Where Papa came from: three generations in Ohio and Missouri

Delaware, Ohio, still a small town just north of Columbus home to the Van Houtens (Papa's mother was Alice Van Houten)  and where Papa's grandfather John Lawder came to study law.  Delaware is still a pretty college town (link to Delaware site], now home to Ohio Wesleyan University (then seminary).   Ohio was afire with Methodist Episcopal spirit  in the 19th c. and Ohio Wesleyan was a center for the education of M. E. ministers like Papa’s maternal grandfather, Peter R. Van Houten.  Alice Van Houten, Papa’s mother grew up here and did attend Ohio Wesleyan Female Seminary.   Both Lawders and Van Houtens had come to Ohio from New Jersey in the generation before but more about that later.


Pleasant Hill,  Missouri (Cass County), today 45 minutes from Kansas City, MO:  the small town’s historic center, a commercial block built in the 1860s near the newly arrived railroad depot, was under construction when John F. and Marion Lawder (Papa’s paternal grandparents) arrived there with their three children in 1866.  John F’s younger brother Rynd Lawder had been in the area with his 2nd Ohio Regiment in the Civil War and may have been impressed with the rolling hills, abundant land, and the rumors that the railroad would be coming in shortly.  John was a lawyer and there were plenty of deals and opportunities to be had in Missouri, now defeated in war and its farmers bankrupt.  John and Marion had special worries:  all four of their children (including Papa’s father Paul) were deaf.  
Below a "bird's eye view of PH in 1869:

Harrisonville, Missouri (county seat of Cass County),: a pretty small town with a downtown listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Storefronts from the 1870s and raised sidewalks surround on four sides the county courthouse and red brick streets.  John’s career took them here as he won several elections for prosecuting attorney.  Papa’s parents, Paul L and Mrs. Alice Van Lombard (nee Van Houten), were married here in 1888.  (Record of their marriage in photo above, from the courthouse log books.  Click on the photo to see the certificate enlarged, Paul Lawder's name in the upper right).

Kansas City, Missouri.  This is Papa’s real hometown.  He lived here from 1895 (7 yrs old) until he left for Chicago in his 20s.  [The photo above shows me in front of the building he lived in from 1901-1906 at 31st and Main, KC, Mo.] It was a real city, growing quickly, with a western grid of city streets, elegant skyscrapers and a booming economy of lumber, stockyards, and railroads and trade that expanded the downtown well beyond its start along the Missouri River. Corruption was rampant and there was lots of money to be made.  The Baltimore Hotel, where Papa worked as a bellboy in his teens, was the 2rd largest hotel outside NYC.   MO was a southern state, (now Nancy remembers that Papa loved grits, big lima beans and scrapple....) and it is HOT in the long summer.  Papa’s family was always living in rented rooms on the 2nd floor in those pre-AC years...   Papa visited Kansas City in 1953 while in Topeka visiting Don and Mary and kids.  He took several black and white photos of places of significance to him with his handwriting on the back: four different apartments they had lived in (only the one above still stands) and one of his grammar school where he graduated at age 14 in 1903.  But he never talked about it or about his father.