Daniel Lester Mowrey of Wayside is a man of extensive experience in the oil districts of the Southwest, and is manager of oil production in this part of Kansas.
His ancestors came originally from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania. The family as a whole has furnished its male members chiefly to the mechanical trades and professions, and the family record is a very worthy one. Mr. Mowrey was born at Emerickville, Pennsylvania, January 20, 1885, and having only recently passed his thirtieth birthday has the promise of many years of usefulness before him. His father, W. H. Mowrey, was born in Pennsylvania in 1844, and died at Emerickville in 1907. His active career was spent as a farmer and stock raiser. As a democrat he was entrusted with a number of township offices, and was also a liberal supporter of the Methodist Episcopal Church. W. H. Mowrey married Catherine Ishman, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1859 and died at Emerickville in 1904. Daniel L. Mowrey of Wayside is their oldest child. The others are: Theodore, a machinist at Sharon, Pennsylvania; Clyde, also a machinist at Sharon; Amor, a steel worker at Sharon; Alvin, who assists his brother Daniel at Wayside; Raymond, still in school at Spartansburg, Pennsylvania. W. H. Mowrey’s first wife was a Miss Hunsinger. Her children were: Charles, who is machinist in a paper mill at Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania; Hermann, a farmer at Emerickville; Michael, a farmer at Maysville, Pennsylvania; George, an engineer at Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania; and Mary, wife of Charles McMillan, who is connected with a tannery at Reynoldsville.
Daniel L. Mowrey received his early education in the public schools of his native town in Pennsylvania. He called his education in the common schools completed at the age of sixteen, but in 1903 took a general course in a business college at Reynoldsville. Thereafter for seven years he was in a store at Russell City, Pennsylvania, but in 1910 came to the Southwest and found employment in the Oklahoma oil fields. He was an oil pumper and tool dresser in Oklahoma, but since moving to Wayside, in 1915, has become a successful manager, and now handles the fourteen producing wells of the firm of Lucas & Wiles. Mr. Mowrey is independent in politics and is affiliated with Wayside Lodge, No. 660, of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He is unmarried.