A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume I, Part 93

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.)
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pubishing Company
Number of Pages: 645

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BENJAMIN H. HARPER. In point of set- tlement Benjamin H. Harper is one of the white pioneers of what is now Le Flore county, and as a resident of Poteau is one of its most substantial business men, land owners and influential citizens. His con- nection with the west began in his early youth, when the family, headed by his mother, came from Arkansas and took up her abode on the edge of the Choctaw country bordering on Sebastian county, that state. Hackett City, Arkansas, was the chief mecca or mart of trade for the neigh- borhood where they lived, and it was in that locality that the boy acquired his meager knowledge of books in a country school. and it was from that community as a young man that he migrated to the country around Kullychaha and established his first per- manent home.

Mr. Harper is a man of the west, his birth occurring in Columbia county, Arkan- sas, June 5, 1857. His father was William B. Harper, one of the ante-bellum settlers of that state and a farmer by vocation, who lost his life in the Civil war while in the service of the Confederacy. The

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elder Mr. Harper was a native of Ten- of the enterprises which contribute mod- nessee, and on the banks of the Cumber- estly .toward its importance as a factory city. He promoted the first cotton gin, and the first planing mill in the place was the result of his capital and enterprise. He has no ambition outside of the channels of business except in the care and educa- tion of his children, in which duty and pleasure he has the intelligent and living co-operation of his wife. He is a stanch Democrat, both from firm conviction and family tradition. land river he married Catherine Vicks, who died near Greenwood, Arkansas, Decem- ber 23, 1873. The children of their union were as follows: Elizabeth Smith, who died in Le Flore county, Oklahoma ; John, of Hackett City, Arkansas; Eliza, who married Samuel Appleton, of Locksburg, Arkansas; Mary, now Mrs. William Mor- ris, of Kullychaha, Oklahoma; William, of Dill, that state; Benjamin, of this review ; Susan, wife of John King, of Kullychaha, Oklahoma; Thomas and Winfield, twins, of Mulberry and Fort Smith, Arkansas, respectively ; and Samuel, also of the latter place.

Benjamin H. Harper secured very poor advantages in school and reached mature years with little knowledge of books. The family circumstances were such as to in- duce constant industry, and when he was left parentless by the death of his mother in 1873 he was forced to the responsibility of his own support. From 1873 to 1875 he was a wage worker on a farm, and from the latter year until 1882 he pursued agri- culture independently. He was then mar- ried and continued the same calling as a · renter or lessee for a few years, when he purchased a farm near Slaytonville, which he partially improved, and some years later bought another tract nearer Poteau. Sub- sequently he settled in the town of Poteau, where he has built a commodious and com- fortable home. He is now also the owner of several tracts of land near the county seat, and a fruit farm of about twelve acres has been developed on one of his properties in the vicinity.

All his efforts have brought to Mr. Har- per abundant success, and his farms con- tribute materially to the annual earnings of his other interests. He is a dealer in cattle and horses, both a feeder and shipper of the former, and his success in the live stock line marks him as one of the reliable business men of Poteau. In addition he has profitable banking investments, being a stockholder in both of the financial institu- tions of Poteau. While not an original citizen of Poteau, or a pioneer in its settle- ment, Mr. Harper has lent himself to some

On December 27, 1882, Mr. Harper mar- ried Miss Emily Enochs, a daughter of John Enochs, who came to Oklahoma from Mississippi in 1878. In the latter state he was a merchant, near Tupelo, where he married a Miss Logan. In Oklahoma he followed the vocation common to most new settlers, that of agriculture. The children born to Mr. and Mrs. Enochs are as fol- lows: Ernest, of DeQueen, Arkansas ; Jes- sie, wife of Henry Harrell, of Calvin, Okla- homa ; and Mrs. Benjamin H. Harper. Mr. and Mrs. Harper's family comprises Grace, Cecil, Cleo, Percy and Jessie Harper. Mr. and Mrs. Harper are members of the Pres- byterian church.

DR. JOHN B. WEAR is a well known physician of Poteau and health superinten- dent of Le Flore county. He has been practicing at this point since 1897, coming directly from Auburn, Sebastian county, Arkansas, where he was engaged in pro- fessional work for seven years. Dr. Wear is a native of Alabama, born in St. Clair county, in the month of September, 1855. Roton G. Wear, his father, was a native of east Tennessee, born in 1832, and was one of several brothers who passed their lives in Tennessee and Arkansas. Of these, Levater and Robert Wear died in Logan county, Arkansas; John M., in Polk county ; and Rev. Jefferson Wear was long engaged in the ministry in eastern Ten- nessee. Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil war the father migrated to Texas. He was a shoemaker by trade and enlisting in the Confederate army was detailed to the shoe manufacturing departments at Arkadelphia, Washington and Gilmer. A few years afterward he removed his family

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to Arkansas, dying near Mena in 1887. His last years were passed as a farmer in con- nection with the operation of a gin and mill. The elder Mr. Wear married Sarah E. Stevenson, who died in Polk county, in 1902, the mother of the following: Dr. John B., of this sketch; Thomas J., of Sallisaw, Oklahoma; A. E., of Polk county, Arkansas; Francis A., who resides in Salli- saw, Oklahoma ; Robert L., principal of the Red Oak (Oklahoma) schools; Mary T., who became the wife of S. C. Thorton, of Sallisaw; and Mrs. S. E. Cotton, also of that city.

Dr. Wear received his early mental train- ing in the public schools and afterward taught for ten years in the country districts, and while thus engaged he studied medical subjects so thoroughly that he was granted a permit to practice before he completed a regular course. He finally entered the med- ical department of the Arkansas Univer- sity at Little Rock and received his pro- fessional diploma and degree in 1888. He then located at Dallas, Arkansas, where he spent one year, and was then at Auburn, Sebastian county, where he continued in active practice until his removal to Poteau in 1897. Within the intervening decade he has established a substantial practice at this point and continues to be an active member of the County, State and American Medical Associations. In 1903 he took a post graduate course at the New Orleans Polyclinic, now a branch of the Tulane Uni- versity. Besides his large practice Dr. Wear is also part owner of a large drug house, the business of which is conducted under the name of the Noble-Bird Drug Company. In politics a stanch Democrat, he is now serving the public as superinten- dent of health of Le Flore county by ap- pointment from the Oklahoma commis- sioner of health. He is a Master Mason; an active member of the Church of Christ; a large property owner and in every way a substantial and influential citizen. On December 27, 1902, Dr. Wear was married in Sebastian county, Arkansas, to Miss Grace Gee.

MARK H. PACE, of Poteau, is a retired business man of Le Flore county and one

of the few living settlers of the early sev- enties. It was in 1874 that he located near where Cameron now stands, but there was no town there at that time, and he made his first home upon the farm which is now the property of Ben McBride. He brought his little family there in a wagon, being in- duced by the old Choctaw, T. D. Sexton, to locate upon a portion of the latter's land, and the erection of a log house there- on constituted his first Oklahoma home. During the fifteen years that Mr. Pace was identified with that community he was a grower of grain, cotton and stock, and his success provided him with a surplus cap- ital with which to engage in other enter- prises when the opportunity offered. In 1890 he left the farm and engaged in mer- cantile pursuits at Hackett, Arkansas, the firm of Johnson and Pace doing business there for the succeeding twelve years. He entered into the political as well as the busi- ness life of the town, and served as one of its aldermen for two terms. Hav- ing sold out his business, he left Arkansas in 1902 and returned to the Choctaw coun- try, locating at Hartshorne, Oklahoma. For nearly four years Mr. Pace was actively engaged in the hardware business at that point, and while there he joined Mr. H. S. Ferbrache in the organization of the Stigler Hardware Company at Stigler, Oklahoma in 1903, of which company he is president and a large stockholder. He disposed of his Hartshorne interests in 1906 and established his home in Poteau, Oklahoma, where he has erected a modest but comfortable cottage. He has many other pieces of valuable property in the county seat of Le Flore, among others some of the early store buildings and a few of the modern brick houses of the city. To these and other private interests he is giving his time and business abilities.

Mark H. Pace was born in Lincoln coun- ty, Missouri, October 30, 1852, and three years later his father. John C. Pace. took the family to Lavaca county, Texas. In 1857 they returned to Missouri, and thence back to McLennan county, Texas, in 1859. The father lived near Waco until 1868. farming and raising stock, when he re- traced his steps north to Arkansas and lo-

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cated in Sebastian county. He remained there until his son Mark had established himself in the Choctaw Nation, when he joined the latter and passed his last years in that locality, dying in 1898 at the age of eighty-two years. The father was born in South Carolina in 1806, leaving his na- tive state in 1827, becoming one of the pioneers of the territory of Iowa and spending two years in the lead mines at Dubuque. The family home was estab- lished in Lincoln county, Missouri, about this time, and John C. Pace was first mar- ried there, in 1837, to a Miss McCulla, who died there. In 1846 he married Miss Julia Cobb, a native of North Carolina, who died in Texas in 1867, at forty years of age. The children of this union were Marcellus, who died unmarried; Mary F., who married J. E. Emmert and lives at Talihina, Oklahoma; Mark H., of this no- tice; Sarah C., who married C. W. Dan- iel and died in 1882, near Cameron, Okla- homa; Rufus S., of Wilburton, Oklahoma, and Lucinda, who married William L. Mur- ray and died near Poteau in 1884.

