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. IV, Part 102

Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 656

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. IV > Part 102

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Dan Diehl was born on the old farm at Mattoon, Illinois, December 16, 1880. The first nineteen years of his life were spent in Illinois, where he gained a sub- stantial education and an agricultural training according to the high standards of the Prairie State. In 1899 he came out to Kay County, Oklahoma, farmed there for two years, and at the opening of the Kiowa, Comanche and the Caddo reservations participated in the drawing and secured a homestead of 160 acres situated eleven miles southeast of Hobart. After proving up this claim and making a farm of it he sold out five years later and then bought 160 acres ten miles south of Gotebo, Okla- homa, in the spring of 1907. He still owns this farm and on it conducts diversified agriculture and stock raising.

His progressive attitude towards agricultural matters made him a man of note in his section and on Novem- ber 16, 1907, the day that Oklahoma became a state, Governor Haskell appointed him to membership in the State Board of Agriculture. He served one year by virtue of that appointment, and was then regularly elected to the position by an almost unanimous vote for a term of four years. In 1912 Mr. Diehl was elected clerk of the district court, and on November 6, 1914, fol- lowing the change of office designation and duties made by the preceding Legislature was elected court clerk, and served the two-year term to which he was then elected. On January 3, 1917, he will retire from the office and devote his attention to raising Jersey cattle, residing ou his farm.

Mr. Diehl is a democrat, and while an active party man is best known in Kiowa County as a progressive agriculturist and public spirited citizen. He is affiliated with Hobart Lodge No. 881 of the Benevolent and Pro- tective Order of Elks and the Hobart Lodge No. 2775 of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen. On January 4, 1915, at Hobart he married Miss Edna Vera Bailey, daughter of W. A. Bailey. Mr. Bailey resides on a farm four miles northeast of Hobart.

MOSES C. TRAUTWEIN. In the year 1841 the German ancestor of Moses C. Trautwein came from Bremen,

Germany, and settled near Cincinnati, Ohio. There he took up farm lands, made a home for himself and his family in a new country, and he died there in advancec life. He was Benheart Trautwein, father of C. B. Traut. wein and the grandsire of the subject.

C. B. Trautwein was born in Bremen, Germany, ony February 17, 1832, and he came to America with his parents in 1841. They were seven weeks and three days on a sailing vessel making the trip. They lived on their farın near Cincinnati and there the boy, C. B., was reared. When he was twenty-one years old he went to Pike County, Illinois, and engaged in the blacksmithi trade. He married there, and later settled on a farm, becoming a prominent farmer and stockman of that dis -.. trict. He is now living near El Dare, in Pike County. He was married on October 1, 1854, to Miss Lucinda Meyer, who was born in Orange, Indiana, in 1834. She died in El Dare in 1891. They were the parents of eight children. Louisa J. married John Driver, and lives in Colorado; Martha E. died in infancy; Austin B. died in Thomas, Oklahoma, and is there buried; he was fifty- four years old when he died, and had been a farmer; William H. died in childhood; Charles Wesley died in Kinderbrook, Illinois, aged forty-one years; he was a. physician and surgeon; Marvin B. died in Fresno, Cali- fornia, at the age of forty; he was a teacher in the schools of that state; Frederick A. is at home in El Dare, Illinois, and lives with his father; Harry was killed in a runaway accident at El Dare, Illinois, in July, 1914; Moses C. is the youngest of the family.

Moses C. Trautwein attended the public schools at El Dare, in which town he was born on October 14, 1876. When he had finished his high school training he entered Barnes Business College at Quincy, Illinois, specializing in telegraphy, and in 1899, when he had finished his training, he secured a position as telegraph operator for the Burlington Railroad. He next worked on a farm in Pike County, Illinois, until March, 1907, when he came to Custer County, Oklahoma, and bought a farm of 160 acres about four miles west of the town of Thomas. He successfully worked this farm until 1912, and in January of that year he came to Thomas and bought the Tribune with all its equipment. Since then he has been editor and publisher of that paper, which was established here in 1902 by Messrs. Bronson and Nichols. The paper has always been independent in its politics and has a wide circulation in Custer and surrounding counties, with a creditable foreign list as well. The plant and offices are on South Main Street, and the equipment of the plant is of the best, and along strictly modern lines.

