USA > Oklahoma > A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II > Part 72
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Mr. McGuire continued his studies for a year in the law school, returned to his home in Chautauqua, was admitted to the bar, and in 1890 was elected county attorney. He held the office for four years and at the ex- piration of his second term, in the spring of 1895, removed to Pawnee county, Oklahoma, and there re-established himself in practice. He had been one of the mounted rushers, who came into the Cherokee Strip in the fall of 1893, when it was thrown open to white settlement. His starting point was the Osage reservation, and he located on what is now Ponca City, where he remained for a few weeks, and assisted in the founding of the town and the establishment of the new order of things. Afterward, as stated, he came to Pawnee and commenced to partici-
pate in the development of that section of the state. He continued in a growing pri- vate practice until 1897, when he was ap- pointed assistant United States attorney for Oklahoma territory, holding that office un- til his election to the Fifty-eighth Congress in the fall of 1902. The five years of his government service in that capacity demon- strated his remarkable powers as a public prosecutor, and the government cases en- trusted to him were almost uniformly car- ried to a successful issue. Whether in the thorough preparation of his cases, or their forcible and brilliant presentation in court, he has had few equals in Oklahoma. He served in the Fifty-eighth, Fifty-ninth, Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses. Mr. McGuire has increased his majority in each campaign since he was first elected in 1902. The following is his running record, to-wit : Elected 1902 by 339 majority ; 1904 by 1,280 majority: 1906 by 1,600 majority ; 1908 by 2,900 majority.
Mr. McGuire's wife was formerly Miss Anna Marx, daughter of Professor William Marx, of Litchfield, Illinois, where she was born October 2, 1872. She was educated in the schools of Sedan, Kansas, to which place she moved with her parents, and at St. Mary's convent, St. Paul, Kansas. Her father was postmaster at the former place, and when a young girl Mrs. McGuire as- sisted him in his work. Thus was she early accustomed to meeting all kinds of people, and the graceful social attainments of her young womanhood, with the later maturity of wider experience and culture, marked her as peculiarly adapted to the amenities of Washington life. As a special mark of hon- or, Mrs. McGuire has been intrusted with the two flags, which first displayed the forty- sixth star in the Senate and House of Rep- resentatives, as indicative of the full admis- sion of Oklahoma into the union of states. The Congressman has also made many friends socially, since he became a figure in national legislation. While faithful and un- tiring in his devotion to the interests of his constituents, he is also a man who thor- oughly believes in the necessity of recrea- tion as a guarantee of an animated body and a clear brain. He is a skillful marksman and an enthusiastic hunter of small game, being the owner of a fine kennel of dogs. Perhaps his second recreation, measured by degrees of personal enjoyment, is baseball, there being few better judges of the fine
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points of the game. In fact, Mr. McGuire is an all-around, able, wide-awake, progres- sive American, interested in everything which is typical of the versatile, electrical character of the people
STACY MATLOCK, principal chief of the Paw- nee Indians and a leading resident of Paw- nee, has for many years been a leader in the education and progress of his race, both east and west. On the death of Eagle Chief in 1908, he was elected by the Pawnee In- dians at the council of the tribesmen as their principal chief, with the special designation "Young Chief." He assumed and retains his place as the head of the tribe, with the approval and endorsement of the govern- ment agent. Stacy Matlock is a born na- tive of what is now the city of Genoa, Ne- braska, and is one of the aboriginal tribes- men of the Pawnees. As a boy he accom- panied the tribe to the Pawnee Indian Agency, Indian Territory, the buildings of the government school then marking what is now the city of Pawnee. It was at this institution, in 1879-83, that he received his first schooling, preparatory to entering the more advanced establishment at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His graduation at the Car- lisle school in 1890 was followed by a visit of three months to his western home, after which he returned to his alma mater to ac- cept the position of assistant disciplinarian. In that capacity and in other responsible positions, he remained at Carlisle for two years, when he entered the government ser- vice at Fort Totten, North Dakota, as dis- ciplinarian and teacher at the Indian schools there located.
