|
John R. Mulvane
A Standard
History of Kansas and Kansans
by William E. Connelley, 1918
John R. Mulvane
has been a resident of Kansas since 1868 and for nearly forty
years president of the Bank of Topeka. That position, together
with the many other interests he has actively prosecuted, has
made him a power in the financial and industrial life of Kansas.
His family lineage
some generations back was identified with that of the McIlvaines
of Scotland. His first American ancestor came to North Carolina
before the Revolutionary war. His grandfather, John Mulvane,
located in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, in 1803 and was one of the
five original taxpayers of that county. He married Mary McCune,
whose father, James McCune, served as an ensign in the United
States Navy during the War of 1812, and as a reward for his
services received a tract of land in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.
John Mulvane was also a soldier in the War of 1812.
David Mulvane,
father of John R., married Mary Ross, whose father, William
Ross, was an Irishman of County Cork, Ireland, and had come to
Ohio in 1805 as a missionary to the Delaware Indians. William
Ross married Jane Whitaker, an English woman. One of her
brothers owned a large cotton mill near Philadelphia, and
another was an iron founder who made cannon for the Federal
Government during the Civil war. David Mulvane began his career
as a farmer boy, also worked on the towpath of the Ohio Canal,
and in time became a successful merchant and manufacturer at
Newcomerstown, Tuscarawas County.
At the home of his
parents in Newcomerstown, Ohio, John R. Mulvane was born July 6,
1835. He was educated in a country school and as a boy learned
the tanning trade in his father's tannery. At the age of twenty
he was qualified to take charge of his father's country store.
In 1865 Mr.
Mulvane joined his brother Joab in merchandising at Princeton,
Illinois. His health broke down there and after same time spent
in recuperating, he arrived at Topeka in August, 1868. He used
his capital to deal in lands and cattle and in January, 1870,
became cashier of the Topeka Bank and Savings Institution. In
July, 1878, this bank was reorganized as the Bank of Topeka,
with Mr. Mulvane as president.
Mr. Mulvan is a
brother of Joab Mulvane, a pioneer Kansan, whose career is
sketched on other pages. These two brothers were actively
associated for many years in large industrial enterprises. They
complete and brought to a successful issue the Topeka Water
Company and reorganized the Topeka Street Railway Company. In
1879 Joab and John Mulvane and W. B. Strong bought a little
telephone exchange in Topeka. That was the nucleus and the
beginning of the great Missouri and Kansas Telephone Company, of
which John R. Mulvane was one of the heavy stockholders and for
many years president.
Mr. Mulvane and
other members of the family became early interested in the salt
industry in Kansas and supplied much of the capital for the
companies operating at Hutchinson. He also helped promote and is
a director of the Beatrice Creamery Company, the largest
organization of the kind in the world. He is a stockholder in
the Charles Wolff Packing Company of Topeka and a director of
the Commerce Trust Company of Kansas City, Missouri.
His name is almost
equally associated with civic enterprise and practical
philanthropy. He was one of the two Kansans who helped organize
the American Bankers' Association in Philadelphia in 1876, and
was also the father and organizer of the Kansas Banker's
Association, of which he was president four terms. He has served
as president of the Topeka Free Library, of which he was one of
the organizers, and in cooperation with Bishop Vail he helped
organize Christ's Hospital of Topeka, which he has served many
years as treasurer. Since 1901 he has been one of the trustees
of Washburn College. Mr. Mulvane has been an active member of
the Baptist Church over forty years, and for twenty years was a
member of the board of directors of the First Church of Topeka.
He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a Knight
Templar, also an Odd Fellow, and is active in the Commercial
Club, Country Club and other Kansas organizations.
Mr. Mulvane was
married August 16, 1856, at Newcomerstown, Ohio, to Miss Hattie
N. Freeman. With no children of their own they adopted and
reared two orphans, the children of Mr. Mulvane's youngest
sister. After the death of Mrs. Hattie N. Mulvane, Mr. Mulvane
married Mrs. Mary A. Sedgwick, who died in June, 1916. |