The school advantages of Mark H. Pace were purely elementary. He was reared to farm work and country life and when he came to Oklahoma owned a span of ponies, a cow and a calf, and a brood sow and pigs. In October, 1871, he was first married in Sebastian county, Arkansas, to Miss Elizabeth C. Adams, who passed away in 1877, while residing on the farm near where now stands Cameron, the mother of the following: Frances Ada, who married A. M. Hulsey and died at Cameron ; Anna L., wife of James F. Miller, of Poteau, Oklahoma ; and Emma, now Mrs. Charles L. Miller, of Poteau. In February, 1882, Mr. Pace married Mrs. Sarah E. Combs, a daughter of Hiram Blair, of Sebastian county, Arkansas, this union having been without issue. For more than thirty years Mr. Pace has been a member of the Mis- sionary Baptist church, and all his life a voting Democrat. He is a Scottish Rite Mason, having been made a Mason in 1882 in Myshulatubbee Lodge No. 13, Indian Territory, and is also identified with the Odd/Fellows lodge.

DR. GEORGE A. MORRISON, who, with his son, Dr. Robert L. Morrison, is engaged in the practice of his profession at Poteau, Le Flore county, has attained prominence in medicine and surgery in both Kansas and Oklahoma. He is a son of the Buck- eye state, born in Guernsey county, May 12, 1853, and his paternal ancestors (of Scotch-Irish stock) were identified with the pioneer history of Ohio. His grandfather, George W. Morrison, was a farmer of No- ble county, where the Doctor's father, Rev. K. P. Morrison, was born in 1805. The former served in the war of 1812, and engaged for many years in agricultural pursuits in Ohio, but toward the close of his life he became a part of the family migration westward, settled near Olney, Illinois, and died in that locality in 1870. The father, while a regularly ordained min- ister of the Methodist church, was a busi- ness man during the main period of his active career, supplying the pulpit only upon special occasions. He was also an earnest patriot, a Union soldier, a stanch Republican and a man of public affairs-a broad, able, useful and Christian character. Until he was nearly fifty years of age he lived in his native Ohio, but in 1854 joined the western emigration to the almost virgin prairies west of the Mississippi. Iowa had then but recently assumed the crown of statehood and the sturdy middle-aged Ohioan became one of its pioneer citizens by settling in Appanoose county, with whose business and public affairs he was identified for many years. At Unionville, he became a member of the firm of Barnes, Phillips and Company, and was also a lead- ing merchant at Seymour, but the burning of his store and stock at the latter place caused him to abandon merchandise and enter the real estate business. Although the opening of the Civil war found him at a period in life when less faithful and ener- getic men are tempted to retire from the strenuous activities, Mr. Morrison unhesi- tatingly enlisted in the Union cause, joining the ranks of Company C, Thirty-sixth Iowa Infantry, in 1862, and serving with that command until the close of the struggle. For meritorious service, he was eventually

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commissioned as a captain and was hon- orably discharged with that rank. After the war he resumed business in Unionville, and subsequently served for four years as district clerk of Appanoose county, his death occurring at Seymour in 1889. His wife, who now resides in Fayetteville, Ar- kansas, was formerly Miss Rebecca Law, and is the mother of four children, as fol- lows: Dr. George A., of this sketch; T. L., a resident of. Des Moines, Iowa; and Emma and Mrs. Minnie Butler, also of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Dr. Morrison obtained his early educa- tion in the public schools of Iowa, and fin- ished his professional courses in the medical department of Drake University, graduating from the latter March 5, 1885. After practicing for two years in Iowa, he located at Columbus, Kansas, where he actively participated in the professional af- fairs of Cherokee county. There he ob- tained such a state-wide reputation that in 1895 Governor Morrill appointed him chief of the medical and surgical staff of the Kansas Penitentiary at Lansing, Kansas. The two and a half years of his adminis- tration in that office were signalized by the thorough systematization of the hospital work, isolation of consumptives, the scien- tific classification of the cases to be treated and the most approved regulation of the diet and personal hygiene of the prisoners. At the conclusion of his noteworthy work at Lansing Dr. Morrison returned to Co- lumbus, there remaining in private practice until 1889, when he removed to the Choc- taw Nation and opened an office at Poteau. His son had joined him as a professional partner at Poteau and has continued in this relation since he became a resident there. In both states of his residence the elder physician has been an active and leading member of the medical societies, and was for years one of the prominent figures of his profession in southeastern Kansas. In 1902-4 he served as professor of physiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Kansas City, and was also president of the Southeast Kansas Medical Society. In 1905 he was appointed surgeon of the Kan- sas City, Mexico and Orient Railway at Topolabambampo, Mexico, where with his

family he resided a year, and he is now local surgeon of the Kansas City Southern Railway Company at Poteau. Father and son are both active Republicans and have been called by their party to serve in not a few responsible public positions. Dr. Robert L. Morrison has served as mayor of the city and as recorder of the town, being now a member of the common council, while Dr. George A. Morrison has been a member of the educational board. The lat- ter is also president of the Commercial Club of Poteau and fraternally is a member of the local Masonic lodge and past chancel- lor of the Poteau Lodge of the Knights of Pythias.

On the 26th of August, 1877, Dr. George A. Morrison married, at Unionville, Iowa, Miss Retta Farley, daughter of David R. Farley, originally a Tennessee farmer. who became an emigrant to Missouri. He set- tled in Harrison county but later moved to Unionville, Iowa, where his daughter Retta matured into womanhood and enjoyed the childhood and youthful friendship of George A. Morrison before their mutual and tried attraction developed into mature love. Theirs is no exception to the rule that such marriages are ideal in harmony and the substantial affection which is proof against the vexations and great trials of life. Their children are the son already mentioned as his father's associate-Dr. Robert L. Morrison, a graduate of the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, of Kan- sas City; Chester F., who is a lumberman of Garden City, Louisiana; Arthur B., a student in the University of Arkansas; Ruth, assistant postmaster of Poteau; and Jo and Helen Morrison, living at home.

FRANK P. ALLEN, who is junior member of Mayer and Allen, leading general mer- chants of Bokoshe, has been a resident of Oklahoma since 1903. He is a native of Mississippi, the ancestral home of the fam- ily being founded near Corinth, by Will- iam Allen, an emigrant from Tennessee who owned slaves and was a successful planter of the old regime. He reared a family in that locality, where he died. One of his sons, William, was killed during the Mexi- can war at the battle of Monterey, having

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heid the state senatorship of Mississippi at the age of twenty-three years. Another son, Eugene, moved to Texas early in the settlement of that state and brought up his family there.

Richard B. Allen, father of Frank P., was born in Mississippi, and was educated for a civil engineer, but eventually became a contractor at Van Buren and Fort Smith, Arkansas. He served in the Confederate army from Mississippi. Although his course in a Virginia engineering school prepared him for work in that field, his scientific training was turned to good use in the field of architecture and contracting. The elder Mr. Allen left Mississippi in 1879, established himself at Van Buren, Arkansas, and there died in 1908. He was married. to Miss Adella Rose, of Pulaski, Tennessee, who became the mother of a large family and still resides at Van Buren, Arkansas. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. Allen were: William B., a druggist of Little Rock, Arkansas; Robert P., one of the state railroad commissioners of Arkansas; Richard F., a merchant of Vian, Oklahoma ; Frank P., of this review ; Dan M., connected with the McElroy bank at Fayetteville, Arkansas; Earl T., who is in the book and stationery business at Van Buren, Arkansas; Mrs. T. C. Potts, of Sheffield, Alabama; and Mrs. Herbert De- Long, of Van Buren.

Frank P. Allen, of this sketch, was chiefly educated in the public schools of Van Buren, Arkansas, and at twenty years of age became a merchant's clerk in a gro- cery store there. He subsequently found employment in a shoe store at that place and afterward served as a commercial trav- eler for the Goodbar Shoe Company, of St. Louis, Missouri. Leaving the road, he became associated with Max J. Mayer in the Boston Store at Van Buren, in which business he maintained an interest for some years. His first connection with the mer- cantile development of Oklahoma began at Vian in 1902 when he took an interest with Allen Brothers of that place. This he sub- sequently sold, in the concentration of all his interests at Bokoshe, where his firm now leads in the field of general merchandise. Mr. Allen was married at Batesville, Ar-

kansas, on January 11, 1905, to Miss Cecil Glenn, adopted daughter of John W. Glenn. Mrs. Allen died January 13, 1907, the mother of two children-Frank Maxwell and Cecil Wilson Allen. Mr. Allen is a Master Mason and an Odd Fellow ; a Dem- ocrat in politics; and his church connec- tions are with the Presbyterian church.