In 1892 he resigned his post, in order to identify himself with agricultural work in the vicinity of Carlisle. For about a year he remained in the employ of the Quaker and Dutch farmers of that section, and in 1893 returned to Indian Territory and as- sumed the position of assistant farmer of the Pawnee Indian schools, later acting as clerk and interpreter to the alloting agents of the United States Land Office. When the Cherokee Strip was opened in the fall of 1893, and Pawnee founded as a city and its municipal government established, Mr. Matlock obtained employment as clerk and interpreter at the Arkansas Valley National Bank, efficiently discharging the duties of the position for a year. He then devoted his time and agricultural abilities to the im- provement of his allotments. In 1901 the
commissioner of Indian affairs appointed him to the position of issue clerk at the Uintah and Ouray Agency, Utah, and after remaining in this branch of government ser- vice until 1904 he was transferred to the Carlisle Indian School and assigned to his former position of disciplinarian. Resign- ing this, in 1906, he accepted his present position of clerk and interpreter in the Paw- nee National Bank.
Stacy Matlock is a grandson, on his moth- er's side, of Pipe Chief, of the tribe of Paw- nees, and, as stated, on the death of Eagle Chief, Mr. Matlock became the principal chief. In 1893 he married Ella, daughter of Man Chief, of the Pawnees. She was well educated in the English language, having attended Lincoln Institute, the college for Indian girls at Philadelphia. The wife died in 1902, leaving a daughter, Cecelia Helen, who is now a pupil at one of the public schools at Pawnee. Mr. Matlock is consid- ered one of the ablest representatives of the Indian race in the southwest, having visited Washington in company with other Okla- homa delegates as a special representative of the Pawnee tribes, and on two other oc- casions having been sent to the national capital to present various tribal matters be- fore the department. He is an honored member, both of the Masons and the Knights of Pythias, and is in every way a creditable member of his community. Be- sides possessing those substantial qualities, which made him an agent of practical pro- gress, he numbers among his accomplish- ments those of a melodious and finished vocalist, and has traveled with a concert troupe largely composed of local talent.
JOHN W. JORDAN, whose valuable agricul- tural interests are near Cleveland, Pawnee county, of which he is a resident, is one of the picturesque veterans of northeastern Ok- lahoma. He is perforated and scarred by Civil war bullets of Union soldiers and has well served the national government since as an officer of the peace in various capac- ities. As Cherokee blood runs in his veins and he is a man of honorable and forceful character, he was long a valued adviser in the councils of the Cherokee Nation, took advantage of his legal property rights in the Cherokee Strip, and in the later years of his life is therefore enjoying its comforts as well as its honors.
Mr. Jordan was born in the Cherokee Na- tion of Indian Territory, December 9,
JOHN W. JORDAN
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1843, and is a son of Levi and Malinda (Ri- ley) Jordan, being one-eighth Cherokee In- dian. His mother, a one-quarter blood Cher- okee, continues her name from her Scotch- Irish ancestors, who settled in America dur- ing the period of the Revolutionary war, with the Cherokees on neutral ground as they refused to fight the Americans. The father was a mechanic and a soldier in the Second U. S. Dragoons, and the son's career was doubtless affected by that fact. John W. obtained his early education in the government school of the Cherokee Na- tion, and prior to the Civil war had made some progress as a farmer and a stockman. Soon after the commencement of hostilities, being then seventeen years old, he joined the Confederate cause as a member of the Second Cherokee Cavalry, commanded by Colonel William P. Adair, Stan Watie's Brigade, C. S. A., serving altogether for ·four years and suffering his full share of hard campaigning and actual wounds. Among other engagements which he has good cause to remember are Pea Ridge, Poison Springs and Honey Springs. The last named was fought July 17, 1863, and Mr. Jordan now treasures a regulation Con- federate belt, with the eleven stars sur- rounding the C. S., which he wore in the fighting ranks at Honey Springs. It has a hole both in the front and back and in order to make these perforations the bullet was obliged to pass completely through Mr. Jordan's body. It is little wonder that he has since been a leader of the Confederate Veterans' organization of the southwest, having served as Major General of the Con- federate Veterans of Indian Territory and taking his noble division to the great Rich- mond Reunion and Unveiling of Jeff Davis' Monument in May, 1907.
After the war, Mr. Jordan located in Tex- as, where for nine years he engaged in the cattle business, and helped reconstruct and free the state from the curse of Carpet-bag rule, as a Solid South Democrat, afterwards returning to the Cherokee country in 1873, and in January, 1883, settling where he now lives, near the city of Cleveland, Pawnee county, and helping to found the city. He there not only brought his farm of 240 acres to a high standard of productiveness and attractiveness, but proved a most use- ful agent for the federal government as an officer of the peace. At one time he held four commissions of this nature; he was a
member of the Indian police, United States marshal, special agent of the Cherokee Na- tion and United States military scout. His authority was such that he was empowered to enforce all presidential orders in the ter- ritory, known as the Cherokee Strip, and, if necessary could call upon the troops for as- sistance without formal requisition. Mr. Jordan's residence on the Strip brought out Judge Isaac Parker's famous decision in the Conell Rogers case, that the Cherokees had not abandoned said land and thus prevented it from reverting to the United States under a clause in the patent. It may be added that Jordan Valley township, Pawnee coun- ty, is named in his honor.
Mr. Jordan has been twice married-first, in 1866, to Miss Sarah Thompson, of Texas, by whom he had three sons, as follows: Robert Lee and Thomas Jackson, both liv- ing, and James L., deceased. In 1882, Mr. Jordan married his second wife, Miss Ten- nessee Riley. Said union was blessed with five children, as follows: Miss Dixie M., now twenty-one years old, the first legal born resident in the Cherokee Strip. She secured her schooling at the Carr Burdett Female College at Sherman, Texas ; John B., the second, is eighteen years old and first lieutenant in the Military University College at Columbia, Missouri. Daisy Lee, the third, a bright and beloved daughter, died at the age of ten years. Robert Owen, the fourth, is nine years old, and Winnie Davis, the fifth and youngest, is six years old.
GEORGE W. NELLIS, superintendent and special disbursing agent for the Pawnee Indian Training School and Agency, at Pawnee, has enjoyed a combined training in the fields of education and business which especially fit him for the duties of his pre- ent post. Born at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on the 30th of March, 1861, he is a son of Noah and Catherine (Fraser) Nellis, his father being a carpenter of substantial rep- utation. George W. was educated in the public schools of Wellsville, Ohio, and Waynesburg (Pennsylvania) College. Af- ter his graduation from the latter he became a teacher in Central College Academy, near Columbus, Ohio, and thus continued for three years, after which he accepted a call to the principalship of the public schools at St. Lawrence, South Dakota. The duties of this position occupied his time for the succeeding two years, when he became a bookkeeper for a mercantile house of the
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same city, resigning, in 1887, after three years of service. He was occupied with similar work at Faulkton, South Dakota, until March, 1891, when he entered the In- dian service for the federal government as superintendent of the Lower Brule school, at the agency by that name in South Da- kota.
Mr. Nellis remained as superintendent of the Lower Brule Indian School until Au- gust, 1897, when he assumed a similar po- sition at Toledo, Iowa, and October 1, 1901, was again transferred to the Oglala Train- ing School, at Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota. On the 1st of March, 1904, he was advanced to the position of superintendent and special disbursing agent for the Pawnee Indian Agency and the Pawnee Indian Training Schools, and the result of his man- agement, in behalf of the government, has amply justified his promotion.
In 1887 Mr. Nellis married Miss Electa Birchard, at St. Lawrence, South Dakota. His wife is a daughter of a business man residing in Kellogg, Iowa, and is the mother of Thomas Earl and Harold Wayne Nellis. Mr. Nellis belongs to but one secret order, the Ancient Order of United Workmen. In politics he is an ardent Republican.
LOUIS BAYHYLLE, Pawnee interpreter at the First National Bank of Pawnee, is thorough- ly educated and has enjoyed a good business training, well fitting him for his present post. Born in Nebraska, November 4, 1813, at a locality which is now the town of Genoa. he is a son of Baptiste Bayhylle, of Mexican blood, and Isabelle, a pure Paw- nee woman. When the Pawnee tribe was transferred from Nebraska to the Indian Territory Louis accompanied his parents to the new Pawnee agency. Then in 188?, when he was nine years of age, he was placed in the Indian school for boys at Car- lisle, Pennsylvania, remaining at that noted institution until 1887. Returning to the Pawnee agency he remained with the fam- ily for about two years, after which he com- pleted his education by pursuing a two years' course at Haskell Institute, Law- rence, Kansas.
