A standard history of Oklahoma; an authentic narrative of its development from the date of the first European exploration down to the present time, including accounts of the Indian tribes, both civilized and wild, of the cattle range, of the land openings and the achievements of the most recent period, Vol. III, Part 114

Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 660

USA > Oklahoma > A standard history of Oklahoma; an authentic narrative of its development from the date of the first European exploration down to the present time, including accounts of the Indian tribes, both civilized and wild, of the cattle range, of the land openings and the achievements of the most recent period, Vol. III > Part 114

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).

The "National Cyclopedia of American Biography"

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contains a ten-page sketch of Kate Barnard's life. In this we find a tribute which she pays to her father, dis- closing such love and loyalty to parentage as is not only worthy of emulation by the children of her state, but explains somewhat the forces which have animated her in this hard fighting battle for social justice.

"My love for my father, and a desire to help the poor, became the two great dominant factors of my life. My father was a stern man with a keen sense of justice. If I did wrong punishment came. He treated me on terms of an adult. He never threatened. He never broke a promise. He hated a lie. He never conversed on frivolous subjects. Justice was with him a passion. I have known him to prosecute a man who tried to cheat him for a small amount, and I saw him voluntarily pay more than was asked to a widow who sold us vegetables at a time when we too were very poor. He would never submit to injury, lest he teach the unscrup- ulous to take advantage of those too weak to protect themselves. During the panic of 1893 he fed hungry men almost daily.

"His life was full of tremendous cataclysms, but no evidence of conflict was visible except the growing stoop to his shoulders and his whitening hair. Twice only did I see tears. The first time was at my mother's grave. Her influence over him extended thirty-three years after she was dead. It was one of those old sweet romances the 'true loves of long ago.'

"Once more he shed tears when he bade me good-bye and left me alone with strangers, at the time he entered the terrible 'run' for a free home in Oklahoma. I was ten years old. Continued drought brought business reverses, he refused to take advantage of the bankruptcy. law (preferring honor and poverty) so he was facing life again a poor man at forty-five.

"He took down my little autograph album and this is what he wrote: 'Let Faith, Hope and Charity be the theme of your whole life and when temptation lures you to forsake either of the three great Christian principles, remember our Saviour Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem sinners. Your loving father, (Signed) John P. Barnard. '

"It was two years before I saw him again. When I did it was difficult for me to recognize in the careworn countenance, the furrowed brow, the faded eyes and silvered hair, the altered image of my father. He had aged twenty years but he was still kind and brave. Such was the father of Kate Barnard. Let those who benefit by my work remember it is the strength of character inherited from that great pioneer which enables me to forego love, home, and other material pleasures, and become a Voice to those who suffer in the gutter of human life. If you would trace the origin of the moral strength behind every sacrifice for principle, every struggle for liberty, every achievement recorded in the history of man, you will find that Divinity has placed it in parenthood like this."

Thus does Kate Barnard pay tribute to her father. Her mother died when she was eighteen months old so that the formation of her character during the malleable and all-important years of childhood was completely in his hands. That the influence of his teaching and personality upon her life was of incalculable value she has gratefully testified.

Kate Barnard's father was a lawyer and civil engineer. He was Irish, a man of unusual qualities of mind and character, and to his training is due much of the prac- tical wisdom which so consistently transfuses his daugh- ter's high idealism. Her father secured a homestead twenty miles east of Oklahoma City, near where Newalla now stands, and here in a lonely frame shanty of two

rooms on the principal pioneer highway between Okla- homa City and Shawnee, Kate Barnard lived alone for nearly two years, while her father practiced law in Oklahoma City to make the money to get bread. Those were days of desperate poverty for all the Oklahoma pioneers, and often the best her father could send her was corn meal, navy beans and fat side mneat. She was determined to help her father get a new start in life, and she "held down"' the homestead under circum- stances that would test the staunchest heart. It was here that bleak loneliness and material hardships drove home the stern lessons which welded and moulded a character of such strength and human sympathy as enabled her to carry down to defeat the sternest opposi- tion, when, in later years, she went forth to secure laws which would decrease poverty, disease and crime. No one then dreamed that in this poverty-ridden shack on the bleak sand hills of Oklahoma was growing up a little girl whose opinions would one day mould the destiny of the state and who would be called to help in the battle for human progress from New York to San Diego; and whose work would be known around the world.

