Loomis Burrell, vice president of D. H. Burrell & Company, Incorporated, one of the leading industrial concerns of Little Falls, was born in this city on the 31st of July, 1872. He is the son of the late David H. Burrell (founder of the company, whose biography appears on another page of this work) and his wife, Louisa (Loomis) Burrell. Mrs. Burrell is the daughter of the late Judge Arphaxed Loomis of Little Falls, a well known jurist of his day. She was born at Little Falls on the 11th of February, 1843, and remained a lifelong resident of her native town, where she passed away on the 30th of April, 1924, when eighty-one years of age.
Loomis Burrell grew to manhood in his birthplace, where he obtained his early education in the local schools. Later he entered the Pennsylvania Military College at Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with honor and with the degree of Bachelor of Science in 1892. The following two years he spent at Yale University of New Haven, Connecticut, from which institution he received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy as a member of the class of 1894. He was appointed laboratory assistant and returned to Yale the next year to instruct in analytical chemistry. Shortly after finishing college Mr. Burrell became associated with his father in the dairy machinery and supply business in Little Falls and Rome, New York, and Brockville, Canada. Following the death of his father in January, 1919, the business was incorporated and he became vice president of the company. The enterprise of D. H. Burrell & Company is not only one of the chief industries of Little Falls, but it holds a place of leadership wherever dairying is conducted on an up-to-date basis or dairy machinery and supplies are sold. Its officers hold positions of great responsibility and trust and must be men of outstanding ability in order to maintain the high standards for which the name "Burrell" is a synonym.
Mr. Burrell has not devoted himself exclusively to this single enterprise, important as his connection therewith has been. Other industrial and financial organizations have also offered him an outlet for his energy and capital. Since 1905 he has been a director in the First National Bank & Trust Company of Utica. He is also a director of the Mohawk Valley Paper Company and the Burrows Paper Company. Like his distinguished father, he has been public spirited in support of various civic and patriotic movements, giving generously of his time and attention, as well as financial assistance. During the war he was of assistance in floating the Liberty Loans in Herkimer county. He was interested in the work of the American Red Cross and is at present chairman of the Little Falls Chapter. Among the local institutions that have benefited from his assistance and support is the Little Falls Public Library, of which he is the president. Mr. Burrell is a Presbyterian and an elder in the First Presbyterian church of Little Falls, an office that his father filled for nearly fifty years. Since 1908 he has been a director of the Auburn Theological Seminary at Auburn, New York. Politically he ranks as a member of the republican party, but he has never sought an active public career. In 1908 he was appointed by Governor Hughes a manager of the State Training School for Girls at Hudson, New York. For five or six years he was a member of the board of fire and police of Little Falls. Mr. Burrell has been an enthusiastic horseman and is fond of hunting, fishing and playing golf as the occasion and season offer. One of his hobbies is photography, in which he has obtained some excellent results as an amateur. His social clubs are the Little Falls Country Club and the Yale Club of New York city. It is not always given to men to carve out their own destinies and instead of making his own pathway in business and professional life, many a person is called upon to continue the work begun by another. This has been notably true of Loomis Burrell. While his father's exalted position as a manufacturer and capitalist undoubtedly offered him opportunities that seldom come to young men born into less prosperous circumstances, the same opportunities carried with them inhibitions and responsibilities that another man would not have been required to assume. Mr. Burrell stepped out of college into his none too easy position with courage and determination to succeed, even as his father and grandfather had been successful men in their day and generation. As the years have gone by he has taken more and more responsibility in the management of the great organization of which he is now the vice president, while in other fields of activity he has ever acted in a manner worthy of the high ideals and traditions he inherited. The best measure of his success in all the relationships of life is determined by the general esteem that is today accorded him.
At Ithaca, New York, on June 20, 1912, Mr. Burrell was united in marriage to Miss Lois Watson Wing, daughter of Professor H. H. and Lillian (Watson) Wing of Ithaca, the former a professor in Cornell University, where he heads the department of animal husbandry. He was born at Willow Brook, near Poughkeepsie, New York, and his wife is a native of Clyde, Wayne county. Mrs. Burrell was born near Clyde on August 24, 1887, and is an alumna of Cornell, class of 1909, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Two years later she obtained her Master's degree at the same institution. Mrs. Burrell is a bacteriologist by profession and at the time of her marriage was teaching that subject at Cornell and carrying on research work. As a hobby she has taken up landscape painting and her friends have been enthusiastic over her work. Mr. and Mrs. Burrell have three children: Lillian Wing, born June 12, 1913; Elizabeth Loomis, born April 22, 1915; and Jean, born December 12, 1919. All are natives of Little Falls.