Then Mr. Bayhylle again located at the Pawnee agency, and for three years was employed at the agency mills, learning the industry and the business in all its details. He then commenced the improvement of the farm allotted to him by the government,
and was thus engaged until 1903. His ag- ricultural experience of more than a decade not only placed him in a comfortable sta- tion in life, but added a valuable asset to his already broad character as a man of affairs and education. In the year named he accepted his present position as inter- preter of the Pawnee Indian language for the First National Bank, in which position he is proving a strong factor in building up the business of the establishment named. In 1906 Mr. Bayhylle married Miss Ruth Upshaw, of Pawnee, and they have one child, Edwin Bayhylle.
STANLEY CLARK . EDMISTER, a well known young lawyer of Cleveland, Pawnee county, is a native of Cass county, Iowa, born No- vember 6, 1881, son of Sylvester and Re- becca Jennie (Clark) Edmister. The father was a merchant and a farmer and the son assisted him during the years of his boy -. hood and youth. When sufficiently ad- vanced in his studies the young man taught school himself during the winter months, as an additional means of continuing in the higher courses. From the public school course he passed into the high school of Lewis, Iowa, and was graduated from that into Drake University, also of the Hawk- eye state. At the latter he completed his law course, graduating in the class of 1905 with the degree of LL. B. Attracted to the new country as one, which in its vig- orous formative period would be of special promise for one of his profession he lo- cated at Cleveland, at once entered into practice, and up to this time has had no re- grets over his choice of a location.
Mr. Edmister's wife was Miss Stella C. Clinite, daughter of W. A. Clinite, a retired farmer of Des Moines, Iowa. Their mar- riage occurred in that city, April 2, 1908. Mrs. Edmister is a graduate of the Cedar Falls Normal School.
Ora Eleanor Edmister, a talented public school teacher of Cleveland, Pawnee conn- ty, is a daughter of Sylvester and Rebecca Jennie (Clark) Edmister. She obtained her only early education in the public schools of Iowa and at the high school in Lewis, that state. She completed her men- tal training for educational work at Drake University, and commenced her career in the vicinity of her Iowa home. Upon lo- cating at Cleveland she obtained a position
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in the graded schools of the city and has since fully demonstrated her efficiency in the field which she has chosen. She is also active in society and lodge work, be- ing identified with the Rebekah lodge and the Eastern Star.
GEORGE B. KEELER. To the versatility of George B. Keeler, of Bartlesville, to his persistent and stable qualities, and to his unfailing ability to always rise a little above the height of the occasion, is mainly due to the present high standing of that city and tributary country as a center of large interest in oil, gas and iron industries. As the leading pioneer merchant of the place, it was his large business which real- ly kept Bartlesville alive until it could se- cure those railroad facilities which stamped it as a modern communiity; and, further, Mr. Keeler, perhaps more than any other man, was the successful promotor of the St. Louis, Bartlesville & Pacific Railroad, as well as the Bartlesville-Dewey Inter- urban line, which gave to the locality its unusually complete transportation conven- iences. Later, he took a prominent part in the development of the great oil and gas resources of the locality, not only as a private investor and promoter, but as an influential citizen on the successful pro- ject of bringing into the territory the wealthy Cudahy Oil Company, now the largest operator in Oklahoma. Mr. Keeler is al- so a stockholder in the Bartlesville Foun- dry and Machine Works and the Bartles- ville Novelty Works and a director in the First National Bank ; has large property in- terests in the city, and is a splendid type not only of the sturdy pioneer business man, but of the broad modern citizen-fer- tile of brain, with his firm hand upon nu- merous expanding projects; generous in impulse and act and with his keen and wise outlook, far above the small policy of carefully weighing the dollars and cents as against the general good of the future.
Mr. Keeler is a native of Putnam coun- ty, Illinois, born on the 7th of February, 1850, and was reared and educated in that section of the state, as well as in Wiscon- sin and Iowa. At the age of twenty-one (in 1871) he became a resident of the In- dian territory, and for several years there after was engaged in the cattle business, in which he acquired large interests. The scene of his initial operations was near the
site of Bartlesville, his first employment being as a clerk for an Osage trader. Next he became a typical rancher on Keeler's creek, and later became associated with Jacob Bartles in a general store, on the east bank of the Caney river opposite the pres- ent town of Bartlesville. In 1884, with Wil- liam Johnstone (whose biography appears elsewhere), he engaged in the mercantile business on the west side of the stream. Their store soon became the trading cen- ter for a large territory and led to the plat- ting of the town some years after its estab- lishment; but the rise of the modern city dates from the discovery of oil in 1898, and the advent of the St. Louis, Bartlesville & Pacific Railroad in the following year. As has been seen, Mr. Keeler has been sec- ond to none in the development of those transportation facilities and industries which have made Bartlesville one of the most sub- stantially prosperous of southwestern cities.
