A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II, Part 78

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

USA > Oklahoma > A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II > Part 78

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Mr. Orcutt is an Odd Fellow of promi- nence, having passed through all the de- grees of his order and is now a past grand and a Patriarch Militant. Like his father, he is a Republican in politics, and was a del- egate from Tulsa county to the State Re- publican convention at Oklahoma City in March of 1908.

He married, in Tulsa, Miss Anna B. Hodge, a daughter of Judge Alvin T. Hodge, a prominent citizen of the Creek Nation, and the history of whose life is more completely given in the sketch of Jack Bell in this work. Mr. and Mrs. Orcutt have become the parents of four children: Wil- liam A., Homer, Lela and Winnie. Mrs. Orcutt is a member of the Presbyterian church.

DR. CHARLES L. REEDER, of Tulsa, Ok- lahoma, is one of the able and well known practitioners of medicine and surgery in the southwest, and since his residence here, which dates from 1890, he has been closely identified with its public life, having served as mavor. He is a native of Iowa, his birth having occurred in Orleans, Appanoose county, in 1862. His father, Dr. Philander Reeder, was born in Ohio, in 1830, but was a pioneer physician of Iowa, while later he practiced his profession in Pawnee City, Nebraska, but is now living, retired, in Tul- sa.

Dr. Charles L. Reeder was but a young lad at the time of his parents' removal from Iowa to Nebraska, and it was in Pawnee City, Nebraska, that he was mostly reared and acquired his early education. Deciding upon a professional course as a life work, he entered Ensworth Medical College, at

St. Joseph, Missouri, but completed his med- ical course in Barnes Medical College, at St. Louis, Missouri, from which institution he graduated. In the year 1890 he made his way to the great southwest, locating in Tulsa, where he has since remained. His practice is already large, and is constantly increasing in accordance with the rapid growth and development of the city ; he has gained the distinction of being one of the most successful practitioners in the eastern half of the new state of Oklahoma.

Dr. Reeder is also well known in munici- pal and financial interests, having served as mayor of Tulsa, in which connection he discharged his duties in a most able and satisfactory manner. He is vice-president of the Central National Bank, president of the Tulsa Grand Opera House Company, president of the First National Building Company, and is the owner of the Reeder Building, a modern, four-story business block, located at the corner of Second Street and Boston Avenue.

Dr. Reeder chose as a life companion Jes- sica Viola Goodamote, who was born and reared at Springville, Erie county, New York. They have one daughter, Winifred, now twelve years of age. The Doctor is a Democrat in politics and is popular in the professional and social circles of the city. He is a man of culture and sense, and his life of industry has brought a rich reward in the estimate his acquaintances place upon him as a physician and a man.

TYRE CLIFTON HUGHES. Tulsa within a few years has expanded from a town to a city. This concentration of population and business activities has demanded improve- ments such as cannot be left to individual enterprise, but must be assumed by the municipality. The making of streets and their improvement, the construction of sew- ers, of waterworks, the lighting of streets, fire and police protections, and many minor departments of public service become a nec- essity as soon as the small center grows to the size of a city. Since December, 1906. many of these municipal improvements in Tulsa, now being undertaken to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing population, have been under the direction of City En- gineer T. C. Hughes. As an engineer, both by experience and practical ability, Mr. Hughes is one of the leaders of the profes-

CL. Reeder mx

413

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA.

sion, and to his services must be credited much of the advancement of Tulsa in its material features.

Tyre Clifton Hughes was born at Platts- burg, Clinton county, Missouri, in 1859, was educated in the local schools of that aris- tocratic old town, and prepared for the pro- fession of engineering in the engineering department of the University of Missouri, at Columbia, from which he graduated in 1884. He became assistant engineer for the Missouri River Commission, continuing as such a little more than two years. Then, as construction engineer for the St. Louis Cable and Western Railway Company, he directed the construction of the first cable road in that city. He was a pioneer in the construction of electric street railways in the west. He built the Wichita and Sub- urban Electric Railway in Wichita, the first in that city, and was then called to Kansas City to become engineer for the West Side Electric Railway. From 1892 to 1894 he was engaged as engineer on the projected (but never completed) Chicago and St. Louis Electric Railway. During the fol- lowing eight years he was principal assist- ant engineer to Chief Engineer Edward Butts for the Metropolitan Street Railway Company of Kansas City. In 1901, during the building of the steam railroad from Rog- ers, in northwestern Arkansas, to Grove, in Indian Territory, he was engineer in charge of construction, and was later en- gaged in mining engineering in Colorado, chiefly at Leadville, being representative for a time of the Onderdonk Engineering Com- pany of Denver. He constructed the noted Yak tunnel at Leadville for the Yak Mining, Milling and Tunnel Company. During this time, also, he spent part of the time on the road, in the west, representing the Babcock & Wilcox Boiler Company, selling boilers to corporations. It was with this record of successful experience that he came to Tulsa. in 1906. Few men in his profession have had a more varied and practical career, and he brings to his office as city engineer the abilities which are most needed in laying a substantial foundation for the growth of a flourishing city.