Mr. Trautwein has served locally on the school board, and he is a member of the Chamber of Commerce of Thomas, which is a thriving organization with fifty- three live members to its credit. He was secretary and treasurer of the Farmers Institute and of the Farmers County Fair, and is an enthusiast in farming matters in the county. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and his fraternal affiliations are with the Inde- pendent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern Woodmen of America, with which latter society he has been promi- nently identified for the past seventeen years. He is also a member of the A. H. T. A.

In 1899 Mr. Trautwein was married in El Dare, Illi- nois, to Miss Myrtle Fenton, daughter of John Fenton, a Pike County farmer. Three children have been born to the Trautweins: Russell was born April 6, 1902, and is now in the high school at Thomas. Alma was born on January 31, 1907, and Adeline was born on September 23, 1909.

The family enjoys the confidence and friendship of an

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W. a Monfort

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ever widening circle of the representative people of Thomas and of Custer County, and they have a leading part in the social activities of their community.

W. A. MONFORT. In such a new state as Oklahoma it is not unusual to find communities which have literally grown up in the lifetime of the single individual and in some cases have been made to grow and prosper largely by the force and energy and character of a single man. This is true of the Village of Copan in Washington County, a community which recently had occasion to mourn the loss of its foremost citizen. This was W. A. Monfort, whose death occurred August 18, 1915.

He built his home at Copan when the village started and during the period of his active career was identified with a number of enterprises, agricultural, commer- cial and financial, and also served in positions of public trust. Both as a business man and official he at all times merited the regard in which he was held by his fellow citizens, and it was not unnatural that they should pay him the highest tributes of respect and esteem, both during his lifetime and after his death.

W. A. Monfort was born on a farm in Shelby County, Indiana, December 26, 1863, a son of Peter S. and Sarah (Avery) Monfort, the former a native of Ohio and the latter of Indiana. The mother died in 1865 when W. A. Monfort was two years old. In September, 1878, the family went west, locating near Elk City, Kansas, where the father continued farming until about the time Oklahoma was opened to settlement, when he changed his residence to Brush Creek, and continued farming there until his retirement. He spent his last years in Claremore, Oklahoma, where he died in 1905 at the age of seventy-three.

During the fifteen years of his childhood and early boyhood spent in Indiana, W. A. Monfort had the advantages of the public schools and he also attended school in Kansas. In 1889 he came to Oklahoma, locat- ing on Brush Creek, and from that time he lived within a radius of four miles of the Village of Copan. By his industry he acquired a fine farm, but in 1910 gave up its active management on account of poor health, and his last few years were spent largely in retirement. In earlier years, however, he carried on general farm- ing and stock raising on an extensive scale, developed a handsome and productive farm and was known as one of the substantial agriculturalists of Washington County. While the greater part of his attention was devoted to the pursuits of the soil, Mr. Monfort also contributed his abilities to the development of other enterprises. In partnership with Dr. W. E. Curd he established and conducted a drug store at Copan for two years. When the Bank of Copan was established he was made its first vice president, later was elected president of the institution, but disposed of his stock and retired about two years before his death.

In his political views he was a democrat, and always an active party worker. He served as a member of the village council until statehood, when he was elected a member of the village board of trustees. He also served as village school treasurer for several years, but gave up that office at the time he retired from busi- ness. Mr. Monfort during the last five years of his life was in the habit of spending his summer months in the Rocky Mountains. As a fraternal worker he was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Masons, the Modern Woodmen of America, the Eastern Star and the Rebekahs, and Mrs. Monfort, his widow, is a member of the last two orders. It was the lot of Mr. Monfort during his long residence in the vicinity Vol. IV-23

of Copan to witness the great changes that took place in Washington County, and he contributed in no small degree to the development of that locality.

In 1892 Mr. Monfort married Miss Ella Squires, who was born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, in 1867, and when three years of age was taken to Kansas by her parents, S. B. and Sarah Squires, the former of whom died at San Francisco, California, while her mother died at Independence, Kansas. Mrs. Monfort is still living at Copan, and since the death of her be- loved husband has been comforted and solaced by the presence of her two children: Grace, who is the wife of Dr. J. O. Hudson, a physician at Copan; and Howard, who is still attending school.

