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 16

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 16

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HOMER N. BOARDMAN. Whoever, associating the name of Homer N. Boardman with high attainments in law and jurisprudence, should deem the possessor of the name only a thoroughly learned and eminently successful member of his profession, would greatly underestimate the qualities of enterprise, business talent, financial abil- ity and initiative which have gained him a position among the substantial business men of Oklahoma City. Appointed United States attorney when but thirty-three years of age, he has not alone continued to hold a dis- tinguished position in the law, but has been a strong and recognized influence in politics, and a stirring factor in the oil, gas, iron and land industries in the state.

Mr. Boardman was born in Jones County, Iowa, Decem- ber 17, 1878, and is a son of Homer C. and Emma (Jacobsen) Boardman. His father, a native of Vermont, migrated to Iowa immediately after the close of the Civil war and there was successful in building up a large wholesale produce business, being also prominently iden- tified with the republican party and serving as state senator from his district. He is now retired from life's activities and is living quietly with Mrs. Boardman at their home at Los Angeles, California.

Homer N. Boardman began his education in the pub- lic schools, and after his graduation from the Nevada (Iowa) High School entered the Iowa State Col- lege, Ames, Iowa. He took his legal course at the Uni- versity of Iowa, Iowa City, where he was graduated in 1900, with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, and imme- diately entered upon the practice of his profession at

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Garner, Iowa, there continuing two years. On coming to Oklahoma, in 1902, he settled in Blaine County, where he was successful in building up a representative profes- sional business, and in the meantime interested himself actively in republican polities. In 1907 he was elected county attorney of Blaine County, as the first incumbent of that position under the new statehood, his term being from October 16, 1907, until January, 1910, but in August, 1909, resigned his position to take charge of the campaign of Dick T. Morgan, republican nominee for Congress, whose election he succeeded in securing. He was only thirty-three years of age when he was appointed by President Taft to the office of United States attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma, and has the dis- tinction of being the youngest man ever appointed to such a position. Owing to a change in the administra- tion, he served only from July, 1912, until November, 1913, and during this period removed the office of United States attorney from Guthrie to Oklahoma City. At the time of the close of his term of office, Mr. Boardman re- turned to private practice, and October 1, 1914, formed a partnership with Alexander Marshall, formerly of Duluth, Minnesota, under the firm name of Marshall & Boardman. This has already become known as one of the strong combinations in the law, and a general practice is car- ried on in all the courts. The offices of the firm are located at 714-15 Colcord Building, Oklahoma City.

For a number of years Mr. Boardman has had large interests in oil, gas and iron, in various parts of Nevada, Minnesota and Oklahoma, and in the farm loan business at Oklahoma City, and his excellent business talents have been recognized by his election to various official positions in the companies with which he is identified, he being at this time president of the Equitable Oil and Gas Com- pany of Reno, Nevada, the Soudan Oil and Gas Company, of Oklahoma City, and the Letha Oil and Gas Company, of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and a director of the Onahman Iron Company, of Duluth, Minnesota. His fraternal connections are numerous, including membership in the Masons, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias and the Phi Kappa Psi frater- nity, and he is also a member of the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club, and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. He is well known in social circles, and has numerous friends both in business and in his profession.

Mr. Boardman was married November 1, 1900, to Miss Susan E. Dakin, daughter of M. C. Dakin, of Marshall County, Iowa, one of the pioneers of Central Iowa, and later one of that state's heaviest landholders. Mr. and Mrs. Boardman have one son, Dakin, born in 1902. The family home at Oklahoma City is a handsome one and is located at No. 605 West Seventeenth Street.

GEORGE W. WOOD. As a member of the representative real-estate and loan firm of Wood Brothers, at Cherokee, George William Wood has been a prominent factor in connection with the civic and industrial development and upbuilding of Alfalfa County, influential in public affairs and progressive and liberal as a business man. He was a young man of about eighteen years when he came with his parents to Oklahoma Territory, at the time of the opening of the famous Cherokee Strip, in 1893, and his vigorous mentality and business enterprise have been potent along various avenues through which the march of progress has made its way in this new commonwealth of the Union. Mr. Wood had the distinc- tion of being one of the framers of the constitution of the State of Oklahoma, as a delegate from the Eighth District, which was then a portion of Woods County, but which is now Alfalfa County. He is state agent for Oklahoma of the Central Life Insurance Company of Des Moines, Iowa, and as a member of the firm of Wood

Brothers is a prominent figure in the real-estate and loan business in Northern Oklahoma, the operations of the firm having been of extensive order and having con- tributed greatly to the progress and prosperity of this section of the state.

