Ray Carl

RAY CARL, a merchant at Long Island, Kansas, is a member of a family that were pioneers in Phillips County, and has lived there forty years.

Mr. Carl was only a boy when his parents came to Kansas and was born at Coldwater, Michigan, April 12, 1866. His father, P. J. Carl, who died at Long Island, Kansas, October 18, 1913, was born in 1839 in the Fourth District of Zeeland, Holland. He lived there to the age of seventeen, when he came with his mother to the United States. The family first settled in Wayne County, New York, and as a young man he went on west to Coldwater, Michigan, where he married and took up farming. In 1869 he went to the western frontier, locating at Saline County, Nebraska, and from his homestead in that locality moved in 1879 to Long Island, Kansas, and engaged in merchandising. He was one of the first merchants of Long Island, and long a man of prominence in affairs in that locality. He served two terms as commissioner of Saline County, Nebraska, was a republican and a member of the Masonic fraternity. P. J. Carl married Mary Wilcox. She was born in Coldwater, Michigan, in 1845, and died at Long Island, Kansas, in 1883. Her children were: Jennie Eiiza, who died at Long Island, wife of J. C. Watson, now a stock raiser at Phillippi, West Virginia; Ray; Cora, who died at Torrington, Wyoming, wife of Thomas L. Hughes, a retired farmer and stockraiser at Torrington; and Minnie, wife of Bert Lindley, a druggist at Riverton, Nebraska. P. J. Carl married for his second wife Miss Susan McArthur, a native of Michigan and now living at Long Island. She is the mother of three children: Jessie, wife of Lewis McCormick, a Presbyterian minister at Lincoln, Kansas; May, wife of Fred Bowman, a banker at Topeka, Kansas; and Francis, wife of Frank Ridenour, a stockman at Emporia.

Ray Carl was three years old when his parents moved to the Nebraska frontier, and was thirteen when they located at Long Island, Kansas. He received his education in these two localities, and left school at the age of seventeen. For thirty-seven years he was employed in mercantile lines at Long Island, and in 1915 bought his present general store on Washington Street, it being the leading store in that part of Phillips County.

Mr. Carl is a republican and has served as city clerk. He is a member of Almena Lodge No. 310, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and is clerk of the Long Island Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America. Besides his store Mr. Carl owns a farm of 120 acres six miles northwest of Long Island.

In 1890, at Riverton, Nebraska, he married Miss Anna Whiting, daughter of Charles and Kate (Peterkin) Whiting. Her parents now live at Snohomish, Washington, her father being a retired carpenter. Mr. and Mrs. Carl have two daughters: Hazel is the wife of Henry Hendricks, of Los Angeles, California; and Mina, now living with her parents, is the wife of Ernest Wright, who is with the United States forces engaged in the campaign in Northern Russia.

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