ANDREW JACKSON SMITH, M. D. During his years of active practice as a physician and surgeon in Oklahoma, the services and attainments of Doctor Smith have ranked him as one of the leading medical men of the state, and he enjoys a fine practice at Pawhuska, where he has been a resident several years. Doctor Smith began to combat the difficulties of life at an early age. Many years were spent in the ranks of teachers, and he finally graduated from that profession into medicine. He has always been very progressive, and has kept himself by study and by attendance at post- graduate schools abreast of all the advancements in his science and art.

He comes of one of the oldest families in the State of Illinois, where he was born at Marion, November 21, 1855, a son of John M. and Elizabeth (Spiller) Smith. His father was born in the same general locality of Illinois in 1817, the year preceding that state's admis- sion to the Union, a fact which of itself is evidence of the early settlement of the family there. Grandfather John Smith at one time owned all the land upon which the present city of Abington, Virginia, is located. He was a native of Virginia, of Scotch parentage, while his wife, Barbara Rust, was a native of Germany. In 1812 these good people left their Eastern homes in Virginia and traveled all the way across country to the Territory of Illinois, the grandmother riding horseback the entire distance, using a side-saddle. They were among the very early settlers of Illinois, and both are buried near the old farm in the State of Missouri. All their children were born in Illinois. John M. Smith spent the first fifty-two years of his life within a few miles of his birthplace, and in 1868 sold out his Illinois farm and moved to Stoddard County, Southeastern Missouri, where he continued farming until his death, June 13, 1878. He married Elizabeth Spiller, who was born in Tennessee, May 28, 1823, and died in Missouri in 1886.

Doctor Smith is the sixth in a family of nine children, two of whom are still living. The first fourteen years of his life were spent on a farm, and his education up to that time had depended upon the limited facilities of district schools. He then entered the academy at Bloomfield, Missouri, of which his older brother, George W. Smith, was at that time principal. After spending two years in that academy he qualified as a teacher, and from the age of sixteen followed that as a profession for twenty years. In the meantime he had continued his education in the Cape Girardeau State Normal School of Missouri. For several years he was principal of the schools at Malden, Missouri, and for three years was principal of one of the city schools in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In the meantime he had taken up the study of medicine, and secured a license to practice a number of years before lis graduation from a regular medical college. Doctor Smith is a graduate of the Kansas

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Medical College in 1897, and in 1899 did post-graduate work at the Post-Graduate School of Medicine iu Chicago.

On April 8, 1894, Doctor Smith, seeking a more con- genial climate than that to which he had previously beeu exposed, located at Ponca City, Oklahoma. He practiced there a number of years with success, and in 1907 removed to Foraker in Osage Couuty, and built there one of the finest homes in the entire county. Three years later he exchanged that home for the one he now occupies in Pawhuska. Doctor Smith has been prospered in a business way, and now owns a 1,500-acre ranch in Osage County.

He is a member of the various medical societies, a member of the Methodist Church, and is affiliated with the Masonic order, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias. On October 8, 1893, at Wichita, Kansas, he married Ida S. Auchmoody, who was born in Nebraska, a daughter of W. H. and Mary Auchmoody. Doctor Smith and wife are the parents of four children: George Auchmoody, born September 24, 1900; Wright Spiller, born January 16, 1905; Ida Eliza- beth, born December 28, 1907; and Andrew J., Jr., born December 5, 1909. These children are receiving the best of advantages in the public schools. Mrs. Smith 's parents resided in their home for several years, the father dying there, and her mother being still with them.

JAMES F. FULLER. A man whose energy, resourceful- ness and well directed endeavors have gained to him a large degree of material prosperity is the well known citizen whose name introduces this review and who has been among the most influential in connection with the development and advancement of the civic and material interests of Sapulpa and of Creek County. In the county he has a well improved landed estate, devoted to diver- sified agriculture and stock-growing, and at the county seat, Sapulpa, he is the owner of valuable city property, besides which he has been a prominent figure in the buiness activities of the city and as a broad-minded and progressive citizen who has the confidence and good will of the community in which he is entitled to pioneer honors.