On the old homestead farm of his father in Owen County, Kentucky, George William Wood was born on the 23d of December, 1875, and he was a lad of about nine years at the time of the family removal to Kansas, in which state he was reared to adult age and received the advantages of the public schools. Mr. Wood is a son of John Wesley Wood and Eunice (Conn) Wood, both likewise natives of the fine old Bluegrass State. The father was born in Owen County on the 20th of October, 1845, and his parents, who were natives of Vir- ginia, were early settlers in that part of Kentucky. John W. Wood devoted his entire active career to the basic industry of agriculture, through the medium of which he won definite prosperity after coming to the West. He was a gallant soldier in the Confederate ser- vice during the Civil war, in which he was a private in the Fourth Kentucky Cavalry, his service having covered a period of three years, during which he participated in many engagements, including a number of the important battles and campaigns marking the progress of the great conflict. In 1885 he removed with his family to Barber County, Kansas, where he purchased a farm in the vicinity of the village of Hazleton. He was success- ful in his endeavors, though he endured his full share of the hardships and vicissitudes that fell to the lot of the farmers in Kansas at a time when droughts and grasshoppers frequently put at naught the arduous labors that had been expended in the propagation of crops. John W. Wood continued his residence in the Sunflower State until 1893, when he took part in the opening of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and located a desirable tract of government land four miles distant from the present thriving little City of Cherokee, the judicial center of Alfalfa County. He made good im- provements on this homestead and after perfecting his title thereto continued his residence on the same until 1902, when he sold the property at advantageous terms. Since that time he has lived virtually retired at Cherokee as one of the sterling and highly honored pioneer citi- zens of Alfalfa County. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraterity, is a staunch supporter of the princi- ples of the democratic party, and is a birthright mnem- ber of the Society of Friends. His wife, a woman of deep religious convictions and gentle and gracious per- sonality, was summoned to the life eternal on the 9th of March, 1913. She was born in Kentucky in the year 1855, a daughter of William and Elizabeth (Williams) Conn, natives of Virginia, and her marriage to John W. Wood was solemnized in the year 1873. Of this union were born five sons and three daughters, the subject of this review having been the firstborn; Leslie is junior member of the firm of Wood Brothers, engaged in the real-estate and loan business at Cherokee, as previously noted; Claude B. is engaged in the successful practice of law at Fairview, Major County; James A. is manager of the Pioneer Telephone Company at Protection, Coman- che County, Kansas; Frederick S. is a civil engineer by profession and is now a resident of Berkeley, California; Eugenia is employed as an expert stenographer at Cherokee, Oklahoma, where Cora is a successful and popular teacher of music, both remaining with their father, as does also Grace, the youngest of the children.

In Barber County, Kansas, George W. Wood wat reared to the sturdy discipline of the home farm and duly availed himself of the advantages of the well ordered public schools. He came with his father and the

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other member of the family to Oklahoma in 1893, and though still a comparatively young man he is thus entitled to pioneer honors. As a youth he learned the printer 's trade, and as an ambitious exponent of the "art preservative of all arts" he was for some time prominently identified with newspaper enterprise in Ok- lahoma Territory. In 1903 he became the founder of a weekly paper known as the Ingersoll Times, in the Vil- lage of Ingersoll, now in Alfalfa County, which was then an integral part of Woods County. He conducted this paper one year and then, in 1904, established the Watonga Herald, at Watonga, the present judicial cen- ter of Blaine County. In 1905 he removed to Cherokee and became the founder of the Democrat, of which weekly paper he continued editor and publisher one year, at the expiration of which he sold the plant and business. Since that time he has been senior member of the firm of Wood Brothers, which has built up and con- trols a large and important real-estate and loan busi- ness.

