Henry G. Gabel

HENRY G. GABEL has been a resident of Larned since 1904, and has given that city its chief importance as a flour milling center. On coming to the city in 1904 he bought the Keystone Mills of H. M. Holloway. These mills had been established about twentyt-wo years before, and the machinery had been industriously at work turning out flour and meal products through all that time and it was a very profitable institution. Mr. Gabel is an old and experienced miller, having learned the trade when a boy back in Pennsylvania, and on purchasing the Keystone Mills he rebuilt the entire plant and put in many perfected processes and appliances. After it was rebuilt the plant's capacity was increased from 125 barrels per day to 500 barrels.

Mr. Gabel comes from an old and historic section of Pennsylvania, Berks County, where he was born July 5, 1846. His people have lived in that county for upwards of two centuries. His paternal father, John Gabel, married Lizzie Schantz. Their children comprised six sons, named Henry, John, Jacob, Frank, Abraham and David, and four daughters, Susan, Betsy E., Kate and Maria.

David Gabel, father of Henry G., was born in the same township of Berks County as his son Henry, and after a long and industrious life died in 1878, at the age of seventy-one. He was both a miller and farmer, and established the mill in his section of Berks County in which Henry G. Gabel served his apprenticeship. He was a loyal and devout member of the Mennonite Church, and in politics merely voted his sentiments as a republican. David Gabel married Mary Gabel, of a branch of that family perhaps remotely connected far back in its history. Mary Gabel was a daughter of Jacob Gabel, who in turn was a son of Henry or Heinrich Gabel, who came to Pennsylvania in 1734 and probably as an emigrant from Holland. One branch of the Gabel relationship first settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania, but Henry Gabel's widow moved into Colebrookdale Township of Berks County when her son Henry was a child. Jacob Gabel married Catherine High, a name Americanized from Hoch, the German form. Jacob Gabel spent his life as a farmer and miller. Many of the family were business men, were peaceable and peace makers, and of the Mennonite faith. Jacob and Catherine Gabel reared the following children: Henry, Jacob, John, Betsy, Magdalena, Susan, Hannah, Mary and Barbara. David and Mary Gabel had the following children: Hannah, who married Daniel Leidy; Ephraim; William; Lavina; Elizabeth, who became the wife of John H. Boyer and died in Pennsylvania; Catherine, who married H. Y. Harbold; Henry G.; David, who died at Boyertown, Pennsylvania; Jacob, who died at the same town; and Daniel G., who is a resident of Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Henry G. Gabel grew up on his father's farm in Berks County, was well educated in the local schools, and he learned all the technical side of milling in his father's establishments. He has known hardly any other business since he was nineteen years of age. At the age of twenty-two he and his brother Ephraim bought their father's old mill, and he continued an active factor in its management until he removed to Kansas thirteen years ago.

Mr. Gabel was married in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in October, 1872, to Miss Emma Landis. Her father, Samuel H. Landis, was of German ancestry, and the Landis family is a very large one in Berks County. Samuel was a tanner and farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Gabel have reared a family of very capable children. Annie, the oldest, is the wife of Wallace Updegrove, of Berks County, and has one son; Elizabeth married Doctor Hawk, of Anthony, Kansas; Mary is the wife of Lew Edwards, of Larned, and has a daughter, Emily; Landis, who lives at Norristown, Pennsylvania, has a son Richard by his marriage to Edna Bowman; Harry is manager, secretary and treasurer of the Keystone Milling Company at Larned, and by his marriage to Gertrude Wren has two children, Marshall Wren and Emily Lucile; Eden, also connected with the Keystone Milling Company, married Mabel Hartman and has daughters named Henrietta and Florence, and a son, Henry George.

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