The Life of James Hamilton Pile
James H. Pile.
And family are among the recent valuable acquisitions to the city of Olathe. Mr. Pile was born in Lawrence county, Indiana, on the 6th day of August, 1823. At an early age he moved to Illinois where he received his education in the common schools of that state. In 1847 he was married to Miss H. E. Keller, his present wife, in Brown county, Illinois. The union has been blessed with nine children seven of whom are living, viz: Mrs. Nellie A. Fisher, of Edgerton, Edgar A. who is in the livery business at Garden City, Kan., Augustus M., of Edwards county, Mrs. M. J. Newton, of Spring Hilll, and Louisa J., Mary R. and O.E. who reside with their parents in this city.
Mr. Pile served two terms as constable while a resident of Illinois and while in the discharge of such duties had many thrilling experiences with thieves, out laws and Mormons who were then quite numerous in that part of the state. He first arrived in Olathe on the 29th day of April. 1857. All there was of this prosperous town at that time was two little houses. He then met Dr. Barton and Ed Nash, two of the original town company. About the first of the following month he took a claim near the present town of Edgerton, and built a small house. The first year he was in Kansas he hauled corn forty miles to feed his stock and paid one dollar per bushel for it. The price paid for corn meal the same year was two dollars per bushel.
In 1863 Mr. Pile was appointed chaplain of the 60th regiment U. S. colored troops and was present at the battle of Centralia, Missouri, on the 27th day of September, 1864, and an eye witness to the terrible and inhuman butchery of the captured soldiers on that day by the notorions fiend Bill Anderson. Perhaps the reason Mr. Pile did not meet the same fate that his comrades did is because he had a pocket book containing $450 of his own money and $200 belonging to a Mrs. Kretzinger, which they relieved him of without a prolonged controversy or complex negotiations. A few years afterward he and another man. who was a stranger to him, were the guests of a farmer residing between Kansas City and Independence. After supper, when comfortably seated around a cheerful fire the conversation naturally turned to the stirring days of the war and the fiendish deeds of the James boys whose exploits in that locality were too fresh in the minds of all honest people. Mr. Pile related some of the most revolting particulars of the Centralia massacre and attributed the cruelty to which the men were subjected to Jesse James and his band of blood thirsty cut-throats. The stranger seemed very much interested in the conversation until it took a political turn, then the hot blood rushed to his cheek and bitter words of denunciation to his lips. After that unexpected demonstration of hate toward the loyal people of the country, further conversation was abandoned. Mr. Pile subsequently learned that the stranger was no less a personage than the distinguished Jesse James himself.
In early years Mr. Pile joined the Methodist Episcopal church and has been identified with its diversified interests ever since. In 1859 he was licensed to preach and some time after was ordained a local deacon by Bishop Janes. He is one of the oldest settlers in this county and numbers his admiring friends by the thousands. Much of his time has been spent on his well improved farm in the southern part of the county.
Olathe Mirror
February 11, 1886
Page 4, Col 4
1st Addition, Block 169. Lot 4, W6