A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans/Biography/Edwin H Lupton

Ever since its arrival in America, some 250 years ago, the Lupton family has been identified with the opening up of new sections of this country. The earliest American progenitor was a pioneer of New England; later members were early settlers of Ohio, Michigan and Iowa, and the present representative of the family, Edwin H. Lupton, has been one of the foremost factors in encouraging settlement and development in certain parts of Kansas, particularly in Sheridan County, where he has large interests. In addition to being an extensive property owner, Mr. Lupton is president of the Bank Savings Life Insurance Company of Topeka, Kansas, is one of the leading real estate dealers of Hoxie and has been the medium through which some large transactions have been consummated.

Edwin H. Lupton was born in Muscatine County, Iowa, in 1858, and came to Kansas in 1886 from Nebraska, where he had located in 1880. He is a son of William C. Lupton, a native of Ohio, and a grandson of Gideon Lupton, who was born in Virginia. The family is of Quaker descent, and its members have always conformed to the beliefs of that creed. Gideon Lupton was one of the very early settlers of Ohio, and subsequently became a pioneer of Michigan, where he spent the last years of his life in agricultural pursuits and died. His son, William Carr Lupton, was born in Ohio, and in 1854 located in Muscatine County, Iowa, when that part of the country was still new. Later he bought considerable property in Benton County, in the same state, and moved to this land in 1859, there passing the rest of his life in farming ventures. As an illustration of the increase in land values, it may be noted that this property was bought by Mr. Lupton at $1.25 per acre, and is now worth $200 an acre. Mr. Lupton was a man of high moral character, whose word could always be relied upon, and who, in his daily life, exemplified the teachings of the Society of Friends. He was a good citizen, supporting all public-spirited movements, and was held in the highest esteem in his community. He married Miss Emma Walker, daughter of John Walker, an Englishman, and they became the parents of eight children, of whom three are now living: Gideon, who is a ranchman near Sheridan, Wyoming; May, who is Mrs. C. H. Brown, and also lives near Sheridan, Wyoming; and Edwin H.

Edwin H. Lupton was educated in the public schools of Iowa, and was twenty-two years of age when he went to Western Nebraska. There he was employed at various occupations, seeking one in which he could get a real start in life, his principal vocation being that of freighter between the most important towns of the locality at that time, viz.: St. Paul, Kearney, Grand Island and Loup City. When he gave up freighting, Mr. Lupton entered the employ of C. J. Burke, a hardware dealer of Kearney, and after spending several years as a clerk was admitted to partnership when he bought a half interest on credit. He remained in this line for two years and three months, and in 1886 disposed of his interests and came to Kansas, locating at Hoxie, the county seat of Sheridan County. With his small capital, laboriously accumulated during his years as clerk and hardware merchant, he began business as a banker and loan agent, but soon disposed of that business to enter in the more promising, and, as it turned out, more profitable one of real estate and insurance, for which Mr. Lupton seemed to have a veritable genius. During a period of thirty years in which he has been engaged in this business he has accumulated 7,000 acres of fine Western Kansas land, but it is his well taken contention that he is not only an accumulator, but a producer and developer as well. He is one of the most extensive farmers in Western Kansas, where he had 1,200 acres in wheat, 800 acres in grain, and other large tracts devoted to produce, and has the greatest faith in his part of the state, believing that any man with good health and the spirit of industry can make a success. That he is a skilled farmer is shown in the fact that on his special farm of forty acres, located at Hoxie, he sowed wheat in 1914, 1915 and 1916, and secured a yield of ninety-seven bushels per acre, or above thirty-two bushels per acre per year. He has had some remarkable earnings from some of his Sheridan County lands, an illustration of which statement is found in the fact that he has received 6 per cent on a value of $250 per acre on land that cost him $4.07 per acre. One of the things that he has the greatest faith in is the value of irrigation, and recently he negotiated a loan of $40,000 for an irrigation plant at Scott City. Mr. Lupton inherits many of the sterling qualities of his Quaker forebears, comes of a strictly temperance family, and is himself a total abstainer, having never touched a drink of alcoholic beverage in his life. His reputation in business circles of both Sheridan County and Topeka is an excellent one, and as a citizen he has done much to aid in the development, material and civic, of the state of his adoption.

Mr. Lupton was married in 1895 to Miss Clara B. Lytle, of Wadsworth, Ohio, a member of a family well and favorably known at that place. To this union there have been born two sons and two daughters: Margaret, Edwin H., Jr., and Claribel, who are graduates of the State University; and Elmer, who entered high school in 1916 at Topeka.