Chubb, D. S. "Uncle Dy"

Baxter Springs Kansas, Chubb, who came to Baxter Springs in a covered wagon Sep 10, 1869, will go to Muskogee Oklahoma to spend the Christmas holiday at the home of his son, Archie Chubb, where he will celebrate his eighty-eighth birthday anniversary. In an interview a few days ago, Mr. Chubb stated that he obtained the land on which have been developed three of the district's rich lead and zinc mines at a cost of only $321. The day following Mr. Chubb's arrival in Baxter Springs, he went to Tar Creek Oklahoma, where he bought for $100 a squatter right's shack of 176.69 acres of ground on which located the present site of Treece Kansas. When the deed, which was signed by President Grant, was obtained, Mr. Chubb paid the federal government $1.25 an acre for the tract. The first drilling activities on the land was in 1916, with Fred Fulton of Baxter Springs as the driller in charge, and the Chubb Mine, the Cherokee Mine and the Kansouri Mine were later developed. Of the three mines, the first ore was taken from the Chubb Mine with hand jigs. The mill on the property was not placed in operation until Feb of 1923. The Chubb Mine was first called the Wachusetts Mine, later the Quapaw-Chubb Mine, but when it was leased to the Commerce Mining and Royalty Company it became known as the Chubb Mine. Mr. Chubb sold the Kansouri Mine to his brother, the late Professor Chubb, father of Roy Clubb, Ivan Chubb and Mrs. John Stoskopf, of Baxter Springs, and Clyde Chubb of Salt Lake City Utah. He sold the Cherokee Mine to the Commerce Mining and Royalty Company and leased the Chubb Mine to the same company. "Some people have said that it was like striking gold in California," Mr. Chubb said, "But they have not taken into consideration the years of hard toil in farming the land before the advent of the drill rig in this field." Immediately after buying the squatter rights, he moved to the tract, living for 10 years in the squatter shanty where for the first few months his only furniture was a goods box for a table, nail kegs for chairs and a rough bunk filled with hay for a bed. During the first few weeks on the tract, he cooked on a fire in the yard with a Dutch oven and a coffee pot as his only cooking utensils. His dishes consisted of tin cups and tin plates. He secured a stove when winter came. After 10 years, he built a three room house and was married to Miss Johanna Sherrod, who lived north of Baxter Springs. It was in this house that Archie Chubb was born Mar 1, 1896. In 1900 the sturdy pioneer built a two story house on the Kansas side of the state line road, just west of the Treece Kansas city limits. The year he came there was a shanty on every 160 tract from the Chetopa road to the state line in Cherokee county Kansas, yet there was not more than 100 acres of corn in Spring Valley township. Mr. Chubb made his first public speech Friday of last week when he gave a review of early days in Baxter Springs before the pupils of the sixth grade at the high school building. Miss Hattie Stoskopf, sixth grade teacher, is his niece. He told the pupils of the total eclipse of the sun on Aug 9, 1869, at which time he was harvesting the first crop of wheat he ever raised in Washington county Illinois. On Aug 18th of the same year he started for Kansas, driving a covered wagon through for another man for his board. The school children were amazed to know that the first building he entered in the state of Kansas was that which has been remodeled and is now occupied by the Read Drug store on Military avenue between Tenth and Eleventh Streets. It was occupied at that time by a drug store, owned and operated by Dr. George C. Gregg and A. S. Dennison. Dr. Gregg was the father of one of Baxter Springs boys who had made good in the newspaper world, Paul Gregg, who draws the feature page on the Sunday Denver Post...Mr. Chubb and L. D. Brewster, another pioneer, disagree as to the date that the first passenger train reached Baxter Springs. It was either on May 10th or May 12th, that this train, a Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf passenger, arrived with its cargo of curious persons anxious to see the cattle town...A big celebration was staged with a free basket dinner served on the hill, east of Military avenue and south of Fifth Street...

Today it's Merry Christmas, but tomorrow it will be Happy birthday for D. S. "Uncle Dy' Chubb, who will be celebrating this ninety-first birthday anniversary. The lives of many people have been made sweeter and better through friendship with Uncle dy, for to know him is to love him, and by loving him one absorbs some of is sweet, unselfish personality and his grand philosophy of life, the basis of which is kindness.