Staggs Family History

My ancestors in the United States

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    Richard Lesley Staggs Sr (1888-1965)

    BIRTH: 10 May 1888, Kansas City, Missouri, USA
    DEATH: May 1965, Pinellas, Florida, USA
    FATHER: Hudson Randolph Staggs (1848-1916)
    MOTHER: Ida Antha Stone (1861-1930)
    SPOUSE: Ella Blanch Wareham (1888-1982)

    When Richard Lesley Staggs was born on May 10, 1888, in Kansas City, Missouri, his father, Hudson, was 39 and his mother, Ida, was 27. He married Ella Blanch Wareham on September 7, 1910, in Porter, Indiana. They had five children in 10 years. He died in May 1965 in Pinellas, Florida, at the age of 77.

    His story

    The following is an excerpt from Staggs Genealogy – Harold Wareham Staggs – His Book

    The next in your line was my father Richard Leslie Staggs, born in Parksville, Missouri, died 1960 at Holiday, Fa.

    When he was a boy, remember his father was gone most of the time, he did well in school and worked on farms the other Staggs owned. But he missed his dad. When he was 14, he decided to pay him a visit and work with him as a builder. The last letter from Hudson was from Texas. Dad didn’t tell anyone where he was off to, just started toward Texas. He didn’t even know where in Texas he was going! Well, he got to Texas and found a flour mill. In those days most millers knew who Hudson was, so when Dad asked the miller if his father was around, the miller gave him a job, a place to sleep in the mill and sent out a call for Hudson to come get his fool kid.

    After a few months Hudson got the news, came after Richard and took him home. Hudson then gave Richard into the hands of his Uncle Richard Stone who put him to work in his mill doing the hardest work he could find. After a few months of this, my dad was ready to listen while his uncle told him that he never would be able to run a mill unless he finished his schooling. So, Dad went to the Springfield Teacher’s College.

    Flour mill operated by R.L. Staggs, his house on left. Individuals in photo, left to right: Leach, H.R. Staggs, R.L. Staggs

    During his second year he started to suffer from nose bleeds. The Doctor told him he might have T.B. and needed rest. So, Dad went to China to be with his father. While there he took over management of a mill. Life, he told us, was very plush. He had a big house with six servants and, he said, the best cook in China.

    R.L. enlisted in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, American Company. While with this unit he saw action twice during riots. He also received a commendation from the Chinese government for saving the lives of several people when a fireworks factory exploded. After several years he returned to the U.S. Took the long way, went west around the world.

    Richard L. Staggs, Shanghai Volunteer Corps, American Company, c1909

    Dad chose to attend the University of Valparaiso and study for the ministry. There in Valparaiso, Indiana he met Ella Blanch Wareham while attending the church in which she sang. Mother said that when she saw him come in the church the first time, she told the girl she was with that she was going to get him. And so, she did. R.L. didn’t become a minister after all. When the two married, they were offered a job running a flour mill in Springfield, Oregon. When Grandfather Hudson returned from China, he and R.L. bought the mill in Roseburg.

    The milling business went well. Dad also bought and sold horses. Then one day the first car seen in Roseburg was bought by the man who ran a stagecoach line in the area. The car, we named her Betsy, was prone to engine troubles. So, when Dad offered her owner a fine team of horses for her, she became ours.

    Flour mill in Roseburg, Oregon.

    Then came the fire and World War I. The fire took the house and the army took Dad.

    A Col. Disk came to Dad and asked him to work for Army Intelligence. The need for Port Orford cedar in the making of airplanes was great. The I.W.W. was preventing the processing of this wood, so Col. Disk was to put men into the logging camp who were to find and report the names of the saboteurs to Disk who then would arrest them. Dad also was to promote a union which would be more attractive to the lumbermen than the I.W.W.

    This job was dangerous. In my mother’s account of our life at that time (copy of which each of my children has) she tells of these dangers.

