USA > Oklahoma > A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume II > Part 88
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In Valliant the Judge purchased much realty and improved some of his holdings there. In the handling of the Indian lands he is asso- ciated with P. A. Wilbor, cashier of the Bank of Valliant, and they are prominent dealers in titles to Indian lands. When the office of mayor became vacant in 1907, Judge Fowler was appointed to fill it, and was elected to the same in the spring of 1908. He is giving his people a good and fair minded administration, running matters economically and showing his people that he has with them a common inter- est in the new and wide-awake town. He has
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large landed interests in McCurtain county, where his family allotments have been taken.
Mr. Fowler's first wife died January 27, 1891, leaving sons, John W., a farmer of Waurika, Oklahoma ; and David and Moses, of Valliant. For his second wife he married on August 2, 1898, Josephine Victor, daughter of George Williams, and a Choctaw Indian lady. She was the widow of a Mr. Wilson, and left a son, George Wilson, at her death, March 9, 1906, besides Sarah, Rosetta and Lillian, daughters by Mr. Fowler.
Judge Fowler is connected with Odd Fel- lowship and also belongs to the Wood- men of the World and to the Circle, one of its auxiliaries. Besides these popular frater- nities he holds a certificate in the Praetorians. In church relations he is identified with the Methodist Episcopal denomination.
THOMAS L. LUCAS, one of the early white settlers of the vicinity of Valliant, established himself at the mouth of Buzzard Creek in the month of October, 1887. Hamburg was the postoffice adjacent to the place, and there he rented land and carried on agriculture in a very primitive way. His means consisted of a team and wagon and the few necessaries found in the possession of farmers in his con- dition. His home consisted of one room-a mere shack-in which he kept bachelor's hall, and during his stay there he was cook, cotton- picker and all. The next year he moved to a larger farm nearby, and had the Huckabys living with him, but even this situation was not ideal, and he sought an opportunity to possess a housekeeper and married Mrs. Lavi- tha Austin, a Choctaw widow, who owned a farm on little River and to it Mr. Lucas and his wife moved and passed the first two years. Going thence to Garland Prairie Mr. Lucas opened up a new farm there, and was actively engaged in its cultivation and improvement un- til his location on his wife's place, which was an allotment adjoining the town of Valliant recently established by the Frisco Railroad. Here he has since resided and been occupied with the duties of a farmer and stockman, and with the gradual improvement of the farm.
Mr. Lucas was born near Bowling Green, Kentucky, February 20, 1855. His father was Nathaniel Lucas, a farmer, born near the same place and who died there in 1878, aged fifty- three years. He was successful, owned land and left a valuable estate at his death. His father, the grandfather of our subject, was also Nathaniel Lucas, who passed his active
life near Mizpah church and is buried there. He had children : William and Ed, who died in Kentucky; Nathaniel, and Martha, wife of Mr. McClung, of Galveston, Texas.
Nathaniel Lucas, our subject's father, mar- ried Ann McClung, who died in Ken- tucky in 1874. She was a daughter of Charles McClung, of Edmundson county, Kentucky, and had children: John, who died near Valliant, Oklahoma; Amanda, wife of James Hurd, of Bowling Green, Kentucky ; Calvin, of Smith Grove, Kentucky ; Alexander, who died in that state; Thomas L., of this review; Nathaniel, of Valliant; Annie, who married John Hibbett and resides in Waco, Texas; Maud, who is married and lives in Jonesborough, Texas; and Spencer who is a farmer at Valliant, Oklahoma.
According to his best recollections the to- bacco patch furnished Mr. Lucas with his early education. Little time was found for him to lift the covers of the few books he possessed and which he used at the common school. He was counted one of his father's family as long as he remained in old Kentucky, and in 1886 he left the state to seek a location for himself. He spent a year in Arkansas, and in October, 1887, settled among the Choctaws along Red River where he put forth his first efforts, as a bachelor farmer, as heretofore outlined.
