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 64

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 64

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George M. Nicholson acquired his early education in the public schools of Kansas. Prior to statehood he served a time as city attorney of Sulphur but has never aspired to official distinction, and has given his time to the law and his varied business affairs. He owns about 2,000 acres of farm land, situated in Murray, Bryan, Pontotoc, Carter and Johnston counties, and owns a comfortalle residence on Fourth Street and Wynne- wood Avenue in Sulphur. He is a member of the Mur- ray County Bar Association and is now vice president of the Oklahoma State Bar Association. Politieally he is a republican.

In 1903 at Tecumseh, Oklahoma, he married Miss Julia Sheldon of Trinidad, Colorado.

JOHN P. CRAWFORD. The ability to win without the aid of publicity has been characteristic of John P. Crawford, of Ada, and it would seem that he has con- tracted the habit of winning. In politics. in law and in the field of commerce he has been a factor in Pontotoc County for a number of years and in each line of activity he has heen snecessful. Two terms in the State Legislature brought him into prominence throughout Oklahoma, and, after accomplishing noteworthy achieve- ments as a lawmaker, he retired to his profession at Ada and to looking after his oil, gas and agricultural interests.

John P. Crawford was born in Washington County, Arkansas, in 1872, and is a son of Johnson and Cle- mentine (Gilliland) Crawford. His father, who was a pioneer minister and farmer of Washington County, was also well known in public life, and served as a member of the Fifth Oklahoma Legislature from Mayes County. John P. Crawford was educated in the public schools of Washington County, Arkansas, and at Rogers Academy, Rogers, Arkansas, from which institution he was gradua- ated in 1896 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Thereafter, for two years, he taught in the public schools of Arkansas and at odd times studied law in the office of Jesse London, at Alma, Arkansas. He was admitted to the bar in 1898, at Van Buren, Arkansas, and imme- diately came West, locating at the then prosperous Town of Center, Indian Territory. After remaining there but a short time, Mr. Crawford moved to Stone- wall, Indian Territory, where he practiced law until 1900, being a partner during a part of this time with W. P. Langston. In 1900 Mr. Crawford moved to Ada and formed a partnership with Tom D. MeKeown, who is now a district judge of Oklahoma. Later he became associated with J. W. Bolen, and he has continued to maintain this relation, the combination being known as

one of the strong ones legally in this part of the state. Mr. Crawford was elected a member of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1910 and was made chairman of the Com- mittee on Appropriations of the House. He was re- elected in 1912 and during the sessions of the Fourth Legislature was chairman of the democratic caucus. In 1914 he was a member of the State Democratic Central Committee from Pontotoc County.

Mr. Crawford was married in 1901 to Miss Margaret Truax, of Stonewall, Oklahoma, daughter of Dr. George H. Truax, a well known practicing physician of that town. They are the parents of one son: Arthur, who is twelve years of age and attending the public schools. Mr. Crawford is a member of the A. F. & A. M. and Royal Arch divisions of the Masonic order, and has been master of the former. He is a member also of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen of America, is affiliated profes- sionally with the Pontotoc County Bar Association and the Oklahoma State Bar Association, and holds mem- bership also in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

When Mr. Crawford first came to Ada it was a village with a future that was problematic. He soon became a leader in its advancement and has since contributed much toward its building to the high place it now occupies among the cities of the state. He has been a successful lawyer, and good investments have brought him into the possession of some excellent farm land. In the matter of agriculture, he is one of the leaders in this section of the county of those who are practicing the diversification of crops and breaking away from the hard and fast rules of cotton and corn that obtained for so long here to the financial detriment of the farmers. He is interested also in the oil and gas development of the community that lately has assumed an aspect of much importance.

GRANT STANLEY. With all of consistency may Mr. Stanley be designated not only as one of the prominent representatives of the legal profession in Oklahoma but also as one of the intensely loyal and public-spirited citizens of the progressive young commonwealth with which he has cast in his lot. He has been specially in- fluential in the furtherance of enterprises for the proper drainage of otherwise virtually waste lands in the state and has accomplished much along this line besides being an enthusiastic promoter of further activities and under- takings with the same purpose in view. Mr. Stanley has a well established and important law business and is engaged in practice at Oklahoma City, with offices at 302 Patterson Building.

