ANDREW TATE CALLENDER was born in Henderson County, on the eighteenth day of January, 1842. His schooling was limited to a period not exceeding six months, and this fact makes his success as a business man all the more wonderful. Mr. Callender is well known as a man of commercial capacity few have ever attained to with the start he had in life. He is a son of Thomas Jefferso Callender and Martha Chiles Harris, both native Kentuckians, and both early comers to this county. It is not necessary to say that our subject is a Democrat, the Thomas Jefferson attaching to the paternal head will guarantee that fact.
The parents of the subject of this sketch, on coming to this county, settled on a farm near Spottsville, on Green River. During the building of the locks and dam at that place, T. J. Callender was one of the most faithful employees. Andrew Tate Callender was born in Henderson County on the eighteenth day of January, 1842, as before stated, and knew nothing but hard work during his boyhood. Judge Warden P. Churchill, now of Louisville, but who, at one time, resided in Henderson, instructed him in about all the studies he was ever fortunate enough to receive an opportunity of knowing anything about.
On the nineteenth day of February, 1868, after having earned for himself a wifely competency, he married Miss Mary K. Eargood, and, as a result of that marriage, there have been born unto him and his faithful life partner, three children, now living, Lila, Andrew T. and Millard Norman. Lila, the eldest, married, September, 1885, Charles McAhan, and they have one son, recently born.
Our subject has been a hard working farmer the greater part of his life, three years of which time was spent with his father in Webster County, the remainder, up to 1870, in Henderson County. During the year 1870, he came to the city and purchased what was then known as Stapp & Sheffer's steam mill grocery on the corner of Fourth and Green Streets. In 1872, he purchased the grocery stock of K. Geibel, Jr., diagonally across from his then place of business, and consolidated the two stores. He yet carries on the grocery business at the same stand, southeast corner of Fifth and Elm Streets, and is doing a lucrative trade.
To use a rather uncommon phrase, Mr. Callender has exhibited more "spread out" than most men, and, as an evidence of it, he purchased of George Able, in 1882, a farm store building in the Third Ward, corner of Adams and Clay Street; seeing far enough ahead to know that that stand, if not then, would ultimately become a good one. A short time after this purchase, this house burned, and he immediately erected for that locality, a commodious brick, and installed his brother as manager of a large and varied stock of groceries and necessary household goods. In this, as in all other enterprises willed by him, he has been successful, and to-day, beholds himself the possessor of a competency amply sufficient for any purpose he may wish. Mr. Callender has never attached himself to any religious denomination, yet he inherits the Baptist faith from the paternal, and Methodist from the maternal parental heads. He has never joined a Lodge of any king. He is a member of the Public and High School Boards.
The History of Henderson County, Kentucky by Starling 1887 page 724-25;