These pages will tell the stories of four families who settled in Callaway County, Missouri. This generation saw more change during their lifetimes than any other generation before or since.

William Riley Rogers was born in 1868. During his lifetime the first electric lights, the first automobiles, the first radios, the first telephones, the first airplanes and countless other technological advances brought tremendous changes to the world around him. Born in the wake of the Civil War, he saw the United States through though one war after another, including both World War I and World War II. Before he died he had lost his oldest son to another civil war in Korea.

Each of these eight people, our grandparents, lived through those same changes. These pages will attempt to tell the stories of their lives and how they came to make Callaway County Missouri our home.