Biographical Sketch of James Wadmore
Ben F. Dixon's book 1932, Our Book:
Our Ancestors, Ourselves, and Our Children , Pages 268-269, says:
James Wadmore was a farmer, justice of the peace, and circuit
clerk of Clark County, Mo. He resided
at Wyaconda, Mo., from 1888 to1899, when he removed to the South Wyaconda, in
the Neeper-Ballard vicinity, where he farmed for a dozen years on the Old
DeWitt Place, the Dunlop Eighty, and the Pleasant Hill Farm. About 1913 he became Circuit Clerk and
removed to Kahoka, Mo., where he has resided most of the time since. He is a brother of Susan Wadmore, who was
the wife of Benjamin Franklin Kinkade.
Uncle Jim's South Wyaconda farms were boyhood hangouts of the Dixon
Kids.
Emma Jane Kinkade was a twin of Edgar Lane. When a small child she was nearly drowned in
Stark County's Spoon River, famed locale of Edgar Masters' Anthology. In 1912, while visiting with the family of
Christie Sorenson and Lavina Ann Kinkade in Toulon, Ill., Uncle Chris drove me
around over the old stamping grounds of the Kinkades; showed me the coal bank
where Grandfather Ebenezer used to take out the family's fuel; the old Kinkade
Farm, which in 1912 was sadly farmed out; and the place in Spoon River where
Aunt Em was nearly drowned. When
Grandfather removed with his family to Clark County, Mo., Emma Jane stayed in
Toulon and lived with a relative known to the Kinkades and Spillmans as
"Aunt Atherton." But on the
death of her mother in 1875, she joined the family at Peakesville, Clark
County, Mo.
About 1900, Aunt Em was stricken with a facial paralysis
which left her with a perpetual smile on her face, to match the smile she ever
wore in her heart. For many years prior
to her death she was afflicted with a severe case of gallstones, for which she
underwent several operations in a hospital at Keokuk, Iowa. She surmounted a world of physical
suffering, torment and toil, passing away at last on the Pleasant Hill Farm
near Neeper.
The home of Uncle Jim and Aunt Em was always run with a
lavish hospitality not reckoned by their worldly goods. What they had belonged to their neighbors,
friends and guests. Their home in
Kahoka was known to the Neeper-Ballard folk as "The Unofficial Wadmore
Hotel." With Aunt Em's passing the
Kinkade Family of Clark County lost one of its outstanding characters, and the
Neeper community lost a Great Heart.
Jennie Kinkade and Paul Dorsey Kinkade, children of E.S.
Kinkade, Jr., and Birdie Sorenson, were foster children of James Wadmore and
Emma Jane Kinkade.
SUBMITTER'S NOTE: Approximately a year after the death of
Emma, James married her sister Catherine, the widow of Patrick Donnelly.
Provided by Betty Latta Kitchen
-- e-mail: Betty Kitchen
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