Floyd Amos “Hiker” Squires Sr. was born February 9, 1882, in Baraboo, Sauk County, Wisconsin, the son of Amos Wilson Squires and Mary Ida Lucy Kenyon.
At the age of 18, he went to work for several years for the railroad as a brakeman and then in a freight house in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Floyd’s father took a job as farm foreman at the horse farm of W. R. Goodwin in 1904, which then became the Will-O-Way Farm, and is now Meson Sabika. Floyd followed him to Naperville in about 1905.
He married Isabelle Annis Kingsley November 4, 1905, in Naperville and they became the parents of five children, Clark Kingsley, Mackey Amos, Dorothy Jane (who married Louis Clyde Hitchcock), Floyd Amos Jr. and Isabelle Mary (who married Harold Richard Theodore Huth).
Isabelle died March 28, 1914, while giving birth to Isabelle Mary.
Floyd then married Martha Helen Smith on July 10, 1915.
Floyd had gone to work for the Naperville Lounge Factory in 1905, which was later named the Kroehler Furniture Manufacturing Company. Almost immediately, he was given the nickname “hiker” when the foreman had gone looking for him and was told that Floyd was hiking down the railroad tracks with a couch on his back to be loaded onto a railroad car for shipping. The nickname stuck for the rest of his life.
Floyd was employed there for 49 years, retiring in 1954. He had started in the truck loading department where he was paid seventeen and a half cents per hour. He eventually became the supervisor. Floyd was then made the Assistant Traffic Manager in 1944 and later worked as the receptionist in the main office.
Floyd then went to work as the supervisor of the cafeteria where his wife was the cook prior to his retirement.
He was raised a Master Mason October 3, 1939, and served as Master of the Lodge in 1951. He was exalted a Royal Arch Mason on February 12, 1946.
Floyd Amos “Hiker” Squires Sr. retired to Florida and died December 19, 1964, in St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida. Masonic funeral services were held at the Ackman Funeral Home by the members of Euclid Lodge.
Religious funeral services were conducted at Grace Evangelical United Brethren Church with the Rev. Grant Graver officiating and he was buried in the Naperville Cemetery.