Mr. Hughes was married at Sedan, Kan- sas, to Miss Hattie M. Pease. They have a daughter, Maud. His only social connec- tion is with the Phi Delta Theta. Frater-

nally, he belongs to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and politically, he is a Democrat.

HARRY C. HALL. A number of business men and merchants of northeastern Okla- homa were trained for their careers in the old mercantile establishment of H. C. Hall & Company, the most important of all the early firms of l'ulsa and that vicinity. The store was a nucleus of the business life of the town, and for miles around lived people who did their trading at Hall's.

With the death of H. C. Hall, at Spring- field, Missouri, on March 10, 1895, there passed away the man who, more than any other local factor, was identified with the construction of the Frisco Railroad to Tulsa and Sapulpa. H. C. Hall was a railroad contractor in the sixties, and had done part of the work on the Union Pacific across the western plains, and in the early eighties took the contract to build the extension of the St. Louis and San Francisco Line from Vinita, through Tulsa and Red Fork, to Sapulpa. His work was completed and rail- road trains began running to these points in 1883. There the railroad stopped for ten years, and it remained for another Oklaho- ma man (C. G. Jones) to push the line to the west to connect with Oklahoma City. Having extended a line of steel road into the heart of the Creek Nation, Mr. Hall was content to rest from his railroad activities and undertake a permanent business at the western end of the railroad. With the towns of Tulsa, Red Fork and Sapulpa, along the terminus of the old Frisco Rail- road, his activities were identified from that time until his death. He established a com- missary store at Tulsa in 1882, and this was the beginning of his larger enterprises, con- ducted, as they are today, under the name of H. C. Hall & Company. He had branch stores at Red Fork and Sapulpa, and in later years at the Mounds. For a time the Red Fork store was the largest, but for some time the headquarters have been at Sapulpa, and the branches at Red Fork and Tulsa were discontinued. H. C. Hall & Company are a well known firm at Sapulpa and Mounds at this time, the widow and daughter of the former proprietor being partners.

Another interesting fact of history con- nected with the Hall stores is that the first Presbyterian services ever held in Tulsa

414

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA.

were conducted in the Hall store at that place. The late Mr. Hall was a useful and public-spirited citizen. He helped many worthy enterprises, whether it was in the strict line of business, or for education and religion. Mr. Hall himself was a member of the Episcopal church.

H. C. Hall was born at Belfast, Tennes- see, April 10, 1841, son of Hugh A. and Esther (Ramsey) Hall, and descended from Revolutionary ancestors. His brother, James M. Hall, now lives at Tulsa, a banker and business man, and for many years iden- tified with this city and vicinity. H. C. Hall was reared and educated and lived in Ten- nessee until he was nineteen. Just before the war he came west, and spent several years of interesting experience as frontiers- man, especially in connection with the pre- liminary work leading up to the construc- tion of the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha to Ogden. In that period of the de- velopment of the western country between the Missouri and the Rocky mountains, when the railroad was first opening a high- way of communication and the Indians were being forced from their ancestral hunt- ing grounds-a period that figures in the history of Oklahoma, as elsewhere de- scribed-Mr. Hall was a figure of consider- able interest. Associated with the old scout, David Mount, of Omaha, he acted as guide in piloting troops and surveying parties across the plains when the first surveys were being made for the railroad. (Mount later became one of the wealthy business men of Omaha.) When the steel rails of the Union Pacific were completed to Raw- lins, Wyoming, it was thought that Raw- lins would remain the terminus for some time, and at that point Mr. Hall established a small store in a tent. In the course of his work in the west he had crossed the plains seventeen times. Leaving Wyom- ing, in 1872, he engaged in the milling busi- ness at Oswego, Kansas, in partnership with Robert Howell, as Howell and Hall. The burning of the mill in 1880 once more turned Mr. Hall to railroad building, and about that time he became connected with the Frisco extension as above related.