A brilliant New York woman has written a book called "American Women in Civic Life." The book contains thirteen chapters, each devoted to a life sketch of one of America's most prominent women. Among these are Jane Addams, Kate Barnard, Caroline Bartlett Crane, Ella Flagg Young and nine others.

Charles R. Zueblin, who for years occupied the chair of Sociology in the University of Chicago, in a recent book also pays tribute to the high sociological value of her work.

Miss Barnard pays the following tribute to one who was constantly associated with her in her work in Okla- homa: "No biography would be complete without a tribute to Mr. Hobart Huson, who was for six years associated with me as assistant commissioner of charities, and without whose wise counsel and thorough devotion to the cause of humanity I should never have accomplished my life work. He was the first to suggest to me the necessity of a State Department of Charities for Okla- homa. A nobler man than he never devoted his life to the cause of human progress. He was a world traveler who in the seasoned wisdom of the afternoon of life joined me and threw all his energies into the struggle to realize the highest degree of human progress for the masses of Oklahoma."

Kate Barnard was a pioneer for ethics and ideals in a raw, new civilization. While men fought for street cars, paving and sky-scrapers, she fought for shorter hours, living wages and a more just relationship among men.

The East has summoned her repeatedly to assist in the most intricate and difficult social service work. In response to this call she has lectured before the City Club of New York, Cooper Union Institute, the League for Political Education of New York, and the most exclusive girls' schools and colleges of the East. In Boston she spoke in Ford Hall and Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of American Liberty." She addressed the Governors' Congress at Richmond, Virginia, in 1913 upon the subject of "Human Conservation; "' and she made the closing address before the American section of the International Tuberculosis Congress at Washington, in 1908, speaking upon the subject of "Social and Indus- trial Causes of Tuberculosis."

She has carried the message of social service into. eleven American national conventions and into scores of colleges, universities and learned societies. She was voted a member of the American Academy of Social and Political Science in recognition of her contribution to constructive statecraft; and a member of the national

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committee to draft amendments for the Federal Constitu- tion to be presented to Congress. She was nominated American delegate to the International Prison Congress of Rome, Italy; and as American delegate to the Inter- national Tuberculosis Congress at Copenhagen, Denmark. What she has accomplished has been so notable as to attract inquiry from Max Nordau of Frauce, Enrico Ferri of Italy; Munsterburg of Germany, and other famous leaders of statecraft. Her work has placed Oklahoma on the map of philanthropy and sociology throughout the world.

Kate Barnard is a woman who came up from the bot- tom and remained plain, earnest, approachable and unspoiled. Asked why she never wore jewelry she answered-"How can a woman wear diamonds in a country where little children starve?" She dressed plainer than the clerks in the state house.

She never forgot the days of her poverty and the door of her office in the state house-like the door of her heart-was always open to the roughest laborer and the raggedest farmer and the dirtiest street child. From governor to newsboy, everybody in Oklahoma called her "Kate" and throughout the magazines and the press she came to be known as "Oklahoma Kate."

For ten years she stumped the State of Oklahoma at all hours of the day and night with all classes of men, and from governor to coal digger she received universal courtesy. Men seemed never to consider her as a woman. So intimately was her life interwoven with their struggle for liberty and bread she seemed only the voice of des- tiny crying out in the world's bitter economic battles for food, shelter and opportunity for them. Wherever she spoke the horny hands of toil gathered and they packed her speaking halls. They named two big Oklahoma schoolhouses and many of their children after her. Into the keystone over the main archway of the public schools at Tecumseh and Marlow is carved the name "Barnard."

Asked what characters had most influenced her life, she answered-Abraham Lincoln, Tolstoi, Joan D'Arc, and the Life of Christ. Her favorite authors were Emer- son, Ruskin, Ibsen, Socrates and Plato, and she always kept near her a copy of that little school classic, Haw- thorne's "Great Stone Face."

