In the collection of material for the biographical department of this
publication there has been a constant aim to use a wise discrimination in
regard to the selection of subjects and to exclude none worthy of
representation within its pages. Here will be found mention of worthy
citizens of all vocations, and at this juncture we are permitted to offer a
resume of the career of one of the substantial and highly esteemed, in fact,
one of the leaders of the industrial world of this section of the state,
where he has long maintained his home and where he has attained a high
degree of success in his chosen field of labor and enterprise.
Levi
Monroe Kagy, the popular and well known president of the Salem State Bank,
of Salem, Marion county, Illinois, was born near Tiffin, Senaca county,
Ohio, December 15, 1855, the son of David Kagy, also a native of Seneca
county, who came to Marion county, Illinois, in the year 1859. He devoted
his life to agricultural pursuits, which he made successful, and at the time
became a man of much influence in his community and well known as a
scrupulously honest and public-spirited citizen. He was called from his
earthly labors February 8, 1887, after a very active and useful life. The
mother of the subject was known in her maidenhood as Sarah Milley. She is a
woman of many estimable traits and is the recipient of the admiration and
esteem of a large coterie of friends and acquaintances in the vicinity where
she is still living in 1908 on the old homestead where she and her worthy
life companion settled nearly a half century ago. To Mr. and Mrs. David Kagy
were born only two children, Alice A. a woman of fine attributes, who is
making her home with her mother; and Levi Monroe, our subject. The parents
spared no pains in giving these children every possible care and advantage
and the wholesome environment of their home life is clearly reflected in the
lives of the subject and his sister.
Our subject lived on the
parental farm until he was twenty-five years old and assisted his father
with the farm work, giving him all his earnings up to the time of his
maturity, and it was while thus engaged in the free outdoor life of the farm
that he acquired many qualities of mind and body that have assisted very
materially in his subsequent success in life. He attended the neighborhood
schools where he applied himself in a most assiduous manner, outstripping
many of his classmates, and therefore gained a broad and deep mental
foundation which has since been greatly developed by systematic home study
and contact with the world. After receiving what education he could in the
home schools Mr. Kagy taught several terms of school in a most praiseworthy
manner, teaching in the winter months and farming in the summer, having
possessed not only a clear and well defined textbook training, but also the
tact to deal with his pupils in a manner to gain the best results, at the
same time winning their good will and lasting friendship.
After
reaching young manhood, Mr. Kagy decided that his true life work lay along a
different course than that of farming and school teaching, so he accordingly
began to save his earnings in order to defray the expense of a course in
Union College of Law at Chicago, now the Northwestern University, and he
graduated from that institution with high honors on June 14, 1883, after
having made a brilliant record in the same for scholarship and deportment.
He at once began practice at Salem, where his success was instantaneous, and
with the exception of one year spent on the farm after his father's death,
he has been in Salem ever since where he is now recognized as one of the
most potent factors in her civic, industrial and social life. Mr. Kagy
practices with uniform success in county, state and federal courts, and his
services are in constant demand in cases requiring superior ingenuity and
apt ability. His untiring energy, indefatigable research and persistency
have made him successful where less courageous characters would have quailed
and been submerged.
Something of the subject's peculiar and
unquestioned executive ability is shown from the fact that he was one of the
principal organizers in 1903 of the Salem State Bank, one of the most
substantial, popular and sound institutions of its kind in southern and
central Illinois. Mr. Kagy is president of the same, the duties of which he
performs in a manner to gain the unqualified confidence of the public, and
the citizens of Salem and Marion county do not hesitate to place their funds
at his disposal, knowing that they could not be trusted to safer and more
conservative hands. He is also stockholder in the First National Bank of
Kinmundy, Illinois. He also helped organize the Haymond State Bank of
Kinmundy, and afterwards was instrumental in merging this institution with
the First National Bank of that city. Mr. Kagy was appointed Master in
Chancery of Marion county in 1889, and afterwards twice reappointed. He has
served as president of the Salem School Board and declined reelection. In
all these public capacities he displayed unusual adroitness in handling the
affairs entrusted to him.
Mr. Kagy's happy and harmonious domestic
life dates from May 18, 1887, when he was united in marriage to Alice
Larimer, the youngest daughter of the late Smith Larimer, an ex-Treasurer of
Marion county, an influential and highly respected citizen. Mrs. Kagy is a
cultured and highly accomplished woman of many estimable attributes and
possessing a gracious and pleasing personality which makes her popular among
a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and she presides over the modem,
cozy, elegantly furnished and beautifully appointed home of the subject and
family with modest grace and dignity. Into this model home two bright and
interesting children add sunshine and cheerfulness. They are: John Larimer,
who was born February 22, 1888, now a student, in 1908, in the University of
Illinois, where he is making a splendid record; and Leigh Monroe, who was
born March 15, 1901; a girl died in infancy.
In 1898, during the Spanish
American war, Mr. Kagy was active in organizing a company, and was elected
captain of the same after much drilling it was ready to go to the front.
Later Mr. Kagy was appointed by Gov. John B. Tanner, major of Pittenger's
Provisional Regiment. Although it was fully ready to go to the front it was
not called upon to do so.
Levi M. Kagy was one of the twenty-two men
who subscribed twenty-two thousand dollars in order to induce the Chicago &
Eastern Illinois Railroad shops to locate in Salem. The public-spirited and
energetic disposition of the citizens of this progressive city can be
ascertained by the statement that this sum was raised in one night. Mr. Kagy
was in San Francisco at the time, but his friends volunteered to vouch for
him for eleven hundred dollars, and he promptly paid the full amount upon
his return home. Mr. Kagy always practiced law alone until January 1907,
when he took E. B. Vandervort, of Portsmouth, Ohio, as an associate. They
have a splendid and well-equipped suite of rooms in the Kagy Building. Mr.
Kagy, although interested in many industrial enterprises, gives his time
almost exclusively to his law practice which is very large and which
requires the major part of his time.
Fraternally our subject is a
member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias and
the Woodmen. He has occupied the chairs in the local Odd Fellows lodge, and
is one of the trustees of the I. O. O. F. Old Folks' Home of Illinois, of
Mattoon, Illinois.
Mr. and Mrs. Kagy and their oldest son are members
of the Presbyterian church. In politics he is a stanch advocate of the
principles and policies of the Democratic party, with which he has been
affiliated from the time of attaining his majority, and he has ever lent his
aid in furthering his party's cause, being well fortified in his political
convictions, while he is essentially public-spirited and progressive. In all
the relations of life he has been found faithful to every trust confided in
him and because of his genuine worth, splendid physique, courteous manners
and genial disposition he has won and retains the warm regard of all with
whom he associates.
Extracted 10 Jul 2017 by Norma Hass from 1909 Biographical and Reminiscent History of Richland, Clay and Marion Counties, Illinois, pages 237-240.