The Reverend F.F. Thomas

The reverend had attended Hedding College at Abington, Illinois where he was born in 1855. After completing his studies at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., Thomas went on to teach for a few years, but then he attended a school of theology and entered the Methodist ministry. In 1883, during the early settlement of Furnas County, Nebraska, Rev. Thomas was assigned to preach a circuit and pastor the Methodist church at Beaver City. It was here that he married Ella Francis Gilmore in 1884. Born at Greencastle, Indiana in 1858, Ella had been educated at Asbury University, now known as DePauw University. Her father had moved to Furnas County in 1878 and was joined by Ella and the rest of the family in 1880.

During Franklin and Ella’s time in Nebraska, a son and daughter were born to the couple, Forrest Lemon and Mable Clare. Rev. Thomas also became a trustee of Mallalieu University at Bartley, a church-affiliated institution of higher education that opened in 1886 and was named for Methodist Episcopal Bishop W.F. Mallalieu.

By 1888, Rev. Thomas and his family were in Colorado, and as a circuit preacher, he ministered the Burlington, Claremont and Lansing circuits. Two more sons, Frederick Gilmore and Frank Fleetwood, were born here. In 1891, Rev. Thomas accepted the call to the Methodist Episcopal church at Steele City, Nebraska, but he was back in Illinois serving the congregation at Ustick by 1896. He became identified with the Presbyterian Church, and in 1901, he left his charge at the Greenup, Ill. church for Kansas. His first assignment in the Sunflower State was pastoring the Presbyterian church at Neosho Falls. He would take turns at churches in Colony, Gallia and LeRoy before making his way to Lakin, accepting the call to the pastorate of the Lakin Presbyterian Church in the fall of 1907. While here, he and his family helped build the first Presbyterian manse, and the reverend also preached at the rural school in Fairview in the extreme northern part of Kearny County.

In 1910, Rev. Thomas gave up the pastorate at Lakin when he was appointed superintendent of missions for southwestern Kansas with headquarters at Garden City. In 1913, he was appointed by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions to lead the mission work among Mexicans at Taos, New Mexico. A man of strong conviction and always ready to help the needy, Rev. Thomas was greatly admired by the congregations he served and highly favored whether he was behind the pulpit delivering a sermon or bellowing out a favorite hymn.

The reverend passed away at Taos on July 4, 1921, and was buried in the historic Kit Carson Cemetery, a national historical site. This cemetery was established in 1847 as El Cemeterio Militar for the burial of American soldiers and civilians killed during the Taos Rebellion. By 1852, it was known as the American Cemetery and was then the only burial ground at Taos for non-Catholics. The cemetery became known as the Kit Carson Cemetery in May, 1869 when the bodies of Kit Carson and his wife were buried there.

After her husband’s passing, Ella Thomas returned to Lakin to be near family. She died September 6, 1929, and was buried in the Lakin Cemetery. According to a family member, an attempt was made to have Rev. Thomas’s grave removed to Kansas and buried beside Ella’s, but because the cemetery he is buried in is a historic site, the request was denied. Several generations of Reverend Thomas’s family have made Lakin their home.