Richard Sparks and his wife Mary C. (Duncan) Sparks came to Barber County
     about 1886 and built a large house just east of Elm Creek on the road to
     Sharon. He was preceded by two sons who were in the cattle-raising business.
     The earliest authentic record of Richard's ancestors is Joseph Sparks, who
     died in 1749 at Frederick, Maryland; he was a farmer. There is vague
     information that his father was an immigrant sailor from Portsmouth, England.
     The family moved in every generation, always to a new frontier. Richard's
     father and family, including a young black woman slave who was the family
     maid, and a Scotch neighbor moved from western North Carolina, probably in
     the early 1840's to Boone County, Missouri. My Aunt Mittie told me that
     Mary Duncan rode horseback from Kentucky to Boone County.
       Richard was an excellent judge of livestock and a good business man and
     became very wealthy buying horses and mules for the government during the
     Civil War. After the war he purchased a 550 acre farm with a 23 room house
     about 1 1/2 miles south of Lexington, Missouri. I have the large family
     Bible which records the following: Richard was born in 1829, Mary in 1832.
     They were married in 1850. Their first child William was born 1851. In
     sequence these children: Charley, Samantha, who died at 2 1/2 years of age,
     Lousia, George, Mittie,  Herbert, Estella, Ethel, Delbert, Clarence Guy
     and Lail. Richard died in 1903, Mary in 1911. Both are buried in Medicine
     Lodge cemetery. Daughter Ethel is also buried there.
       While living at Medicine lOdge his business was purchasing cattle and 
     hogs and shipping them to market. Both were active members of the Christian
     Church.
       My father, who used his middle name, Guy, and my mother Clara Myrtle
     Huffaker were married on the Huffaker farm near Sharon, 12 February 1895.
     I was born in Richard's house on Elm Creek, 12 February 1897. My father
     moved to Sharon probably in 1900, where we lived on a farm until 1907. My
     sister Helen was born at Sharon and died 1978 in Denver, Colorado. A five
     year old sister and my father, who died in 1939 at Pratt, are buried at
     Kiowa, Kansas. My mother was born in Missouri in 1870 and died in 1960 at
     Pueblo and is buried there. My wife Alice, who was from Caldwell, Kansas
     died the same week.
       One of my boyhood friends was Allan Hibbard. Some of my happiest boyhood
     memories come from living on the Sparks and Huffaker farms at Sharon in
     beautiful Barber County.
       A historical note: My mother told me she saw the tribe of Kiowa Indians
     as they traveled south of the farm on the long trek to a reservation in
     Oklahoma.
                
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas, pg. 431 
     Submitted by: James Richard Sparks