W. W. Hains to Move Office After 40 years on North Side of Square

W. W. Hains, dean of Saline county's real estate dealers, will move his office next week to the Bank of Saline building after forty years on the north side of the Square in Marshall. His daughter, Nell Ellingson, who is associated with him in his combination real estate, insurance and loan business, was quick to point out the advantage of the new location, which will be on the ground floor of the former bank building, with the office entrance on Lafayette street.

Mr. Hains, however, during nearly sixty years of buying and selling real estate, has spent as much time outside his office as in it, often meeting his friends on the steps at the entrance leading up to the office, or on the sidewalk outside, and no doubt will now become a familiar a figure to the west side of the Square as he has been on the north side.

Land Values Change

During the years, Mr. Hains has witnessed great changes in real estate values. He first started "trading in land" in Arrow Rock, where he operated a general merchandise store for several years after his marriage in 1897. Land that he then sold for $40 an acre today is worth as much as $200 to $250 and acre.

When he commenced dealing in real estate in Marshall in 1900 he knew of only one other real estate man in the county, Henry Mead in Slater, father of Dr. S. T. Mead. Dan Ehlers was his first business partner, and later Mr. Hains was associated with the late E. E. Elsea for several years. Russell Hains joined his father in 1933, and Mrs. Nell Ellingson became associated with them in 1943.

Mr. Hains used to take his clients about the county traveling by horse and buggy. He now takes the grandsons of some of those clients out to the same farms, reaching them in a fraction of the time by automobile.

He made his first big sale when he had been in business only a short time. He had sent out handbills advertising the opening of his office and listing many farms. One of the bills attracted the attention of Charley and Henry Leimkuehler of Osage and Gasconade counties, cousins, and they came to see Mr. Hains.

"What kind and size of farm do you want?" he asked.

They replied that it didn't make any difference, and so he and Dan Ehlers took the two men out in their buggies to a 624-acre farm near Hardeman. The owner, T. A. McClellan, who lived in Kansas City, happened to be there that day, and Mr. Hains asked him what he wanted for it.

"Sixty dollars an acre," he said, not expecting to get such a good price. In less than a half hour the terms were agreed upon, the down payment had been made, and Mr. Hains was encouraged and elated over his success. Since that time he has made larger sales -- he recalls selling 2800 acres at one time -- but they did not give him any greater thrill than this early achievement.

Mr. Hains loves the land, and farmed until a few years ago.

A Good Country

"This is the best country in the world," he declares. "Take it all around, it is best for most everything you want to grow. If you will do your part, it will do its part. This land in Saline is worth three time as much as some of the land outside the county, and not too far away, either."

He is not, however, a native of Saline County. He was one of a family of twelve children of George C. and Elizabeth Hains, who came to Saline county from Faquier county, Virginia, in 1883, when W. W. Hains was eleven years old.

One elderly member of the Hains family, who also made the long journey from Virginia, was Aunt Kitty Triplett, who was born only 18 years after the death of General George Washington.

The father of Mr Hains ran a grist mill near Rectortown, Va., which he had inherited from his father and one of the family stories concerns the time when Lee, the elder brother of W. W. Hains, as a boy six or eight years old, fell into the "forebay" of the mill into water about twelve feet deep, and was rescued by his father.

Civil War Experiences

He also remembers the stories his father told of his experiences in the Civil War, or the War Between the States. He had enlisted in the Confederate army as a boy of seventeen, and was in the battles of Bull Run, Manassas Junction, and other important engagements in that area.

The Marshall real estate man recalls hearing his father tell of an incident in which his life was miraculously saved. He was behind a tree firing at the enemy during a skirmish when an officer came by and said, "Get out from there where you can do some good!". When he did so, the officer got behind the tree. The enemy flanked them, and the officer was killed behind the tree.

Old Masonic Apron

A treasured family relic is a Masonic apron, originally owned by Daniel Hains, the grandfather of Mr. Hains.

This apron now is 125 years old. It is of white satin, that still is white, and is ornamented with a blue fringe. The apron has on it Masonic symbols in color not on the aprons worn today by Masons.

At the top is the All Seeing Eye, representative of the Creator. Other symbols scattered over the apron are: The Three Steps, Noah's Ark, The Anchor, The Columns, one on the right and the other on the left, Sword pointing to the Naked Heart, The Trowel, The Altar and the Three Lights, The Sword and the Bible, The Handclasp, The Point within the Circle, The Hour Glass and the Scythe, as emblems of time, the forty-seventh problem of Euclid.

Worn with the apron was a pastel blue silk baldric, which is a kind of sash, over the right shoulder crossing the chest to the left hip. This baldric also is in an excellent state of preservation.

Apron Twice Saved Mill

The grandfather ground wheat into flour and ground other grains at the water wheel mill. On two separate occasions, Grandmother Hains saved the mill from destruction by Union soldiers by wearing this Masonic apron. Masons among the Union troops recognized the apron and persuaded their compatriots not to destroy the mill.

While the war was on, Grandfather Hains accepted Confederate money in payment for flour and other ground grains and at the end of this internecine strife he had a barrel filled with the Confederate currency, which was of no legal value whatever.

W. W. Hains is a member of the Masonic lodge and about five years ago was presented with the 50-year pin by the local lodge.

Judge Rector Praised Saline

"The late Judge Alf Rector helped influence us to come to Saline county," Mr. Hains recalls. "Father had been talking about coming to Sedalia, as an aunt of ours had been to Sedalia and thought that was a great country. Then one night at a party at our house Alf Rector said we ought to come to Saline county, because there the ground was so rich that a farmer didn't have to thin his corn as we did in Virginia."Rector's letter

Will Hains made the race into Oklahoma at the time of the opening of the Cherokee Strip.

"Thousands of people went", he relates. "I rode a gray mare that belonged to one of my brothers, and got within a few miles of Perry, I staked my horse out, and slept on the open prairie all night. The Sooners had set the grass afire and we had to go through dense smoke that day, and I got so thirsty that when I came to a hole in the ground where some water was standing, I just drank alongside of my horse. Before the night was out I ran the corners and found out that I was on a school section, and so I didn't get any land; but afterward I bought 160 acre, about eighteen miles from Perry. When I came back to Missouri and went to work, somebody jumped it and I lost my land, but I think I did myself a favor, because it was so dry down there that you couldn't raise anything."

Work His Hobby

In looking back over the years Mr. Hains feels no regrets over the work he chose. "It is a hard job and it takes lots of work," he admits, "but my hobby is work. I have done hard work all my life. I have done business with three generations. After being in the real estate business a long time you get to know land values and what people want and need."

Mr. Hains will be 85 years old on January 9, but he remains and appears younger than he is. Perhaps the secret of his vitality and vigor is his enthusiasm and love for the land.