Frank E. Mossman, A. M., D. D. One of the institutions which in thirty years of existence had sent hundreds of well-trained and efficient Christians and citizens into the life of Kansas is the Southwestern College at Winfield, of which Frank E. Mossman had been president for the past twelve years. Mr. Mossman is an educator of wide experience and thorough training and had been very valuable to Southwestern College on the administrative side.
He was born at Urbana, Iowa, August 26, 1873. The Mossman family were originally Scotch, went from that country to Ireland, and Mr. Mossman’s great-grandfather immigrated across the ocean and settled in Pennsylvania. The grandfather, William Mossman, was born in Pennsylvania in 1803, and became a pioneer farmer in Iowa. He died at Vinton in that state in 1889. He had three sons who were soldiers in the Civil war, named George, A. P. and Frank. A. P. Mossman is now living retired at Oklahoma City.
David C. Mossman, father of Doctor Mossman, was born in Illinois in 1848 and died at Sioux City, Iowa, in March, 1915. He was reared and married at Urbana, Iowa, and for a long period of years was a substantial farmer and influential citizen in that locality, but spent his last days in Sioux City. He was a republican, a member of the official board for many years of the Methodist Church, and belonged to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He married Mary Cross, who was born in Indiana in 1852 and died at Sioux City, Iowa, in 1911. There were six children: Col. Eugene D., who is connected with the Government Indian Agency at Sisseton, South Dakota; Frank E.; Bessie I., who died at the age of five years; Fred G., a farmer at Marcus, Iowa; h. L. Mossman, an attorney at Omaha, Nebraska; and Nina B., wife of Dale W. Heskett, a farmer at Cardington, Ohio.
Frank E. Mossman attended the public schools of Urbana, Iowa, and in 1893 graduated from the Tilford Academy at Vinton. He alternated between teaching and other lines of occupation for a number of years, and finally completed his higher education in Morningside College at Sioux City, where he was graduated A. B. in 1903. In 1905 that college awarded him the degree Master of Arts. Doctor Mossman had a year of post-graduate work in the University of Chicago, and in 1905 he received the degree Doctor of Divinity from the University of Upper Iowa. In the meantime he had taught in the public schools in Northwestern Iowa for five years. On August 10, 1905, he accepted his present post as president of the Southwestern College at Winfield.
Southwestern College was established in 1886 under the auspices of the Southwest Kansas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Through good times and bad the institution had held its own and had always been performing its share in the wholesome training of Kansas young people for the higher and better things of life. The college campus is situated a mile and a half northeast of the center of Winfield. The original building, North Hall, now had the four science departments and the academic department, while a newer building, Richardson Hall, erected in 1911, furnishes the administration headquarters.
Mr. Mossman is a republican in politics. He was ordained an elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago in 1904. He belongs to the Masonic order, was formerly a member of the Modern Woodmen of America, and belongs to the Honorary Greek Letter Debating Society Phi Delta Kappa. Among other interests Mr. Mossman owned a 320-acre farm in North Dakota.
In 1896 at Larchwood, Iowa, he married Zoa Foster, daughter of B. F. and Eliza (Flanery) Foster. Her mother died at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mossman at Winfield in January, 1917. The father now resided at Bottineau, North Dakota, being a farmer there. Doctor and Mrs. Mossman have four children: Mereb, born December 1, 1905; Benita, born in 1907; and Hobart and Homer.