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 14

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 14

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).

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HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

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The organization of oratorical, debating, literary, spelling and athletic associations and the building of good roads likewise are exercising commendable influence in the development of the rural education system in the county. The Oklahoma Presbyterian College, at Durant, and the Indian school maintained by the Government in Bryan County are contributing much to educational advance- ment. In this section of the state this subject of edu- cational facilities and advancement is one of special interest, for under many years of tribal government the quality of ignorance was in preponderance in the citizen- ship of the now ambitious and progressive County of Bryan. The work today and the great possibilities for the future prove an inspiration to such progressive leaders as Superintendent McIntosh, and in the most emphatic sense he has proved himself to be "the right man in the right place." As county superintendent he has under his supervision seventy-three school districts, within which are included two cities and eight towns; 150 teachers and 13,177 students as shown by the en- rollment record for 1915.

Mr. McIntosh was born at Buena Vista, Chickasaw County, Mississippi, on the 17th of April, 1884, and is a son of Robert K. and Mary Bell (Boone) McIntosh, the former of whom is deceased and the latter of whom still resides in Mississippi, she being a lineal descendant of the historic frontiersman and patriot, Daniel Boone.

The early education of Mr. McIntosh was acquired in the schools of his native state, and after availing him- self of the advantages of the high school at Houston he attended for two years the Mississippi Normal Col- lege. For three years thereafter he was a student in the Mississippi Agricultural & Mechanical College, in which institution he specialized in textile engineering, and within the period of his resdence in Oklahoma he had further prosecuted his studies in the Southeastern Nor- mal School, at Durant. Mr. McIntosh came to Okla- homa within a short time after the admission of the state to the Union, and in view of his present promi- nence in the educational affairs of Bryan County it is specially interesting to record that here he began teach- ing in 1908, his first school being that in District No. 41, near Bennington, where he taught in an open church during the winter terms and under a brush arbor in summer. He there remained two years, and for two years thereafter he served with marked efficiency as assistant county superintendent of schools, under the administrations of H. C. King and C. L. Neeley. After his retirement from this position he taught three terms in the village schools of Bennington, and in the autumn of 1914 he was elected county superintendent of schools, the duties of which office he assumed on the 1st of July, 1915. He is an influential and valued member of the Bryan County Teachers' Association and is identified actively with the Oklahoma State Teachers' Association. As an educator and public-spirited and progressive citi- zen he is specially interested in the advancement of agri- culture and the teaching of its science as an important adjunct in connection with the work of the rural schools. His political allegiance is given to the democratic party, he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist Church, and he is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity.

Mr. McIntosh has four brothers and two sisters, con- cerning whom the following data are consistently entered at this juncture: James T. is a representative lawyer of Bryan County and is engaged in practice at Durant, the county seat, besides which he is serving in 1915 as a member of the Oklahoma State Senate; Mrs. Kittie Foster resides near Houston, Chickasaw county, Missis- sippi, where her husband is a prosperous agriculturist ; Murdock is engaged in the wholesale furniture business Vol. IV-4

at Alexandria, Louisiana; William E. is a pharmacist at Caddo, Oklahoma; Albert E. resides at Houston, Mis- sissippi, and is an electrician by vocation; Lorena is the wife of John R. Priest, M. D., who is engaged in the practice of his profession at Van Vleet, Mississippi.

On the 4th of August, 1912, was solemnized the mar- riage of Superintendent McIntosh to Miss Dora Crudup, of Durant, who is a graduate of the Southeastern State Normal School and who was associated with her hus- band as a teacher during the first year after their mar- riage. They have one child, Robert K., Jr.

WILLIAM OSCAR MITCHELL. One of the prominent and best known members of the Oklahoma City bar is William O. Mitchell, who is a lawyer of more than forty years experience and who came from the State of Ohio to Okla- homa abont twelve years ago. Mr. Mitchell is a soldier, made a gallant record during the Civil war with an Iowa regiment and was prominent in the movement for the establishment of the Vicksburg Military Park. He was officially identified with that institution several years.