Kate Barnard has herself been a woman of the heroic type who battered down prejudice and "precedent" in her effort to decrease world sorrow. She was con- structive and upon the wrecks of the past she built higher standards of life and nobler ideals for the future. Her youth, her brain, and the best years of her life are woven into the fabric of Oklahoma's civilization. The laws she has written are in Oklahoma's statutes, but the things she has built belong to the sphere of the unseen. They lie buried in the souls of the youths of Oklahoma, for the things she built were visions of a loftier woman- hood and a nobler manhood dedicated in high and holy service to all the human race. She fired the brain of the coming generation with ideals of brotherhood- dreams which will yet come true.

She has taught that service to human progress is the noblest purpose of human life and Kate Barnard's work will live when she is dust. Her work will live because the dreams of youth are the materials of which history is made. Few women could sway the mind of a whole state for ten years and history records a just tribute to the genius and service of womankind when it declares that her work is constructive statecraft and entitles her to a position among the foremost statesmen of the age.

ROBERT F. BLAIR. A member of the Wagoner bar since 1902, Robert F. Blair has become known in this city as an attorney of broad legal information engaged

in the successful handling of involved and important litigation. Mr. Blair is a native son of Tennessee, born at Sevierville in that state, and reared on a farm. His parents were Robert H. and Harriet ( Mills) Blair, the former a member of a family of English origin, which removed from Virginia to Tennessee soon after the Revo- lution, and the latter connected with an Irish family which came into Tennessee from South Carolina.

Robert F. Blair completed his early literary education at the University of Tennessee, where he was a student during 1883 and 1884, but owing to ill health was not permitted to complete his course in that institution. Predilection for the law led him into the study of that profession, and to prepare himself for its practice he matriculated at Washington and Lee University, Lexing- ton, Virginia .. In 1890 he was graduated from that uni- versity at the head of his class of forty-six pupils, and as the class orator was its representative at commence- ment, winning favorable comment as such. In the fall of 1890 Mr. Blair opened a law office at Knoxville, Ten- nessee, but in March, 1892, removed to San Antonio, Texas, where he resided and practiced his profession until 1899. At that time he moved to Northern Arkan- sas, where for two or three years he was engaged in mining ventures, but in 1902 came to Wagoner, Okla- homa, where he has continued to reside and to follow his profession. He has met with gratifying success in a material way and has forged his .way to a high rank in his calling, gaining an enviable position as an honest, sincere and capable legist. Always maintaining the strictest regard for integrity, and manifesting a com- mendable interest in public affairs, Mr. Blair has won universal regard and esteem as a citizen, aside from his standing in a professional capacity.

In politics Mr. Blair has always been a democrat and has been active in the councils of his party, in the sup- port of the candidates and policies of which he has done much effective campaign work as a speaker on the plat- form. He served two terms in the Legislature of Texas in 1895-7, from Bexar County, wherein the City of San Antonio is located, and was regarded as one of the best parliamentarians of the body.

Although unmarried, Mr. Blair maintains a beautiful suburban home, on a well improved farm near Wagoner.

JOHN W. RILEY, M. D. An exemplar of the best in the unwritten ethical code of his profession, Doctor Riley is engaged in active general practice in Oklahoma City, but his special skill and resourcefulness as a surgeon has caused him to devote his attention largely and with most effective concentration to that important department of professional service in which he has to his credit many most delicate operations in both major and minor surgery. In this domain he has gained prestige as one of the leading surgeons of Oklahoma, and he is known as a man of fine intellectual and professional attainments and as a genial, loyal and progressive citizen fully worthy of the high esteem in which he is held in the city and state of his adoption.

