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Title: A History of Jasper County, Missouri, and its people, Volume II
Author: Joel T. Livingston
Pub: 1912 by The Lewis Publishing Co.
Pages 873 - 875
Transcribed by contributor 47360587, Webb City MO


Henry C. Henson of Carterville, Jasper county, who is one of the masters of the lumber trade in all its bearings in this part of the country, began his acquaintance with the material he handles by using it in the most practical way as a carpenter and builder. From the mechanical department of the great industry of making it serviceable to his fellow men he passed easily and logically to the mercantile one of handling it in large quantities for their convenience and having always on hand an extensive and varied stock of it wherewith to supply their wants. He has made a striking success in both branches of the work; for as close study, the utmost care and zealous attention to details made him an excellent carpenter, the same qualities and habits in business have developed him into a first class merchant of commanding ability in his line of trade and capacity for conducting it on a very large scale.

Mr. Henson is in the very prime of life, forty-seven years old, vigorous in body, active and versatile in mind and full of ambition and enterprise in spirit. He is a native of Danville, Indiana, where he was born on June 4, 1864, the son of William and Amanda (Haines) Henson. The father was born in Virginia, on July 6, 1820, and died in Garnett, Anderson county, Kansas, December 7, 1872, when his son Henry was eight years of age. He was a farmer, contractor and merchant in Indiana until the winter of 1869-70, when he moved his family to Garnett, and there he passed the remainder of his life in the same pursuits. The mother, who was born in Ohio on February 3, 1826, is still living, at the advanced age of eighty-five, and makes her home with her daughter, Mrs. Allie Cline, in Garnett, Kansas. She and her husband were the parents of ten children, Henry being the eighth in the order of birth. Her advanced age is but the realization of the promise of her youth and later womanhood. She was always very active and energetic, had great vigor and powers of endurance, and has been blessed with excellent health during the greater part of her long and very industrious life.

Her son Henry began his education in the public schools of his native town and completed it in those of his new home in Kansas, being graduated from the high school in Garnett at the age of sixteen. After leaving school he learned the carpenter trade, which he followed as a journeyman and contractor for about six years. In 1893, he moved to Carterville and accepted a position as bookkeeper for the Carterville Lumber Company. At the end of one year he resigned his position and returned to his former home in Kansas, and there farmed and dealt in live stock as a feeder, buyer and shipper for a period of five years.

But he had found Missouri, and especially this part of it, profitable to many men and promising to him, and in 1899 he came back to Carterville and resumed his old position with the Carterville Lumber Company. Soon afterward the business was purchased by J. H. Leidigh. and the name of the establishment was changed to the Mineral Belt Lumber Company, of which Mr. Henson was made general manager This arrangement continued five years. Then Mr. Henson purchased a one-half interest in the business and it was incorporated with a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars. It was rebaptized as the Leidigh & Henson Lumber Company, with Mr. Leidigh as president and Mr. Henson as manager and treasurer.

On December 1, 1909, Mr. Leidigh withdrew from the company and his stock in it was purchased by James A. Daugherty and others. Mr. Daugherty was made president and the name of the corporation was changed to the H. C. Henson Lumber Company. Its yards are the pioneers in this district and the oldest in length of service in the city of Carterville. Mr. Henson has been in full charge of them and the business of the company during all of the last twelve years, and in spite of a great deal of competition, has been very successful in increasing his trade year by year. These yards are the only independent ones in the Carterville-Webb City District. All the others, six in number, are owned and controlled by one corporation.

Notwithstanding the heavy burden of his business in connection with this company Mr. Henson has found time to give attention to the acquisition and expansion of other interests. He is president of the Henson-McDonald mine at Prosperity, a rich property and large dividend payer. He was also, in 1906, vice president and treasurer of the L. & H. Mining Company, a very prosperous company in its day and owner of one of the most prominent mines in this district, and is now one of the stockholders in the First National Bank of Carterville.

In the public affairs of the city and county of his home Mr. Henson is always an active participant, eager to advance the interests of the region in the way of development and improvement, and doing his full share of the work required for the purpose. He adheres to the Republican party in politics but takes no active part in its campaign. Political contentions are not to his taste, and he has no desire for public office, although he has served as a member of the city council of Carterville. As a thirty-second degree Free Mason, he is active in the fraternal life of his community. He has filled a number of the offices in his lodge and the other Masonic organizations to which he belongs, and was very energetic as one of the leading spirits connected with the erection of the Masonic temple. He was reared in the faith of the Methodist church, and has remained true to its principles and helpful to its interests.

Mr. Henson has maintained a domestic shrine since November 6, 1884, when he was married in Garnett, to Miss Lydia Pontious, a daughter of Nicholas and Harriet (Bowman) Pontious, who belong to the contingent of that county's population which came from Ohio, where Mrs. Henson was born. She and her husband have had two children, their daughter Osa May, who was born in Garnett on December 17. 1886, and is now the wife of William Leonard Pitman, a scion of old Carterville families who were among the pioneers of this region; and their other daughter, Olive Van, who was also a native of Garnett, born on September 12, 1894, died in Carterville in March, 1900.