Do you have a short, biographical piece on a Barton County resident tucked away in a scrapbook, trunk or file? Does it come from an old local history, a family history or is it something you've written yourself? Send it in and share it with the rest of us! Type up your biography and email it to us and we'll post it below. Just observe the following guidelines...
To enter your Barton County biographies please follow the "Nine Commandments" of submission:
1- Email them to wrs@cjnetworks.com. Put "Barton Co Biography" in your subject line. If you'd rather mail them to us through the U.S. Postal Service our address is: Bill and Diana Sowers, 1746 SW Fairmont Rd., Topeka, KS 66604 2- On the first line put the surname of the person. 3-On the second line put the person's full name. Try to use as full a name as you know. Put all surnames in capital letters. Put a nickname or other name used "in quotes." Put a maiden name in (parentheses). If a woman was married more than once add the surnames in order of husband married to. Here are some examples:
Armelia Elizabeth "Mel" (ALGER) POLLOCK
Susannah Maria "Maria" (CODY) SMITH JOHNSTON
Jacob "Jake" MELLONS 4-Limit your biography to less than 400 words. This may be hard. Some biographies go on and on. Figure out what to keep... what to drop. If we get something too long we'll have to send it back to you for editing. If you aware of an online biography just put down some bare bones information on the individual and link to the biographical source on the Internet. Examples of this are below. 5- It's ok to edit biographies you submit from other sources than yourself. If you want to add maiden names, correct/add dates or other information do so. Just put any added information in [brackets]. That lets the reader know that this is something not in the original obituary. Just remember to keep the whole thing under 400 words. 6-PLEASE.... Your biographies should be about Barton County residents only... A resident is an individual who lived in Barton County for part of his/her life. You may use material from other county histories if the person was born or lived in Barton County. 7-Include the source of the biography. If it's from a book, give the full title, author, year and place of publication. If it's from a newspaper or journal include the periodical's title, date of issue, volume number, issue number, and place of publication. A special warning... if you use a source that is copyrighted or published more recently than 1923 make sure you have the permission of the author/publisher before you submit it. If you write the biography yourself just say so. 8-Put "submitted by [your name and email address]" at the end. If you want to, include your postal address as well. Include your relation to the individual. Below you will find biographies with no "submitted by" notes. These biographies are usually provided by us as we come across them for people we are not related to. We hope they may be of some help to someone. If you'd also like to donate biographies about Barton County residents not related to you just let us know this when you send them to us. 9-Remember... these are biographies... not queries. If you have questions about a person, put them on the query page. We will delete questions/queries within a biography and ask you if you'd like them on the query page. On the other hand it's ok to write: "John Smith's birtdate is unknown." or "I do not know where John Smith was born."
It's as simple as that!
