US Congressman. He was born one of six children (he also had four brothers and one sister) in Salem, Illinois, to Henry Woodford Vursell and Nancy I. Young Vursell, and while growing up he attended the local public and common schools in Marion County, Illinois. After completing his education he became a hardware merchant in 1904. On April 18, 1904, he married Bessie Ada Brasel in Marion County, Illinois, and the couple would have two children (Charles Eugene was born in 1906 and Harold D. was born in 1908). He then became the Sheriff of Marion County, Illinois, and he served in that position from 1910 to 1914. He was then elected as a Member of the Illinois State House of Representatives and he served the 42nd District from 1914 to 1916 (another source says 1915 to 1918). He became involved in newspaper publishing and he founded the Salem Republican Newspaper based in Salem, Illinois, and he published it from 1916 to 1948. He then decided to run for a seat in the United States Congress and was elected. A Republican, he then served Illinois's 23rd and 24th Districts (Seventy-Eighth and to the seven succeeding Congresses) in the United States House of Representatives from 1943 to 1959. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Eighty-Sixth Congress in 1958. While serving in the United States Congress he served on the appropriations committee and was known as a staunch conservative who voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. After his term in the United States Congress expired on January 3, 1959, he was succeeded in office by United States Representative George Edward Shipley. After his retirement from public service, he lived out his final days at a nursing home in Salem, Illinois, passing away there on September 21, 1974, at the age of 93. His funeral was held at the Bowman Funeral Home in Salem, Illinois, and he was buried in the East Lawn Cemetery in that same city. His wife Bessie passed away less than two months later on November 6, 1974, at the age of 91, and she was buried with her husband. He was a lifelong member of the Freemasons and the Elks. His cousin was Carl Albert who was a United States Representative from Oklahoma from 1947 to 1977 and the 46th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977.