Mr. Fuller was born in a pioneer home on the site of the present Union Passenger Station in the City of Waterloo, Blackhawk County, Iowa, the major part of his father's original homestead farm being now included within the corporate limits of that city. The date of Mr. Fuller's nativity was April 1, 1859, and he is a sou of Woodbury and Matilda (Shaffer) Fuller, the former of whom was born in Ohio and the latter in Pennsyl- vania. Woodbury Fuller was a child when he accom- panied his parents to Indiana, and was a boy at the time when the family removed to Iowa and became very early settlers of Blackhawk County. Woodbury Fuller was reared to manhood in the Hawkeye State, where was solemnized his marriage to Miss Matilda Shaffer, whose father had entered claim to the tract of land on which the subject of this sketch was born, and whose husband entered claim to an adjoining tract. At the outbreak of the Civil war Woodbury Fuller promptly enlisted as a member of an Iowa volunteer regiment, and it was not long afterward that he sacrificed his life on the altar of patriotism, as he was killed in the battle of Shiloh. About ten years later his widow became the wife of his brother, Aaron Fuller, three children having been born of the first marriage and four of the second.

After the close of the war the family removed to Texas and established a home three miles southwest of the City of Dallas, which was then little more than a fron- tier trading post. The' thriving little City of Oakliff, a virtual suburb of Dallas, is situated on a portion of the old Fuller homestead farm in Dallas County. Mrs.

Matilda (Shaffer) Fuller survived her second husband and continued her residence in the Lone Star State until the time of her death, in 1903.

James F. Fuller was a mere lad at the time of the family removal to Texas, where he was reared to adult age on the home farm in Dallas County and where he availed himself of the advantages of the schools of the period. He there coutinued to be actively identified with agricultural pursuits until he had attained to the age of nineteen years, when he joined the celebrated Texas Rangers, who were then in pursuit of the notorious out- law, Sam Bass. Mr. Fuller remained with the gallant frontier rangers one year, and the following year he devoted to work on ranches in Taylor and Brown counties. He next made a trip into Nebraska and Kansas, and in 1880, at Parsons, Kansas, was solemuized his marriage to Miss Ursula Coffield, who was born in Indiana but reared and educated in Kansas. After his marriage Mr. Fuller was a resident of Nebraska four years, and he and his family passed the ensuing four years in Texas. Shortly after the opening of Oklahoma Territory to settlement Mr. Fuller established the family home in Oklahoma City, and brought his excellent mechanical skill into effective play by engaging in bridge and railroad construction work, to which he devoted his attention for eighteen months. At the opening of the Cherokee Strip he entered a claim, but the same was contested and he made no strenuous at- tempt to hold the property.

In 1895 Mr. Fuller became one of the pioneer settlers in the little Village of Sapulpa, and he has since main- tained his home here, the while he has been closely and prominently identified with the upbuilding of the fine city that is now the judicial center and metropolis of Creek County. In the earlier period of his residence at Sapulpa Mr. Fuller gave distinctive evidence of his versatility and industry by doing effective service as a carpenter, stone mason aud, plasterer. Across Euch Creek he built a bridge with seventy-five-foot spau, this being the first bridge constructed at Sapulpa and in Creek County. He worked at his trades about eight years, and for a number of years thereafter was suc- cessfully engaged in the general merchandise business, besides which he conducted a meat market for some time. He now gives his supervision to his well improved farın, which comprises a half section of land located 51/2 miles southwest of the Village of Kellyville and devoted to diversified agriculture and the raising of high grade live stock. In his home City of Sapulpa he is the owner of five residence properties, and he erected two substantial business buildings which he later sold, one being on Main Street and the other on Hobson Street. Mr. Fuller had but nominal financial resources when he established his residence at Sapulpa, and the tangible evidences of suc- cess achieved by him are those afforded in his ownership of valuable property and his status as one of the inde- pendent and well-to-do citizens of the county of which he is a pioneer.

Mr. Fuller gives unqualified allegiance to the demo- cratic party, and though he has had no desire for public office he showed his civic loyalty through his effective service as a member of the first city council of Sapulpa. He has been identified with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows for a score of years and is affiliated also with the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

It has already been noted that in 1880 Mr. Fuller wedded Miss Ursula Coffield, and she has proved a de- voted companion and helpmeet to him during the long intervening period. They have nine children, namely: Woodbury, Maude, Claude, Daisy, Lulu, Norton, Myrtle, Stella and Arthur. The eldest was named in honor of his paternal grandfather; Maude is the wife of Robert

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HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1695

Norman, of Sapulpa; Claude is identified with business activities in this city; Daisy is the wife of Frederick Boyce, of Sapulpa; Lulu is the wife of Frank Altman, of Bristow, Creek County; Norman has the practical supervision of his father's farm; and the three younger children are members of the parental home circle.

