Schuyler County ILGenWeb – Nathan T. Veatch Biography – A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans Vol. 3

Schuyler County ILGenWeb

A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans
Vol 3
written and compiled by William E. Connelley, published in 1918.
Submitted by Mr. E. H. Johnson

Nathan T. Veatch
Nathan T. Veatch has been suberintendent of the city schools of Atchison since 1901. He is a veteran edueator, and was teacher, principal or superintendent for a number of years before he came to Kansas.
A native of Illinois, he was born on a farm near Astoria in Fulton County February 25, 1852, grew up in Schuyler County, attended the public schools, and has been teaching almost continuously since 1879. He taught his first term in Schuyler County, Illinois. In 1881 he was graduated from the Illinois Normal [p.1422] University at Normal. Mr. Veatch taught in Brown County, Illinois, was principal of a ward school at Little Rock, Arkansas, four years, and for fourteen years was superintendent of schools at Rushville. Then in 1901 he accepted the call to Atchison and has since been head of the school system of that city. Superintendent Veatch has under his management seven schools, a staff of seventy teachers, and about 2,200 scholars.
His ancestors were English and Scotch who came from the North of England in Colonial times, locating in Delaware and Maryland. His grandfather, Nathan Veatch, was born in Indiana, and married Elizabeth Evans, for whose family the City of Evansville, Indiana, was named. Nathan Veatch was a farmer and a pioneer settler at Astoria, Illinois, but his declining years were spent with his son B. M. Veatch at Keytesville, Missouri, where he died. In politics he was a whig. He and his wife had the following children: B. M. Veatch, who served as a captain in the Union army during the Civil war and afterwards engaged in the real estate business at Keytesville, Missouri, where he died; Harmon, who served with the rank of lieutenant in the Union army and is now a resident of Oklahoma; Simdon, also a veteran of the Civil war, was an Iowa farmer; Kinzie, who fought with the Home Guards in Missouri during the war, afterwards followed farming and died in 1909; William, who like his four brothers upheld the supremacy of the Union by military service, and lived for many years at Abingdon, Illinois, where he was postmaster and where be died; Nathan, who was a farmer and died in Oklahoma in 1916; Preston E.; Catherine and Jane, both deceased.
Preston E. Veatch, father of Nathan T., was born in Indiana in 1829 and when a child accompanied his parents from Evansville, Indiana, to Astoria, Illinois, where he grew up and became a farmer. Early in the war he enlisted in Company F of the 119th Illiuois Infantry, was first sergeant of his company, and as a result of exposure and hardship in the field he died near Memphis, Tennessee, March 27, 1863, his son Nathan being then eleven years of age. He was a republican and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Preston E. Veatch married Miss Melvina Sprigg. She was born in Kentucky in 1830 and is now living at the age of eighty-seven with her son Nathan at Atchison. Nathan was the oldest of six children: William C. is in the music business at Girard, Kansas; Simeon E. was formerly a farmer but is now in the music business at Fort Scott. Kansas; Henry C. lives at Buffalo, New York, and is traveling salesman for a milling company; Preston E. bas his headquarters at Chicago and is traveling representative for the Topeka Milling Company; and Imogene, who died in infancy.
Nathan T. Veatch resides at 525 Mound Street in Atchison. He is independent in matters of politics, is a member and clerk of session in the Presbyterian Church, belongs to the Kansas State Teachers’ Association and the National Education Association, and is affiliated with Washington Lodge No. 5, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. At Rushville, Illinois, in 1883, he married Miss Lizzie Montgomery, danghter of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Montgomery, now deceased. Her father was a prominent citizen of Schuyler County, Illinois, where he served as county clerk and in other local offices. Mr. and Mrs. Veatch have two sons: Nathan T. is a graduate of the University of Kansas with the degree Bachelor of Science in 1909, and is now member of the firm Black & Veatch, consulting engineers at Kansas City, Missouri. Francis M. was graduated Bachelor of Science from the University of Kansas in 1914 and is now chemist in charge of the filtration plant of the East St. Louis Waterworks, with home at St. Louis, Missouri.