For Brother of the Year
Category. Permanent award.
Authority for the Award.
Department Bylaws Chapter VII, Article III, Section B: This award is presented by the Department Commander to the brother whom the Department Commander has determined to have performed significant service to a camp or the Department within the past year. The Department Commander shall seek recommendations from the various Camp Commanders for this award.
History of the Award.
This award was created by Department Commander Dean K. Speaks with Department Order 1 (1996-1997), dated October 1996, as the “Captain Patrick H. Coney Award for Member of the Year.”
The award was made a permanent award of the Department by the Thirteenth Annual Department Encampment in 2008.
The following is from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; transcribed October, 1997, for KSGenWeb.org.
PATRICK H. CONEY. In many ways the State of Kansas during the last half century has had no more interesting, patriotic, versatile figure than Patrick H. Coney of Topeka. He came to Kansas after making a brilliant record as a soldier in the Civil war. He has been extremely successful as a business man, and his interests as a business man have extended over a wide and diversified field. No man in the country has exhibited a more intense loyalty and devotion to the welfare of the veterans of the great struggle between the North and the South. Mr. Coney is a lawyer, has practiced in Topeka over thirty years, is also a vigorous writer, has been a publisher in his time, and has always made his private success subsidiary to the public welfare.
He was born in Newbury, Vermont, March 10, 1848, a son of Luke and Honor Berry Coney. The genealogy of this family is traceable back to Laogare, ancestor of the Southern Hy Nials, a son of Nial of the Nine Hostages, Kings of Ireland in A. D. 379.
His father, Luke Coney, was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and emigrated to the United States in 1839. After living a time in Boston he moved to Vermont, where he married, and in 1850 went to Wayne County, New York. His later life was spent in Topeka, where he died December 16, 1905, in his ninety-fifth year.
Patrick H. Coney spent his youth on a farm and his school advantages were seasoned with much hard work. He was patriotic to the core, and after the Civil war broke out his zeal could not long be restrained, and when not quite fifteen he managed to get himself enlisted in Company H of the One Hundred and Eleventh New York Volunteer Infantry. He was detailed as dispatch bearer on the staff of General McDougall and later was promoted to orderly dispatch bearer on the staff of Gen. Nelson A. Miles. In that capacity he was with the army of the Union until the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox. On June 5, 1865, he was transferred to Company H of the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery, and received his honorable discharge at Hart’s Island, New York, October 5, 1865. At the Peach Orchard in front of Petersburg, Virginia, June 16, 1864, he was wounded, and was confined in the hospital sixty days. Altogether he was a participant in more than thirty engagements. With all this record he was less than eighteen when he left the army.
Returning to Wayne County, New York, he took up his interrupted studies and in 1867 was graduated from an academy. In the same year he came to Kansas, and for the next fifteen years he lived at Leavenworth, where he attracted attention as a student, businessman, writer and publicist. Coming to Topeka in 1881, he founded and published the first exclusively soldier and sailor paper in the West–the National Banner, which subsequently was merged into the Knight and Soldier, and afterwards the Western Veteran. All these papers exerted a tremendous influence during their existence.
In the meantime his work had brought him a generous fund of knowledge in the law, and by taking up his studies syystematically[sic] he was admitted to the bar in 1885, and subsequently was licensed to practice in the United States District and Supreme courts. Since then for thirty years he has found a large and congenial field of work in the practice of law. While Mr. Coney has earned many large fees from wealthy clients, it is said that more than half his professional service has been rendered gratuitously to the old soldiers and the soldiers’ widows in securing pensions for them and in other ways easing the burdens of existence. His heart has been keenly attuned to the distress of the soldiers of the Civil war, and probably no man in Kansas has done more for their interests.
For years he has been an influential figure in the councils of the Grand Army of the Republic, local, state and national. Besides being a member of Topeka Post, No 71, Grand Army of the Republic, which was formerly known as Rice Post when he organized it, and its former commander, he was elected department commander of the Kansas Grand Army of the Republic in 1905 and reelected in 1907. He was transferred from the Topeka Post to the Lincoln Post in 1897.
Mr. Coney has traveled and read extensively, and has a well selected library of his favorite authors, is a collector of historical relics, and is a writer who lends perfect diction to an orderly train of thought and imagination. No one has ever questioned his loyalty to the republican party, but his time has been too much bestowed in other directions to seek political preferment. However, his talent as a campaign orator has been widely sought, and he has an acquaintance among a host of men of state and national prominence. A man of wealth, many public and private benefactions have received his aid. Among other properties he owns 16,000 acres of the best land in Benton County, Missouri.
He is a member of the Masonic Order, the Knights of Pythias, the Woodmen of the World, the Anti-Horse Thief Association, the Irish National Alliance, the Irish-American Historical Society, and the Kansas State Historical Society. He has without a doubt the finest collection of scrap-books in the state, all indexed. At the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 Mr. Coney successfully promoted and conducted the Lapland Exhibit, which was one of the most interesting features of that great fair. On July 29, 1886, at Topeka, Kansas, he was married to Emma G. Hitchcock, who was born in Cortland County, New York.
Patrick H. Coney died July 24, 1932, in Topeka, Kansas. He is buried in Mount Cavalry Cemetery, Topeka.
Recipients.
| Year | Recipent, Camp No. | Awarded By |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 1998 1999 2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 | Jerry Seery, 1 (Recipent not identified) (Recipent not identified) Jeffrey L. Dunaway, 16 (Recipent not identified) Franklin C. Bergquist, 1 Alan L. Russ, 16 Douglas E. McGovern, 1 Thomas E. Schmidt, 1 James R. Knopke, 5 Matthew G. Toll, 5 James M. Converse, 5 Dale L. Rouse, 1 Robert L. Wandel, 4 Kent M. Melcher, 16 Rocky L. Bartlow, 16 Jerry W. Reiman, 16 William E. Fischer Jr, 5 Mark A. Britton, 1 Ryan L. Todd, 4 Dale L. Rouse, 1 Robert D. Boyd II, 9 Eric L. Crittenden, 10 Michael A. Todd, 4 James D. Thornton, 5 Michael J. Hadl, 4 Jerry A. Coffelt, 5 | Dean K. Speaks Dean K. Speaks Dean K. Speaks Franklin C. Bergquist Randall M. Thies Alan L. Russ Kenneth R. Spurgeon Thomas E. Schmidt James R. Knopke Randal L. Durbin Roy A. Lafferty Craig A. Sundell James M. Converse James R. Knopke Roy A. Lafferty Roy A. Lafferty Rocky L. Bartlow Rocky L. Bartlow Kent M. Melcher Mark A. Britton Mark A. Britton Michael A. Todd K. Kirk Nystrom Robert D. Boyd II Thomas E. Schmidt Conrad M. Fisher Kent M. Melcher |
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