Mr. Keeler has been twice married-first, at Silver Lake, Oklahoma, to Miss Josie Gilstrap, who was born in the Cherokee Nation, to Andrew J. and Jane (Blythe) Gilstrap, the mother being a native woman of that nation. Her father was a white man; a Missourian, who came to the In- dian Territory, as a trader, about 1850. Mrs. Josie Keeler died in 1893, at the age of thir- ty-six, mother of the following nine chil- dren: Charles R., William and Frank, all residents of Bartlesville; Albert, who died when about twenty-two years of age ; Fred, also living at Bartlesville ; Maud and Lillie A., both living at home ; and Pearl and Nina, the former of whom died at sixteen and the latter, at two years of age. Mr. Keeler's second marriage was to Miss Joseph Blythe, also a native of the Cherokee Nation. In his fraternal relations, he is identified with the B. P. O. E., Woodmen of the World, and Masonry. In the last named he has reached the thirty-second degree. Although Mr. Keeler is a Republican, he has never been a partisan, an office seeker or a public official. It is evident, from this review of his career, that he has other interests which have completely crowded out the considera- tion of politics.
JUDGE ARTHUR TERRELL DUMENIL. The law has ever called into its circle the bright- est minds, the most gifted sons of the na- tion. But it is an arduous, exacting voca- tion to one who is unwilling to subordinate
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all other interests to its demands, but to the true and earnest devotee it offers a sphere of action whose attractions are unequalled and whose rewards are unstinted. It is these qualities in Judge DuMenil that have made him a leader and won him a name in legal circles that is widely known, for he is a man of the state, a typical representa- tive of the true American spirit. He studied law in his father's office at Pratt, Kansas, later taking special preparatory courses in the law department of the University of Kansas, at Lawrence, and was admitted to the bar in 1893.
Previous to this time, in 1889, Judge Du- Menil had made the run at the opening of old Oklahoma, on April 22d of that year, and on the opening of the Cherokee Strip, in 1893, he took part in that run, which was in all respects a more stupendous event than the original 1889 opening. Following this he located for a time in Enid, and sub- sequently, giving up, temporarily, the prac- tice of law, he engaged in the newspaper business at Stanberry and Trenton, Mis- souri, and in 1899 he came to the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, and located at Dewey, four miles north of his present home, Bartlesville. At Dewey he estab- lished the first newspaper there, the Eagle, while subsequently he moved this paper to Nowata and combining it with another jour- nal there established the Nowata Adver- tiser. Following this he returned to Bar- tlesville and resumed his former practice of the law. Judge DuMenil has achieved distinguished success as a lawyer, and was elected the first county judge of the new county of Washington at the general state- hood and constitutional election of Sep- tember 17, 1907. An item of unique historic interest that links the Judge's name with the advent of statehood is the fact that, on November 16, 190}, the day that statehood was officially pro- claimed by President Roosevelt, Judge DuMenil, getting out of a sick bed for the purpose, on advice from Governor Haskell and acting in his capacity of county judge, issued a writ of injunction enjoining the Kansas Natural Gas Company and other Companies from piping natural gas out of Oklahoma. This injunction was issued early in the morning, about four hours be- fore the actual signing and issuing of the proclamation of statehood, and Judge Du- Menil's injunction takes precedence as the
first legal action taken in the new state. Immediately on the issuing of the injunc- tion he had officers hurry to the Kansas state line and carry out its provisions, the gas companies being already at work there and on the verge of laying their pipes out of Oklahoma. This quick and wise action was of incalculable benefit in preserving for use in Oklahoma alone its great resources in natural gas.
Judge DuMenil was born in Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1872, and he moved with his father, J. M. DuMenil, and family to Pratt, in southwestern Kansas, in 1884, where the father is still living, a practicing lawyer, he having begun his practice many years ago in Hillsboro, Ohio. Judge DuMenil's wife before her marriage was Miss Amanda Kennell, and they have two sons, Joe and John. The Judge is a Democrat in politics.
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