(DATE NOT NOTED) 1927

FROM THE FILES OF THE WAUPACA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

 

DEATH L. STARKS OLD POTATO KING

 

            Leonard Starks, Wisconsin’s leading potato shipper for many years prior to reverses a comparatively few years ago, died at his home at Rhinelander, December 10, at the age of seventy-six years.

            A private funeral was held Monday at 10:30 a.m. conducted under Masonic rites and to which about fifty intimate friends were present to honor the memory of a man of unusually fine character and disposition.  Among those present were Jerome Starks, brother of the deceased of Plainfield, Mr. Regan of St. Paul, Minn., A.W. Breitenstein of Stockton, E.P. Miller of the firm of Andrew Miller and Co. of Chicago, Charles E. Murphy, Chicago, Fred Copps of Stevens Point, and J.F. Jardine of this city.

            Mr. Jardine credits the late Mr. Starks with being one of the most hopeful genial and charming of all the men he has ever known.

            This early potato shipper, who started at Plainfield, was at one time worth one and a half million dollars and at that time was the friend of the poor man or the young man just starting on a business career.  It was a pleasure for him to permit a promising young man to draw on his account for sums approaching the fifty thousand dollar mark.

            Later when Mr. Starks started the town of Starks, Oneida county, he cleared land for seed potato culture in Oneida county amounting to 1800 acres.

            Finally reverses overtook him, sweeping away a fortune and leaving him financially down and out at three score years and ten.  But he never lost his nerve, his business acumen or his cheerful disposition.  He at once set himself to the task of recouping his finances and was well started toward a realization of his aim when he was stricken with cancer and withstood its inroads but a few short weeks.

            The body was placed in a vault at Rhinelander and doubtless will be removed to Plainfield the home of his younger years with the coming of spring.