After five years of most valuable clinical experience in the leading hospitals of the City of Buffalo, New York, Doctor Riley came tu Oklahoma City in 1906, and in the capital city he has been unsparing of his time, ability and energy in the work of his exacting profession. Within his period of service as commissioner of health of Oklahoma City, in 1910-11-12, the community was visited by a most severe and formidable epidemic of smallpox of the malignant type, and it was largely due to his prompt and effective handling of affairs that the scourge did not work greater havoc. The city had no vaccination laws and no smallpox hospital. Doctor Riley

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met the situation by providing an isolation camp of tents which were distributed over five acres of ground, and in which proper facilities were provided for the treat- ment and care of victims of the dread disease. He at- tempted also to obtain from the state government an ordinance providing for general vaccination, but those opposed to vaccination organized and formulated plans to prevent the vaccination of pupils in the public schools, but fortunately their end was not achieved until after the commissioner of health and his assistants had vaccinated about 15,000 persons, of whom 6,000 were school children. To his wisdom and energetic action was it due that thereafter not a single student in the schools was afflicted with smallpox during the epidemic. At the tent colony Doctor Riley supervised the treatment of 480 cases, with a loss of only forty-five. This record alone should have prevented the final decision of the Oklahoma courts in favor of anti-vaccination, such a policy being at distinct variance with the opinions of leaders of the medical profession throughout the civilized world. Doctor Riley was born at Mexico, Oswego County, New York, on the 21st of June, 1877, and is a son of Terrence and Margaret (Driscoll) Riley, the former of whom was born in Ireland and the latter in Onondaga County, New York, a member of a prominent and influ- ential family of that section of the Empire State. Ter- rence Riley became a successful farmer in Oswego County, New York, and there gained inviolable place in the respect and esteem of those with whom he came in contact in the varied relations of life.

After duly availing himself of the advantages of the public schools of Mexico, New York, Doctor Riley was for two years, 1897-9, a student in the medical depart- ment of Syracuse University, and he then entered the medical department of Buffalo University, in which ex- cellent institution he was graduated in 1901, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. From 1899 to 1901 he had further fortified himself by serving as interne in the Fitch Accident Hospital, iu the City of Buffalo, and after his graduation he was appointed house surgeon in the Emergency Hospital of that city. This latter posi- tion he retained until 1902, when he was appointed assist- ant attending surgeon in the Buffalo Hospital main- tained under the auspices and charge of the Sisters of Charity, and with this institution he continued to be identified until the time of his removal to Oklahoma, in 1906. From the year of his graduation until he came to Oklahoma he served also as assistant surgeon of the eye, ear, nose and throat department of the Charity Hospital of Buffalo.

During the entire period of his residence in Oklahoma City Doctor Riley has specialized in surgery, and he is attending surgeon at the University Hospital and St. Anthony's Hospital. The doctor served with marked fidelity and efficiency as health commissioner of Okla- homa City from 1909 to 1912, and within his regime in this office he effected the erectiou and equipment of the city detention hospital and the general municipal hos- pital which is now known as the Post Graduate Hospital. For some time he was lecturer on surgical anatomy in the Epworth Medical School, now defunct, and since 1910 he has been the valued and popular incumbent of the chair of genito-urinary surgery in the medical de- partment of the University of Oklahoma. He has thus been prominent not only in the general and educational work of his profession but has also kept himself iusist- ently in line with the advauces made in medical and surgical science, through recourse to the best in standard and periodical literature pertaining thereto and through taking two post-graduate courses at the fine hospital connected with Johns Hopkins University, in the City

of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1913 and 1914. In 1914-15 Doctor Riley held the office of president of the Oklahoma State Medical Society and president of the Okla- homa County Medical Society, 1914-1915; he is a charter member of the Oklahoma City Academy of Medicine and a member of the American Medical Association. His political allegiance is given to the democratic party, his religious faith is that of the Catholic Church, and he is affiliated with Oklahoma City Council, No. 1038, Knights of Columbus, of which he is past grand knight.

On the 26th of April, 1902, was solemnized the mar. riage of Doctor Riley to Miss Cassie M. Sheldon, daugh- ter of Howard and Ada (White) Sheldon, of Scio, New York, where Mr. Sheldon, now deceased, was a repre- sentative merchant and stock-grower and where he served also as postmaster. Doctor and Mrs. Riley have no children.

