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From the book entitled: Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri: a compendium of history and biography for ready reference
Editor: Howard Louis Conard
Publisher: The Southern history company, Haldeman, Conard & co., proprietors, 1901

Rhodes, Cecil B., prominently identified with real estate affairs in Kansas City, was born January 3, 1858, in Auburn, Indiana. His father, Captain M. L. Rhodes, was a native of Indiana, and his mother, Elizabeth E. Harmany, was born in Pennsylvania. Their son spent his boyhood days in his native State and attended the public schools. Having an ambition to start out in the world on his own account, and a belief in the future greatness of Missouri, Mr. Rhodes left his home in 1880 and removed to Lamar, in this State, where he engaged in the real estate and loan business. He was associated with George E. Boling for some time, and the eighteen years spent in Lamar were profitable ones. In 1893 Mr. Rhodes, seeking a wider field for his operations in the business world, located in Kansas City, Missouri, and has since been a resident there and a figure in the commercial world of which the metropolis of western Missouri is the center. In Kansas City he followed the same line of business and engaged in the real estate and loan features of financial affairs. He is at the head of the C. B. Rhodes Company, a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Missouri and carrying on a large and general real estate business in Kansas City and vicinity. Mr. Rhodes represents the interests of several Eastern and outside owners of Kansas City property and is the owner of a number of residence tracts which have been laid out profitably to himself and to the general improvement of the city. Farm lands are also handled by this company, the operations in this department alone being very extensive and covering every portion of Missouri. Mr. Rhodes was married in 1883 to Miss Sallie b: Finney, daughter of Captain W. H. Finney, of Boonville, Missouri. Captain Finney won his military title in the service of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and by a singular coincidence, Captain Rhodes, the father of the subject of this sketch, was an officer in the Union Army during the same civil strife. Mr. Rhodes, whose name appears in the introductory line, is one of the substantial business men of Kansas City. He is safely conservative in his methods, and yet exercises a degree of energy and force that has brought success and liberal reward. He is a member of several organizations which attest a social popularity that is in keeping with his standing in the business world.