Mrs. H. C. Hall, who has an active busi- ness interest in her late husband's enter- prises, and who has resided in Tulsa since 1904, was before her marriage Miss Hettie C. Howell, the daughter of Mr. Hall's form-

er partner in the milling business. She is a native of Wisconsin, and was married to Mr. Hall at Oswego. She has an interest- ing American ancestry, being a descendant on her mother's side of the Revolutionary general, Nathaniel Greene, and including others of historic note. There are two chil- dren, Robert Howell Hall and Mrs. Beulah Hall Huonker. The former, who is now in business at Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, es- tablished the first telephone system in Tulsa. The daughter is the wife of Charles Louis Huonker, Jr., a native of St. Louis, and son of C. L. Huonker, an old-time business man in the plumbing trade of that city.

DR. SAMUEL E. ORCUTT. The south half of the town of Broken Arrow was built on land the lease right of which belonged to Dr. Samuel E. Orcutt. With the comple- tion of the Tulsa branch of the M. K. & T. Railroad in 1904, the town was laid out, and has been growing rapidly ever since. Dr. Orcutt constructed the third business building in the new town and was proprietor of the third store. Later he organized and developed one of the largest mercantile en- terprises of this vicinity, the Farmers' Trad- ing Company.

Dr. Orcutt is one of the early white resi- dents of the Creek Nation. He and his brother, Col. A. D. Orcutt, now of Coweta and a member of the state legislature, came here May 4, 1874, locating near the Arkan- sas river about ten miles south of the present Broken Arrow and five miles north of the old Indian village of Wealaka. They engaged in trading and live-stock until Samuel E. entered the profession of medi- cine, which he abandoned finally for a busi- ness career. He has been a successful man, in the early days lived on pleasant terms with the Indian neighbors, knew them all and was influential among them, and with the changing conditions in the Territory has increased his business affairs accord- ingly. Since selling his mercantile inter- ests in 1907, he has given all his time to the S. E. Orcutt Investment Company, which deals in farm lands, oil leases, busi- ness property and general investments.

Samuel E. Orcutt was born in Lewis county, Kentucky, in 1855. His parents were among the ante-bellum settlers of Kan- sas. His father, A. C. Orcutt, was a prac- ticing physician for a long number of years, and a native of New York state. His wife,

SE Orentry

415

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA.

Mary (Crull) Orcutt, was from Scioto coun- ty. Ohio. Moving to Doniphan county, Kansas, in 1857, they lived there only a short time before they went back east to Coles county, Illinois, and thence, in the early seventies, moved to Oakland, Marion coun- ty, Arkansas. It was in these two last- named localities where Dr. Orcutt spent his boyhood and received his education. His father was his first preceptor in medicine, and after attending lectures in a medical college he began practice in his home coun- ty, coming from Arkansas to Indian Terri- tory in 1874.

The doctor is a member of Broken Arrow Lodge, No. 14%, I. O. O. F. Politically, he is a life long Republican. He was married in Missouri to Miss Sarah Jane Burgess, a native of Mt. Vernon, that state. At her death on January 5, 1908, she left the fol- lowing children: Alice, Alpha, Loney, El- mer, Essie, Effie and Crull.

WILLIAM T. DALTON. Since June, 1903, about the time the Tulsa Branch of the M. K. & T. Railroad was completed and the town of Broken Arrow was established, this growing town has had William T. Dal- ton as one of its enterprising citizens. Mr. Dalton is an old-timer in the Oklahoma country, and has experienced the conditions of life in this portion of the west for over thirty-five years. He was born in Macou- pin county, Illinois, November 7, 1857, but lived there only to the age of fourteen, when he went with his parents to their new home on the prairies of Nebraska in Clay county.

Living in Nebraska during the seventies was marked by almost a succession of dis- asters, beginning with the "April snow- storm" of 1872, the panic of 1873, and grass- hopper plague of 1874-75, and years in which all the products of the country brought low prices that hardly paid for the high cost of transportation.

Mr. Dalton became an Oklahoman in 1892. After living for awhile at Stillwater in Payne county, he took part in the rush to the Cherokee Strip in September, 1893, and got a homestead on the northeast quar- ter of section 13, township 21, range 1 east, in Noble county, later relinquishing this for the northeast quarter of section 12 in the same township. After farming for three years he went into business at Stillwater, the county seat of Payne county, where he lived until moving to Broken Arrow.