    Old Betsy took us into the logging camps of Oregon and there we (5 of us) lived in a 9 x 10 tent through summer and winter. Mother cooked over an open fire outside and washed us and our clothing in a tub. In a tape I’ve copied and sent to my children, mother talked about these days.

    After the war the army offered Dad a commission but he, working in Brookings at the time, wanted to move the family back east so that we could receive better schooling.

    Load the wagons, we’re on our way.

    After 30 days on the road, mostly dirt, we arrived in Valparaiso, Indiana. Dad worked for a time in the steel mills in Gary, then moved us to Chicago, and became Scoutmaster of Troop 418.

    When Dad got his first job with the Edison Company his pay was about as low as a snake’s belt buckle. Therefore, we rented a house in a very poor neighborhood.

    We lived on the top floor of a two-story building and every bit of wood and coal used for heating was carried from the coal shed in the back yard. In the winter that house was cold! Yet we were a happy family. One rule I’ll always remember was if we can’t pay cash for it, we don’t get it. Mother and Dad were sure that a person should never owe money except on a farm, business or home.

    Across the alley from the house was located the best built, and largest, building in the area, a product of prohibition (the sale or manufacture of alcoholic beverages was not legal). Now this was called a garage but what make of car smells like beer? Owned by Al Capone it employed a number of men in the area, so we all acted as if nothing was wrong.

    Richard L Staggs Sr, wife Ella and their five sons. (left to right) Robert, Ella, William, Howard, Richard Jr, Richard Sr, and Harold.

    We were sent to a Catholic School because the teachers in the local public school seemed to spend their time trying to keep order rather than teaching. It was a very tough area.

    Lieutenant Colonel Richard Staggs

    Times got better and we moved into a new neighborhood where we found the teachers teaching, couldn’t believe it.

    Dad’s first job for the Edison Company was sweeping floors, his last was Head of its Department of Training and Safety. In 1921 he enlisted in the 108 Comb. Eng. 33 Div. Ill. N.G. and was its lieutenant colonel when he left in 1940. He retired at age 57 because of a heart condition and moved to one of our three farms in Stella, Missouri. Dad saw to it that each of his five sons went to college. Later he and mother moved to Florida where he died at age 71.

    Obituary

    RICHARD L. STAGGS

    TARPON SPRINGS (Special) —
    Col. Richard L. Staggs, 76, of 203 Lullaby Drive, Buena Vista, died Sunday in a Dunedin hospital. He was a native of Springfield, Mo., and had been a winter visitor here 15 years, coming from Stella, Mo. He was a retired supervisor of safety training of the Commonwealth Edison Co., Chicago, and was a member of the Masonic Lodge in Chicago. Survivors include his widow, Mrs. Ella B. Staggs; five sons, R. L. Staggs Jr., Chicago, D. W. Staggs, St. Augustine, Dr. Harold W. Staggs, Sacramento, Calif., Robert L. Staggs, Neosho, Mo., and Howard J. Staggs, Tarpon Springs; a sister, Miss Edith Staggs, Monterey, Calif.; nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

    Legacy of Richard Lesley Staggs Sr

    Parents

    Father: Hudson Randolph Staggs (1848-1916)

    Mother: Ida Antha Stone (1861-1930)

    Married

    Ella Blanch Wareham (1888-1982). Married September 7, 1910, in Porter, Indiana.

    Children

    • Richard Leslie Staggs, Jr. (1911-1996) married 1st Clara Norma Turner (1914-1967) on 27 Apr 1933, married 2nd Dorothy Annabel Groose (1908-2005) on 18 Apr 1938
    • William Randolph Staggs (1912-2010) married Grace Kathryn Glasser (1914-1993)
    • Harold Wareham Staggs (1915-2009) married Jeanne Wilma Sammons (1919-1959)
    • Robert Leslie Staggs (1919-2003) married Virginia Graham (1917-1996)
    • Howard J. Staggs (1921-1968).

    Documents

    Gallery

    Relation of Richard Lesley Staggs Sr to Steven Barry Staggs: paternal grandfather

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