Gilbert Beagel held a variety of jobs, including working as a barber, a Motorman for a streetcar company, and running a Surrey service. Beagel married Laura Margaret Rogers in 1917. The couple moved to Springfield, Missouri where Beagel repaired locomotives. In 1921 the couple and their children moved to Alta Vista, Kansas. The couple had seven children – Joseph Dwight (1918), Eleanor (1921), Frank Donald (1922), Robert (1926), Norma Jean (1928), Virginia Louise (1931), and James Harris. The family bought a 160 acre farm near Wilsey, Kansas in 1930 – at the beginning of a decade long drought. The family’s correspondence and documents (especially "Bob’s Book') provide documentation on events in Kansas from daily economic and agricultural situations to the Civilian Conservation Corps and World War Ii. Much of the correspondence relates to Virginia Beagel, who fell off a horse as a child and lost the use of one arm. She was hospitalized several times for rehabilitation and petitioned her high school for better services to students with disabilities. She died in 1949 at the age of 18 from an infection resulting from surgery.