Benjamin Foraker Mounts (1888 - 1984)

Born 28 Apr 1888 in New Amsterdam, Washington Township, Harrison, Indiana, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Mabel Belle (Bennett) Mounts — married 6 Nov 1915 in Olathe, Johnson, Kansas, USA

Descendants

Died 6 Apr 1984 at age 95 in Marshall, Saline, Missouri, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Jessica Hammond [send private message]

Biography

Early life

Benjamin Foraker Mounts was born April 28, 1888 in New Amsterdam, Harrison, Indiana.^[1][2] His father, Samuel, was 45 when he was born, and his mother, Florence, was 40.^[3] Ben was the ninth of ten children. Two older siblings died before he was born, so he only knew seven of his brothers and sisters.^[4][3][5][6]

Although Ben and all his siblings were born in Indiana, Ben would have had very few memories of living there. His father, Samuel, farmed and preached in a church in New Amsterdam, Indiana.^[7][4] But when Ben was young, Samuel became a traveling preacher for the Congregational church, and the family spent Ben's early childhood moving around.^[8] They moved to Illinois when he was four years old, and spent some time in Nebraska when he was five.^[1][9] When he was six years old, they settled in Billings, Missouri, and that's where they remained for the next six years.^{[8][1][10][11]}

In 1900, when Ben was twelve years old, the family made one final move to the Kansas City area.^[3] His father, Samuel, died of leukemia a year later, in April of 1901.^[12][1] Samuel had been sick Ben's entire life, due to Civil War injuries that never healed properly. His death may or may not have been related to the injuries - Ben's family and the United States government disagreed on that point.^[1] Ben spent the rest of his adolescence living with his mother and his siblings who were still at home.^[3][13] 1900 and 1901 would have been a rough two years for his family. His seventeen year old brother, Walter, died as well in November 1900.^[14]

Difficult beginnings aside, Ben enjoyed talking about his teenage years. His family eventually settled in the outskirts of Kansas City, in an area near Blue Springs and Grain Valley. He became close friends with another boy named Henry Pilant.^[1][8] Henry, he said, was closer to him than his brothers, and he remained a close friend into adulthood. Ben's son called him "Uncle Henry" and wrote, "I have sat (literally) for hours and listened to those two men relive their boyhoods and tell of the outrageous escapades that they participated in."^[8]

He took some time away from outrageous escapades for academics too, and completed high school.^[15]

Carpentry and work as a contractor

Ben spent his entire life building and fixing things. His older brothers were all carpenters, so he most likely learned the trade from them at a young age.^[16][17] He was a perfectionist in all things, but especially in his work. His son wrote,

"Before the days of power saws, sanders, routers, etc., etc., Daddy could turn out a piece of furniture, using only hand tools, that was absolutely perfect, in every detail. I remember once, when I was very, very young, watching Daddy build cabinets in a church kitchen. Even then, I was impressed by his absolutely beautiful workmanship. Daddy continued to love carpentry throughout his life and we still have things in our home that were built by him. You would swear that they were factory built."^[8]

As a young man, he worked for the railroad, building and maintaining railroad cars. Once, while he was working underneath a boxcar, the car was bumped by an engine and pushed along the track, dragging Ben with it. He hurt his back, and he believed he was lucky to have survived at all.^[8] 

During World War I, he and his brother Harry went to Houston and worked as civilians building ships for the Navy.^[8]

Eventually he became a contractor, overseeing the construction of buildings in the Kansas City area. His son wrote in the mid-1980s that "many buildings that he constructed are still standing there -- and I will bet they are still as sound and structurally perfect as they were when he finished them."^[8]

He shared a story about how exactly Ben made sure those buildings were perfect.

"Daddy could not abide shoddy work or laziness and I am sure he must have been a difficult person to work for. One of his favorite stories...was about a carpenter that he had working for him on one of his houses. The man was on a ladder nailing siding to the building. He had driven a nail about halfway in when someone blew the lunch whistle. Daddy said the man left the nail driven halfway in and came down the ladder for lunch. Daddy said he was waiting for him at the foot of the ladder and fired him on the spot."^[8]

It may have been during his work as a contractor that Ben developed a grudge against future president Harry Truman. In 1919, Truman opened a short lived men's clothing store in Kansas City. At one point, Ben did some work for Truman or possibly sold him some equipment. According to Ben's side of the story, Truman never paid him for it. Truman's store failed after just a few years, leaving Truman scrambling to pay back his debts, so Ben's version of events is actually plausible. And true story or not, Ben never approved of President Truman after that.^[8][18][19]

Marriage and family life

On November 6, 1915, Ben married Mabel Belle Bennett. Mabel was twenty-three, and he was twenty-seven. They had no reason to rush the wedding, but they chose an nontraditional wedding day. The two of them went alone to Olathe, Kansas and were married by a justice of the peace.^[20]

The courthouse wedding marked the beginning of a happy marriage. Their son wrote,

"I have never known a more devoted couple. Byie [Mabel] worshipped Daddy. I honestly cannot remember one violent argument or 'falling out' between them as I was growing up. They talked everything out together and did nothing of importance until both of them were in complete agreement."^[8]

Twenty-five years after the wedding, Mabel kept a travel journal, and her words confirm her son's. She writes, casually, about making decisions together with her husband, who seemed to be genuinely her friend and partner.^[21]

Ben and Mabel (on the left) with Mabel's family

Ben and Mabel remained in Kansas City for about a decade after their marriage, and that kept them close their parents and siblings, both his and hers. His son wrote that although Ben enjoyed both families, he was probably closer with to his wife's family than his own, with the exception of his younger sister, Flossie. Of course, that doesn't mean he didn't stay in touch with his other siblings too. They had large family dinners with both sides of the family, and he had a regular pinochle night with Ben's brother Harry and his wife Emma.^[8]

Ben and Mabel's son, Ben Carol Mounts was born a little over three years after their wedding, on February 10, 1918.^[2] Years later, Benjamin Foraker told his son, Ben, about what a difficult birth it had been, and that "he thought that they were going to lose both her and [the baby]".^[8] Ben didn't know if that was the reason his parents never had any more children. Ben Carol would remain his parents' first and only child.

When his son was very small, Ben read his son bedtime stories most nights. The Kansas City Star printed Thornton Burgess's illustrated Bedtime Stories - adventures of a cast of talking animals - and his son sat in his lap to hear the stories.^[8]

He also tried to teach his son to stick up for himself. When Ben Carol lost a fight with neighborhood kids, Ben took him aside in the evening and gave him boxing lessons. His son wrote, "I don’t think it did much good -- I was always getting into fights, and getting whipped!"^[8]

Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds at Missouri Valley College

In the fall of 1927, Ben took on the job of Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds at Missouri Valley College, and the family moved from Kansas City to the central Missouri town of Marshall. Ben had plenty of work to do at the college, overseeing the construction and maintenance of all the buildings on campus. But it took the family a few months to settle into their new home. 1927 turned out to be an exceptionally harsh winter - his son later said that "it was like moving to the North Pole" - and they missed their family back in Kansas City. They made the three hour drive back to Kansas City weekend after weekend.^[8]

But, eventually, Marshall became their home. Ben stayed with the college until his retirement decades later, and Ben and Mabel lived in Marshall the rest of their lives.^[22][8]

Ben guided the construction of Missouri Valley College's Murrell Memorial Library and the Gregg-Mitchell Field in 1928, and Young Hall in 1929.^[23]

Rea's Garage and work with cars

But he wasn't at Missouri Valley College for very long before he was out of a job - sort of. Due to the Great Depression, the college was forced to place some of the faculty on a leave of absence. He was still technically employed by them, but he had no work and no salary.^[8]

This wasn't as much of a problem for the Mounts family as you might think. Mabel had taken on a job with an abstracting company before the Depression hit, and she kept that job all through the Depression and into World War II. Ben, meanwhile, did the odd bit of construction work, and was also steadily employed by Rea's Garage. He developed a reputation for excellent work, and he brought extra business to the garage.^[8]

Ben had loved to work with cars ever since there were cars to work on. Sometime he chose to stay out in his garage, tinkering with his cars late into the night.^[8]  He invented an early gas pump meter. To this day, some people in Marshall believe he invented the gas pump meter, the same one they use every day when they fill their cars. But he never patented his invention.^[24][25][26]

Thanks to Ben, the entire family had strong thoughts on the make and models of cars, and strong emotional attachment to their particular cars. In a travel journal, Mabel kept up a running commentary on the good and not-so-good cars that she and Ben encountered a trip. She affectionately referred to their own car as "Little Ponty". Little Ponty was a "he".^[21]

When the family took a road trip to Mabel's hometown in northeast Missouri, Ben felt it was important to first overhaul every piece of the engine, and repaint the body so it was smooth as glass. His son wrote, "When he finally finished with it, it was beautiful -- I’m sure that car didn’t look half that good (nor did it run as well) the day it came from the factory." 

(He was not rewarded for his efforts on that particular journey. The family ended up stuck in a ditch in a rainstorm, and his beautiful car finally rolled into town covered in mud.)^[8]

As fastidious as Ben was about the appearance of his cars and his buildings, he cared nothing at all about his own appearance. He didn't really notice clothes. He once used Mabel's wedding dress as a garage rag. (It's not entirely clear how or why that happened, and the family stories don't tell what Mabel had to say about it!)^[24]  When he went to meet his son's fiance for the first time, he didn't change out of his work clothes first, and she thought he was a tramp hanging around the train station. They got along well once she realized he was her future father-in-law.^[8]

Teaching mathematics at Missouri Valley College

Ben continued his work with Rea's Garage until shortly before World War II. Then the college was finally able to bring him back on as full-time staff.  A few years after that, he was busier at the college than he'd ever been. The G.I. Bill brought in a huge influx of new students at the end of the war, and Ben supervised the construction of several new campus buildings, and the additions to several more.^[8][23]

During his last ten years at the college, from 1957 to 1967, he took on additional duties and became an instructor of mathematics and engineering at the college. He had never attended college himself, but he studied textbooks, and he spent his life experimenting and learning. His brought the same intensity to trigonometry and calculus that he brought to everything else.^[22][8]

His grandson Steve once asked what, exactly, made Ben so interested in numbers.

"Numbers," Ben answered, "are everything."

"You mean numbers are the key to understanding the universe?" Steve asked.

"No," Ben said. "Numbers are the universe."^[27]

More on Ben's personality

Friends and neighbors described Ben as a genius.^[25] He probably would have described himself as a genius too. He wasn't exactly modest, and he was a colorful storyteller. His son wrote, "Daddy was... pretty good at embellishing his remembrances of that past and, as he grew older, I noticed that many of his stories changed and became more and more colorful."^[8]

He bragged that he "never tasted a drop of alcohol," and he claimed that "cigarettes were for sissies."^[8] But he did smoke a pipe. He smoked Prince Albert Tobacco, and there are many family photos of him with a pipe in hand or dangling from the corner of his mouth.

His grandchildren don't describe him as a the type of grandfather who liked to get down on the floor and play with the kids.^[24] But he liked people who liked his work, even if they were children. One women who grew up next door to him wrote,

"[Ben] had a shop in his garage. Sometimes I would sneak over there. My Grandma told me not to be bothering him. So, I had to sneak when she wasn't watching. He was always nice to me... Later after I was grown my first born would sneak over to see [him]... Math is what he taught my 8yo son."^[26]

Ben's work at the college and the garage helped him build connections all around Marshall. When his teenage son got into a particularly outlandish misadventure (Young Ben decided to try out something he read about in gangster stories. It didn't work out like he hoped.) people from all over town, including the president of the college and the mayor, spoke up for the family.^[8]

In 1955, Ben's good standing in town helped him again, when he was elected to the Marshall city council.^[28] The council nominated Ben, over his own objections, as mayor pro tempore, to act as the mayor of Marshall in the mayor's absence. Ben said he appreciate the honor, but it would be better if the position went to council member with a two-year appointment, rather than Ben's one year appointment. But the rest of the council overruled him, and Ben was appointed Marshall's mayor pro tempore for 1955.^[29]

Meanwhile, Ben and his family stayed busy with interests and adventures outside of Ben's professional life.  

