A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II, Part 51

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.)
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 810

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voyage of seven weeks, he landed at Phila- delphia. Fearing that he might be tempted on account of homesickness to return to England, he bought a ticket as far west as his money would permit, which was Pome- roy, Ohio, where he went to work at any sort of employment he could find.

The following year he continued his way westward to the Rocky Mountain regions, where he entered the employ of the Union Pacific Railway Company. He was a fire- man on an engine in construction service. and was present, May 10, 1869, when the gold spike was driven in celebration of the completion of the road and the connecting of the East and West with iron bands. Sub- sequently he became locomotive engineer and ran between Wasatch and Promontory. where the golden spike was driven. In 1872 he left the railroad service and returned to Pomeroy, Ohio, and became a stationary engineer. and later was assistant engineer at the Athens Asylum, under Governor Bishop, of that institution, and still later was made superintendent of his department. Next we find him at Middleport, Ohio, em- ploved as engineer in the woolen mills, where he remained two years, after which he spent eight years as machinist in the mines at Minersville, and was there during the unprecedented rise in the Ohio river, in February, 1884, and was the last man to leave the Williams mine, February 10, 1884, when the mine was flooded. At this time he again turned his face westward, the In- dian Territory being his objective point. Arrived here, he took a position under John D. Williams of the Osage Coal & Mining Company, as Assistant Master Mechanic, and for six years had charge of electrical machinery.

In 1900, Mr. Redpath started the McAles- ter Foundry and Machine Shop which, after a few years, was united with the Union Works, by purchase in consequence of the failure of the latter, and the whole chartered as the Union Iron Works, with a capital of $50,000, with $35,000 paid up; Mr. Red- path and his family owning more than half the stock. He is treasurer and general man- ager, and other offices in the company are Messrs. James Degnan, William Busby and James McConnell and others. At the time Mr. Redpath landed in Oklahoma, he had $26 in money, having left his wife and chil- dren in Ohio well provided, for he did not

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know where he was going nor when he would return. He remained here one year and then sent for his family. In addition to his interest in the company as above indicat- ed, he owns his own home and other property in McAlester : is a stockholder in and direct- or in the Creek Coal Company, and a stock- holder in the American National Bank.

July 4, 1868. Mr. Redpath married Miss Margaret Potts, daughter of George Potts, this important event taking place in Pom- eroy, Ohio. The children of this marriage are as follows: John G., who has charge of the Masonic Temple of McAlester and is boiler inspector : William H., foreman Un- ion Iron Works; James, master mechanic of the Degnan mining interests at Wilbur- ton ; Frank, superintendent of the Schrein- er interests at Carbon : Thomas. assistant machinist of the Union Iron Works; Mary, wife of Joe McGinnity, New York's famous pitcher in the National Base Ball League ; Eliza, who married Calvin Rippev, of Mc- Alester ; Margaret, wife of A. McPhail, of Krebs, Oklahoma; Lulu, widow of Clyde Moore, who met with a fatal accident in the Union Iron Works; and Miss Nellie, who is in the office of the Union Iron Works. Politically. Mr. Redpath is a Democrat.

PRESLEY R. ALLEN, general manager of the McAlester Coal Mining Company, is one of the active young men in the mining dis- trict of McAlester, with which he has been conspicuously identified since 1902, and in which he has demonstrated his ability as a business man and also his peculiar adap- tability to the successful management of labor.

The McAlester Coal Mining Company is a corporation with one hundred thousand dollars capital stock. eighty-seven per cent of which, and all its bonds, are owned by the Allen family. H. W. Allen, of Arkadel- phia, Arkansas, is its president and George W. Allen, its treasurer. The property owned by this company comprises three mines that have been in active and continuous opera- tion since they were opened up in 1899.

The Allen family, of which Presley R. is a representative, had its original American home in Virginia, where David Allen, his grandfather was born. After his marriage in that state to Miss Alice Spencer, of Spen- cer. Virginia. David .Allen became one of the pioneer settlers of Mississippi, where he reared his family, passed the most of his life

and died. His children who grew up and oc- cupied useful and honored positions, and themselves reared families, were Robert, a prominent lawyer of Mississippi, who did for his state what Thomas Jefferson did for the United States at its constitutional conven- tion ; Mrs. Eliza Robbins, of Tupelo, Missis- sippi; James H., the father of Presley R .; John M., well known as "Private John," ex- congressman of Mississippi; Walter, who died in St. Louis, Missouri ; and Mrs. Forest Cox, of Baldwin, Mississippi.

James H. Allen was born in Mississippi, in 1843, and as a farmer's son grew up with no special advantages for an education. He joined the Confederate army during the Re- bellion and became chief spy of General Forrest's command. When the war was over he engaged in the commission business in New Orleans, where, largely through his efforts, his firm enjoyed phenominal success. He was also engaged in business in Tupelo, Mississippi, and in Jackson, Tennessee. In 1890 he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he formed the Allen-West Commission Co .. of which he is president. From the com- mission business, which attained large pro- portions and included the handling of thou- sands of bales of cotton annually, Mr. Al- len's interests extended to banking and oth- er enterprises. He was one of the promot- ers and directors of the St. Louis Trust Company, and was prominentlv identified with the carrying out of large projects in the South and West and also in Old Mexico. From his earliest connection with business he seemed to possess a magic touch that insured prosperity, and before he was thirty he had acquired a modest fortune. James H. Allen and his wife, who before her mar- riage was Miss Louraine Wisdom, and whose family were early settlers of Tennes- see, were the parents of five children : Mrs. G. W. Sickle, of New York; Henry W., of Arkadelphia, Arkansas ; Mrs. Hamilton Grover, of St. Louis, Missouri; Presley R .: and Terry W., of Hamburg, Tennessee.

Presley R. Allen was born in New Or- leans, Louisiana, January 21, 1878: passed his boyhood in Tupelo. Mississippi, and in Jackson, Tennessee, receiving his early edu- cation in the public schools ; later he entered a preparatory school in Chicago, and after- ward he went to Baltimore, Maryland. where he was a student in Johns Hopkins University. He was for some time in the

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employ of the Mobile & Ohio Railway Com- pany, first in the operating department, and subsequently as soliciting agent in St. Louis. Then he went to Cooper, Texas, and for three years employed himself toward the mastery of a modern southern plantation. In 1902 he was placed in charge of the Mc- Alester Coal Mining property, at Buck, with which he has since been connected.

Mr. Allen's identity with the mining in- terests of the state, together with his loyal- ty to the Democratic party, led Governor Haskell to appoint him chairman of the Ok- lahoma State Mining Board in 1907. No- vember 13, 1902, Mr. Allen married, in St. Louis, Missoui, Miss Effie MI. LaPrelle, daughter of J. L. LaPrelle, of that city. They have one child, Presley R., Jr. Mr. Allen is a thirty-second degree Mason, and an Elk.

FRED C. RUSSELL, president of the New State Iron and Supply Company, of McAl- ester, Oklahoma, was born in Clay county, South Dakota, Febuary 26, 1822. He is the son of Charles C. and Mary M. (Stuart) Russell. Moving to Old Oklahoma with his parents in 1889, he has since resided there. He commenced business for himself at Guth- rie, Oklahoma, in 1896, and moved to Cal- vin, in 1900, where he continued in the gen- eral merchandise business until 1903. He then served as cashier of the First National Bank of that place one year.

He subsequently organized the Russell- Scales Mercantile Company and served as its .president until January 1. 1908. He then moved to McAlester, and united himself with the New State Iron and Supply Com- pany. Though not a politician, he supports the policies of Roosevelt and is a Mason of the thirty-second degree, and a member of the Scottish Rite. consistory of McAlester.

JOHN C. REID, of McAlester, represents the largest individual coal operator of Ok- lahoma, and his connection with some of the leading companies in his official capacity marks him as one of the successful mining men of the state. Mr. Reid comes of Scotch parentage. His father, Hugh Reid, and his mother, Mary (McCalum) Reid, were both born in Ayr, Scotland. Hugh Reid, when a boy, was brought to this country, and was put to work in the mines of Pennsylvania at an age when most children are in school. During the last years of the Civil war, he served as a member of the 211th Pennsyl- vania Infantry, under General Grant, and

after the close of the war he returned to Sharon, Pennsylvania, and resumed work in the mines. He was identified with the Pennsylvania coal mines until 1829, when he came west to the new diggings in Indian Territory. For several years he worked in the McAlester field, then became a mine foreman at Krebs. In 1884 he went to Clin- ton, Missouri, where he took a financial in- terest in a proposition and, later on, he op- erated with others, a mining property in Ray county, that state. In 1889 he was made superintendent of the coal interests of the Kansas & Texas Coal Company at Marcel- ine, Missouri, and a year later he became an operator in the coal fields at Pleasanton, Kansas, and when he sold his holdings there he again assumed the position as superin- tendent, but this time with the M. K. & T. Company in southeast Kansas, and he was thus occupied until 1903, when he accepted the position of superintendent of the Kan- sas division for the Central Coal and Coke Company, which he held until 1908. During this period he had headquarters at Scam- mon, Kansas, and here his present resi- dence is maintained. The children born to Hugh and Mary Reid were: Mrs. George S. Brown, of Altoona, Kansas ; John C., Mc- Alester, Oklahoma; Mrs. Charles Kincaid, Pittsburg, Kansas: Adam H., McAlester. Oklahoma; Walter S., Scammon, Kansas; Mrs. O. C. Arnold, Palacios. Texas; Mrs. Carl Drain, Scammon, Kansas, and Miss Mabel Reid, of Scammon.

John C. Reid grew up in the coal fields of the various states in which his parents lived during his minority, and worked two years in and about the mines before he seriously began the study of mining with a view to mastering the subject. He entered the Missouri School of Mines at Rolla, where he pursued a five years' course, being grad- uated in 1893. Soon after receiving his dip- loma, he accepted a position as assaver and chemist in the Smelting and Refining Com- pany at Argentine, Kansas, which he filled until he left it to enter the service of the M. K. & T. Railway, as mining engineer of their coal department at Mineral, Kansas, where he remained from 1895 to 1900. Then he came to Oklahoma, as superintendent of the Coalgate works of the company, where he served two years, after which he joined the Busby interests at Mc. Alester, as mining engineer, and has since then risen to the gen-

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eral management of the Great Western Coal and Coke Company, the Osage Coal and Mining Company, and the Samples Coal and Mining Company. To this position he was appointed in 1906.

December 8, 1896, Mr. Reid married, in Pleasanton, Kansas, Miss Bessie Kincaid, a daughter of Joseph Kincaid, an old settler of Linn county, Kansas, and a well known merchant of Pleasanton. The children of this union are Sidney, Edith, Joseph, Mil- dred and Allen. Mr. Reid is a thirty-second degree Mason. Politically, he supports the Republican party.

BEN DURFEE. Occupying a foremost place among the successful merchants of McAlester, Oklahoma, is the dry goods house of Ben Durfee & Company, with Mr. Durfee as its executive head. He was born at Wyoming, New York, October 24, 1872, and is a graduate of Wyoming Academy. He obtained his first business experience in the city of Buffalo, where he was employed as book-keeper and clerk. In 1891, before he reached his majority, he came west, to Wichita, Kansas, and accepted a humble po- sition in the store of Cash Henderson. Soon, however, Mr. Durfee worked his way up to a place of trust and responsibility, and had charge of the store at the time he severed his connection with it. He came to Okla- homa in 1898, and that year opened his store on Choctaw avenue, McAlester ; he has pros- pered in his business and grown with the town, and today ranks with its represent- ative business men. He has a modest home on Washington street, and other property interests in various parts of the town; is a director in the City National Bank and a stockholder in the Elastic Pulp Plaster Com- pany of McAlester.

The Durfee family in America was origin- ally established by Thomas Durfee, an Eng- lishman, who settled in Rhode Island in 1643. The line from this remote ancestor to Ben Durfee includes William, David and David, William, Thomas and Charles W. Some of the sons of these grandsires were soldiers in the colonial army in our war for independence, which service places their de- scendants in line for membership in the Sons and Daughters of the American Revo- lution. Thomas Durfee moved from Rhode Island to New York in the early settlement of that state. He was a farmer and. like the family generally, his posterity was numerous.

His son, Charles W. Durfee, father of Ben of this sketch, was born in Wyoming, New York, and there passed his life as a farmer and miller. He and his wife. who before her marriage was Miss Rose Henderson, and who also was a native of Wyoming, both died at the old home in New York, her death occurr- ing in 1903, and his three years later. Their children were: Emory, who resides in Gen- eseo, New York, is a traveling representative for a wholesale house of Lansing, Michigan; Nellie, wife of Charles Newton, of Geneseo; Mrs. Blanche Winne, of Canandaigua, New York; Ben and Thaddeus, associated together in business in McAlester; and Mrs. W. H. Tripp, of West Point, New York.

While the Durfee family from an early day acknowledged fealty to the Democratic party, none of them seems to have followed politics as a business or for profit. and the younger men have fallen away from the old-time al- legiance, to a degree, and have accepted what they feel to be sounder policies for good busi- ness conditions than those offered by modern Democratic platforms. Ben Durfee is a thirty- second degree Mason, a Knight of Pythias and an Elk.

