Bassett Family Association Database

Arthur Mallory Bassett

Male 1884 - 1963  (~ 78 years)


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  • Name Arthur Mallory Bassett 
    Born Mar 1884  Fort Totten, North Dakota Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    _UID 4C8B2D700AECC647B2D4ED401AFC6A5A0496 
    Died 1963  Tyler, Smith County, Texas Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Buried Dallas, Dallas County, Texas Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Notes 
    • Sometime during the 1930's, Arthur Bassett and Dorothy Brodie divorced. Arthur moved with his children, Ada and Charles, and for some time these two children lived with their uncle Donald Bassett in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. Later on these children returned to Texas to live with their mother. When Arthur Bassett remarried Allie they lived in Tyler, Smith County, Texas.

      All of the Bassett family, Donald, Josephine and Arthur graduated from Perkiomen Seminary in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. Ada Bassett worked there as a matron after her husband died. Many of the Potter and Spatz families graduated and also taught there.

      Arthur Bassett worked on the building of the Panama Canal. There is a family story that he was buried alive while working on the Canal and his story ended up in Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

      Indiana Evening Gazette
      Monday, December 14, 1908
      14 Killed on Canal
      Premature Discharge of Blast Plays Havoc on Panama Ditch
      Washington, December 14 - Fourteen are known to be dead, three of these Americans, and fifty injured, three or four seriously, as a result of the premature explosion of twenty-one tons of dynamite at Bas Obispo in the Panama Canal Zone.
      The following dispatch has been received from Chief Engineer Goethals by the chief of the Washington office of the Isthmian Canal Commission:
      "The premature explosion of twenty-one tons of dynamite at Bas Obispo resulted in the death of fourteen men and the injury of fifty. Three or four of the injured will probably die. Following Americans killed: James T. Hummer, craneman, steamshovel, Dunnellen, New Jersey; John J. Korp, steamshovel engineer, Phillipsburg, New Jersey; John J. Reid, powderman, Indianapolis, Indiana. Seriously wounded: Benjamin H. Cole, foreman, Rochester, New York. Slightly wounded: Arthur H. Bassett, foreman, Philadelphia; W.G. Bell, foreman, New York city; C.W. Hayden, steamshovel engineer, Sandusky, Ohio.

      Pitman Man, 85, Has a Way With Bikes
      August 18, 1972
      (Article includes three pictures)
      By Mary T. Wiser of the Times Staff
      Pitman - Donald M. Bassett claims he's not a successful loafer. That's the reason he has mastered five trades in his lifetime and, at the age of 85, has re-opened his bicycle shop on Holly Avenue.
      The senior citizen who went back into the bicycle business a year ago has some mighty new ideas about the "booming bicycle interest" and some new inventions for the industry.
      "When I had a heart attack back in the '60's, I wanted to sell out all my supplies but no one was interested. So I packed everything up in boxes and kept them in the cellar. When I wanted to open up again, I called some of my old suppliers and they wouldn't even talk to me. They said they are too busy and have a back log on their regular customers. They can't be bothered with me now that the bicycle business was blown up," Bassett said.
      In his cellar repair shop, he had created several inventions meant to make the repair of bicycle wheels easier. He has a patent pending on one and is planning to show another at the bicycle dealers' convention in Florida this winter.
      "I figure I can sell this one for over a million. When you think of how many millions of bicycles there are now and how the number of repair shops is growing, that wouldn't be much. After all, rebuilding wheels is the biggest part," Bassett said.
      His new shop is meant to center on a new idea in repair work. That is, he feels someone coming to him ought to be able to leave his shop in fifteen minutes with the bike in working condition. So he created the bicycle wheel exchange, which is the name he has given his shop.
      "But I've been too busy to really do it right. But we'll work into it more," he said. Bassett figures he could provide rebuilt wheels to replace broken ones at about the same price it would cost to repair a wheel and the customer wouldn't have to wait to use his bike.
      Bassett didn't get into the bicycle repair business until after he retired in 1953 from the PTC in Philadelphia where he was an electrician.
      "I sold real estate for about four years, then mortgages became hard to get and I wasn't ready to work for nothing," the octogenarian said. "I loafed for a few years until my daughter got me started fixing a bicycle," he said. "My daughter had taken a bicycle to be repaired and thought the price was outrageous. She said I could do it and so I got started," he added.
      Bassett said the first trade he mastered was that of a miller. He said he was 16 years old when he started helping his grandfather in a grain mill in central Pennsylvania. "By the time I was 15, I was a qualified miller," he said. The thin senior citizen said he was lucky when he was young and went to work for the railroad until the depression in 1907. He joined the Navy and went to a naval electrical school. He became an electrician for the railroad again after the war.
      "Then I got in debt and my brother was bragging about his oil wells out West, so I wrote and asked him for money. He told me to come work for him and he'd pay me $18 a day. That was good, so I went and became an oil well driller for three or four years," he said. After oil drilling came fruit farming in Glasboro where he bought a twenty acre farm. "I kept it during the depression and still sold some real estate," he added.
      Bassett said his repair business is interesting. "It's a matter of improving everyday because it's difficult to get parts sometimes but I like people and I get along with people," he said.
      The shop was enlarged to handle the new business. It is located adjacent to his home. His wife, Flora, who is 84, sometimes stops in the shop. The couple has two daughters, Mrs. Flora Yockel and Mrs. Ann Parke.
      Bassett said he's very thankful for help received from the M&S Store, Western Auto and Peddlers. They supply him with many items and, "without them and their great kindnesses, I couldn't be in business," he said.

      1900 Federal Census of Pennsburg Boro, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (20 Jun 1900)
      Ada Bassett (Wd) - 38 - F - Sep 1864 - PA-PA-PA - Head - Matron
      (5 children, 3 living)
      1900 Federal Census of Pennsburg Boro, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (19 Jun 1900)
      Arthur M. - 16 - M - Mar 1884 - ND-MD-PA - Student

      1920 Federal Census of Ardmore, Carter County, Oklahoma
      Arthur Bassett - 35 - M - ND-PA-PA - Head - Driller Oil Well
      Dorothy - 32 - F - CN-CN-CN - Wife
      Ada - 3 - F - CW-ND-CN - Daughter
      Charles - 11/12 - M - CW-ND-CN - Son
    Person ID I2857  1B John Bassett of Connecticut
    Last Modified 11 Jan 2013 

    Father Doctor Simpson Overton Bassett,   b. 22 Jun 1859, Maryland or Washington D.C. Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 4 Mar 1892, Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 32 years) 
    Mother Ada Potter,   b. Sep 1864, Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F790  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family 1 Dorothy Edna Margaret Brodie,   b. 1887,   d. Aug 1965, California Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 78 years) 
    Married Oct 1915  Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Divorced Yes, date unknown 
    Children 
    +1. Living
    +2. Charles Potter Brodie Bassett,   b. 13 Feb 1919, Killam, Alberta, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 29 Oct 1997, Smith County, Texas Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 78 years)
    +3. Hugh Arthur Bassett,   b. 28 Sep 1920, Ardmore, Oklahoma Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 30 Sep 1987, Riverside, California Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 67 years)
    +4. Living
    Family ID F1054  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family 2 Allie B. 
    Family ID F1261  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart