Our Town's Namesake
Elias Summerfield's Obituaries
(From the New York Tribune,
November 1, 1924.)
Elias Summerfield, 80, Retired Rail Official
and Silk Director.
Elias
Summerfield, eighty years old, for many years a railroad executive in the
West, was stricken with a heart attack. He lived at the Hotel Chatham
and was a director of the Gotham Silk Hosiery Company, of which his nephew,
Solon E. Summerfield of Lark Avenue, is president.
He was born in Germany and came to this country
when nine years old, settling in Lawrence, Kansas. He was at one
time general manager of the Kansas City, Wyandotte and Northwestern Railroad
and was interested in other railroads in the West and Middle West.
He had retired about twenty years ago.
(From the Prodical Sun,
New York, January 29, 1919.)
Elias Summerfield, Hotel Chatham, New
York City.
Mr. Summerfield filled out his questionnaire with
such brevity that we were compelled to put our sleuth on his trail.
We discovered: that he went to Eudora, Kansas in 1857, as a boy of twelve.
In 1861, he joined the 24th Infantry when he was 16 and served his country
for three long years. Returning to Kansas later he became deputy
county treasurer of Douglas county. During that period he seemed
to have acquired a strong distaste for public office, for although he has
always had a great interest in politics (especially in the Kansas variety)
he never could be induced to become a candidate-not even for President
of the Kansas Society where he could have been sure of election.
For some years, he was Superintendent of the K.C.W. & N.W.R.R. which
later became part of the Missouri Pacific System. He lived in Kansas
from 1857 to 1904, with the exception of the three years in the army.
And this is the man who claims never to have done anything worthwhile.