Identity, Telling the Story of Those Who Had No Descendants: Arthur L. Gorrell

I make an effort to tell the story of those family members who had no descendants. I don’t wish that they be forgotten. One such person was my husband’s great-uncle, Arthur Leonidas Gorrell.

Arthur was the youngest child of Amos Gorrell and Catherine “Cate” Elizabeth Shotts, who was born 27 February 1876 and died 19 April 1916.[1] My father-in-law, George Gorrell was just barely one years old and it’s possible he never met him.

Arthur married Millie Gillespie on 3 October 1903 in Marshall, Saline County, Missouri. It’s interesting that his license said he lived in Kansas City, Missouri and she lived in Blackwater, Cooper County, Missouri.[2] It is likely that was where he met her, as his parents lived in Blackwater at that time. Perhaps they attended school together even though he was three years older.

Taken in Blackwater about 1913

Three years prior to the marriage, Minnie lived in Blackwater with her parents, James Henry and Nancy Crockett Gillespie. She was twenty years old and single and no occupation was listed for her. Likely she helped her mother with her younger brothers and sisters.[3]

Arthur worked as a lineman and a foreman for the Kansas Gas and Electric Company and worked in Kansas City and Wichita.

At age 38, he lost his life when he fell 25 feet from a light pole at night. There had been a fire in the lightning arrest box from a lightning strike and he had just put it out. It was thought that high winds were the cause of his imbalance as he was descending the pole. From the news article, it stated “Mr. Gorrel [sic] was considered the Kansas Gas & Electric Company’s most careful lineman and always selected for the difficult jobs, Electric Superintendent C.B. Tingley said today.”[4]

His superintendent was also present and he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance to the Wichita hospital.[5] Hospital authorities pronounced his injuries were not “dangerous.”[6] The next day, that newspaper gave a different account, that he suffered from a concussion and died.[7]

Funeral services were held by Rev. Kitch at the Grace M.E. Church on 20 April, and his body was sent to Blackwater, Missouri for burial.[8]

Old Lamine Cemetery

At the time of his death, he and his wife lived at 1012 South Water Street.[9] City directories listed different addresses for them in Wichita from 1909 through 1911. It wasn’t uncommon for renters to change residences.

One of the news articles mentioned he had been president of the lineman’s union. I found his name listed in a union newspaper as one of the committee members planning a Labor Day celebration. He was a member of the Electrical Workers No. 144.[10]

His wife, Minnie, lived another forty years and had a successful life. She enrolled in the National Training School at Kansas City where she graduated as a deaconess[11]. This was a training school for deaconesses and missionaries and was located at the corner of East 15^th street and Denver Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri.

She was a bureau secretary for the Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, while working at the Methodist Deaconess Sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[12] At the hospital, she was the superintendent.[13] This sanatorium was located at 1605 E. Central Avenue.[14] During the meeting of the society in Rochester, New York in October 1926, she “gave a vivid picture of the work at Albuquerque, with its four buildings and forty-eight cottages, all modern, and every room full.”[15]

An ad for the sanatorium in Albuquerque stated “A modern sanatorium for the Tuberculous—Four large modern we-equipped buildings and fifty cottages surrounded by beautiful lawns and trees—Open to all physicians—Rates $50.00 to $75.00 per month medical care extra. Mrs. Minnie G. Gorrell, Superintendent.”[16]

The sanatorium closed in 1950 when the new Bataan Memorial Methodist Hospital opened. She lived with her sister, Helen Gillespie, who was a nurse at Presbyterian Hospital.[17] Later, she left Albuquerque and moved to Sedalia, Kansas, to live with her sister, Harriett Mabel (Mrs. R.W.) Oman, where she died 27 July 1956. The funeral was held at the Gillespie Funeral Home and let by Rev. Lee F. Soxman, pastor of the Fifth Street Methodist Church. She was buried in Lamine Cemetery near Blackwater, Missouri.[18]

There is a tombstone for Arthur L. Gorrell but I don’t seem to have one for Minnie. Perhaps her name was not inscribed on his when she was buried.

 #52Ancestors-Week 26: Identity: Telling the Story of Arthur L. Gorrell, Who Had No Descendants

This is my fifth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

---

[1] 1880 U.S. census, Cooper Co, Missouri, Blackwater, ED 130, p. 6b, family 45, Amos Gorrell; NARA T9, roll 682.

[2] Saline County, Missouri, marriage license record, v. 7, p. 243, Arthur Gorrell to Minnie R Gillespie, 1903; FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/007514069/), image 129.

[3] 1900 U.S. census, Cooper Co, Missouri, Blackwater, ED 43, p. 7b (stamped), family 133, J.H. Gillespie; NARA T623, roll 850. For her parents’ full names, see “Mrs. Minnie G. Gorrell,” The Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat, 29 Jul 1956, p. 4, col. 2.

[4] “Fall from Pole Kills a Lineman,” The Wichita (Kansas) Beacon, 19 April 1916, p. 12.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Fall off Tall Pole,” The Wichita (Kansas) Daily Eagle, 19 April 1916, p. 2.

[7] “Fall Kills,” The Wichita (Kansas) Daily Eagle, 20 April 1916, p. 5.

[8] Ibid.

[9] “Fall from Pole Kills a Lineman,” The Wichita (Kansas) Beacon, 19 April 1916, p. 12.

[10] “Labor Day: Celebration September 7, Prizes for the Babies, Athletic Sports, Etc,” Kansas Union Journal (Wichita, Kans), 29 Aug 1908, p. 1.

[11] “Mrs. Minnie G. Gorrell,” The Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat, 29 Jul 1956, p. 4.

[12] The Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Forty-fifth Annual Report for the Year 1925-1926 (Cincinnati: The Woman’s Home Missionary Society, 1926), 7.

[13] Ibid, 27.

[14] Ibid, 37.

[15] Ibid, 52.

[16] Diseases of the Chest, Jan 1940, 29, ad for Methodist Sanatorium. There are numerous issues of this journal with the ad in the 1930s.

[17] “Mrs. Gorrell, 76, Dies in Missouri,” Albuquerque Journal, 30 Jul 1956, p. 4.

[18] “Mrs. Minnie G. Gorrell,” The Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat, 29 Jul 1956, p. 4.

Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.