Edmund Needham Morrill (1834-1909) - The thirteenth governor of the State of Kansas, Morrill was born at Westbrook, Maine on February 12, 1834. He was educated in the public schools and at Westbrook Academy, and after leaving school learned the trade of a tanner with his father. In March, 1857, he landed in Kansas and located in Brown County, where he and a partner established a sawmill. The same year he was elected to represent Brown and Nemaha counties in the first Free-State legislature, serving in the extra session of December, 1857, and the regular session which began in January, 1858. In 1861 he enlisted as a private in Company C, Seventh Kansas Cavalry, but in a short time was promoted to the rank of sergeant. In August, 1862, he was commissioned captain and ordered to report to General Grant at Corinth, Mississippi, where he was made Commissary of Subsistence and placed in charge of government stores in Tennessee. Near the close of the war, he was brevetted major, and was honorably discharged in October, 1865. Returning to Brown County, he engaged in the banking business, in which he continued for the remainder of his life, and at the time of his death it was said that during his long career as a banker he never foreclosed a mortgage. In 1866, he was elected Clerk of the District Court. The following year he was elected County Clerk and held that office by re-elections until 1872, when he was elected to the Kansas State Senate. He was re-elected to the senate in 1876, and during his second term, served as president pro tem. In 1882 he was elected Congressman-at-large, and at each of the three succeeding biennial elections was chosen to represent the First District in the lower house of the National Legislature. In 1890 he declined a fourth term as Congressman from and announced his intention of retiring permanently from politics. However, in 1894, he yielded to the solicitations of his friends and accepted the Republican nomination for governor. At the election in November, won the election. He was defeated for a second term in 1896. Governor Morrill was a man of great public spirit and was always a willing helper of any enterprise for the material advancement of the state. He was a liberal contributor to the drought sufferers, gave the City of Hiawatha its fine library and academy, and no church ever appealed to him in vain for assistance. On July 7, 1886, he became a member of the Kansas Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, in which he held the offices of vice-commander and chaplain. He was twice married. His first wife died without children, but the second marriage was blessed with two sons and two daughters. Governor Morrill died on March 14, 1909.

Victor Murdock (1871-1945) - Journalist and member of Congress, Murdoc was a native Kansan, having been born at Burlingame on March 18, 1871. The next year his parents,  Marshall M. and Victoria (Mayberry) Murdock, moved to Wichita, then a frontier town, where Victor attended the public schools and the Lewis Academy. At the age of 10, he commenced learning the printer's trade, working during his vacations, and when he was just 15 years-old he became a reporter. He rapidly developed the "journalistic instinct," and five years later went to Chicago, where for some time he held a position on the staff of one of the metropolitan dailies. In 1890 he was united in marriage with M. P. Allen, and in 1894 he became managing editor of the Wichita Eagle. In 1902 he was nominated by the Republican district convention for Congress, was elected the following November, and was re-elected at each succeeding biennial election to 1914. Afterwards, he continued as editor of the the Wichita Eagle until his death in Wichita, Kansas on July 8, 1945.