He was married to the widow of Henry Austin, and who was also the widow of Isaac Hawkins, and the daughter of Mr. Le Flore, a pioneer from Mississippi and whose family is prominent among the Choctaw tribe. By her first husband Mrs. Lucas was the mother of Isaac Hawkins, of Valliant, and Frances, wife of a Mr. Hanson, of the Chickasaw coun- try. By Mr. Austin, Mrs. Lucas was the mother of Phebe, wife of Spencer W. Lucas, of Valliant ; Ida, who married John Whitfield, of Valliant ; and Samuel, who makes his home in the same place. Mr. and Mrs. Lucas had no children, and she died October 20, 1906.
Mr. Lucas is a Master Mason and also be- longs to the Odd Fellows order. Politically he is a Republican. He owns considerable property in Valliant, improved and unim- proved; has extensive farming interests in McCurtain county and he is classed among the leading citizens of his town and county.
JUD MOORE, of the firm of Moore Brothers, general dealers of Valliant, was born in Blos- som, Texas, April 24, 1877, a son of Henry Moore, who settled in the Lone Star state in 1845, when a mere boy, accompanying his
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father, Fulsom Moore. The latter settled in Lamar county, near Paris, where he died as a thorough going farmer of his time. He was born in Florida, from which southern state he brought his family to Texas.
Henry Moore married Maggie Birmingham, daughter of Dr. Birmingham, of Dublin, Ire- land, where he grew to manhood and obtained his education. He was a pioneer settler in Lamar county, and practiced medicine in Paris, in which city he passed away. The issue of Henry and Maggie Moore was: Edith, of Blossom, Texas, wife of J. H. Norwood; Bertha, of Abilene, Texas, wife of G. M. Moody; Mate, who married J. M. Whitlow, of Rogers, Texas; Pat., of Portland, Oregon ; James E., of Valliant, Oklahoma ; and Jud and John, proprietors of Moore Brothers business at Valliant.
Concerning the personnel of Jud Moore let it be said that he received a good common- school education in the elementary branches. This much was obtained in his childhood while toward manhood he attended rural schools and spent six months in a business college at San Antonio, Texas. His first position was with Sam Steinle at Clarksville, Texas, who was a merchant, and with whom he mastered many useful points concerning the mercantile busi- ness. He then purchased cotton for a time, after which he embarked in the grocery trade. Being without capital himself, but having a friend with means and plenty of confidence in him Mr. Moore joined a young friend in the grocery business. Dr. Hooker advanced the means necessary, as well as much of the credit, to start the new firm at Clarksville, Texas, where they were highly successful, made money, and when he sold out to his partner, Charles E. Tue, Mr. Moore came to Valliant and there engaged in general merchandising in company with his brother. As they pros- pered in business they added other depart- ments of stock until within their brick build- ing can now be found a typical modern de- partment store. Other business interests form a part of Mr. Moore's holdings, both farming and lumbering being among such additional interests. His life having for a dozen or more years been absorbed in his own business affairs he has paid but little attention to politics, for he has been mindful of the fact that too many men in trade are apt to lose their bearings in a community by dabbling in local politics. Hle has not even established himself with a home and family of his own, as yet. He is
a member of the Masonic order, being a Mas- ter Mason and has taken the Chapter degree of this most excellent and ancient order.
Mr. Moore is one of a class of young busi- ness factors who have come to the new state from older sections of this Union and brought tact and business experience along with them. He has built up a business which has helped his town and county as well as enriching him- self. The community appreciates just this type of business men. who are free from low trickery in trade.
WILLIAM W. SWINK, of Valliant, Okla- homa, was one of the first merchants of the town to open a store, but of recent years has been engaged in agricultural pursuits. He came into the Choctaw Nation in 1887 from Henderson, Tennessee, where he was born December 9, 1867. Wilborn Swink, his father, was born near Meadon in the same county, in 1815, a son of a large slave owner, pro- prietor of a stage stand in his county in the frontier days of Tennessee and a settler from North Carolina. Wilborn Swink married Mary Robinson, who died in 1888, the mother of: Kate who married T. J. Butler and died in Tennessee in 1905; Sophia, wife of Thomas Nesbit, of Center Point, Arkansas ; David, of Swink, Oklahoma, after whom the station was named; Susan, wife of David Harris, of Lu- ray, Tennessee; Sallie, now Mrs. Hubert Mays, of Penson, Tennessee; Gertrude, wife of a Mr. Stone; John; Ella, the widow of Jamies Paccaud, of Tennessee ; Florence, who died unmarried ; Albert, on the old homestead ; and William W., of this biography.
