L. A. Winsor
L. A. WINSOR is superintendent of the city schools of Irving, and for a number of years has been identified with public school work in Marshall County. He is known as a very capable educator and stands high among the school men in the northern part of the state.
His people have been in Kansas for over forty years. His grandfather was born in England in 1837 and on coming to this country located first in Canada and from there moved to the State of Iowa, and in 1874 went to Thomas County, Kansas. After about a year he returned to Walker, Iowa, and subsequently retired and moved to the Hood River country of Oregon. He was a dairy farmer and also a teacher and saw active service in the Union army during the Civil war. He died at Hood River, Oregon, in 1902. He married Katherine Walker, who died at Walker, Iowa.
J. L. Winsor, father of the Irving educator, was born in Walker, Iowa, in 1861 and came with his parents to Kansas at the age of thirteen. Later he returned to Walker, Iowa, but as a young man located at Barnes, Kansas, where he was married and where he followed his trade as a carpenter. In 1895 he removed to Washington, Kansas, and engaged in business as a contractor and builder, a line he has successfully followed to the present date. He is a democrat, a member of the Presbyterian Church and is affiliated with the Masonic Order and the Eastern Star and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. J. L. Winsor married Hattie E. Hardin, who was born in Atchison County, Missouri, in 1863 and died at Washington, Kansas, in 1908. They were the parents of four children: Nellie, wife of R. S. McCullough, a Methodist Episcopal minister now at Elmont, Kansas; L. A. Winsor; Nettie, who died in infancy; and Alice, a stenographer, living with her father.
L. A. Winsor was born while his father and mother were at Barnes, Kansas, September 10, 1886. He spent most of his early life in Washington County, Kansas, and was graduated from the Washington High School in 1906. In the same year he began teaching in the rural schools of that county and for three years, from 1907 to 1910, was superintendent of the Haddam schools. Following that he combined farming and teaching district schools for a couple of years and in the fall of 1912 he entered the University of Kansas, where he pursued the classical course and where he was graduated A. B. in 1915 and at the same time was given a state teacher's certificate. From university Mr. Winsor entered upon his duties as superintendent of schools at Kensington, Kansas, and in the spring of 1917 came to his present post at Irving, where he has charge of the local schools.
Mr. Winsor is a member of the Marshall County and the Kansas State Teachers Association. He belongs to Washington Lodge No. 104, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Haddam Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Kensington Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America, and is a democrat and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
On June 1, 1910, at Palmer, Kansas, he married Miss Katherine E. Denman, daughter of J. N. and Ella (Kline) Denman. Her parents reside at Palmer where her father is a farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Winsor have two children: Louise. born October 27, 1914; and William Denman, born March 2, 1917.
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; transcribed 1997.