this means. An old freight book used by George H. Campbell from October 1, 1864 to February 1, 1866 when he was Illinois Central agent at El Paso, lists the following farmers as shipping to the Land Department of the Central: D. Alward, Philip Tompkins, Alex Hawthorn, J. A. Dix, Robert A. McClellan, C. Weinland, H. L. McOmber, Robert Hodge, Henry Childs, John Ellis, Frank Sutton, L. A. Geiger, Timothy Enright, Sr. and Con Ryan.

Oats sold in El Paso for 8 cents in 1861 and corn for 17, but as freight, commission and warehouse costs were almost 11 cents, the farmer received little cash for his product. As the war went on prices went up as they usually do in war years; by 1863 oats were 60 cents and in June, 1864 corn reached a dollar per bushel. There were sharp fluctuations in prices of grain during and immediately after the Civil War years.

While these early elevators were operating, a public scale was maintained in a small building at the corner of Front and Sycamore Streets, and a city ordinance required that all coal and grain be weighed by a sealer appointed by the city officials. Just how long this method of official weighing was in effect we cannot learn, but the scale house remained until about 1905.

Asa and John Shepard built an elevator on Main Street just east of the Illinois Central tracks in the summer of 1898. The elevating machinery was operated with a ten-horse gasoline engine. In 1908 a group of farmers organized the El Paso Elevator Company and paid the Shepards $7,250 for their elevator. They later bought the Enright station elevator and built elevators at Panola and Kappa. When the company began business, only three Chicago firms would accept their grain shipments, so new was the farmer-owned grain elevator in Illinois. Today the farmers generally have dropped out of its ownership, and George Burroughs, Melvin J. Remmers and Homer Sturm are practically the sole owners of the stock. At all of its stations, this firm will annually handle close to a million bushels of grain, depending on the crop season.

Following John Kinsella's announcement that he would not rebuild after his elevator burned, Percy Kingdon and a group of seven other farmers and land owners built an elevator and coal yard on the east Y on Main Street, and named the firm the White Elevator Company. It was operated as a partnership for fourteen years, C. C. Kingdon then buying out all the other partners. A veteran of World War I, he leased the business to go back into the army in December, 1941. Ted Wollenschlager then moved to El Paso as manager for the Peoria firm leasing it. Following the war, Kingdon sold it to the Wyoming Grain Company, who in turn sold it to the El Paso Elevator Company in 1953. Fifty years ago there were four grain firms in El Paso; today there is business enough for only one.

LIVERY STABLES. From early days until about 1915 the livery barn provided rented transportation. They not only provided horses and

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