JAMES MILTON BONHAM, M. D. The pioneer physician of Hobart, where he has been engaged in practice since 1901, Dr. James Milton Bonham is known as a leader in the professional life of Kiowa County and as a citizen who has contributed materially to his community's wel- fare and growth. He belongs to a family which, originat- ing in England, was founded in this country by all emigrant who came here prior to the Revolution, taking up his residence in the Colony of Virginia. Doctor Bon- ham was born at Osceola, Iowa, May 25, 1870, and is a son of L. L. and Mary Elizabeth ( Welch) Bonham.

The paternal grandfather of Doctor Bonham, Rev. Smiley S. Bonham, was born in 1812, and died in Clark County, Iowa, in 1881. He passed his life as a farmer and stock raiser, and also was a local preacher in the Christian Church, and became prominent as a member of the old greenback party, which sent him to one of the earliest legislatures of Iowa. L. L. Bonham was born at Iowa City, Iowa, in 1842, and removed from Clark County to Osceola, then to Wilson, when his son James M. was still a child, and to Creston in 1885, all these cities in the State of Iowa. During his active career he devoted himself to the lumber business, in which he was successfully engaged at various places, and was well known in business circles, but is now living a retired life. During the period of the Civil war he enlisted in Company H, Forty-fourth Regiment, Iowa Volunteer Infantry, in which he served for four years, and made an excellent record as a soldier. In political matters Mr. Bonham is a prohibitionist, his fraternal connection is with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and religiously he is connected with the Christian Church. Mr. Bonham married Mary Elizabeth Welch, who was born at Riverton, Iowa, in 1844, and ten children have been born to them, namely: Irvin W., who died at the age of eighteen years; Fred, who resides at Beaconsfield, Iowa, and is a telegrapher; Dr. James Milton, of this review; Florence, who married Charles S. White and resides at Omaha, Nebraska, where Mr. White is fore- man for a railroad company; Novella, who married Willis McFarland and resides on their Iowa farm; Laura, who is the wife of Edgar P. Todd, a real estate and loan dealer of Selma, California; Carrie, who is the wife of William Myers, of Omaha, Nebraska; LeRoy, who is a merchant of Creston, Iowa; Edward, who is connected with an automobile factory at Omaha, Nebraska; Ethel, who is the wife of Joseph Hamilton, foreman of the electric light plant at Creston, Iowa; and Ray, who is connected with an automobile concern of Omaha, Nebraska.

The foundation for James Milton Bonham's education was laid in the public schools of Osceola and Weldon, Iowa, and when he entered upon his career it was as a telegraph operator for the Western Union Telegraph Company, a line in which he came into connection with the Associated Press, with headquarters at various points in Nebraska, Wyoming and Kansas. However, during this time he had merely used the telegrapher's calling as a means toward an end, for it had been his ambition from his youth to follow a medical career, and only waited until he could himself earn the means necessary to take him through college. In 1898 he entered the Kansas City Medical College, Kansas City, which is now the medical department of the University of Kansas, and was graduated therefrom in 1901, with the degree of

Doctor of Medicine. Later lie pursued courses of a post- graduate nature at the New York Post-Graduate School, in 1904, at Rochester, Minnesota, with the Mayo brothers, and at the Chicago Polyclinic and other Chicago hospitals.

Doctor Bonham began practice in 1901 at Hobart, as the pioneer physician of the place, and has since built up a very gratifying professional business, having at this time well-appointed offices in the Neff Building, on Fourth Street. The high place which he occupies in the esteem and confidence of his fellow-practitioners is evi- denced by his incumbency of the position of secretary of the Kiowa County Medical Society, having been the first to hold that office. He is also a member of the Okla- homa State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and of the latter was counsellor of his dis- trict for several years. A republican in his political views, Doctor Bonham's only public office has been that of health officer, which he held under the territorial government. Fraternally, he belongs to Hobart Lodge No. 198, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Hobart Chapter No. 37, Royal Arch Masons; Hobart Com- mandery No. 10, Knights Templars; and Hobart lodges of the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen of America. He has been successful in a material way, being the possessor of a high order of business ability, and is president of the Tucumcari Ice Company, of Tucumcari, New Mexico, and a director in the Home State Bank, Hobart, in addition to having other in- terests.

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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: 656

Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 656