WILFRED G. ASHTON. As state commissioner of labor, a position to which he was elected in November, 1914, Wilfred G. Ashton has the direction and charge of mat- ters which concern the people of Oklahoma as closely as those of any other department of the public service. It is a strong man who assumes such burdens as those inci- dental to the discharge of the duties of this office, and one element of Mr. Ashton's strength is his experience as assistant state commissioner for six years; another, that he spent the early years of his life as a member of an industrial trade. The present happy conditions iu regard to the labor question in Oklahoma may be largely accredited to his wise and ceaseless labors.

Wilfred G. Ashton was born at Plymouth, Indiana, in 1880, and is a son of John H. and Mary (Krumenacher) Ashton. His father, a native of Pennsylvania, removed to Marshall County, Indiana, as a young man, and there engaged in agricultural pursuits, in which he is still interested, Mrs. Ashton also surviving. Although he has long been influential in political matters, he has never sought office on his own account. Wilfred G. Ashton was educated at Saint Michael's Academy, Plymouth, Indi- ana, and as a youth learned the trade of painter and decorator. Coming to Oklahoma City in 1905, he was employed at his vocation until 1908, when he became assistant state labor commissioner, under C. L. Daugherty. In November, 1914, he was elected on the democratic ticket as state labor commissioner, taking office in Janu- ary, 1915, for a term of four years, to succeed Mr. Daugherty, who at that time became secretary of the Board of Public Affairs.

As assistant state labor commissioner, Mr. Ashton pre- pared the "Supplement to the Fifth Annual Report of the Department of Labor for the State of Oklahoma on Employers' Liability and Workmen's Compensation, De- cember, 1912," and since he assumed his present office his recommendations have been enacted into a law by the Fifth Legislature, in 1915. He has been eminently suc- cessful in the handling of strike troubles throughout the state, notably the strike of the smeltermen at Collinsville, in 1913; the strike of the smeltermen at Bartlesville, in 1911, and the strike of the oilmen at Tulsa and the oil fields of the state, involving from 1,200 to 1,500 men, in 1915. All of these troubles he adjusted not only to the satisfaction of the employes but of the employers as well. As state labor commissioner he has placed factory inspec- tion on a broader basis, by establishing safety commit- tees in the various factories. As a result of this work Oklahoma has the distinction of having the first State Safety Council in this country, organized recently and affiliated with the National Safety Council. Mr. Ashton is president of the new council. He has raised the standard of the Free Employment Bureau to a higher

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plane by extending the work to cover mechanics and clerical help, whereby references are required in regard to the ability and character of the applicants, thus secur- ing for the employer the kind of material which he desires; he has also extended the work to the profes- sional field, to the extent of securing positions for school teachers, which has the endorsement of State Superin- tendent of Instruction R. H. Wilson. In fact he has placed the Free Employment Bureau on such a high standard that all classes throughout the state are induced to make use of it all over the state. Mr. Ashton is a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, No. 417, of Oklahoma City.

In February, 1906, Mr. Ashton was married to Miss Eva Smith, daughter of D. C. Smith, of Plymouth, Indiana, a prominent and active politician, who has been elected sheriff of his county on the republican ticket in what is ordinarily a strong democratic locality. Mr. and Mrs. Ashton have no children. Their pleasant home is located at No. 3121 North McKinley Avenue.

JOEL H. NAIL, now a farmer-stockman at Caddo, was once, in the palmy days of Indian life, reputed to be the wealthiest man in the Chickasaw Nation. Whether that was a true estimate or not, his estates and his honor gave hin a standing in the financial world that iew natives of the Indian country possessed. More than fifty miles away, in picturesque Indian Territory, he conducted a live-stock business through financial connections in Sher- man, Texas. Those connections embraced Col. Tom Ran- dolph, one of the founders of the Merchants and Plauters Bank of Sherman, who in recent years has played a con- spicuous part in financial circles of St. Louis.

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Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941 Publication date: 1916 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society Number of Pages: 660

Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 660