{"id":48611,"date":"2019-03-12T12:01:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T16:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=48611"},"modified":"2019-10-24T12:26:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T16:26:38","slug":"george-kemp-hortons-bright-yellow-buick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/george-kemp-hortons-bright-yellow-buick.html","title":{"rendered":"George Kemp Horton\u2019s Bright Yellow Buick"},"content":{"rendered":"

After being contacted by a cousin recently, I started looking deeper into the life of his grandfather George Kemp Horton (1873-1953)<\/a>. I realized I didn\u2019t know much about him.<\/p>\n

In the 1900 census<\/a>, when George was 26 years old, it stated that he worked at a \u201cLivery Sales Stable\u201d in Catskill, Greene County, New York.<\/p>\n

By the 1910 census he was living in Kingston, Ulster County, New York, worked in real estate, was married, and they had three children.<\/p>\n

By the 1920 census they lived in Kansas City, Missouri. He was still working in real estate, and now they had four children.<\/p>\n

The census gave me good information: he was a liveryman; worked in real estate; and had moved across the country to Kansas City, Missouri. But what was he really like \u2013 what was his story?<\/p>\n

To find out more, I turned to GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a><\/p>\n

This newspaper article tells that he was still in the livery business in 1915, and was the \u201cnew liveryman\u201d for Emporia, Kansas.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, Emporia Gazette (Emporia, Kansas), 6 May 1915, page 8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This article also reports that George was \u201cformerly of Kingston, N.Y.\u201d and was \u201cdoing business in the stables used by the Newton Transfer Company,\u201d which he spruced up and updated with \u201cnew horses and harness\u201d and with cabs that \u201chave been repainted [and] make an excellent appearance.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 6 May 1915, George \u201cfurnished twenty teams and fifteen cabs for a funeral\u201d in Emporia. That\u2019s a big operation he was running.<\/p>\n

I also found this ad, in which George called his business \u201cHorton\u2019s Transfer Company\u201d \u2013 and it was \u201copen day and night.\u201d His phone number was 86 \u2013 that would be easy to remember.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, Emporia Gazette (Emporia, Kansas), 6 May 1915, page 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It looks like he was combining his livery and real estate skills.<\/p>\n

A June 1915 article tells us how he bought Newton\u2019s Transfer Company.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Emporia Gazette (Emporia, Kansas), 15 June 1915, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This article reports:<\/p>\n

\u201cReal estate business is booming says George K. Horton, the Eastern hustler, who came to Emporia April 1 and traded a farm of 646 acres to C. W. Weis for the old Newton and Potter transfer companies, which Mr. Weis had purchased and put together some time ago\u2026 Along with this hustling he purchased a farm of the Newton National Bank, of 160 acres southwest of town, which he now is running and raising cattle and hogs.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was a man on the move.<\/p>\n

According to this article, George traded \u201ca portion of his entire livery stock\u201d to a Mr. W. H. Verburgge for a 160-acre farm, along with the old Sprague property that had a lumber and coal yard \u2013 and a home on Market Street in Emporia.<\/p>\n

Wow! But it didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe then swapped the balance of his funeral equipment\u2026 for a brand new Studebaker automobile\u201d and cash.<\/p>\n

It turns out that \u201cMr. Verburgge didn\u2019t like the livery business and he traded it for a farm\u201d and then \u201cMr. Horton immediately traded his Studebaker car [and] paying the difference\u2026 [bought back] the entire livery stock\u201d which he had originally sold to Mr. Verburgee.<\/p>\n

The article ends by saying that in Emporia:<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Horton has advertised himself in Emporia and everyone knows him by his \u2018canary car,\u2019 a shy wood violet of a car that you can hear seven miles when it is standing still with a dead engine! It is a Buick painted a bright yellow with a red stripe, and the car is going the streets or to the farms at all times.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was making quite an impression on Emporia, Kansas, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Horton says he likes Emporia very much and expects to move his family here soon.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Four years later he bought the Hotel Lenore in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, for $75,000. He paid for that transaction with \u201ca 626-acre stock ranch located six miles of Ottumwa,\u201d Iowa.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), 23 May 1919, page 22<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

George was quite the entrepreneur! It\u2019s in the old newspapers that we find the stories of our ancestors\u2019 lives \u2013 the stories that tell us who they were, and what they did and accomplished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by Thomas Jay Kemp about researching George Kemp Horton using census records and old newspapers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[6976,12,2719,2020],"class_list":["post-48611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-census-records","tag-genealogy","tag-genealogy-search-tips","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/illustration-0221-2019-featured-graphic-man-computer.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}