William Thornton Kemper, Sr.

William Thornton Kemper Sr. (November 2, 1867 – January 19, 1938) was an American banker who was the patriarch of the Missouri Kemper family, which developed both Commerce Bancshares and United Missouri Bank to become a major banking family in the Midwest. Life and career Kemper was born on November 2, 1867, in Gallatin, Missouri. He was the son of Sarah Ann Paxton and James Madison Kemper. His mother died in 1875, when he was nine years old. At the age of seventeen, Kemper moved with his family to St. Joseph, Missouri. Kemper never completed a formal high-school education. At the age of 14 he began work, sweeping the floor at Collins and White, a St. Joseph shoe store, and later became a salesman for Noyes, Norman and Company, a shoe distributor and manufacturer (also in St. Joseph) in which his father was a part owner, covering retailers in eastern Kansas, including Valley Falls, Kansas. In 1885 Kemper moved from St. Joseph to Valley Falls to establish a dry goods store, "Evans & Kemper". Kemper would spend the next eight years in Valley Falls, where he courted and married Charlotte Crosby and began a career in commercial banking. Valley Falls (then known as "Grasshopper Falls") was a small settlement on the Delaware River about 35 miles due west of Leavenworth, Kansas. In the years following the Civil War, such towns were promoted as commercial hubs in the new network of regional and trans-continental railroads. The northern route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad was built through Valley Falls in 1871, later joined by the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific.