Part of the Indiana Biographies Project
Walter Stevens Ratliff
Walter Stevens Ratliff was born on April 24, i860, on a farm three miles west of Richmond, Indiana, being the third son of Joseph C. and Mary F. Ratliff. Showing an early inclination for learning, he was sent to school, which was held in an old school-house on the old National Road, where he passed through the first reader before he was four years old. At the age of twelve, at the last day of school, he gave on the black-board a public exhibition of free-hand drawing, from memory, of the continent of Europe. He continued there until February, 1873, when his father moved to a farm just northwest of Richmond, where he resided until he was married. There being no girl in the family he "wore the apron" around the house, and frequently lost a half day of school helping his mother to do the washing. Being a great reader, he spent three years in reading the Holy Bible, completing the same at the age of thirteen. The graded school at Sevastopol near by furnished a good opportunity for study, which was attended until the spring of 1878. At the age of seventeen he secured the prize offered for the best penman at a public writing-school, among many competitors. In September, 1879, he resolved to enter a larger institution and secure a more thorough, practical education, such as was given at Purdue University, at Lafayette, Indiana. He entered the college on the 1Oth of that month and spent four years of hard study, graduating, with two diplomas and with the honors of his class, on June 7, 1883. While there he had the distinguished honor of being the second student, the other being a young lady, who had ever in the history of the university completed two distinct courses of study in four consecutive years and graduated in the same. During the junior and senior years he assisted the professors by teaching in the preparatory department of the university. Considerable manual labor was done on the campus of the college grounds and on the farm while a student, and many of the arbor-vitae hedges, fruit and ornamental trees now standing bear evidence of his work, and over one-half of the necessary expenses incurred in securing his education were made in this way.
After graduation he resided with his father, following farming and the breeding of Jersey cattle. On November 12, 1885, he married Metta E., daughter of Stephen and Louisa Comer, and removed to a farm two miles west of Richmond, where he still resides. One child has blessed their union, Verlin Comer Ratliff, who was born March 14, 1895. At present he is engaged in breeding Jersey cattle and in dairying. He performed a series of experiments on his farm in connection with the university, as, sowing wheat with and without the use of commercial fertilizers; determining the merits of different brands of the same, on one particular variety of wheat; and noting the ravages of the Hessian fly on wheat with different times of sowing. A member of the State Farmers' Institute workers, he has given a number of papers at various institutes throughout the state, and he has furnished contributions to many of our local papers and magazines. He was vice-president one year of the Indiana Horticultural Society; a delegate two years to the Indiana State Board of Agriculture; has been secretary of the Wayne County Agricultural and Horticultural Society for ten consecutive years; is and has been for five years the Recorder of the Indiana yearly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, being an active member of this church; was superintendent of the Purdue University Young Men's Christian Association during his senior year; is an administrator of estates and guardian of minor children; a director of the Wayne Farmers' Insurance Company for 1897; furnishes statistics to the United States Department of Agriculture, and semiannual reports to the Division of Ornithology of the Biological Survey of Indiana; for a number of years he was a volunteer in the service of the state weather bureau for this district, and the official observer at Lafayette, Indiana, at the volunteer weather station, from 1880 to 1883.
He is a stockholder, director and assistant superintendent of the old National Road, and with his father was selected by the company to make the final sale of the same to the county commissioners, which occurred on June 20, 1895.
Fraternally he is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America; of the Tribe of Ben Hur of Indiana; of J. N. S. Council of the Royal Arcanum of Massachusetts; the worthy patron for two years of Loyal Chapter, No. 49, Order of the Eastern Star; is a past master of Richmond, Indiana, Lodge No. 196, F. & A. M. , having spent six years in the chairs of the lodge; a member of King Solomon's Chapter, No. 4, Royal Arch Masons; of Richmond (Indiana) Commander}-, No. 8, Knights Templar; and of the Indiana Consistory of Scottish-rite Masons, having taken the thirty-second degree on March 30, 1899. Mr. Ratliff is a total abstainer from the use of intoxicants, drugs, tobacco and other narcotics.
Source:
Biographical and Genealogical History of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin Counties, Indiana, Volume 1, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, 1899