Sports and semi-professional baseball

Ben loved all sports, especially baseball. He played semi-professional baseball for a while when he was young, though he said he wasn't particularly good. His son wrote,

"He has modestly said (which was rare -- Daddy wasn’t the most modest of persons!) that he really wasn’t a very good baseball player (he could hit a fastball over the fence anytime, he told me once, but always had trouble with the curve!)"^[8]

Ben (on the right) in uniform for a semi-professional baseball team

Years later in Marshall, Rea's Garage organized a softball team called the Pontiacs, and Ben and his son both played for the team. His son said, "Daddy had 'lost his touch' since his semi-pro days, and I never was too good. But we had a lot of fun, and even won a few games!"^[8]

The Mounts family was one of the first on the block to own a radio, and it was probably so they could listen to sports.^[15]

His son wrote,

"The St. Louis Cardinals were the only team in the mid-west at the time...and we would sit up late at night listening to their games...

One night there was to be a great boxing match that would decide the championship of the world. I believe that it was the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight, though I’m not sure. Anyway, Daddy and I had looked forward for days to listening to this fight on the radio.

The night came, we turned on the radio and the first round was just about to begin. Daddy and I dashed to the kitchen to get something to drink. One of the boxers (I’m sure that it must have been Louis over Schmeling) had knocked out his opponent with almost the first punch! Daddy and I almost cried."^[8]

Family travels

The family liked to travel, and they did it as economically as they could. They stayed in tourist camps where they rented inexpensive cabins with few amenities. Mabel would pack a box of food and supplies, and then she would make breakfast and dinner at the camps, rather than buying meals at restaurants on the road.^[8] Eventually, twenty-five years after their wedding, Mabel and Ben went on their much delayed "honeymoon", a tour of southern United States. The trip involved a few more restaurant meals than their early travels. But they still stayed mostly in tourist camps when they could. Mabel proclaimed the hotels too "snazzy."^[21]

Pets, and Dusty the cat

The family also shared a love of pets. Their first pet, a little white dog named Shag, showed up one day in Ben and Mabel's yard. Their son encouraged the dog to stay. Ben encouraged the dog to go. He even drove the dog across town and dropped him off. But Shag kept coming back, so Shag became their dog. Ben built him a bed out of two car tires and filled it with with old blankets.^[8]

One day Shag disappeared, and this time he didn't come back. Ben drove around the city for days looking for him, but he never found him.

That was when Ben's sister's husband introduced Dusty to the family.

Dusty was a little black cat, and theoretically, he belonged to Ben's son. In reality, Dusty was beloved by everyone in the family, and by Ben in particular. When Dusty harassed a neighbor's cat, Ben defended him, saying that cats would be cats. But, his son wrote, "I can imagine what his reaction would have been if it had been her cat chasing Dusty up a tree!"

Dusty lived to be old and blind, and he'd search for Ben in the dark to sit on his lap for hours. When Dusty died, Ben gave him a funeral. He built a little coffin for him and fired a rifle over his grave.^[8]

Retirement and end of life

Late in life, Ben and Mabel began attending the Gill Memorial Baptist Church in Marshall.^[22][8] A 1966 photo shows him standing, shovel in hand, at the groundbreaking ceremony for church's new education building.^[30]

Ben retired from Missouri Valley College in 1967, when he was 79 years old.^[22][31] He only had a few years after his retirement to spend with Mabel. She died in 1973.^[32]  But Ben still had more than a decade of his life ahead of him.

He lived independently to the end.  But in April of 1984, his son wrote, "Daddy wasn’t at all well when we returned [from our vacation] though (characteristically) he insisted that there was nothing wrong with him -- that he merely had a little "flare-up."  However, just a few days after our return he called us about some physical problems, and the doctor had him admitted to Fitzgibbon Hospital."^[8]

Ben died in the hospital a few days later on April 6, 1984, a few weeks before his 96th birthday.^[33][8]

His son wrote, "He was alert mentally until the hour of his death, and his sense of humor never failed him.  He was a remarkable man, and probably no man in Marshall had more friends."^[8]

He was buried alongside Mabel at Ridge Park Cemetery in Marshall, after a crowded funeral at Gill Memorial Baptist Church.^[8][33]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5} Florence Mounce, widow's pension application number 742,430, certificate number 525,245; service of Samuel Mounce (Pvt., Co. F, 35th Ind. Inf, Civil War); Case Files of Approved of Approved Pension Applications...,1861-1934; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
   
