Biography of Harvey L. Brammell

Harvey L. Brammell owns one of the finest farms in Jefferson County, adjoining the Village of Ozawkie, and for many years had been engaged in the ministry of the Church of the Brethren and had achieved the highest rank, the office of bishop.

The locality where he now lives was also the scene of his birth. Mr. Brammell was born October 4, 1871, and his people were early settlers in Jefferson County. The Brammells came out of Germany and were early settlers in Pennsylvania. His grandfather, Reuben Henry Brammell, was born in 1815, and from Pennsylvania moved to Wabash, Indiana, where he followed farming and where he died in 1886. Henry Brammell, father of Harvey L., was born at Frankfort, Kentucky, February 9, 1842, but when a child moved with his parents to Clinton County, Indiana. He grew up and married there and soon after his marriage came to Jefferson County, Kansas, where he located in 1864, during the Civil war. He first bought a farm of forty acres west of Ozawkie, but selling that place for $700 he bought another forty acres east of town and after five years sold that property and then bought eighty-seven acres 2 1/2 miles east of Ozawkie. He was actively engaged in farming on the last-named farm for twenty-two years. He then disposed of his farm and purchased 100 acres adjoining Ozawkie on the cast. That fine property remained in his possession and under his management until his death, which occurred October 11, 1913. He was a democrat in politics and an active supporter and deacon of the Church of the Brethren. Henry Brammell married Sarah Holler, who was born in Indiana in 1844 and died at Ozawkie in 1892. They had a large family of children: N. W. Brammell, who had the leading general merchandise store at Ozawkie; Martha, who died at the age of two years; Elizabeth Frances, living at Colorado City, Colorado, widow of E. D. Root, who was a minister of the Church of the Brethren and died at Newton, Kansas; D. F., a stock buyer who died at Ozawkie at the age of twenty-eight; George, who died at the age of eight years; Harvey L.; Edward, a resident of California; Catherine, who died at the age of seven years; Ettie, who died at twenty-three, the wife of Paris Hertzler, an Oklahoma farmer; John W., a farmer at Paola, Kansas; and Minnie, wife of George Mariner, a railway employe at La Junta, Colorado.

Harvey L. Brammell spent his boyhood on his father’s farm near Ozawkie, attended the public schools in that town, and at the age of eighteen left home to begin work for the Southern Pacific Railway Company. He was employed for fifteen months in that company’s service, with headquarters at Los Angeles, California. After that western experience he returned to Ozawkie and took up farming, which he had followed actively for many years, though oecasionally assisting his brother N. W. in the mercantile business. Mr. Brammell’s fine farm of 145 acres adjoins the Town of Ozawkie on the north and extends along the entire northern boundary. It had an excellent situation and under his management is cultivated on the diversifled principle, both as a stock and crop proposition. Mr. Brammell had for years successfully handled eattle, hogs and horses.

He was reared in the faith of the Church of the Brethren and had long served it as a minister, and as bishop he had the supervision of a number of churches in this part of the state. Politically he is a democrat. Mr. Brammell was married at Ozawkie in 1891 to Miss Judith Harnish, a daughter of Elias and Barbara (Haus) Harnish, both now deceased. Her father was a Jefferson County farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Brammell have six children: Guy H., who lives on his father’s farm and is also a minister of the Church of the Brethren; Everet W., principal of the public schools at Ozawkie; Cora, living at home with her parents and a teacher in Jefferson County; Ira, a graduate of the Oskaloosa High School and now teaching in Jefferson County; Roy, in the junior class of the Ozawkie High School; and Iva May, in the eighth grade of the Ozawkie public schools.