Sunday Stories: Landis Correll

Excerpted from: One Hundred Years on the South Loup

Also coming in early spring (1880) was Landis Correll (pronounced Cor-ELL), an impoverished, unschooled Church of Christ preacher who had crossed the plains by wagon train from his native New York in 1849. Correll filed on the quarter joining Allen’s on the east – present Correll street marks the line between the two claims.

He was joined later by his wife, Martha, daughers, Frances (Gordon) and Lillian (Mrs. Frank Anson and son, Clarence. (The old yellow willow tree still standing in the lumber yard’s southeast corner was planted by Correll in the 1890’s west of his sod house.)

In a young man’s country, Landis Correll was old, sixty, shriveled, with a long white beard, but if any could be said to be the “father” of Arnold, it would be this good and kindly man. No matter what their faith, he served the people well, he married them, buried them and comforted them. The title of the last sermon he preached before his death in 1906 was “Can an old man be useful?”

Commentary: I especially love the quote above in bold. One never knows how significant an effect small kindnesses can have.