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LEMUEL C. RICKETTS. In pioneer days when farming implements and machinery were of .the crudest kind, requiring a goodly supply of both muscle and grit to use them to advantage, brawn, more than brains, was needed in the business of farming, in order to rescue the fertile soils from the wilderness of forest and prairie growth. In these modern days of worn and worn-out soils and the abandoned farm, with the most improved labor-saving farm machinery, the business of farming needs brains more thaw brawn, that our soils may be rescued from the wilderness and desert or wasted fertility that has stifled and depleted them. One of the farmers of Jackson township, Greene county, who is evidently intelligently applying himself to his vocation, is Lemuel C. Ricketts, who not only uses his brains, but is a hard worker with his hands, and therefore has succeeded.
Mr. Ricketts was born in Fairfield county, Ohio, November 3, 1873. He is a son of Jesse M. B. and Othelia (Chancy) Ricketts, both natives of that county and state also, each born near the town of Carroll, the father's birth having occurred in 1819. There they spent their earlier years and attended the common schools. Jesse M. B. Ricketts also went to school in Columbus, Ohio, studied law, and later practiced his profession at Finley and Lancaster, that state, with success. He retired from his professional life at the age of sixty-five years, and moved to a farm in Greene county, Missouri, his place here consisting of eighty acres. His death occurred in Colorado at the advanced age of eighty years. His family consisted of three children, namely: Mary Ella, deceased; Lemuel C., of this sketch; Mrs. Viola M. Russell lives in Billings, Montana.
Lemuel C. Ricketts was reared in Ohio. He was thirteen years of age when he removed with the family to Greene county, Missouri. He received a good education. He hired out most of the time until he was twenty-one years old. In 1897 he went to the West, where he worked for some time as a contractor, returning to Greene county in 1907. Soon thereafter he purchased the farm of two hundred and twenty acres where he now lives. He has a well-improved and productive place, which gives every indication of good management. He has been very successful in a business way and is one of the substantial and influential citizens of this section of the county. He is president of the Bank of Stafford, which he helped to organize, which, under his able and judicious management, has become one of popular and sound banking institutions of this part of the state. He has been president since its organization. It has had a constant and satisfactory growth and a general banking business is carried on. He has built an attractive home on his farm. This place was settled in 1845 by Erskin Danforth.
Mr. Ricketts was married, January 6, 1899, to Estella Palmer, who was born in Wisconsin, August 19, 1876. She is a daughter of Randolph and Marira (Dearth) Palmer. She spent her early life in Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. She received a common school education.
The father of Mrs. Ricketts was a soldier in the Civil war, having enlisted in Company D, Sixty-third Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and he served in the Georgia campaign under General Sherman, with whom he marched to the sea. He is now living in Joplin, Missouri.
Six children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Ricketts, namely: Hugh, October 25, 1899, lives at home; Lemuel E., born October 29, 1901,October 20, 1908; Jesse Paul, born January 17, 1905, is at home; Arthur L., born July 6, 1907, is at home; Helen May, born August 7, 1910, is at home; Ralph Randolph, born July 4, 1912,died March 3, 1915.
Politically, Mr. Ricketts is a Republican. Fraternally, he is a thirty-second degree Mason, and is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
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