JAMES F. ELLIOTT, general manager of the Hailey-Ola Coal Company and, since 1882, identified with the McAlester District, in which he has distinguished himself in his various official relations, was born in Youngs- town, Ohio, May 9, 1853. He traces his an- cestry back to the British Isles, where his re- mote forefathers were of the agricultural class. His father, James Elliott, was born in county Waterford, Ireland, in 1804. son of Richard Elliott. James Elliott was a land- lord and represented an English syndicate of land owners. Later he was interested in min- ing in the copper districts of Great Britain, and worked in the fields of England, Ireland and Wales, where he remained until 1846. That year he came to America. On his ar- rival in this country, he sought the mining district of Youngstown, Ohio, where he reared his family and passed the rest of his life. He died at Youngstown, as also did his wife, whose maiden name was Miss Cath- erine Murphy. They were the parents of thirteen children, all of whom are deceased except James F.

While James F. Elliott was growing up, in the vicinity of Youngstown, his education was rather of the neglected sort, and he reached maturity with scarcely more than a

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smattering of the common school branches. He earned his first money as a boy in the em- ploy of the Iron King of Youngstown, Chaun- cey Andrews, and when old enough to work regularly became a miner, later working in the rolling mills of Youngstown.

In 1871 Mr. Elliott left Ohio and went to the coal fields of Union county, Kentucky, and for several years he drifted about the coal fields of that state, Illinois, Indiana, and Penn- sylvania, in 1881 coming out to Indian Terri- tory. For a time he dug coal at Savanna, and it was here that he formed an acquaintance which has been maintained most harmoniously since and which has been largely responsible for the successes he has since achieved as a superintendent and manager and as a diplo- mat in the field of arbitration. This acquaint- ance was with Dr. D. M. Hailey. In 1882 Mr. Elliott was employed by Dr. Hailey to drive the delivery wagon for the store owned by Hailey & McAlester, at Savanna, and from the wagon he was soon called into the store to clerk. Eventually he became manager of the business, and after the dissolution of the firm of Hailey & McAlester, he was made gen- eral manager of Dr. Hailey's interests. In 1898, the property comprising the Hailey mines was taken in charge by Mr. Elliott. He opened up mines and put them on an active and paying basis, acquiring, himself, a finan- cial interest in the property, which today ranks as one of the most important in the McAlester district. Recognizing his universal success in the management of his own inter- ests and his exceptional business ability and tact in handling knotty problems between la- bor and its employer, the Southwestern Inter- State Coal Operators elected Mr. Elliott presi- cent of its association. In this position he is a member of the court of last-resort in the settlement of disputes between the unions and the operators, the chairman of the United Mine Workers being the other member. All cases incapable of adjustment by the arbitra- tion boards established or created by the local unions and the operators, are referred to these two men who dispose of such matters ami- cably and thus end the controversies. Any- thing like a definite idea of the service to labor as well as to its employers, that Mr. Elliott has rendered could not be more than hinted at in a brief article like this, for his long con- nection with a position requiring final judg- ment in matters of supreme import to his people has brought him into contact with thousands of cases which a closer attention

to the inner circle of happenings among min- ers would reveal.

In August, 1879, Mr. Elliott married, at Caseyville, Kentucky, Miss Mary A. Reed, daughter of Alexander Reed, a Scotchman and a miner. The children of this union are as follows : James A., manager of the Hailey- ville company store; William S., who is in charge of the lumber and timber interests of the Haileyville Coal Company, at Lutie; E. A., employed in the Lutie mines; Joseph W., a clerk in Haileyville ; Lutie, who died Jan. 15. 1909; and Mary C. Mr. Elliott has fraternal relations with both the Odd Fellows and the Masons. He was made a Mason at Savanna when a young man, and at McAlester has ad- vanced through various degrees of this an- cient order until he is a thirty-third degree man and has been the recipient of high hon- ors from the brotherhood. He is past grand commander of the Grand Commandery of In- dian Territory.

EDWARD HOCKER, cashier of the Bank of McAlester, has been a resident of Pittsburg county, Oklahoma, since 1901. He was born in Paris, Missouri, June 11, 1812, and in his native town spent the early years of his life, attending the public schools. Later he took a business course in a commercial school at Fort Worth, Texas. In Lampasas, Texas. at the age of twenty-two years, he was elected district clerk of the county, which office he filled acceptably for a term of four years, after which he entered the employ of Stokes Bros., merchants and bankers of Lampasas, and as book-keeper remained in their service two years. Then he came to the Choctaw country and took up his abode in McAlester, where he accepted a position in the First Na- tional Bank. as teller, which he filled three years. Upon the organization of the Bank of McAlester, in North McAlester, he was chosen as its cashier, and has since served as stich. This bank was chartered by the state, has a capital of $25,000, and is officered as follows: E. C. Million, president: Chris- topher Springer, vice-president ; Edward Hocker, cashier and manager: and its official board is composed of A. U. Thomas, E. C. Million, C. Springer, J. M. Lathim, W. B. McAlester. and Edward Hocker.

