Township Officers - 1895

Townships once had formal and robust political leadership. This is the list of Clay County township political officers from the 1895 elections.

The excerpt is from The Clay County Patriot newspaper from 22 Nov 1895 (erroneously catalogued under "The Clay County Republican" at newspapers.com

In days of yore, the township was a real thing a formal administrative and functioning staff elected on the ballots for school, city, county, state, and federal positions.

This roster of Clay County township officers appeared in The Clay County Patriot newspaper in November 1895. Do you find your great, grandfather here?

Note that the dominate political parties at the time were the Populists and Republicans. Democrats had not yet recovered and rebooted from the days of the Confederacy. Also note that townships tended to be dominated by one or the other of those "p" and "r" labels.