440 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



PRINCIPAL FACTS CONCERNING THE LIFE OF COLONEL 

 GEORGE W. WATERS, DECEASED. 



No greater service can be given to the State than to labor for the 

 elevation and advancement of the industrial classes. The man who 

 amasses wealth and contributes of his means to the support of the gov- 

 ernment is a useful citizen, but the man who gives his life for the up- 

 building of his fellowmen is a benefactor to his race, a philanthropist 

 worthy of the admiration of all mankind. Such a man was the subject 

 of this article, the late Colonel George W. Waters. It may be truly 

 said of him, he was aggressively honest, sincere and unselfish in his work, 

 active and progressive, devoted to the welfare of his family, the com- 

 munity, the church and the State ; and no greater tribute than this can be 

 paid to any man. It is no discredit to any other to say that no man in 

 this State has labored so long, so unselfishly and so effectively for the 

 advancement' of the cause of agriculture, a cause held sacred by Colonel 

 Waters. Colonel Waters never considered his own comfort when duty 

 called him. The weather was never too cold, the distance too far, or 

 obstacles too great for him to overcome. "Greater love than this hath 

 no man, that he lay down his life for a friend." Such was the love of 

 Colonel Waters for the betterment of the farmers of Missouri. He 

 sacrificed his life for a cause held sacred by him. 



The following expressions, from those who were intimately ac- 

 quainted with Colonel Waters, show in what high esteem he was held 

 by the people of this State. 

 From "Colman's Rural World :" 



George Washington Waters, born in Ralls county, Missouri, Au- 

 gust I, 1836, died in Hope, Arkansas, February 23, 1906, aged 70 years. 



The elder George Waters, his father, moved from Wilson county, 

 Tennessee, to Missouri in 1829, settling in Pike county at first, and later 

 establishing a home on a farm in Ralls county, where the subject of this 

 sketch was born. 



George W. Waters' boyhood was probably that of the average coun- 

 try boy of the time in which he lived, and after having obtained such an 

 education as was afforded by the public school system of that time, and 

 such as his father, who, in addition to being a farmer, was a minister of 

 the Gospel, could give him, he completed the work in the Fitting 

 Academy at Louisiana, Missouri, and immediately entered the Uni- 

 versity of Arkansas, at Fayettevillc, to prepare himself for a civil en- 

 gineer. Just before graduating, in the spring of 1859, he retired from 