William W. Swink was reared surrounded by the scenes incident to real farm life and labor. He attended such schools as his near- by neighborhood afforded, the log school build- ing with its slab bench being still in vogue when he was a pupil and none of the more convenient and modern appliances had come to obtain when he attended school. He con- tinued to reside at home with his parents un- til he went to Dallas, Texas, arriving in that goodly southwestern city with the sum of fif- teen cents as his only capital. He went there from Corinth, Mississippi. His brother David had preceded him into the Indian country, and he followed up and located at old Doakes- ville, where he began his Territorial career as renter on a farm. After a few years he was appointed deputy United States marshal, and during his service of eight years he served
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under Marshals Needles, McAllister, Grady and Hackett, closing his service while at Ant- lers, where he married and built his first home.
Having decided to engage in business he was employed a short time at Antlers, and then disposed of his property and went to Doakes- ville, (Shawneetown), where the merchant, R. M. Love, employed him and where he re- mained two years as a clerk, He established himself in business next at Bonton, one of the country towns nearby, and was there four years, when the building of the Frisco rail- road through the Choctaw country opened up the station at Valliant, and he moved his stock of goods to that point, and built one of the first business houses of the town. He con- tinued in trade two years and then sold out to Bushnell and Knight, since which time he has devoted his time to farming. Having ac- quired citizenship in the Nation by marriage he allotted much of his family lands in Mc- Curtain county, where on Red River lies a body of nine hundred acres, some three hun- dred acres of which is being cultivated by tenants, and there the staples of cotton, corn and alfalfa are successfully produced in pro- fusion.
In the month of November, 1894, Mr. Swink was married to Nannie Edwards, a daughter of H. C. and Lydia (Carrollton) Edwards, citizens of the Choctaw Nation. Mrs. Swink was born in Oklahoma. The issue of the mar- riage of Mr. and Mrs. Swink is: William E., Inez, Ida May, Randall Henry and Irene K.
As a citizen of the new state of Oklahoma Mr. Swink has identified himself with civil movements looking toward statehood from first to last, and was sent as a delegate to Okla- homa City, to the single statehood convention, which movement he supported. He has helped to build up the town of Valliant by the erec- tion of dwellings, besides his own residence, and was one of the promoters of the Bank of Valliant and is one of its stockholders. While he has formulated no definite political alliance as to national affairs himself, his fore- fathers were all Democrats and his own lean- ings are toward the faith of that political school. He is allied with the Knights of Pythias and Woodmen of the World, and belongs to the various committees in those fraternities.
WALTER L. RAY, of Idabel, county clerk of McCurtain county, is a native of Sevier county, Arkansas, born March 25, 1877, near Chapel Hill. He received his education the
best he could in the country school of his county and Little River county, where he reached his maturity. At twenty years of age he received his initial experience in life in teaching a country school, but the attractions thus obtained, however, were not sufficient to rivet him to the profession, and he soon found a position with a civil engineering corps on the Kansas City & Southern Railroad, where he worked for about one year, after which he secured a position as clerk and bookkeeper in a store at Cerro Gordo, Arkansas. After spending about five years there the old voca- tion of farming, at which he was reared, beck- oned him then, and he came to that part of the Indian Territory which is now a part of McCurtain county, Oklahoma, where he set- tled in 1903. Until his election as county clerk, he was a citizen of the Good Water Neighborhood, and his candidacy for the office was taken favorably over the county, there be- ing no opposition to his nomination. He was elected over his Republican opponent by a majority of four hundred and fifty-seven votes. He belongs to the Idabel lodge No. 152, A. F. & A. M., to the Knights of Pythias and is identified with the Eastern Star.
He was united in marriage in Arkansas, December 27, 1898, to Grace C. Sims, the daughter of J. B. Sims, who was born in Ten- nessee, in 1853, and Bettie Sims, who was born in North Carolina March 14, 1857, and came to Arkansas when about two years of age. Mrs. Ray has three brothers and two sisters. The issue of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Ray is Swan, Harrold and Bradley.