MATHEWS NELSON, postmaster of Bo- koshe, has been identified with Le Flore county since 1903. He has been active in the western country since his youth, and the states of Louisiana, Texas and Okla- homa have been the scenes of his business activities for more than a dozen years. His relation to his present town is that of a developer of its business affairs, and his present standing marks the climax of his achievements as a citizen and as a leading factor in the commerce and public affairs of the community. Born in Rutherford county, Tennessee, March 19, 1878, Mr. Nelson is a son of Lycurgus Nelson, a farmer and stockman who married Eva B. Weekley, a native of Tennessee but of Vir- ginia parentage. Both parents are de- ceased. The issue of their marriage were Weekley, a resident of Kentucky; Lycur- gus, of Taylor, Texas; Robert M., of New York City ; Eva May, wife of W. B. Smith, general superintendent of Whithed and Wheeler's Lumber Company, of Alden Bridge, Louisiana ; Mathews, of this notice ; Warford, of Potosi, Mexico; Brownie, now Mrs. Max J. Bell, of Trinidad, Colorado; and W. L., who is living at Bokoshe, Okla- homa.

Postmaster Nelson was educated in the public school, but his character was formed more by his business experiences than by the schoolmen. At a very early age he left school to assume a position with C. H. Harwell, a leading business man of Quannah, Texas, and remained with him for seven years, then entering the service of the R. L. Trigg Lumber Company, at Noble, Louisiana. After four years he re- signed his position as manager of their commissary department, located at Bokoshe and became identified with the lumber busi- ness there. He became one of the pro- moters of the Citizens Bank of that place,

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and is now manager of the Peoples Lum- ber Company and controls considerable farming interests in Le Flore county.

Mr. Nelson has been as conspicuous in politics as he has in business. He served as chairman of the Republican Club of his township during the recent presidential campaign, has frequently been a delegate to political conventions, and in 1908 was one of the secretaries of the state conven- tion of his party at Oklahoma City, being also sent as a delegate to the statehood con- vention at Tulsa which paved the way for the admission of Oklahoma as a state. Mr. Nelson was honored with appointment to the postmastership at Bokoshe in Novem- ber, 1907. On April 28, 1901, he was mar- ried at Charleston, Mississippi, to Elizabeth F. Neely, a daughter of John T. Neely, chancery clerk and for many years a mer- chant of Tallahatchie county, that state. Mr. Neely was a Confederate soldier and is a representative of one of the ancient families of the south.

WILLIAM H. HARRISON, postmaster of Poteau, Le Flore county, was born in what is now Haskell county, Oklahoma, on the site of the present hamlet of Tamaha, March 5, 1880. His parents established themselves there in the early seventies and in the public affairs of the Choctaw Na- tion the father, Mitchell Harrison, became widely known. The Harrison family is a numerous one among the Choctaw people and many of its representatives have filled positions of honor and trust under the In- dian regime. Mitchell Harrison was born in old Towson county, in the vicinity of Fort Towson, in 1850. He was a son of William Harrison by a full blood Choctaw woman, a member of the band which set- tled there from Mississippi, according to the stipulations of the treaty with the United States made a few years before. Mitchell Harrison seemed to possess both the bent and qualifications for politics, and his activity in the field won him such a wide and favorable acquaintance among the national leaders that he was made county judge, district trustee and judge of the circuit court. He died on the 4th of No- vember, 1898, and his wife, who was Miss

Louise Garland, of Choctaw blood, is liv- ing at Tamaha. Their children were Vir- ginia, wife of J. E. McBrayer, of Stigler, Oklahoma, who died at Tamaha ; Henry C., who passed away and left a daughter near that place; William H., of this notice; Mary, wife of J. R. Porch; Albert P. and Lewie, all of the old home community. By a previous marriage Mitchell Harrison left Benjamin F., and by his second marriage he left Mitchell and Milo E. Harrison.

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A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume I, Part 93

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.) Publication date: 1908 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pubishing Company Number of Pages: 645

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.)
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pubishing Company
Number of Pages: 645