Dempster Nation Guinnip, from the Elmira Star-Gazette, Dec. 11, 1929.
A figure of distinction in the town of Spencer, New York, Dempster Nation Gunnip lived to the ripe old age of 92 and during his long life was active in a number of different areas in that town, serving as a member of the town Board of Education, township assessor and Overseer of the Poor. In 1896 he was elected as Village President of Spencer and would serve a one-year term.
Born on December 1, 1838, in the Tompkins County town of Dryden, Dempster Nation Guinnip was the son of George (1811-1891) and Laura Guinnip (1813-1887). Being the son of a successful cabinet maker and painter, young Dempster would study those trades under the tutelage of his father and after removing to Spencer with his family attended that village's "Old Red School House."
In 1861 Guinnip married Mary A. Bell (184-1896) and later had one daughter, Helen. For over fifty years afterward, Guinnip continued work as a house and carriage painter and maintained a fifty-plus-year membership on the Evergreen Cemetery Board in Spencer. Gunnip would also occupy several important local political offices in Spencer, including that of Town Assessor, Inspector of Elections, and was secretary of the Spencer Board of Education for over twenty years.
Noted as being "one of the firmest republicans in the village", Dempster Gunnip was elected as Spencer's Village President in 1896 and served one term (1896-97). He continued to take an active role in Spencer's civic affairs well into his nineties, serving as Town Overseer of the Poor and in February 1929 was elected as Secretary of the Evergreen Cemetery, having celebrated his 90th birthday the previous December. Widowed in 1896, Dempster Gunnip died at age 92 on March 20, 1931, and was interred alongside his wife at the Evergreen Cemetery.
From the Elmira Star-Gazette, December 18, 1928.
From the Topeka State Journal, February 23, 1921.
Longtime Kansas attorney Dempster Orville Potts is another man with that odd first name who ran for political office, in his case being the candidate for Kansas State Attorney General in the 1914 Democratic primary; a candidate for Kansas Governor in 1920; a candidate for state supreme court justice in the 1926 Democratic primary; and in 1936 was an unsuccessful aspirant for the U.S. Senate from Kansas. One of five children born to George and Elnora (Langley) Potts, Dempster Orville Potts was born in Taylorville, Christian County, Illinois on March 15, 1875.
Left motherless at just seven months old, Potts' early life and education largely remain unknown. Prior to attaining maturity, he resided in the Oklahoma Territory for a time before relocating to Pekin, Illinois, where his brother Albert practiced law. Deciding to become a lawyer himself, Potts began reading law in that city and also worked in a clothing store in the neighboring city of Peoria. Dempster Potts married in Peoria in April 1896 to Clara Elizabeth Meyer (1877-1950), to whom he was wed for over five decades. The couple would have seven children, Lynda Lenora (1897-1925), Emma Louise (1899-1975), Edna Belle (1902-1985), Dallas Meyer (1904-1955), Monroe Orville (1905-1974), Walter Dempster (1907-1982), and Daniel Eldon Potts (1915-1994).
Following his admittance to the Illinois bar, Potts and his wife removed to Kansas, settling in Atchison around 1898. He practiced law in that city for about five years before deciding to return to his old home in Taylorville, Illinois, where he operated a joint law practice with his older brother Rufus Monroe (1870-1948). Removing to Wichita, Kansas in 1906, Potts built up a law practice in that city that would see him hold "the position of counsel for numerous large business concerns", as well as making "an excellent record in general law practice."
After establishing himself in Wichita Potts became active in Democratic politics in the city, and in 1914 announced that he'd be seeking that party's nomination for Kansas state attorney general. Running in that year's primary, Potts lost that election in August 1914 but was undeterred, and in 1920 entered into the Democratic primary race for Governor of Kansas.
From the Wichita Daily Beacon, August 13, 1914.
One of three men vying for the nomination, Potts would lose that race to Jonathan M. Davis, who, in turn, would lose the general election to incumbent Republican Governor Henry Justin Allen. Potts experienced further defeat in the August 1926 primary when he was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Kansas State Supreme Court. A decade following that loss Potts set his sights on a seat in the U.S. Senate, and as an unsuccessful Democratic candidate in that year's primary "advocated the implementation of the Townsend Old-Age Pension Plan."
Dempster O. Potts continued in his Wichita-based law practice after his 1936 senate candidacy and died in that city on February 26, 1950, aged 74. His wife Clara survived him by less than a year, dying in November 1950. Both were interred at the Old Mission Cemetery in Wichita.
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