The circumstances of his early life in the developing agricultural region west of the Missouri river, its alternating booms and panics and the severe afflictions visiting it in the early years, made him a close and serious student of the peculiar economic problems affecting this region. He joined earnestly in the Populist movement of the early nineties, and gave much of his time to the consideration and advocating of re- forms in financial and other laws and poli- cies of the nation and state. His experience and fitness for the position being readily recognized, he was honored by receiving the Democratic nomination and election as member of the constitutional convention of 1906-07. and took an active part in the de- liberations and constructive statecraft of that assemblage. Much of his time was spent in framing provisions pertaining to the committee on private corporations, a work in which he was animated by a de- sire to have the convention show exact jus- tice to all interests, private and public, and to place no needless restrictions on the le- gitimate conduct of any commercial or in- dustrial enterprises. He was a member of the committee on public printing, and was the chief exponent of the measure provid- ing for a public printer and a state printing plant, a provision that was written into the organic law of the state.

Mr. Dalton is one of the successful busi- ness men of Oklahoma. Besides farming lands and town real estate, he is owner of the cotton gin at Broken Arrow, which is conducted by the Coweta Gin, Coal and Mill Company. In this company he is as- sociated with his brothers, J. C. and C. L. Dalton. In his native county of Macoupin, Illinois, Mr. Dalton married Miss Minnie Belle Rohrer. They have six children : Clarence J., Lela May, Bertha Lee, Wil- liam Carl, Ralph R. and Charles Joseph.

DANIEL B. CHILDERS. By blood relation- ship and marriage, Daniel B. Childers, of Broken Arrow, connects the best known names of the Creek Indian race. The old Childers homestead, about five and a half miles south of the present town of Broken Arrow, where he was born in 1879, is one of the noted homes of the Creek Nation. Within its walls lived for many years his parents, Daniel and Lydia (Perryman) Childers, and there his father died in 1885. Daniel Childers was a half-blood Creek, his

416

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA.

father a white man and his mother an In- dian, and he was born in the Indian Terri- tory and lived here and went through the Civil war as a soldier of the Confederacy. Lydia (Perryman) Childers (the mother), who is still living, is a remarkable woman, and a member of the family of Perrymans who were among the first leaders of the Creek Nation in Indian Territory, and whose names are mentioned frequently in the gen- eral history of the nation. One of the two chiefs of the name, Legus C. Perryman, is still living at Tulsa. Thompson Perryman is the father of Mrs. Childers. The latter is exceptionally well informed on the his- tory of the Creek Nation, and affords a lis- tener much information that is entertain- ing and instructive.

Daniel B. Childers attended schools at Tulsa, Eufaula and elsewhere, and almost from the attainment of manhood has been active in the affairs of the Creek Nation. He was elected a member of the lower house of the Creek council and served on the fi- nance committee, representing Big Springs town. His home has been at Broken Ar- row since about the time the town was established, in 1902, and his farm in that vicinity is one of the finest in the Creek Nation.

Mr. Childers married Mildred McIntosh, which brings forward another noted name of Indian Territory history. Her father was the distinguished Roley McIntosh, whose home was at Stidham, in McIntosh county, which was named in his honor. Of this same family were the McIntoshes who led one of the Creek migrations to the coun- try beyond the Mississippi, a history of which is given on other pages. For many years Roley McIntosh had been a leader, having held every office of importance in the Creek Nation, and more than once represent- ed his people in delegations sent to Wash- ington. He died November 30, 1908, after a short illness. Mrs. Childers, nee McIntosh, is a highly educated lady, having been an honor student at Carlisle, and after leav- ing there was a teacher in the Creek Nation, and at the present time is the clerk of the lower house of the Creek council. Mr. and Mrs. Childers have three children : Clar- ence W., Ruby Mildred and Eloise.

DR. FRED S. CLINTON. On June 25th 1901, was completed the first oil well in the Tulsa district, at Red Fork. The pioneers

in this enterprise were two practicing phys- icians, Dr. Fred S. Clinton, of Tulsa, and Dr. J. C. W. Bland, of Red Fork, who suc- cessfully promoted the drilling of the well which attracted to this field eventually, some of the most experienced oil men from the older fields who have opened probably the greatest oil producing territory in the world. The remarkable development of these natural resources, including the Glenn Pool, may be said to have originated with the work of these doctors.

