A. Lough, Baldwin. [J. M. Melloy was the husband of my gg aunt, Mary Isabel Swallow.]