William Oscar Mitchell was born at Bonaparte, Iowa, April 4, 1846, a son of George M. and Sarah (Hobson) Mitchell. He grew up in the country, was educated in the common schools, and was one of the boy soldiers who bore so heavy a share in the work of putting down the rebellion. He was sixteen years of age when he enlisted in Company C of the Thirteenth Iowa Regiment, and went South to join the armies under General Grant, who at that time was undertaking his first siege of Vicksburg. Later he participated in the movements which finally enveloped Vicksburg and brought about the fall of that city. During a later campaign while Sherman's armies were advancing on Atlanta, he was captured on July 22, 1864, and spent more than six months in the Southern prison. He was at Andersonville two months, spent a few weeks in Charleston, but escaped the Confederate guards there, being recaptured at the end of two weeks and was then confined at Salisbury, North Carolina, and was finally exchanged at Richmond in February, 1865. Many of the Mitchell family have had military experience during the different generations, and one of his ancestors was a major who fought under Washington during the Revolution.

A number of years after the close of the war Mr. Mitchell was appointed by the State of Iowa on a com- inittee to locate the graves of soldiers on the battlefields of the South. His own active service and knowledge of the movement of the troops, especially about Vicksburg, made him a valuable member of that committee, and he was finally selected as a member of a commission of cleven to erect monuments to Iowa soldiers on Southern battlefields. Later came his election as vice president of the National Military Park Association at Vicksburg. Ho and Lieut. Steven B. Lee and Capt. W. T. Rigby went to Washington for the purpose of securing necessary appropriations for the building and maintaining of the Vicksburg National Military Park, now one of the beauty spots of the entire nation. Others had previously visited the national capital for the same purpose, and credit is due this committee, of which Mr. Mitchell was a member, for securing recognition from Speaker Tom Read, and the inception of the movement in Congress which finally brought the park into being.

After the war Mr. Mitchell returned to Iowa and in 1871 was graduated from Cornell College at Mount Pleasant. He read law in Chariton, lowa, and was admitted to the bar also in 1871. For thirty-one years Mr. Mitchell was an attorney with rising reputation and growing practice at Corning, Iowa, and ten years of that time he was local attorney for the Chicago, Burlington &

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Quincy Railway. He also became a factor in developing Iowa's great agricultural resources, and did an extensive business in the buying, improving and selling of stock farms. He was president of an association covering eighteen counties in Southwest Iowa, under whose auspices were undertaken developments at different times, and chicfly the introduction of blue grass culture, as a result of which that section has rivaled the famous blue grass regions of Kentucky.

As an Oklahoma lawyer Mr. Mitchell has continued the success which marked his work in Iowa, and besides his own private interests, which are extensive, he looks after a substantial law clientage. He maintains his offices in the Security Building at Oklahoma City, and has a residence two miles east of the Fair Grounds on East Fourth strect. As a republican he was twice elected to the lower house of the Iowa State Legislature, for one term was speaker of the house and later spent four years in the State Senate. Mr. Mitchell is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and with the Grand Army of the Republic. He is a member of the Methodist Church.

At Washington, Iowa, in 1876, he married Dora Conger, who died in 1881. Their one daughter, Medora, is now Mrs. Cyrus Metcalf, residing at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In 1887 Mr. Mitchell married Helen E. Chaffee at Corning, Iowa. There is also a daughter by this union, Helen, now Mrs. Harold Lee, of Oklahoma City.

FORDYCE GIVEN WOODARD. The Woodard family have been identified with the City of Alva since its founding and establishment with the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893. Fordyce G. Woodard though coming into Oklahoma at that time from Kansas as a youth of seventeen, has a special distinction in connection with Oklahoma, since he is perhaps the only white man with- out Indian family affiliations who was born in the west- ern half of the old Indian Territory during the decade of the '70s and still a resident of the state.