Mr. Ray's family on his father's side are old Scotch-Irish, and immigrated to Orange coun- ty, North Carolina, from the northern part of Ireland at an early date. There were several brothers of them that first came to America and bought large tracts of land and became large slave owners, but we have no accurate history of the family until we come to Wal- ter's grandfather, James Ray, who owned a large farm north of Hillsboro, North Caro- lina, which was deprived of all its stock and provisions by Colonel Tarlton's British sol- diers, who camped near there for a short time during the Revolutionary war. James Ray had three sons, David, John and Josephi. David had two children, John and Bird. The latter never married and is now living with one of her nephews. Walter's grandfather married a girl named Wilkerson, whose father was also Scotch-Irish and came from Ireland.
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Josepli Ray had two sons, and James, the oldest, married and has three children, two girls and one boy. Hugh Ray, who was a Confederate soldier, died after the war in Tennessee, leaving four sons and one daughter. The other son, John Ray, Wal- ter's grandfather, married in Orange coun- ty, North Carolina, Elizabeth Redding. Of that marriage three children were born. Nancy, the oldest, was born in 1842; Wil- liam, Walter's father, was born in 1844; Elizabeth was born in 1847; Nancy married a man named Stepp and died in Franklin county, Arkansas, in 1900. Elizabeth mar- ried a man by the name of N. B. Ward, and died at Chapel Hill, Arkansas, in 1902. John Ray moved from North Carolina to McNairy county, Tennessee, before the commencement of the late war. In April, 1861, the President called on Governor Is- ham Harris of Tennessee for two regiments of men to help put down the rebellion. Ten- nessee had not yet seceded. Governor Har- ris refused to furnish the troops but made a call for men to defend Tennessee against Lincoln's demand for troops. Walter's fa- thier, W. S. Ray, was one of the first to re- spond to this call and left Purdy, Tennessee, on the 3rd day of May, 1861, under Captain Cross, and a regiment was soon formed at Randolph, Tennessee. This regiment was known as the One Hundred and Fifty- fourth Tennessee. He served during most of the war in this regiment, but was with General Forrest for a short while. After the war he came to Sevier county, Arkansas, where he lived two years, then went back to his old home in Tennessee and married Narcissus Hubbard and returned to Sevier county, where he made his home until the spring of 1909, when he moved to Idabel, Oklahoma. John Ray died in McNairy county, Tennessee, in 1862 ; his wife, Eliza- betli, died in Franklin county, Ark., in 1827.
WILLIAM H. MURRAY.
It is likely that the school books of a century hence will mention among the facts that all children of Oklahoma should know, that the first speaker of the house of rep- resentatives, as also the chairman of the constitutional convention that framed the constitution under which Oklahoma became a state, was William H. Murray. Whether the curiosity of people a century from now will be so strong respecting the personality and career of Mr. Murray that it will lead to a searching for additional facts concern- ing him, cannot be said positively, but it is possible for a historian to state that he is the most picturesque figure in the Okla- homa public life of the present. He is typical of Oklahoma citizenship, represent- ing, as he does, the Indian race that inherited the land, and to a greater degree the white people who have occupied and developed the Oklahoma country. His family ties identify him with Texas and the Indian country, but by profession he has been a lawyer possessing a patriotism that knew no special section or civil divisions that would prevent his efforts for the wel- fare of his state.
His family record can be quickly sketched. He was born in Collinsville, Grayson county, Texas, November 21, 1869. Uriah Darwin Thomas Murray and Bertha Jones were his parents. The Murrays came to Virginia from Scotland in colonial days. One of the early members of the family married a relative of George Bancroft, which accounts for the frequent appearance of that name in the Murray family. The speaker's father came to Texas from Ten- nessee when sixteen years old. He was one of Colonel Potter's Texas Rangers. By occupation he has been first a butcher and for the past twenty years or more a farmer.