Mr. Stanley claims the fine old Hoosier State as the place of his nativity and is a scion of a family for many generations one of not a little prominence and influence in England, where the Stanley genealogy is traced back to the tenth century. The first representative or repre- sentatives of the family in America came to the New World in 1635 and made settlement in the patrician old Virginia colony, whence members of a later generation removed to North Carolina, the name having been closely linked with the civic and material history of those and other states of the Union.

Grant Stanley was born at Richmond, the judicial center of Wayne County, Indiana, on the 9th of Febru- ary, 1865, and is a son of John T. and Mary (Robbins) Stanley. John T. Stanley was born and reared in North Carolina and continned his residence in the South until the climaeteric period that found its culmination in the Civil war, when he removed to the North, his sympathies having been with the Union, as he believed the poliey of secession to be intrinsieally and fundamentally wrong.

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He established his residence in Indiana and became one of the duly prosperous farmers of Wayne County, where he continued his residence until 1867, when he removed with his family to Kansas and became one of the pioneer settlers and agriculturists of the Sunflower State. In 1886 he came to Oklahoma and became a pioneer of Beaver County-a region that was at that time desig- nated, and with no little consistency, as No Man's Land. He developed one of the early ranches in that section and his energy and good judgment enabled him to achieve definite success and prosperity, the while he became one of the well known and influential pioneers of what is now a prosperous commonwealth. Now seventy-eight years of age (1915), he is living virtually retired in the attractive Village of Arcadia, Oklahoma County, and his venerable wife, who is likewise a native of North Caro- lina, is his devoted companion in the gracious twilight of their long and useful lives.

Grant Stanley may well be considered a true son of the great West, as he was a child of about two years at the time of the family removal from Indiana to Kansas, where he was reared to adult age under the conditions and influences of the pioneer farm and where he con- tinued his studies in the public schools until he had com- pleted the curriculum of the high school. At Douglas, Kansas, he studied law under the preceptorship of Judge Edward H. Hutchins, and in 1885 he was there admitted to the bar. Thereafter he was engaged in the practice of his profession at Garden City, that state, until 1889, the year which marked the opening of the new Territory of Oklahoma to settlement, when he joined the influx of new settlers and established his residence at Guthrie, the territorial capital. He thus became one of the pioneer members of the Oklahoma bar and after remaining in practice at Guthrie about eighteen months he removed to Oklahoma City, where he has since continued his profes- sional endeavors with unequivocal success and where he has been identified with much important litigation, un- der both the territorial and state governments. Mr. Stanley was an enthusiastic and zealous worker in con- nection with the movement that resulted in the admission of Oklahoma as one of the sovereign states of the Union, and his co-operations have been freely given in the furtherance of those measures and enterprises that have tended to advance the social and material progress and prosperity of the state.

Mr. Stanley's association with drainage projects and enterprises in Oklahoma has been one marked by much progressiveness and circumspection, with the result that he has exerted definite influence in the furtherance of reclamation measures through this important medium. He was the promoter of the Deep Fork Drainage District, and is legal representative of the same, as is he also attorney for the Lincoln County Drainage District. Within these two districts was instituted the first work of scientific and systematic drainage in the state and through the carrying forward of the work a large area of otherwise worthless land has become eligible for agri- cultural purposes and been made productive and valu- able. Though he has had no vaulting ambition for the honors and emoluments of political office, Mr. Stanley has manifested a lively and effective public spirit and his allegiance is given to the progressive party.

In Oklahoma City, in 1898, was recorded the marriage of Mr. Stanley to Miss Ida Thurston, daughter of Wil- liam A. Thurston, a pioneer farmer and highly esteemed citizen of Oklahoma County, to which locality he came in the territorial days. Mr. Thurston is a native of Maine and a representative of a staunch old colonial family of New England. Mr. and Mrs. Stanley have two daugh- ters, Blanche and Marie, and the family home, a center

of gracious hospitality, is an attractive residence at 2306 West Seventeenth Street.

JOSHUA PORTER REED. One of the pioneers at the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893, Joshua P. Reed has for more than twenty years been identified with busi- ness affairs at Alva and has succeeded in building up a large and prosperous business as a wholesale commission merchant. Mr. Reed is a very able business man, and has well established connections and a large following of loyal friends in and about Alva.

He was born May 27, 1857, at Orville, Ohio, son of H. and Amanda (Randolph) Reed. His father was born in Washington County, a noted district in Southwestern Pennsylvania, September 12, 1825, and though reared on a farm took to the life of merchandising at the age of twenty-five at Millersburg, Ohio. He had prominent relations with that community until his death July 20, 1898. For the last twelve years of his life he was one of the county officials of Holmes County. Mr. Recd's parents were married in 1855. The mother was a daugh- ter of Thomas and Samantha (Low) Randolph. She was born in 1834 at Bethlehem, Virginia, and her parents were natives of that state and the Randolphs were of the same family that for generations has been of historic prominence in the Old Dominion State. Amanda Randolph Reed died at Millersburg, Ohio, in 1870. She was an active member of the Christian Church. There were two children, the first a son and the second a daughter. The daughter, Elma, born April 1, 1860, was married in 1877 to Edward Keister, now a retired railroad man, and they live at Lorain, Ohio. They have one son, Harry R. Keister.

Joshua Porter Reed grew up at Millersburg, and attended the public schools of that little Ohio town. When eighteen years old he was entrusted with handling an engine in a planing mill, and subsequently had charge of an agricultural implement store for his father. In 1883 he removed to Harper, Kansas, and lived there for ten years and was in the bakery business.

In Sentember, 1893, Mr. Rced came into the Cherokee Strip with thousands of other home seekers, and located at Alva. For several years he was employed by a whole- sale house at Alva, and in 1899 engaged in the wholesale commission business on his own account. For more than fifteen years he has handled live stock and poultry in large lots, furnishing the market for raisers over a large territory surrounding Alva, and shipping many cars every year to the central markets. In building to this successful business he has made his best contribution to the commercial prosperity of Alva. Though a democrat, Mr. Reed has manifested no signs of desire for office. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity.

Mr. Reed was married at Coldwater, Kansas, to Miss Hattie Belle Reiter. She was born April 19, 1869, at Farina, Illinois. To their union have been born two children : Dorothy De Maris, born at Alva, September 8, 1899; and Burnell Dallas, born August 30, 1906, at Alva.

HASKELL B. TALLEY first located at Tulsa in the practice of law on May 1, 1904. In the past ten years he has covered a great deal of ground in the gen- eral affairs of Oklahoma. He was soon diverted from general practice and gave his attention particularly to corporation and land law, and became recognized for his ability in handling large affairs. From 1907 to April, 1914, he was general solicitor for the Oklahoma Natural Gas Company and handled the legal matters connected with that corporation and also was an efficient business adviser from its organization. During that seven years

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the company had become one of the five strongest organi- zations of its kind in America. Since leaving this com- pany he has decided to devote his energies to a general civil practice. A few years ago Mr. Talley came in for much attention in Oklahoma and elsewhere as representa- tive for the federal government in prosecuting town lot grafters and from that litigation, to paraphrase Mr. Talley's own words, he derived much excitement and considerable "cussing. "'

Mr. Talley is one of the highly educated men in the legal profession in Oklahoma and represents some of the finest old Tennessee families. He was born at Murfrees- boro, Tennessee, September 18, 1877, a son of Edwin W. and Katie (Burleson) Talley. Murfreesboro has been the home of the Talleys for several generations, and other prominent families in the relationship were the Murfrees, Pahners and Readys. Edwin W. Talley was born in Middle Tennessee in 1854, and his wife in 1857, and both are still living on the old farm near Murfrees- boro. His father is a member of the Masonic fraternity and in politics is a democrat. There were two children, and the daughter, Janie, is the wife of M. Beaty. In the maternal line the Burlesons have been historically con- spicuous in various states of the South, particularly in Texas.

Haskell B. Talley as a boy attended the noted old Webb School at Bellbuckle, Tennessee, and in 1897 grad- nated from the Southwestern Presbyterian University at Clarksville. He was graduated from the law department of Vanderbilt University at Nashville in 1899, finished his post-graduate course in Harvard University in 1900, and in 1903 took his degree Doctor of Civil Law from the Columbian (now George Washington) University at Washington, D. C. While at Washington and elsewhere he came under the instruction and inspiration of some of the greatest American jurists of the last generation. Some of his teachers were the late Horace H. Lurton, the late David J. Brewer, the late John M. Harlan, all three of them at that time associate justices in the United States Supreme Court. Another teacher was Jacob McGavock Dickinson, a noted Tennessean formerly secre- tary of war, and still another was Justice Willis Van Devanter. Mr. Talley has had exceptional opportunities both in his classical and legal training, and his active career as a lawyer shows the benefit of these earlier associations.

Mr. Talley is president of the Harvard Club of the State of Oklahoma, and is now perfecting a similar or- ganization for the Vanderbilt Alumni in Oklahoma. In politics he is a republican. Mr. Talley was married January 12, 1909, to Miss Pearl Borochoff, who was born in Savannah, Georgia. Their three children are: Herschel, Esther and Rebecca.

JOHN WILLIAM BLATTNER, M. A. Soon after Gover- nor Williams began his administration in 1915 he and the state superintendent of education, Mr. R. H. Wilson, began looking for the best talent and experi- ence to fill the position of superintendent of the Okla- homa School for the Deaf. That is a position for which the qualifications are purely technical and in no sense political, and it was natural that the governor and his advisers should look beyond the borders of the state. After much solicitation they finally secured the services of the then superintendent of the North Dakota School for the Deaf, John William Blattner. Mr. Blattner's reputation became securely established as an educator and administrator in this field by his long connection with the State School for the Deaf in Texas. In fact he has a national and international reputation, and Oklahoma was fortunate in gaining his services.

The Oklahoma School for the Deaf is located at Sul- phur on a beautiful tract of land and the situation is peculiarly advantageous from every standpoint. The plot on which the buildings are located consists of fourteen acres, located one mile east of the Sulphur postoffice. A short distance east of the building site are sixty acres, which were originally intended as the campus for the school, but are not so easily acces- sible since they are on a bluff. The institute was started in 1907, receiving at that time the sixty-acre tract of land which was donated by citizens of Sulphur. The first Oklahoma State Legislature made an appropriation of several hundred thousand dollars. Building was commenced on the original site, but after one of the concrete floors for one of the buildings fell on account of faulty construction the work was condemned, and after- wards the present site decided upon. Plans are now being made for a new administration building and two more dormitories. The present building equipment con- sists of three main structures, a large school building and two dormitories, one for boys and one for girls. A new building is being erected to serve as a kitchen with a large dining room on the second floor and rooms for employes on the third. All these buildings are of brick and fireproof construction, and Oklahoma has the ad- vantage of having established this institution within the last few years, when it has been possible to make use of the latest ideas in sanitary and model equipment and arrangement. The institution as at present can ac- commodate 240 students, and there are 215 now enrolled, representing all sections of the state. Since he became superintendent Mr. Blattner has introduced many im- provements, and it is to be expected that the attendance at the school will soon reach 300 or more.

John Williamn Blattner was born in Mahaska County, Iowa, the son of a substantial farmer of German birth and lineage, G. M. Blattner, who was born in Germany in 1830 and came to America in young manhood. He lived a time in Ohio and later in Kentucky, and was a pioneer in Mahaska County, Iowa. He died at Prairie City, Iowa, in the winter of 1910. The maiden name of his wife was Mary Ann Hauck, also a native of Germany and now deceased.

Superintendent Blattner acquired his early education in the public schools of Iowa, being graduated from the high school at Pella, and in 1885 graduated A. B. from the Central University of Iowa. The same university subsequently gave him the degree M. A. From the first his work as an educator has been in teaching the deaf. His first experience was at the Iowa School for the Deaf at Council Bluffs, where he remained a little more than three years. Subsequently he had charge of the Colorado School for the Deaf at Colorado Springs one year, and then accepted the office of principal of the Texas School for the Deaf at Austin. As already mentioned, it was his work there which brought him his widest distinction, and he remained in charge of the Texas institution for more than a quarter of a century. He was then offered and accepted the superintendency of the North Dakota School for the Deaf at Devil's Lake. He took charge of that school July 1, 1912, and was there three years when he yielded to the solicitations of Governor Williams and Mr. R. H. Wilson and resigned to come to Oklahoma. · Governor Williams made his appointment in July, 1915, and he took charge of the Sulphur Institution on August 1st. While the governor has the appointing power at present, the control of the school and the appointment of the superintendent will probably in the near future be given to the state

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board of education. Mr. Blattner's term of service is at least assured for four years.

