Palmer R. Edgerton
Liberty Township has in Palmer R. Edgerton a farmer who has brought to his work in the agricultural enterprise a comprehensive knowledge of the subject, applying in his daily tasks an understanding of the science of the farm that has given him a place in the community that may not successfully be challenged. Intensive farming is demonstrated to the highest degree on his place, and in the breeding of pure bred horses of the Percheron and Belgian breeds he is admitted to be one of the most successful men in the county. Duroc-Jersey hogs also have been one of his specialties in the breeding feature of his business. It is to men of his stamp that the advance of agriculture in Grant County must be largely ascribed. Others, with a lesser regard for the scientific side of the subject, have blazed trials that have opened up the county widely and prosperously, but the men who have regarded their work as a science, rather than as a hit and miss business, dependent largely upon the proper proportions of sunshine and rain, have carried forward the status of the agriculturist in Grant County as have none other. As proprietor of the "Wastena Stock Farm" Mr. Edgerton has been active in farm circles since 1906, in which year he concluded his college training, and his place in section one of Liberty Township is one of the highly creditable ones of the district.
Palmer R. Edgerton as born on the farm which now represents his home and the scene of his business activities, on December 28, 1884, and his is the son of Jesse and Sarah (Shugart) Edgerton. The father was born near Amboy, Indiana, in 1858 and his marriage to Sarah A. Shugart, of Grant County, occurred in 1878. The father is now deceased, but the mother still lives and makes her home in Monroe Township. They were the parents of two children, Sula E. being the wife of Dr. Thomas J. Carter, of League City, Texas, and Palmer R. Edgerton of this review. The daughter was educated in the schools of her native community, finishing in Fairmount Academy, and is a woman of talent and culture. The son was reared on the home farm to the age of fourteen years, at which age he entered Fairmount Academy, and was finished there when he was seventeen years old. He then entered Purdue University and was graduated therefrom in 1906, with the degree of B.S. in Agriculture. He came back to the home farm with his mother who had accompanied him to school, settling down to farming in real earnest, and two years later he married Mary Zoe McConnell, a native daughter of Franklin Township, and a graduate of Fairmount Academy. She was further trained for three years in the subject of domestic science in the Agricultural College at Lansing, Michigan, and is one of the most successful and capable home-makers and keepers to be found in these part. She is a daughter of John N. and Ellen Burrier McConnell, and with her husband, she has membership in the Friends Church.
Both are highly esteemed in the township and have a host of genuine friends throughout the community. Mr. Edgerton is non-partisan in his local application of politics, but favors the Prohibition Party in matters of state and nations import. His farm proper, or that portion of which he is the owner, is made up of fifty-five acres, the remaining part of the one hundred and sixty acres which he works belonging to his mother, now Mrs. William E. Stout of Monroe Township.
Submitted by: Gina Reasoner