Sunday's Obituary - Frank R. Vestal

Tonight's obituary post is a two-for-one deal.  I have 2 obituaries for my great-grandfather, Frank R. Vestal.

What I know about my great grandfather:

Frank R. Vestal was born on Feb. 1, 1904 in Longton, Elk, Kansas.  He married my great-grandmother, Ruby Irene VanRoyen on August 3, 1923.  Together they had 3 children, but only 2 survived.  One of their sons only lived 5 days. Ruby died in May 1929.  He remarried to Eleanor Marie Baker on Feb. 2, 1931 also in Longton, Kansas.  They had 4 children, however one died at birth.  According to Census records, he lived in Elk County, Kansas all but the last 10 years or so of his life before dying on January 23, 1972 in Dodge City, Ford, Kansas, and a brief residence in Chautauqua County, Kansas between 1920 and 1930.  Below are two obituaries I have for him.

Transcription for the above obituary:

FRANK R. VESTAL

DODGE CITY, Kan - Services for Frank R. Vestal, 67, employe of Ford County Highway Department, will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Hulpiett-Swaim Funeral Home. Burial will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in Longton (Kan.) Cemetery. He died Sunday. 

Born at Longton, he came to Dodge City about 10 years ago.

Survivors include his widow, Marie; three sons, Francis E., Salina. Kan., Ralph Jr., Dodge City, and Gary R., Denver; two daughters, Mrs. Chet Harris, Amarillo, Tex., and Mrs. Wilbur Persinger, Longton, and two brothers, Nathan and Garrett, and a sister, Mrs. Frank Kimzey, all of Longton.

Transcription of the above obituary:

Frank R. Vestal

Frank R. Vestal, 66, of the Prairie Village trailer court, died Sunday evening in Trinity Hospital, after a very brief illness. He was born Feb. 1, 1904, at Longton, in Elk county, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Hilary Vestal.

Mr. Vestal grew up in Elk county and lived there, where he was a farmer and stockman, until about 10 years ago. He and Miss Marie Baker were married Feb. 2, 1931, at Longton.

They moved to Dodge City about 10 years ago. Here, Mr. Vestal was employed by the county highway department.

He was a member of th Dodge City First Christian Church and of the Masonic Lodge of Elk Falls.

Survivors include the widow; three sons, Francis of Salina, Ralph Jr. of Dodge City and Gary R. of Denver, Colo.; two daughters, Mrs. Chet (Lois) Harris of Amarillo, Tex., and Mrs. Wilbur (Marjorie) Persinger of Longton; two brothers, Nathan and Garrett, and a sister, Mrs. Frank Kimsey, all of Longton; 14 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

The Funeral has been set for 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Hulpiet-Swaim Funeral Home chapel with Sheldon Thomas, minister, officiating. Burial with Masonic graveside rites, will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Longton cemetery.

Rainy Day Saturday Genealogy

It's been raining off and on all day today, including the thunderstorm that woke me up at 5am this morning.  I did get back to sleep, only to wake up again around 8am.  I decided to stay up since I had agreed to help my grandmother fix her computers and show her some of the documents and photos I've gathered recently on her side of the family tree.  That's been postponed until tomorrow though.

I did make some progress today in my RootsMagic database.  I sourced the marriages of my great aunt Ozella Lee Hazlett and her husband.  I also sourced the marriage of my 2nd great-grandfather Hillary F. Vestal and 2nd great-grandmother Malvina Chappel, and the marriage of my 3rd great-grandfather Alexander Vestal and Delanah Gross.  Another marriage I sourced was of my 3rd great-grandfather, Moses Chappel and his wife Kissiah Swaim.  I've been slowly making progress catching up on my source citations in my database.

I was browsing ancestry.com earlier, and I found city directories for my great-grandfather Ralph Leo Hazlett and my great-grandmother Lois Lavon McDonald (with both Ralph Hazlett in 1942 and her 2nd husband in 1954) and add residence entries for each with source citations for them.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon.

It's been awhile since I've gotten a chance to write a post here.  Working full time sometimes has the downside of not having enough time for my genealogy addiction.

Today I was thinking I would check the stats and see some of the searches that have brought people to my blog in the last 30 days.  There's only a few but it's still pretty neat to see that people are being directed here through searching for things.

Here are the search keywords from the last 30 days or so:

hillary vestal longton kansas - I wish I knew who this person doing the search was, as this is my great-great-grandfather and perhaps we are somehow related.

mygenresearch.blogspot.com - Wonder if this one was typed in the search bar instead of the address bar instead?

tackling brick wall - I've managed to do this a few times since August when I got back into my genealogy research again.

to my great great grandfather - I wonder who your great great grandfather was?  One that we share as a common ancestor perhaps?

Thriller Thursday: Sexton C. Vestal

My great-granduncle Sexton C. Vestal was born in 1879 and died in 1923, at the age of 43.  During the 43 years of his life, there are at least 2 major accidents that I know of, the 2nd one was the cause of his death.

The first incident, I was able to find a description of through an old news article printed in The Sedan Lance on July 16, 1896 describing the accident.  In July of 1896, he was bringing a hay rake from one field to another on his father's farm.  While coming down a hill, the horse ran away, turning the rake over on him hurting him internally.

I received a copy of a letter, sent to me by a distant cousin in the Vestal lines.  The letter was sent from Hillary Vestal to his mother Delanah (Gross) Vestal.  He wrote it in October of 1896 and it confirmed the accident, mentioning that Sexton was badly hurt on the 6th of July.  According to my great-great-grandfather Hillary Vestal, Sexton was just getting able to return to school in October and his accounting of the hay rake accident was that a horse had run away with him  and threw my great-granduncle Sexton against a tree.  The letter says that Sexton had been close to death for several days, but given the great care he had been given and a good doctor, he was able to "get up one more time".

The second accident was the fatal one.  My great-granduncle owned a coupe that had to be crank-started.  On January 25, 1923, farmers found his body crumpled under his own car at the bottom of a hill a few miles from Winfield, Kansas.  Apparently, the car either died or was stopped on an incline and he had to get out to hand crank it to get it to start.  When it did start, it ran him over, dragging him to the bottom of the hill and killing him.  According to the article, Sexton's wife and relatives were notified by phone of the accident and they were going to go into town to claim the body.

Found a great deal on eBay

I came across a book the last time I was at the Wichita Public Library regarding the history of Elk County, Kansas.  This is where my grandfather and great-grandfather on the Vestal side were born and where my great-great-grandfather Vestal moved in the late 1880s.  Well, I wanted to get a copy of the book for myself, however everywhere I looked for used books showed a minimum price of about $75 all the way up to a price of around $120.  This was a bit out of my budget so I put it on the back burner so to speak.

That is until I checked eBay the other morning.  I was going through my email and found an alert for a search I saved at ebay.com for Elk County Kansas and there before me was a listing for the book "Elk County: A Narrative History of Elk County and Its People" for only $29.95!  I clicked through to see if it was still there for purchase and sure enough it was.  So now I am eagerly awaiting my copy of this book which will be my first genealogical book in my personal collection.