A. A. Gillispie

A. A. GILLISPIE is one of the few men who have succeeded in steering a certain and successful course on the sea of journalism, and for a number of years has conducted one of the leading papers in Northwestern Kansas. He is proprietor and editor of the Rexford News, and has conducted it for more than fifteen years.

Mr. Gillispie was born in Forest County, Pennsylvania, August 2, 1880, but has lived in Western Kansas since childhood. The Gillispie family came from Ireland and settled in Pennsylvania in colonial times. His grandfather, John Hayes Gillispie, spent his life in Pennsylvania as a farmer and died at Spartansburg in that state in 1888. J. H. Gillispie was the pioneer in Western Kansas and is still living in Thomas County. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1848, and all his life has been a farmer. He was reared and married in his native state, and in 1885 brought his family to Thomas County, Kansas. Besides his quarter section homestead he pre-empted 160 acres and lived on that half-section for fifteen years. Selling it, he bought another farm, and now has 480 acres well developed and highly improved, situated two miles west and two miles north of Levant in Thomas County. On this farm he has raised many good crops of wheat, but also places his dependence largely in livestock. He is an old-school republican and has held various township offices. J. H. Gillispie married Julia E. White. She was born in New York State in 1863, and died on the home farm in 1901. There were eight children. R. V., the oldest, is a homesteader and stock raiser at Siebert, Colorado. The next in age is A. A. Gillispie. Grace married William Imhof, a farmer at Guide Rock, Nebraska. Don E. died on the home farm at Levant, Kansas, in 1912. Roy is a member of the famous Eighty-ninth Division of the American Expeditionary Forces. He was on the firing line during the last days before the signing of the armistice, and is now in the advance with the army of occupation on German soil. Lura married Chan Wilson, a railway fireman living at North Platt, Nebraska. Clyde Myrle is with the Sandstorm Division in France. Just before the war broke out he was editor of the Brewster Herald, owned by his brother A. A. Gillispie, who is managing the property until Clyde Myrle returns from the war. The youngest of the children is Harry, still at home.

A. A. Gillispie attended the rural schools of Thomas County, and among other experiences of his early life taught school fourteen months, graduating from the Thomas County High School in 1903. In the meantime he had learned the printer's trade in an office at Colby, and also worked in a newspaper office at Atwood as foreman for one year. In 1904 he bought the Rexford News, which had been established the previous year, and has given his time and energies effectively to promoting its interests and building it up as the official paper of Thomas County. It is a republican paper, and has a circulation and influence all over Thomas and surrounding counties. Mr. Gillispie established the Brewster Herald, above referred to, on March 22, 1917.

Mr. Gillispie in addition to his duties as editor and publisher was for eight years and six months postmaster of Rexford under the administrations of Roosevelt and Taft. He is a straighforward[sic] republican in politics. He is also past grand of Rexford Lodge of Odd Fellows. Mr. Gillispie is unmarried.

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