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One of the facts of interest about Speaker Murray that makes his early career seem very much like that of the ordinary citizen, is his activity as a school teacher and news- paper man, two occupations that brought him in close contact with human nature. After going to school in Wise and Parker counties, Texas, he got a place as teacher in order to support himself while continu- ing his education. He had left home a twelve years, and from that time supported himself. During the years 1885-88, he was alternately engaged in teaching school and in attending the College Hill Institute. He was a schoolmaster five years in all. Dur- ing the days when the Farmers' Alliance was a power in business and politics in Texas, he was officially connected with that organization, and in the promotion of those interests founded at Dallas the Farmers' World. He was twenty-three years old at the time. After accomplishing his pur- poses he sold out to the Texas Farmer, and returned to the school desk. An unsuc- cessful campaign for the office of state senator against George Jester left him in debt, and there followed a two years' period of strenuous self-denial and hard work, during which he established and conducted the Corsicana News. He was the sole pro- prietor and office force, circulation depart- ment, foreign correspondent, besides direct- ing the minor details of this enterprise, and it is not strange that he succeeded. More than that, he read law when not getting out his paper, and after being admitted to the bar began practice in Corsicana.
Following a prospecting visit in April, 1897, Mr. Murray located permanently at Tishomingo, in the Indian Territory, March 28, 1898. To keep up appearances he rode in the hack up town from the depot, but this extravagence cost him his dinner, for he had started for this new home with only
a few dollars in his pocket. In practicing law he was successful almost from the start, and continued to take cases and maintain his law office in Tishomingo until Decem- ber, 1902, when he moved to his farm. He had been associated as private secretary and as adviser with Governor Johnston of the Chickasha Nation, and by his marriage to Miss Alice Hearrell, a niece of the gov- ernor, he further allied himself with the interests of this nation. He has been a figure in Chickasha politics for the past ten years, and when the movements were set on foot that finally placed Oklahoma in the family of states, he became an active factor in the cause. In 1905 he was a member of the convention called by the five civilized tribes for the purpose of appealing to Congress for statehood for Indian Territory to be admitted as the state of Sequoyah. He served in that convention with C. N. Haskell; and the experience gained in the organization of that con- vention and the formation of the consti- tution was in large measure the foundation for the present political prominence of those two men. September 29, 1906, after a hot campaign Mr. Murray secured the primary nomination to represent his district, the One Hundred and Fourth, as a member of the constitutional convention. At the gen- eral election following, he was elected by a vote of two to one, in a district which had previously been gerrymandered, so it is claimed, to give a Republican majority. The convention met at Guthrie on Novem- ber 20. In the large country of Oklahoma and Indian Territory the name of William H. Murray was at that time little known. But the Sequoyah movement still had power and influence, and among thirty-four delegates in the convention who represented that movement Murray was one of the strongest and had their confidence and the
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support of the former Union representa- tives as well. The story of the contest over the chairmanship and the final out- come in the election of William H. Murray is still fresh in the minds of Oklahomans, and a part of recent political history. Sixty- two of the delegates gave their votes to Murray, and he presided over the conven- tion during their historic deliberations last- ing eighty-seven days, until their first ad- journment and approval of the constitu- tion on April 16, 1907.
During the summer of 1907 many rumors were afloat that the original document of the constitution was lost, or secreted for political reasons, that a genuine certified copy was unobtainable, and that the con- vention's president was carrying the orig- inal about with him, and in the dead of night "doctoring the instrument to his taste." Of course those were largely press stories, and told mainly as flavor for the midsummer staleness of news topics, or to prejudice the president and the people against the result of the convention's labors. When the proper time came to exhibit the document, it was on hand, and exactly as it had left the hands of the engrossing clerks and been signed by the convention officers and delegates. It is true that few people knew the whereabouts of the con- stitution during the summer, and Mr. Mur- ray explains his disposition of it during that time in the following way: The ques- tion came up, when the constitution was completed, of filing it with the secretary of the territory. The convention had pre- viously selected seven lawyers to advise Mr. Murray, six of whom counseled that the original copy be filed in the regular manner, and one (now Supreme Judge R. L. Williams) advised that no filing be made, since an injunction was being sought against the submission of the constitution
to the approval of the voters. The consti- utional convention, Mr. Murray contended, was of a higher lawmaking order than any other body of legislators, and was limited in its actions only by the constitution of the United States and the enabling act. For this reason Mr. Murray put the constitu- tion in his pocket, and refused to file it until it was finally revised in the July ses- sion of the convention. On September 17. the people gave overwhelming approval of the constitution and at the same time en- dorsed thereby the work of the convention and its president. It is interesting to note that Mr. Murray's cherished political prin- ciples were embodied in the constitution with the one exception of the Torrence sys- tem of the registration of land titles, a feature in which he believes thoroughly.
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