Gates Orr

Gates and his first wife, Lorinda, moved with his widowed mother and siblings to Wayne Co., IL about 1853 where Lorinda died in 1863. He married Mary Jane BEST in 1864 in Wayne Co., IL. In the fall of 1878, after a few years in Wisconsin, Gates and Mary Jane moved to Sumner Co., KS and bought the farm on which the ORR family lived for the next 120 years, bringing three of the children from his first marriage - Lorinda Estella “Stella”, Joseph Hyram and Olive Ruth, and the first three born to him by Mary Jane - Mary Best, Fred Calvin and Frank Gates. Also with the family was May D. ORR, believed to be the illegitimate daughter of Estella, who was raised as a daughter of Gates and Mary Jane. George Russell ORR was born to Gates and Mary Jane in 1880. Family information was that he died on December 10 and that's the date used on the tombstone erected in 1994, but the following two obituaries indicate that he died on a Tuesday and in 1905 Tuesday was on December 12. From the Conway Springs Star, December 1905: Another old settler of Sumner County and citizen here for 27 years has gone to his eternal home. Gates Orr died at his home southwest of Conway Springs about 8 o’clock Tuesday evening. He has been very feeble for a long time and died at the ripe old age of about 80 years. Gates Orr has experienced all the struggles and triumphs incident to the settlement and development of this country, and as a splendid citizen and good neighbor he will long be remembered. The funeral will be this Thursday afternoon, Dec. 14 at his home, and it will be conducted by Elder Broadus of Belle Plaine. Gospel Advocate, January 11, 1906, page 26: Brother Gates Orr died at his home three miles southwest of Conway Springs, Kan., on Tuesday, December 12, 1905, aged about seventy-nine years. Funeral services were conducted at the home of Elder D. T. Broadus, of Belle Plaine, Kan., after which the remains were followed to the Spring Hill Cemetery by many sorrowing friends, to await the resurrection of the dead. G. M. Roach., Conway Springs, Kan