Amos Armstrong Cass House, Carterville, Missouri
We are happy to present the first of many photographs from the portfolio of architect Alfred W. Rea of Garstang & Rea. The featured photo is of the Amos Armstrong Cass House in Carterville, Missouri. Many thanks to Rea’s relatives for preserving and sharing Garstang & Rea’s architectural legacy.
Amos Armstrong Cass
The Biographical Record of Jasper County, Missouri, by Malcom G. McGregor, had this to say about Mr. Cass:
“One of the most conspicuous exponents of that sturdy spirit of American progressiveness which enables men to win success in any field of labor to which they may be called, that could be pointed out among the many successful miners and business men of Jasper county, Missouri, is Amos A. Cass, of Carterville. He is a native of Georgia, but was taken to east Tennessee while yet a mere child, and was there reared to manhood. James M. Cass, his grandfather, was a cousin of General Lewis Cass. His father, James M. Cass, died in Tennessee. His mother, who prior to her marriage was Miss Martha Jane Ryan, was a native of Georgia, and she died in Carterville, Missouri.
Mr. Cass, a contractor and builder, came to Jasper county in 1886 and engaged in the milling business, but soon began to give attention to mining. During the last five years he has devoted himself exclusively to mining, and is now interested in seven good plants, having three on the Cornfield land, at Carterville, one on the Perry lease, one on the McKinley lease and one on Judge McGregor’s lands, besides one other at Oronogo, all productive mines, well equipped with good machinery, and he has come to be known as one of the most extensive miners in the district. He is a partner and director in the Weeks Hardware Company at Carterville, and is a director in the Carterville Investment Company, of which corporation he is secretary.
A man of much public spirit, he has the best interests of Carterville at heart and he is one of its most active and progressive citizens and one of theleading Democrats of Jasper county. He was for eight years a member of the school board of Carterville and was influential in increasing the number of school rooms of the public schools of the town from four to fourteen and in securing the erection of two new brick school buildings. In 1867 he was received as an Entered Apprentice, passing the Fellow Craft degree and was raised to the Sublime degree of Master Mason. Later he took the degrees of capitular Masonry, became in turn a Mark Master, a Past Master and a Most Excellent Master and was exalted to the august degree of Royal Arch Mason; the degrees of Chivalric Masonry were conferred upon him and he was constituted, dubbed and created a Knight Templar, and still later he acquired the Royal degrees of the Secret Ineffable degrees of the Scottish Rite.
Mr. Cass married Miss Sarah Hunt, a native of east Tennessee. His son, Walter W. Cass, owns a good interest in four good producing mines and is connected with his father in the management of the Bell C. and L. C. mines, of which he is superintendent and his son, Carl C. Cass, is assistant superintendent. He had four daughters: Ollie, the eldest, the deceased wife of M. V. James, of Carterville; Lillie A., wife of O. H. Schoenherr; Belle B., at home; and Beulah Jene, a student in St. Charles College, at St. Louis, Missouri.”
According to his death certificate, Cass enjoyed his home by Garstang & Rea up until his death in 1915 from heart disease.
