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Transcribed from "An Illustrated History of The Big Bend Country, embracing
Lincoln, Douglas, Adams and Franklin counties, State of Washington",
published by Western Historical Publishing Co., 1904.
WILLIAM H. PHILPOTT is a prominent
farmer and stock man residing ten miles northwest of Lind. He came
to the state in 1889 and filed a homestead on his present home. Being
in rather cramped financial circumstances at that time he found it necessary
to spend a great deal of his time in working for wages in order to make
improvements on his claim. He went to the Walla Walla harvest fields
and worked during the fall following his advent into the country, and the
next year he rented a farm near his own and purchased a header, since which
time he has manipulated a great amount of harvesting machinery,--headers,
threshing outfits and a combined harvester--employing large numbers of
men. For years his was the only harvesting outfit in a section of
country miles in extent. Prior to 1891 Mr. Philpott farmed but little,
devoting his time principally to his machinery and working for others,
but during the year mentioned he settled down to the cultivation of his
land. Owing to drouth and the squirrel pest, his farming operations
netted him practically nothing, so that he lived almost solely upon what
he and his machinery earned during the harvest months, until in 1897 he
harvested a large crop and received a high price which set him on his feet,
so to speak. In 1899 he purchased two sections of railroad land and
in 1901 another quarter-section and his brother's interest in the machinery
and stock which the two hitherto owned jointly. All of his land is
fenced and under cultivation. Mr. Philpott lives in a farm house
costing two thousand five hundred dollars, has other improvements and out
buildings to correspond and keeps thirty head of work horses. He
is in decidedly comfortable circumstances, and is a man of well-known reliability.
William H. Philpott is a native of Chariton
county, Missouri, born October 7, 1858. He was the son of H. R. and
Sallie E. (Lee) Philpott, natives, respectively, of Kentucky and Virginia.
Soon after their marriage the parents settled in the county of our subject's
birth and there spent the remainder of their lives doing farming.
Our subject had four uncles in the Civil War. The mother was distantly
connected with the far-famed Lee family so familiar to the student of American
history. Her half-brother and two full brothers were soldiers in
the Civil war. Mr. Philpott's great-grandfather, Ellington, served
during the Revolutinary War. Both the ancestral families of our subject
originally sprung form England.
Mr. Philpott received his early education
in the old Lee school house in his native county, and upon attaining his
majority he started life independently by working a farm in partnership
with an uncle. After one year he and his brothers, D. E. and L. M.,
rented a farm for one year after which Mr. Philpott himself conducted a
farm in his native state until coming to Washington. In the year
1901 he was married to Letitia B. Potter, widow of Sanford Potter, deceased.
At the time of this marriage Mrs. Philpott was the mother of three children,
George O., Laura M. and Leona D. Potter, and her second marriage has been
blessed with one issue, Martha Elizabeth Philpott.
Mr. Philpott is one of the most persistent
and active members of the Democratic party in Adams county. Ever
since coming to his present locality he has been a member of the county
central committee of his party, and chairman of his precinct committee.
He also takes a deep and active interest in educational affairs, having
for many years been a member of his local school board and one of the organizers
of his district as well as of three others in his vicinity. He is
now clerk of his district. For two years he was superintendent of
a Sunday school in Lind. He subsequently organized a Sabbath school
class in his home distict and is now superintendent of his local Sunday
school. He is a member of the Southern Methodist Episcopal church.
In 1894 Mr. Philpott's name was proposed as
the nominee of his party for the office of county commissioner, but he
refused to make the race, using his influence for the nominee of the Populist
party. He is president of the Farmers warehouse, the largest warehouse
in Lind, and the one which handled more wheat than any of its competitors
in the fall of 1903.
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