Dr. Clinton has maintained an interest in the oil and gas properties in this section and is one of the leaders among the men of en- terprise who have made Tulsa one of the most important centers of the oil and gas industry in the United States. He was a charter member and later one of the Direc- tors of the Tulsa Commercial Club. He was one of the organizers, incorporators and sec- retary of the Tulsa Street Railway Com- pany.

Both in his profession and in business af- fairs he has had a career of unusual interest and varied activities. He was born near Okmulgee, Creek Nation, Indian Territory, in 1874. His mother, Mrs. Louise (Atkins) Clinton, is a southern woman of Creek de- scent. His father, Charles Clinton, was a highly educated white man and came to the Indian country in the early seventies. He was thoroughly progressive and of great business capacity. He was an extensive cattle owner and among the first to suggest the vast mineral wealth of the Creek Na- tion. He died in 1888.

Both for business and professional life, Dr. Clinton received the best educational preparation that the schools of the country could afford. From the National Schools of the Creek Nation he became a student in St. Francis Institute at Osage, Kansas. Then Drury College, Springfield, Missouri ;

the Gem City Business College, Quincy, Illi- nois, and Young Harris College in Georgia. He studied both pharmacy and medicine in Kansas City, graduating with honor from the Kansas City College of Pharmacy in 1896, and from the University Medical Col- lege in 1897. He first practiced at Red Fork and later located in Tulsa.

Much credit in the medical profession is due Dr. Clinton in keeping alive the inter- ests in the Indian Territory Medical Asso- ciation (now merged with the Oklahoma

Mrs. Jane Do. Clinton

mid,

417

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Medical Association) and the welfare of the medical profession in general. He has held all the positions in the old association-sec- retary, treasurer, vice-president and presi- dent, and in 1906 was chosen the associa- tion's delegate to the annual meeting of the American Medical Association at Boston, and in 1908 was named as delegate to the International Congress on Tuberculosis at Washington, of which he is an active mem- ber. He is one of the organizers and is president of the Tulsa Hospital Association, which owns the Tulsa Hospital, a modern institution. He has also been active in or- ganizing the Oklahoma Branch of the Amer- ican National Red Cross Society, of which William H. Taft is president. Besides his private practice, he is local surgeon at Tulsa for the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad Co., the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad Co., Midland Valley Railroad Co., and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company, and is Chief Surgeon of the Tulsa Street Railway. He is a member of the County, State and National associations and of the American Association of Railway Surgeons, and other associations too num- erous to mention. He is surgeon for vari- ous accident insurance companies and ex- aminer for old-line companies.

In 1892. Dr. Clinton was married to Miss Jane Carroll Heard of Elberton, Georgia. She is one of the ranking musicians of the state and is president of the Hyechka Club, and keeps in touch with the musical pro- gress of the entire country. The Doctor is a member of the Methodist Church South, also a member of the Masonic. Scottish Rite and Shriner orders.

GEORGE H. NORVELL is now filling the po- sition of notary public at Tulsa, where he has made his home since August, 1902. He is a veteran of the Civil war and in days of peace displays the same loyalty to the interests of the government and the coun- try at large as he manifested when on southern battlefields he followed the old flag to victory. He was born in Jackson township, Linn county, Missouri, October 29, 1847. the old home place, where he lived for many years, being on section 36 that township. His boyhood and youth were spent in the usual manner of farm lads who assist in the cultivation of the fields from the time of early spring planting until crops are harvested in the late autumn. He en- Vol. II-27

joys the distinction of having been one of the youngest soldiers of the Civil war, who fought in defense of the stars and stripes, for on the 21st of July, 1861, he enlisted in the Union army, as a member of Company C, Eighteenth Missouri Infantry. The first important battle in which he participated was that of Shiloh, in which he sustained a severe bullet wound. His regiment, the Eighteenth Missouri, together with the Sixty-fourth Illinois, formed the picket line at Shiloh and bore the brunt of battle. These two regiments became famous as sharp- shooters and following the engagement at Shiloh were continually placed in most dan- gerous service because of their expert abil- ity in warfare. Mr. Norvell went with his regiment from Shiloh to East Tennessee, participating in all of the battles around Chattanooga, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge and afterward participated in the siege of Atlanta and marched with Sher- man's army to the sea through the Caro- linas and Virginia, and at length, reaching Washington, participated in the grand re- view in May, 1865. It was a celebrated military pageant in which the Union army marched through the streets of the city which were lined with cheering thousands who thus welcomed the return of the sol- diers.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II, Part 78

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