Fordyce Given Woodard was born at the old military post of Fort Sill, Indian Territory, July 7, 1876. His parents were Benjamin Thomas and Mary A. (Hollo- way) Woodard. In 1872 his father was awarded a eon- tract to supply wood to the military establishment at Fort Sill, and remained there four years, during which time he participated in other branches of the Indian service, holding such positions as commissary clerk, beef issue clerk, etc. Benjamin T. Woodard was born in the state of Indiana in 1849, and was the son of Quaker parents, also natives of Indiana. In 1870 the Woodard family moved from Indiana to Kansas, locating on government land in Douglas County. The grandfather continued there as a farmer until his death in 1895. His four children were William, Thomas, Benjamin T. and Elizabeth, William and Benjamin T. being the only ones now living. Benjamin T. Woodard was reared on a farm and received his education in public schools and began his career as a farmer in Douglas County, Kansas. After the four years spent in Indian Territory hc re- moved to Barber County, Kansas, in 1877, and for a few years was employed in a general store. In 1880 he took up a claim and engaged actively in farming and cattle raising, at the same time conducting a store and livery stable. In 1893 he participated in the opening of the Cherokee Strip, made the run to Alva, and in that town established the first livery barn. He also took a claim of government land one mile east of town. He continued in business as a liveryman at Alva until 1902 and then sold out his property and retired, locating in the beauti- ful country of Northwestern Arkansas at Rogers, where he and his wife now enjoy the comforts of their former years of labor. Benjamin T. Woodard and wife were

married in 1867, and she was born in Indiana in 1847. Their six children comprise five sons and one daughter, as follows: Alonzo, born September 6, 1872, at Law- rence, Kansas, and now a farmer in Reno County, Kan- sas; was married in 1904 to Miss Mary Madison, and their three children are Allen, Alden and Ray; William Harley, born March 20, 1875, at Lawrence, Kansas, and now a lumber merchant at Clayton, New Mexico, married in 1906 Lena Gregory, and their children are Mary and Elberta; Fordyce G., who was the third in order of birth; Harry Clifton, born at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, September 20, 1886, is now living with his parents at Rogers, Arkansas; Lulu May, born at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, September 20, 1889, also with her parents; and Frederick, born at Medicine Lodge May 20, 1891, still at home.

Fordyce G. Woodard was born in a stockade house on the old Fort Sill military reservation, but has no recol- lection of his birthplace since the family returned to Kansas and located at Medicine Lodge when he was about one year of age. He received his education in the public schools of that town, graduated from high school in 1892, and in the following year participated with his parents in the run into Cherokee Strip. For three years he was engaged in mauaging his father's livery business, then became a salesman in a dry goods and elothing store, and now for a number of years has been manager of the clothing department of one of the chief depart- inent stores of Western Oklahoma.

At Alva on January 15, 1907, Mr. Woodard married Miss Villa. May Cox. Mrs. Woodard was born at Pana, Illinois, November 14, 1878, a daughter of James Madi- son and Sophia Cox, natives of North Carolina, and now living at Alva.

THOMAS CHISM. By reliance upon a strong and in- dividual character and ability, Thomas Chism has made more out of his opportunities than most men can claim, and has worked out a very successful career since eom- ing to Oklahoma. He is one of the leading ranchers and stock men in the vicinity of Beggs in Okmulgee County, and furthermore is one of the county commissioners of that eounty.

His service as county commissioner has been con- tinuous for seven years since statehood. He was first appointed to that office, and has been elected for three consecutive terms.

Born in Morgan County, Missouri, June 25, 1866, he was the only child of the marriage of H. L. and Mary S. (Bradbury) Chism, his mother dying five weeks after his birth. Both parents were born in Johnson County, Missouri, and the father died on his farm in that state in 1897 at the age of sixty-five. He was twice married. During the Civil war he served in the Confederate army under General Price, and at one time was county judge of Morgan County. He was an active democrat, a Baptist and a member of the Masonie fraternity.

Thomas Chism was reared by his aunt, Kate Salmon, in Morgan County. He had only limited advantages in the way of schooling and had to shift for himself as soon as possible. When he was eighteen years old he went to Henry County and began working out at hard labor and meager pay. For a great many years in his earlier career Mr. Chism was paid only fifty cents for many hours of toil. He proved himself faithful and competent, and continued to support himself by hard work in Cooper and Jackson counties, Missouri, and lived at Lee Summit in that state until he came to Oklahoma in 1898.

