Reverend Cyrus Andrew Russell died at the age of ninety-five on February 5, 1946, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Leonard B. Bruner, in Wichita Falls, Texas. He was one of the last of the pioneers who preached in the school houses and brush arbors in our rural communities when there were no church buildings.

He was born in Graves County, Kentucky, September 22, 1850, a son of Reverend Thomas Sidney White Russell, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, and Mary Patience Cook Russell. His early years were spent on a farm with very little opportunity for schooling because of the Civil War.

He united with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1868 and joined the O'Brion [sic: Obion] Presbytery as a probationer in April, 1869. He entered Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1870, and was licensed to preach in October, 1872.

In December, 1872, he came to Texas and worked for the Texas & Pacific Railway Company and taught rural schools, helping with revivals in the country near Greenville in the summers. He assisted Rev. Mr. Nicholson in a meeting at Greenland Presbyterian Church [sic: Greenville Cumberland Presbyterian Church] there in the fall of 1873.

He married Miss Mary Jane Kiser on August 24, 1873. They worked together until her death in 1928.

Teaching school and preaching to small rural congregations did not support his family and he farmed in Hunt and Cooke Counties. Through the years he gave his time to poor and destitute groups, organizing several churches. In 1886, he joined Guthrie Presbytery. Later this Presbytery became known as Denton Presbytery and is now part of Fort Worth Presbytery. In 1900, he moved to the small town of Myra, in Cooke County, and organized a church from the pastorate of which he resigned after five years.

He retired from active ministry at the age of sixty-three because of failing health. They then lived near Gainesville until Mrs. Russell's death in 1928, when he moved to the home of his daughter, Mrs. Bruner in Wichita Falls.

He is survived by eleven children, seven sons and four daughters. These are: George F. Russell, Odessa; C. E. Russell and J. T. Russell, Amarillo; E. B. Russell, Oklahoma City; J. M. Russell, W. F. Russell, R. J. Russell, Gainesville; Mrs. Mary U. Aldridge, Dallas; Mrs. G. F. McWhorter, Buffalo Springs; Mrs. L. B. Bruner, Miss Ada Russell, Wichita Falls. Reverend Joe M. Russell, Dallas, is a nephew.

The funeral services were conducted by Reverend Karl F. Wettstone and Reverend William A. Cockrell, at Wichita Falls, and by Reverend E. F. McGaughey, in the First Presbyterian Church, Gainesville. Burial was in the Gainesville Cemetery.

Brother Russell's long life exemplified the spirit of Horatius Bonar's lines:

Go, labor on; spend and be spent,
   Thy joy to do the Father's will:
It is the way the Master went;
   Should not the servant tread it still?

[Source: Minutes of the Synod of Texas of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 1946, page 77]