Mr. Hocker's father, Thomas J. Hocker. has been a teacher all his life. He was born at Paris, Missouri, and is a descendant of Jolin Hocker, who emigrated from England to this country at an early day and settled in Ken-

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tucky, where he passed his life as a farmer, and died. John Hocker's family comprised the fol- lowing members: Thomas J .; Rev. Philip, a Baptist minister, deceased, who left a family at Centralia, Missouri : Mrs. Bell Tansy, who resides near Paris, Missouri; Emily, wife of Robert Cartwright, of near Paris ; and Mattie, wife of John Slack, of Centralia, Missouri. Thomas J. Hocker married Miss Elizabeth Eu- banks, an orphan, who was reared in Kentucky by W. V. Wright; and they have a family as follows: (Jak, of Los Angeles, California ; Edward; Lou, wife of P. E. Leatherwood. of Lampasas, Texas; Letha, wife of W. R. Payne, of Chillicothe, Texas, and Misses Helen and Stella who reside with their par- ents in Lampasas.

In December, 1902, Edward Hocker married Miss Bell Standifer, at Lampasas; and they have a little daughter, Edwina. Mrs. Hocker is a daughter of Capt. W. J. Standifer, one of the pioneer rangers of Texas. Mr. Hocker acts with the Democratic party, and at the last city election was honored by his party with the office of Treasurer of McAlester. He is a member of the Masonic order and he and his family are identified actively with the Christian church.

ROBERT H. EARNEST, of Mcalester, pre- sents a career which is both broadly useful, varied and stirring. As a colonel of a colored regiment during the Civil war he made a fine and remarkable record and several years after the conclusion of the hostilities commenced an equally signal career as an official repre- sentative of law and order in both Texas and Oklahoma. The Earnest family, as the name indicates, is of German origin and its founder in America was in the colony of South Caro- lina where the great-grandfather of Judge Earnest settled early in the country's history. William Earnest. a son of the American founder of the family, was the grandfather of Robert H., of this sketch. Henry Earnest, the father, settled in Kentucky in the early days of its history, reared his family in that state and died in what is now Simpson county. Henry Earnest was a native of South Caro- lina and after serving in the war of 1812 migrated to Kentucky which was then the westernmost frontier of the United States. Hle was twice married, his six children by his first wife being William, John, James, Philip, Samuel and Elizabeth. His second wife was Mrs. Francis Harris, whose children by a former marriage were Christopher, Margaret

and Joseph. Robert H. was the only child by this marriage and was reared among the numerous children of the combined house- hold.

Robert H. Earnest, of this biography, was born in Simpson county, Kentucky, February 16, 1833, receiving his education in the district schools of the locality. As his father was a farmer the youngest son naturally followed in his footsteps, but upon the breaking out of the Civil war the young man enlisted in Com- pany F, Twenty-sixth Kentucky Infantry and was commissioned second lieutenant. The first lieutenant of the company was killed in the battle of Shiloh and Mr. Earnest was pro- moted to the vacancy. Some months later, by another fortunate vacancy he was advanced to the captaincy and in the fall of 1864 re- ceived a commission from the president as colonel of the One Hundred and Fifteenth United States Colored Infantry which regi- ment he had raised at Bowling Green. Ken- tucky. When ready for the field the regi- ment was ordered to Richmond, Virginia, and was in the vicinity of Petersburg when the Confederate capital was evacuated, the One Hundred and Fifteenth Regiment being among the first bodies of troops to enter that city and to do its part in the preservation of order. During the following summer Colonel Earnest was ordered to take his regiment to Indianola, Texas, presumably to participate in the cam- paigns against Maximillian in Mexico. At that time there were forty thousand troops in camp but the life of inactivity there grew irksome to the young man and he consequently resigned liis command and returned to Kentucky. He spent the first year after the war as sheriff of his county to which office he had been appointed and when this service was concluded he re- turned to farming and continued thus until 1823. He was then induced by several of his friends to migrate to Texas and during the same year he located at Richmond. that state. At that time it was a decided political ad- vantage to be a Republican in the Lone Star state and during the succeeding ten years Judge Earnest was elected justice of the peace, county attorney (six years) and county judge (two years). A short time after he conclud- ed his term as county judge he received an appointment as United States commissioner for the Indian Territory with headquarters at McAlester. His advent to that town at such an early date marks him as among the pioneer

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A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II, Part 51

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.) Publication date: 1909 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 810

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.)
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 810