Ad Astra: Larabee family poured money into StaffordBy Beccy
Tanner They were a family strangely out of place among dirt-poor
farmers. At the turn of the 20th century, the Larabee family of
Stafford had climbed the rungs of the social elite, becoming one
of the wealthiest milling families in the nation. Joseph Larabee
had established a modestly successful career in New York as a
cheese buyer when he moved his family to Stafford in 1886 and
began building a family fortune. Over the next three decades,
the Larabees built a bank and a library in the small town and
brought in the region’s first telephone and electrical systems.
They built up the Larabee Flour Milling Co., which has
headquarters in Stafford, and operated more than 20 mills across
the Midwest. They owned land — thousands of acres in western
Kansas. The Larabees were involved in lead mining near Galena in
southeast Kansas, had an iron foundry in Stafford and
manufactured iron seats for corn sleds. They also operated a
charcoal plant in the Ozarks, an