By Beverly Clinkingbeard
As a brief review for readers who may not know the history of Tarkio, Missouri, David Rankin was an influential farmer and community leader. Tarkio was founded in the 1880 era, and by 1885 had a newspaper, an elevator under construction, numerous homes and businesses. Tarkio was on the map.
The new Tarkio Valley Railroad brought business and farm seekers to town. The Avalanche reported the summer of 1885 that, “Mr. D. Rankin received 24 more cars of stock cattle last Thursday from far off Arizona.” In September, “D. Rankin received an extra trainload of stock cattle last Tuesday morning. Sixteen cars.” Atchison County had open prairie and cattle herding.
Other news that summer was entitled, “It’s A Girl.” The article tells the story best, as well as giving us a peek into a community concern that exists yet today. The article is as follows: “Hon. D. Rankin is a man who has the reputation of generally maintaining his equipoise under and all circumstances and, we suppose, in ordinary and every day business transactions such is the case. But last Monday night he seems to, from some cause or other, “got clear off his base.” Citizens who passed him on the street noticed that he walked with an unusual elasticity and fancied they saw a somewhat agitated cast to his countenance, but attributed it all to some important business transaction and thus passed it by. We are not able to give all that transpired during that night, but suffice it to say, that early the next morning it was ascertained that Mr. Rankin had left his team standing hitched upon the street the livelong night, and one of the horses having become tired of such treatment was found roaming around town. The excitement for awhile ran high. Some said the team had run away, thrown him out and perhaps killed him, while others insisted that it was a case of dementia and moved that a searching party be organized and the surrounding country scoured at once. One man insisted that he had been kidnapped and would listen to no other theory. No telling what the result might have been had not the subject of all this hubbub and excitement at this time made his appearance upon the scene. Coming from the direction of his own dwelling, the crowd saw that their theories were all wrong and instead of plying him with questions as to how the team happened to be left standing hitched in the street all night, waited for him to make an explanation. Mr. Rankin, after some hesitation, broke the silence, and with “I wish it had been a boy” expression on his face said: “Boys, there is no use trying to get out of it, it’s a girl and I acknowledge the corn.” They named her Esther.
’Til next time….