He arrived in Oklahoma, or as it was then Indian Territory, with practically no capital except his energy

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and ambition. He first located in Wagoner County, and since 1901 lived at Beggs, having been identified with that village practically from its beginning. Here his prosperity has rapidly grown as a farmer and cattle man, and he now owns 800 acres in Okmulgee County, and has under lease a large amount of additional lands. He keeps ten tenant farmers at work on his land, and employs three other men for service in the operation of his cattle ranch. His home place is a thirty-acre homestead close to Beggs, and it is a fine home and he enjoys it all the more for the fact that he has labored diligently to produce it. At the present time Mr. Chism has about seven hundred head of cattle on his farms and ranches.

As a democrat he has always taken much interest in his party, and it is said that as a political manager he has never had a serious defeat. The office of county commissioner was the only place to which he ever aspired for himself. He is affiliated with the Masonic Order, the Woodnien of the World, the Modern Woodmen of America, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias. In March, 1903, he married Emma Martin of Springfield, Missouri. They have one son, Charles M., who is now attending the high school at Muskogee.

JOSEPH L. HULL. A member of the representative law firm of West, Hull & Hagan, of Oklahoma City, Mr. Hull has achieved much along the line of his pro- fession during the period of his residence in Oklahoma, especially through his effective service as assistant at- torney general of the state, further distinction being his also through the able assistance which he rendered in the work of annotating the statutory laws of this new commonwealth. He has maintained his home in Oklahoma City since 1910 and has been concerned with important litigations in which he has fully demonstrated his broad and accurate knowledge of the science of jurisprudence and also his versatility as a trial lawyer.

A scion of a distinguished old southern family of prominent collateral relations, Mr. Hull was born in the fine little city of Athens, Georgia, on the 6th of May, 1885, and is a son of Augustus L. and Callie (Cobb) Hull, the latter's sister having become the wife of Hon. Hoke Smith, former governor of Georgia and present representative of that commonwealth in the United States Senate. The father of Mr. Hull was likewise born and reared in Georgia, is a man of high intellectual attainments, served for a number of years as secretary and treasurer of the University of Georgia, at Athens, and is the author of several historical works of enduring interest and value, including one entitled "Campaigns in the Confederate Army," and another entitled "An- nals of Athens." Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin, ma- ternal great-grandfather of him whose name introduces this article, was the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia and in that state a county was named in his honor. Thomas R. R. Cobb, maternal grandfather of Mr. Hull, was the author of a codification of the laws of Georgia and one of the authors of the constitu- tions of the Confederate States of America, he having been a leading member of the Georgia bar and prominent in the affairs of the Confederate government during the period of the Civil war. The maternal ancestral record of Mr. Hull shows many names prominent in profes- sional and military life, and his mother is affiliated with the distinguished organization of southern women known as the Daughters of R. E. Lee. Mr. Hull has three brothers and three sisters: Marion is a repre- sentative physician and surgeon in the city of Atlanta, Georgia; Harry is engaged in the real estate business at Athens, that state; Augustus L., Jr., is reporter in

the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, at Guthrie; Mrs. William H. Poe is a resi- dent of New Mexico, where her husband is presiding on the bench of the United States District Court; and Mrs. Philip Weltner and Miss Callie Hull reside in the City of Atlanta.

After duly availing himself of the advantages of the public schools of his native state Joseph L. Hull was for three and one-half years a student in the Uni- versity of Georgia, one year of this period having been passed in the law department. He was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1905, shortly after leaving the uni- versity, and thereafter he was engaged in the general practice of his profession at Athens, that state, until 1910, when he came to the State of Oklahoma and established his residence in Oklahoma City, where his first important work was that of assisting Clinton O. Bunn in the official annotating of the statutes of the new commonwealth. In April, 1912, he was appointed special assistant attorney-general of the state, under the regime of Attorney-General Charles West, and on the 1st of July of the following year he was made a regular assistant. He was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court on the 13th of Oc- tober, 1914, and while serving as assistant attorney-gen- eral he was the effective coadjutor of the attorney-gen- eral in arguing before the Oklahoma Supreme Court a case involving the state banking board, the court holding that a suit against this board was an action brought against the state itself, this being the contention made by the attorney-general and his assistants in the presenta- tion of the case. As assistant attorney-general Mr. Hull was prominently concerned in the presentation of other important causes in behalf of the state, and his labors in this office tended greatly to the furtherance of his professional prestige and success after he had resumed the private practice of law.

