Orlando Beach Terrell (also spelled Turrell) was born on September 15, 1834, near Danbury, Connecticut, to Ephraim Turrell and Esther Higgins. His father was a shoemaker and farm laborer who owned $50 of personal property by 1860. The family moved to Carmel, New York, around 1842, and he grew up and attended school there. Around 1847, he began working at a general store. He married Harriet Smith on June 3, 1857, and they had at least two children: Robert, born around 1869; and Luella, born around 1871. He moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, around 1858, and he worked as a bookkeeper there.  

 

By 1870, he was working as a banker, and he owned $60,000 of real estate. According to an early biographer, in the early 1870s, he “retired from the [bank], to give his entire time and attention to realty investments and operations.” He moved to Paxton, Minnesota, in the 1870s. He supported the Republican Party, and he served as county commissioner from 1878 until 1882. He served in the state legislature several times in the 1880s and 1890s, and he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Congress in 1892. He retired in 1895 and settled in Redwood Falls, Minnesota. He died there on March 11, 1917.

 

Image: Orlando B. Terrell (The National Cyclopedia of American Biography)

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