He is an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and while living in Austin was one of the board of stewards of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the largest churches of that city, and held a similar position while living at Devil's Lake in North Dakota. Fraternally he is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias. In Austin, Texas, in 1891, Mr. Blattner married Miss Lula A. Jones, whose father, D. W. Jones, was a prominent early merchant of Austin. Mrs. Blatt- ner had been a teacher in the Texas School for the Deaf before her marriage. Their five children are: George W., who is a graduate from the Academic De- partment of the University of Texas with the class of 1915 .and the degree A. B., and is now taking post- graduate work in commercial law and banking at the University of Wisconsin; David J., graduated from the Devil's Lake High School in June, 1915, and is now in the freshman class of the University of Wisconsin, in the electrical engineering department. Mary Ann, a junior in the University of Texas; John William, Jr., a sophomore in the Sulphur High School; and Delle Sha- pard, in the public schools of Sulphur.

Mr. Blattner is a member of the National Association of Teachers of the Deaf, and for a number of years held an official position in that body and has always been active in national conventions. He is a member of the National Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf and served as a director in that organization for a number of years. He has long been prominent in the proceedings of the national associa- tions of his profession, and has also made a thorough study of the methods employed in the education of the deaf. A number of years ago he prepared a course of study for the deaf which has been taken as a model by many of the schools in the country, and this fact alone has brought him into great prominence in his profession. He has been a frequent contributor to pe- riodicals published in the interests of the education of the deaf, especially to the American Annals of the Deaf. Oklahoma has indeed been fortunate in secur- ing Mr. Blattner to administer the Sulphur institution through its early and formative years of development.

JAMES D. SCOTT. There are many facts that make the career of James D. Scott, of Alva, notable and interest- ing. He was one of the first men to reach the site of Alva at the opening of the Cherokee Strip in September, 1893, set up one of the first stores in the town, has been continuously in business from that date, was a member of the first city council, and in many ways has made himself an influential and useful factor in the progress of that community. Prior to his participation in the opening of the Cherokee country, Mr. Scott had lived many years and was already a successful business man. He is one of the fine old Confederate veterans of Okla- homa, and was a hard fighting soldier for the South until the crucial conflict at Gettysburg, where he was severely wounded and spent the rest of the war time in a Federal prison.

James D. Scott was born June 20, 1839, on a farm in De Soto County, Mississippi, a son of Felix D. and Sarah (Mayes) Scott. His father and mother were natives of Kentucky, and the former died January 5, 1853, and the latter in 1848. They had five sons, namely: George Mayes, Joshua, James D., Daniel Gray and Felix. All are now dead except James. Every one of these sons fought during the war between the states, and four of them were on the side of the Confederacy, while Joshua

was a member of a Kentucky regiment in the Union army. Few families were more liberally represented in that war than the Scotts.

James D. Scott, though he has always passed for a man of substantial education and keen intelligence, as a boy had little schooling and gained most of his train- ing by self study and observation and practice. At the outbreak of the war he was one of the first to enlist in the Confederate army. He enlisted at Memphis, Tennessee, March 27, 1861, in Company I of the Ninth Mississippi Volunteer Infantry. This regiment was under General Bragg in some of the first campaigns in the western part of the Confederacy. His first enlist- ment was for one year, after which he re-enlisted and was assigned to Company C of the Forty-second Missis- sippi Infantry. This regiment was part of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Lee, and he was present at many notable and historic battles. The climax of his military experience was at Gettysburg. His brigade opened the fight on the first day of July, 1863. In the first rush and conflict between the opposing forces his regiment had 242 men killed, and only forty- eight out of the regiment escaped death. Mr. Scott was one of the seriously wounded, and from Gettysburg was transferred to a Federal prison at Fort Delaware, where he remained nineteen months and seven days. At the close of his services he was a sergeant. Just fifty years after the battle which closed his military career the veterans of both the blue and the gray reassembled in reunion on that battlefield in July, 1913, and Mr. Scott was one of the two old soldiers from Oklahoma repre- sented in the ranks of the former Confederates. He defrayed his own expenses to that reunion, and there were few of the old veterans more vigorous and alert than he.

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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