As may be inferred, Mr. Hull is a stalwart advocate of the principles and policies for which the democratic party stands sponsor. He and his wife are members of the Presbyterian Church, South, and at the University of Georgia he became affiliated with the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, and also with the Delta Theta Pi Fraternity of the law department.

At Oklahoma City, on the 23d of October, 1912, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Hull to Miss Lucille Kirkpatrick, whose father served as controller of the United States sub-treasury in the city of New Orleans under the administration of President Cleveland. Mr. and Mrs. Hull have one child, Alyce Lucille.

WILLIAM L. SPIKES. Much of the good that was accomplished in advancing the cause of education in Oklahoma as far back as 1900 had its inception in an understanding on the part of the teachers of the cou- ditions that prevailed in the territories iu that day. Oklahoma then had been largely populated by people from the southern states, and the southern teachers with training sufficient for the task who came here had a decided advantage over those who came from the north- ern states. This condition prevailed for several years, or until the North and South became acquainted in Okla- homa and a new citizenship absorbed the best ideas that both brought here. Texas and her state normals sent some of the best teachers from the Sonth. Among these was William L. Spikes, who came to Western Oklahoma in 1902. He had completed a course in the North Texas Normal College at Denton, Texas, and had five years of successful experience in that state. He taught for three years in the public schools of Beckham County and then left the profession to take up pharmacy. He entered the School of Pharmacy of the University of Oklahoma in -

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1908 and finished the course the following year. He then engaged in the drug busines in Catoosa, but moved to Aylesworth in 1910. Here he has one of the largest stocks of merchandise in the town and one of the largest in a town of that size in the county.

Mr. Spikes was born in Cass County, Texas, in 1877, and is a son of W. B. and Urina ( Walker) Spikes. His father was a native of Texas and his grandfather a vet- eran in the Confederate Army. His early education was obtained in the public schools of Texas, and his pro- fessional education was obtained during the years of 1896-7-8 in the North Texas Normal College.

Mr. Spikes was married in 1903, in Denton, Texas, to Miss Nannie Fox. They have five children: Lovella, aged eleven; W. L., aged nine; Orvel Dixon, seven years old; Orleta, five and Verna, three. Mr. Spikes has two brothers and three sisters. J. A. Spikes is principal of the public schools at Wheeler, Texas. Mrs. Alvin Mat- thews is the wife of an insurance man of Denton; Mrs. W. A. Taliafero is the wife of a merchant in Denton. Miss Hattie Spikes teaches in the public schools in Ayles- worth, and H. W. Spikes is a dry goods merchant in the same place.

Mr. Spikes is prominent in fraternal circles as a mem- ber of the Masons, the Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World. He is a member of the Business League of Madill, though his home and main interests are in Ayles- worth, Oklahoma. He owns some valuable farm land in the vicinity of Aylesworth and is actively interested in agriculture and livestock.

WILLIAM J. RISEN, M. D. Established in the success- ful practice of his profession as one of the leading physicians and surgeons of Texas County, with residence at Hooker, Doctor Risen also has had much influence iu public affairs in the state of his adoption, is a stalwart and effective advocate of the principles of the democratic party, and has given specially loyal and valuable service as member of the State Senate from the first senatorial district in the Fifth General Assembly of the Oklahoma Legislature.

Dr. William James Risen was born at Summersville, Green County, Kentucky, on the 24th of January, 1864, and is a son of Alfred L. and Cynthia A. Risen. Alfred L. Risen was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on the 25th of July, 1832, and was a lad of nine years at the time of his parents' removal to Kentucky, where he was reared and educated and where he passed the residue of his long and useful life, his father having been a valiant soldier in the Mexican war and his mother having been a native of the City of Dublin, Ireland. Alfred L. Risen became a prominent and influential citizen of Green County, Kentucky, where he was called upon to serve in various public offices, including those of justice of the peace, county assessor and county sheriff. His hold upon popular esteem was shown in the fact that he was never defeated for any office for which he was a candidate, and he was unswerving in his allegiance to the democratic party, his last vote having been cast when he was eighty years of age and his death having occurred when he was eighty-one years old; his devoted wife followed him to eternal rest about two years later. Mr. Risen was a prosperous agriculturist during the major part of his signally active and worthy career as one of the world's productive workers.

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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