As the second of six children born to Frank S. and Josephine Dunham Knowles,
  I was born March 19, 1898, in a rock home on the south side of the Medicine
  River some three miles west of Sun City. My early schooling was at the Old
  Rock School (new Elm Grove) with my older sister, Relda, and then later at
  the new Kling School.
     Being the oldest son, I was early given the task by Father of hauling water
  from the river, every other day, for household use because the well water was
  so hard and the cistern too small. A sled was built using two elmwood logs 
  with turned-up ends and adding a platform to hold two fifty-gallon wooden
  barrels. Using the kitchen stove for every meal and the heating stove during
  winter months consumed many cords of elmwood, and it was up to me and my
  three brothers to do the spliting and carrying. As a fill-in task there was
  usually corn to be shelled in the small hand-operated corn sheller.
     As a boy, machinery fascinated me and I watched the development of improved
  farm machinery with much interest. My father jointly owned a new Case steam
  engine and Case threshing machine wiht the Walkers and Fultons, but I was
  too young to get to operate it. Later, after marriage, I did own and operate 
  a Minneapolis threshing machine powered by an Oil Pull Rumely tractor.
     Shortly before World War I, I began courting Olgie Walker, a neighbor, in
  a two-cylinder Jackson (buggy drawn by two mules). After I was drafted for a
  short term of enlistment in the war, I returned home and married Olgie,
  February 22, 1920. We honeymooned to Wichita in the Walker's 1918 Oldsmobile
  with wire wheels, a very sporty car! As a wedding gift my parents gave us
  $500; with this we purchased the entire furnishings for our new home on the
  hill beyond Hart's corner, west of Sun City.
     That first year was a real test of character for me and my bride. The 
  previous fall, wheat had been planted, but without snowcover it winterkilled.
  So the ground was prepared again in the spring and replanted to Kafir corn.
  Hard rains followed and covered much of the seed so deep it couldn't emerge,
  and part of the field had to be replanted a second time. The late maturing
  Kafir had so little grain in the heads that it was shocked for forage; but,
  because other farmers were in the same situation, the feed market was depressed.
  We managed to sell 65 acres of it to Taylor Hall for some three year-old
  steers, and I did the feeding. Altogether we made just enough on the Kafir
  to pay the grocery bill for the year, $275.
     Two of our children were born while we lived in the home on the hill; 
  Kenneth, born January 6, 1921, and Rachel, born October 28, 1925.
     Because of the hard times in the late twenties, we moved our family west
  to Walla Walla, Washington, in 1930, where Olgie's sister Ruby (Mrs. A.D.
  Rogers) was living. We made a home on a small valley farm and here our third
  child, John, was born June 29, 1935. At this writing we have 16 grandchildren
  and ten great-grandchildren. In recent years I have been farming together with
  son Kenneth and grandson Wayne, producing a diversity of irrigated crops.
                 
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 262 
     Submitted by: Fred J. Knowles