I am glad my parents settled in South Barber County.
       The John William (Bill) Walker family fame to Barber County in 1914.
       When Bill was four years old, the family moved from the state of
     Georgia to Missouri, where they settled on a farm near Pleasant Grove.
       He grew to manhood there and married Sarah Levica Brown. When their
     first two children, Perna Maxine and Homer Clifford, were young, they
     moved to Cleveland, Oklahoma, where he drove the dray wagon for the 
     town.
       After hearing of relatives from Missouri moving to Barber County to
     be wheat farmers, he decided also to try it. In the summer of 1914 the
     family came in a covered wagon from Cleveland to the Old Kiowa community.
     The children attended Olk Kiowa school northwest of New Kiowa and lived
     in the Chris Olson farm home.
       In 1916 they moved to the farm home on the Kansas-Oklahoma state line
     of Barber County, one mile south and three miles west of Kiowa.
       In this farm home I, Georgia Irene, was born and lived until my marrige
     to Kenneth Rathgeber. For a few years my brother and I attended the
     Mulberry Center country school of Woods County, Oklahoma, because it was
     closer than the Kiowa school. Except for the first eight years of his
     life, Kenneth and I have been residents of Barber County and have made
     our home in Kiowa since World War II. I have been active in community
     affairs and a nurse aide. My husband was in the army three years during
     WWII and has been employed by the O.K. Grain Co. twenty-three years and
     also active in community organizations. We have two sons, Ronald Kent
     and Rex Leon. The four of us are graduates of Kiowa High School.
       My sister lives near her sons, Lloyd and Bill Fullerton, in California.
       My brother and wife, Velda, reside in Emporia. Their son, Harold, lives
     in California, and thier daughter, Barbara Ann, lives in Topeka.
       My parents moved from the farm to their home in Kiowa the spring of 1945.
     Mother died in August, 1945, and Dad died in June, 1963. They are buried
     in the Kiowa cemetery.
       I have lived through the Depression when wheat sold for 25 cents a bushel,
     seen the sky so darkened by dust that it was like night at noon, the severe
     winters and the extreme hot summers, but the acres and acres of wheat waving
     in the May breeze like a green ocean, then turning to golden ripe, is a
     sight that makes it all worthwhile.
       This is some of the reasons I am glad my parents settled in south Barber,
     and we could see our sons grow up in this kind of environment.
                
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas, pg. 469 
     Submitted by: Georgia Walker Rathgeber