Pages 394-395, transcribed by Carolyn Ward from History of Allen and Woodson Counties, Kansas: embellished with portraits of well known people of these counties, with biographies of our representative citizens, cuts of public buildings and a map of each county / Edited and Compiled by L. Wallace Duncan and Chas. F. Scott. Iola Registers, Printers and Binders, Iola, Kan.: 1901; 894 p., [36] leaves of plates: ill., ports.; includes index.



 

394 cont'd HISTORY OF ALLEN AND  

FRANK GAY.

FRANK GAY—The citizens of "the west side" in Iola township recognize no more industrious or worthy farmer than Frank Gay. He has been in Allen County more than thirty years, nearly all of which time has been spent in the vicinity of his present home. He was born near Montgomery Alabama, December 16, 1852, and is a son of

  WOODSON COUNTIES, KANSAS. 395

Jasper N. Gay. The latter left Alabama before the Civil war came on and passed that period in the State of Arkansas. He was born in Georgia in 1815 and was a planter's son. In 1869 he came to Allen County and located upon the Goforth place, west of Iola. He died there in 1871. His wife was Sarah Gilland who is residing with her son, Frank. Their children are: Frank Gay; Emma, wife of John H. Beahm; John Gay, of Hillsboro, California; George Gay, a soldier in the regular army and now in the Philippines; Jeff Gay of Colorado, and Edward Gay, of Washington.

Frank Gay went to school where school facilities were poor. He deplores the fact that his educational equipment is so scant and has a warmer side for a liberal education on this account. Labor has been his strong card and he has engaged in it persistently and unceasingly since his sixteenth year. For five years he was a wage earner on the farm and out of these earnings he purchased his first piece of land near the Neosho Valley school house. He purchased and disposed of another farm in the same section before he located in section 5, town 24, range 18. His present place was, only a few years since, an expanse of wild land fit only for the grazing of roaming herds and attractive to the eye of no man. Under the unyielding pressure of his industrious hand it blooms and blossoms and produces abundantly.

Mr, Gay was married May 18, 1880, to Eliza, a daughter of David Beahm. The issue of this marriage are: Earl, Josie, Willie, Charley, Orby and Ira.

Mi. Gay is a Prohibitionist with Democratic leanings—his ancestors having been Democrats—and is a member of the Advent church.


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