ur grandfather, William Henry Lawrence, born in Upper New York (St. Lawrence County) July 19, 1842, moved with his mother and grandfather Landers at an early age to DuPage County, Illinois. In January 1869 he left Illinois "bound for some place out West to become a rancher or cowboy." His dreams came true as he had large herds of cattle in Kansas and Oklahoma and made cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail. He and his first wife, Orpha Wilcox, were the parents of the first white child born in Harvey County, Kansas, and were later recognized as the first white family to settle in what is now Kay County, Oklahoma, where they lived in a dugout near Braman from 1873 to 1876, when they returned to Kansas because of a threatened Indian uprising. He died August 21, 1926 in Wichita, Kansas, and is buried at Drury (Sumner County) Kansas. [Lawrence homepage]

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