   I requested the Civil War pension file of Samuel Mounce from the National Archives in 2009. I received several hundred pages of documents. I've made scanned copies of it all. The documents span from 1864 , when he first began receiving a disabled veteran pension, to 1928, when his widow, Florence, died. During his life, Samuel applied for a pension increase under various governmental acts. Sometimes he was approved and sometimes he was rejected.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Missouri Bureau of Vital Records, birth certificate, Ben Caroll[sic] Mounts, 10 February 1918.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} "United States Census, 1900," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M3ZM-V5Z : accessed 15 January 2021), Samuel A Mounts household, Precinct 3 Kansas City Ward 7, Jackson, Missouri, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 60, sheet 6B, family 115, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,240,862.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} "United States Census, 1880," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MH97-B2D : 12 November 2020), Samuel A. Mounts household, Harrison, Indiana, United States; citing enumeration district ED 103, sheet 396D, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm 1,254,283.
5. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33039507 : accessed 08 January 2021), memorial page for Olive G. Mounts (27 Aug 1872–10 Oct 1876), Find a Grave Memorial no. 33039507, citing Ripperdan-Sonner Cemetery, New Amsterdam, Harrison County, Indiana, USA ; Maintained by Erica (contributor 46934374)
6. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33039627: accessed 08 January 2021), memorial page for Samuel E. Mounts (6 Feb 1877–11 Oct 1878), Find a Grave Memorial no. 33039627, citing Ripperdan-Sonner Cemetery, New Amsterdam, Harrison County, Indiana, USA ; Maintained by Erica (contributor 46934374) .
7. ↑ Handwritten genealogical notes, author unknown, scanned and emailed to me in April of 2017. I received the notes from a distant cousin, the great-great-grandchild of George Franklin Mounts, and great-grandchild of Margaret Mounts. I don't know when the notes were written or by who. They refer to "Uncle Ben" (Benjamin Foraker Mounts - George Franklin Mounts's brother) so they were likely written by George Franklin Mounts's children or grandchildren - possibly his daughter Margaret Mounts. See the free space profile for scans of notes.
8. ↑ ^{8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19 8.20 8.21 8.22 8.23 8.24 8.25 8.26 8.27 8.28 8.29 8.30 8.31 8.32 8.33 8.34 8.35 8.36 8.37} Autobiography of Ben Mounts, about 1987, original typewritten manuscript held by Jessica Hammond, transcribed digital copy also held by Jessica Hammond
9. ↑ Lynn Waterman, "1893 Roster of Nebraska Veterans - Indiana Enlistees, M-Z", typed index, 1893 Nebraska Census of Civil War Veterans (http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/county/holt/1893/indiana_m-z.html : accessed 15 January 2021), Mounts, S.A.
10. ↑ Mabel Phillips, transcriber, Billings Special Road District assessment, index, 1897-1900, Christian County, Missouri Personal Property Tax Index 1879-1900    (https://sites.rootsweb.com/~moccl/Ppt/Ppt.html : accessed 29 January 2021) > Special Road Districts > Billings > https://sites.rootsweb.com/~moccl/Ppt/Bl-srd.pdf > Mounts, S.A.
11. ↑ Mabel Phillips, transcriber, Christian County, Missouri Personal Property Tax Index 1879-1900 (https://sites.rootsweb.com/~moccl/Ppt/Ppt.html : accessed 29 January 2021) > Individuals > Mo-My > https://sites.rootsweb.com/~moccl/Ppt/Ppt_Mo-My.pdf > Mounts, S.A.
12. ↑ "Missouri, U.S., Death Records, 1850-1931," database with images, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1172/ : accessed 15 January 2021), Jackson County, Record images for Jackson, 1899-1905, image 147 of 427, number 7073, Samuel A. Mounts.
13. ↑ "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch    (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M2YK-MFX : accessed 15 January 2021), Florence Mounts household, Jackson, Missouri, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 178, sheet 18B, family 338, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 790; FHL microfilm 1,374,803.
14. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 29 January 2021), memorial page for Walter R. Mounts (1883–1900), Find a Grave Memorial no. 131657553, citing Woodlawn Cemetery, Kansas City, Wyandotte County, Kansas, USA ; Maintained by Jessica (contributor 48160479) .
15. ↑ ^{15.0 15.1} "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K7WF-LKM : accessed 18 September 2020), Ben F Mounts household, Ward 2, Marshall, Marshall Township, Saline, Missouri, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 98-23, sheet 7A, line 6, family 28, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 2155.
16. ↑ "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M2Y2-RJV : accessed 15 January 2021), George F Mounts household, Jackson, Missouri, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 203, sheet 20A, family 450, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 790; FHL microfilm 1,374,803.
17. ↑ "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M2Y2-9ZQ : accessed 15 January 2021), David H Mounts, Jackson, Missouri, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 189, sheet 12B, family 289, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 790; FHL microfilm 1,374,803.
18. ↑ Research notes of Jessica (Mounts) Hammond, interviewing Ben Mounts and Betty (Wells) Mounts, about 1999. When I was a sophomore in high school, I interviewed my grandparents for a school paper about family history. The original recording from the interview is long gone, but I still have the notes I made from the recording when I was fifteen.
19. ↑ "Biographical Sketch: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States", Harry S. Truman Library and Museum ( https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/biographical-sketch-harry-truman : accessed 29 January 2021).
20. ↑ Johnson County, Kansas, marriage license record no. 45829 (6 November 1915), Ben F. Mounts and Mabel Bennett; digital image held by Jessica Hammond.
21. ↑ ^{21.0 21.1 21.2} Mabel Mounts, "The Story of a Belated 'Honeymoon'", travel journal with souvenirs and photographs, 1940, privately held by Jessica Hammond.
22. ↑ ^{22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3} "Ben F. Mounts," Marshall (Missouri) Democrat-News, 6 April 1984, page 12.
23. ↑ ^{23.0 23.1} "Our History", Missouri Valley College (https://www.moval.edu/about/our-history/ : accessed 29 January 2021)
24. ↑ ^{24.0 24.1 24.2} Personal recollections of Dan Mounts
25. ↑ ^{25.0 25.1} Dan Mounts, posting at “You know you're from Marshall , if you remember...,” Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/229268843776158/permalink/3411222538914090 : accessed 29 January 2021), various commenters on the post, 27 November 2020.
26. ↑ ^{26.0 26.1} Dan Mounts, posting at “You know you're from Marshall , if you remember...,” Facebook    (https://www.facebook.com/groups/229268843776158/permalink/2551287661574253 : accessed 29 January 2021), commenters on the post, 23 December 2019.
27. ↑ Personal recollection of Steve Mounts
28. ↑ "Missouri Voters Approve Bonds, School Levies," Moberly (Missouri) Monitor-Index, 6 April 1955, page 5, column 4; "Moberly Monitor-Index (Moberly, Missouri)" (database with images), Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/51717/ : accessed 26 November 2020).
29. ↑ "City Council Makes Number of Appointments," Marshall (Missouri) Daily Democrat News, 16 April 1955.
30. ↑ Gill Memorial Baptist Church page, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Gill-Memorial-Baptist-Church-188600594529889
31. ↑ "90 on Friday," Marshall (Missouri) Democrat-News 26 April 1978. I retrieved a typed copy of this article from the Mounts file at the Marshall Public Library around 2008. The original microfilm of this date's newspaper is gone.
32. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/77590433 : accessed 29 January 2021), memorial page for Mabel Belle "Byie" Bennett Mounts (30 Apr 1892–4 Nov 1973), Find a Grave Memorial no. 77590433, citing Ridge Park Cemetery, Marshall, Saline County, Missouri, USA ; Maintained by Jessica (contributor 48160479) .
33. ↑ ^{33.0 33.1} Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/77590431 : accessed 29 January 2021), memorial page for Benjamin Foraker "Ben" Mounts (28 Apr 1888–6 Apr 1984), Find a Grave Memorial no. 77590431, citing Ridge Park Cemetery, Marshall, Saline County, Missouri, USA ; Maintained by Jessica (contributor 48160479) .