The Eggleston family had some interesting firsts, dealing with an automobile, a telephone, brick streets, and a sidewalk.

Some Eggleston Firsts

My great- grandfather, Madison Joseph Eggleston, owned one of the very first Ford automobiles in Kingman, Kansas.  All of his family enjoyed the car.  However, the most interesting thing to me about the automobile, and something that was quite common in those days, was that it was kept in downtown Kingman in a garage behind the Eggleston Pharmacy.  Homes in those days did not have garages like they do now.  Whenever great-grandfather or his son, my grandfather, Frank Dunn Eggleston, wanted to use the car, they walked downtown to get it.  Now by this time Great-grandfather Eggleston did have an apartment downtown, but some of the time he still lived at 636 N. Spruce with Grandfather and his family.  Aunt Susan and I found it very amusing that the Eggleston family would have to walk downtown to ride anywhere in the automobile.

Another Eggleston first was the telephone.  I remember one day when I was looking at the newspaper which contained my Grandmother Eggleston’s obituary (March 1922), that on the back page I saw an ad for the Eggleston Pharmacy.  The ad listed the telephone number, which was 1.  I remarked to my father that it was something to have the telephone number 1 because it would be very easy to remember.  “Well, do you know why our telephone number was 1?” my father asked.  “It was because we had the first telephone in Kingman.”  I do hope someone got the telephone number 2 right away so they could call the Eggleston Pharmacy.

Here is an Eggleston first which you can still see in Kingman today.  My grandfather was Kingman’s Commissioner of Finance and while he was in office he ardently supported paving the dirt streets in brick.  Those were the days before cement and concrete.  Can you imagine the dust or mud people had to walk and drive through before streets were paved?  My father was very proud of Kingman’s brick streets. (As of June 2011, at the Eggleston family reunion, we saw that the brick streets were still there).

And there is one more first.  Grandfather had the first sidewalk in Kingman.  It was cement and poured at their home which Daddy said was on East Avenue C where they lived before they moved to 636 N. Spruce.  The cement sidewalk went from the street to the front door of the house.  I remember Daddy taking Aunt Susan and me to the house so we could see his footprints in the cement.  My father said Grandfather was amazed that some of the Kingman community decided he thought he was better than the rest of them because he had to have a cement sidewalk.

Just so you’ll know—if you go in the garage at 410 N. Rutherford in Macon, Missouri, you will see Susan’s and my footprints in the cement floor of the garage  which Daddy hired built in 1947.  Daddy was insistent that our footprints be in the garage, and Susan and I had a great deal of fun adding to the Eggleston tradition.