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1897 - 1898 Directory, Kansas City, Missouri

WAGNER, Anna

    WAGNER, John, Jr.

    WAGNER, Frederick

WAGNER, George


Scroll down to view the Directory image.

Source:   Hoye's City Directory,
Kansas City, Missouri, 1897 - 1898, Page 763;
ancestry.com image 395 of 529 (in 2011).

At this time the Wagner and Beck families had probably not yet encountered each other.  However, once both groups had been drawn to Kansas City, for many decades they remained cemented in the same old neighborhoods.

This is because George Wagner and his two younger brothers, John, Jr., and Frederick, were also "collar-makers" — not collars in the garment trade, but collars or harnesses for HORSES.  George is also referred to elsewhere as a "leather-worker."

On the Beck side, the patriarch George Dobson Beck was a cattle-shipper, and a noted collector of longhorn specimens.  Thus, both families worked in fields closely linked to the then-enormous  Kansas City Stockyards  — and the railroads serving them.

Remember, this was 1897, just nine years before Upton Sinclair exposed the horrors of Chicago's giant stockyards in The Jungle.  But anything written about the Chicago yards could apply equally well to Armour, Swift, and other packing houses in Kansas City. 		Anna ("Annie") Wagner is living at  2016 Wyoming Street  with her sons John, Jr., and Frederick.  It is possible that daughters Sophia, Maude, and / or Julia were also there with her, but minor unemployed children would not be listed in a directory such as this.

Eight blocks to the south, at  2811 Bell Street, is Anna's second-oldest son, George Wagner.  His first wife, Lura May (Williams) Wagner, was likely there with him.  (Unhappily, the 2800 block of Bell Street is now buried beneath Interstate 35.  It was one block east of the state line.)

So where was the Wagner patriarch,
Anna's husband, Johann,
    and their eldest son Philip?



Likely, they were in Oklahoma Territory scouting possible Homestead Act land opportunities.  The family filed its Pawnee County property claim there in 1898.

Click here to view the Wagners'
Oklahoma land claim documents.