Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1915 — ALL VETERANS. IN SERVICE [ARTICLE]

ALL VETERANS. IN SERVICE

Three Railroad Employees Who Have Given Years of Their Life to Single Duty. The oldest freight agent on the Milwaukee road recently celebrated his golden service anniversary. The veteran is R. M. Telfer, Beloit, and he went to work for the railroad May 7, 1865. Two other men—J. A. Cotton, Rockford, 111., and J. W. Hayes, eighty-three years old, Elkhorn, Wle.—entered the railroad’s employ before Mr. Telfer, the former in 1857, the latter in 1860. But both have been retired for several years, and that fact makes Mr. Telfer the oldest active freight agent on the system, in point of service. The Beloit veteran began in the storeroom of the old Western Union railroad in Racine. While there he learned telegraphy and at the time the railroad was absorbed by the Milwaukee road, he was an operator. In that capacity, in 1869, he went to Beloit. He was operator there for several months. Then he served successively practically every station on the Racine division of the railroad. Finally, in 1904', he was returned to Beloit as freight agent and he has been there since.