I have this book, City of the Plains..A Story of Leonardville. It mentions our Stones, Dugans and Breese's in it. If you would like me to look up a name, just ask and I'll make copies of what is in it. Here is a brief story of Thomas Dudley Stone, although he goes by "Dudley". It mentions the Leonardville Monitor, the local newspaper.
Dudley Stone owned the Monitor building and was listed as guantor and owner for several years. When B.A. Belt bought the Monitor from W.M. Amos, Mr. Stone loaned Belt $250 on a new press, and Ed Nickelson furnished a new gasoline engine with which to run the press.
In 1908, dudley was busy fixing up the Monitor office and one of his houses in town. He also owned 400 acres of good farmland, the post office building and the telephone exchange building, as well as two residences.
By 1908, he was on easy street, said the Monitor, taking life easy and doing what good he could for his fellow man. He had come from Estill County, Kentucky, originally, after 3 years in Missouri, he and his wife Sarah, came to Kansas, arriving on Christmas Eve, 1871. In 1872, he took up a homestead claim one mile west and two miles south of Leonardville.
It was news when Mr. Stone stayed home all day, as he usually walked into town. The paper reported once that he had stayed home by the fired on a day when the temperature was 20 below zero. Another time they reported a bad scare that he had. "He has a place under the trees near his house where he often rests and reads during hot weather, and when an electrical storm threatened, he went out to bring in some papers and things he had left there. Just then lightning struck the granary a few feet away. Some of the siding and one of the 2x4's was splintered, and a hole was punched throught the granary floor. It was just close enough to make him feel shaky."
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