In 1906 when the call was made for a constitutional convention to frame a constitution for the new state, Mr. Wood became a candidate for delegate from the Eighth Representative District, and was elected, on the democratic ticket, by a majority of 192 votes over his republican opponent. He took a loyal and active part in the work and deliberation of the convention that framed the organic laws of Oklahoma, having been chairman of the committee on printing and a member also of the committees on prohibition, county lines and legislation. As a member of the committee assigned to the defining of new county lines Mr. Wood was specially influential in bringing about the erection of Alfalfa County, originally a part of Woods County, his having been the distinction of selecting the name for the new county and also effecting the establishing of the county 'seat at Cherokee. His name finds place on the history of Oklahoma as one of the zealous and valued members of its state constitutional convention. He is a stal- wart .in the camp of the democratic party, is essentially liberal and public-spirited as a citizen, and takes a vital interest in all that pertains to the welfare of his home city and county. His name is still enrolled on the list of eligible bachelors in Alfalfa County and here his circle of friends is limited only by that of his acquaint- ances.

A. H. CULP, M. D. The pioneer physician to locate in the town of Beggs when it first started was Dr. A. H. Culp, who for more than fifteen years has supplied not only a skillful professional service but also much of the business enterprise to that community.

His professional career covered more than a quarter of a century. He was graduated M. D. from the Louisville Medical College at Louisville, Kentucky, in 1888. Since then he has been in continuous practice and has had an extensive experience in all branches of medicine and surgery. It was in 1900 that he came to Beggs, while the town was in its incipiency, and he has always had as much practice as he could well attend to in connection with his business interests.

Dr. A. H. Culp was born in Parkersburg, West Vir- ginia, October 20, 1860, a son of William and Mary S. (Holland) Culp. His parents were both natives of Old Virginia. His father was born in 1828 and died at Col- lins, Missouri, in 1910. The mother was born in 1830 and died in 1870 at Moberly, Missouri. The family came to Missouri in 1867 when Dr. Culp was about six years old, and the father became a prominent factor in the town of Moberly. He was in the lumber business the greater part of his life, and he also laid off Culp's

First and Second Addition to the City of Moberly. He handled a great amount of real estate in the course of his active career. He was a democrat and a member of the Methodist Church. There were three children: Dr. J. C. Culp of Thayer, Missouri; Dr. A. H. Culp; and Minnie, wife of W. V. McCormick of Sedalia, Missouri.

From 1867 until about fifteen years ago Dr. A. H. Culp lived in Missouri and gained all his earlier expe- riences as a physician there. In and about Beggs he has acquired some extensive land holdings and as his father before him has been quite successful in handling real estate. He has also been interested in oil lands and for a time engaged in the cattle business.

In 1915 Dr. Culp was honored by election as president of the Okmulgee County Medical Society. He is also physician to the New York Indian Boarding School, one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the Creek Nation and has been surgeon for the St. Louis & San Francisco R. R. for the past ten years. He is a democrat, but not active in politics except so far as the good government of his own community is concerned. He is a member of the Masonic Order and the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

In 1889 Dr. Culp married Miss Lillie Warren, who was born in Sedalia, Missouri, in April, 1866, daughter of J. L. Warren. Dr. and Mrs. Culp have one daughter, Lucile, who is the wife of Louis R. Steigleder. Mr. Steigleder is cashier of the Farmers National Bank of Beggs, one of the strongest institutions in Okmulgee county, with capital and surplus of $28,250.

FRANK BROADWELL. Associated with his brother, George B. in the handling of bonds and other high- grade securities, with offices at 320 American National Bank Building, Oklahoma City, Mr. Broadwell is one of the leading representatives of this important line of financial enterprise in the Oklahoma metropolis and capital city, and is a citizen and business man of pro- gressiveness and distinctive civic loyalty.

Mr. Broadwell was born in Logan County, Illinois, on the 15th of June, 1864, and was a boy at the time of the family removal to Kansas, the while he has the distinction of being a pioneer of the present State of Oklahoma, as he became associated with his father in the opening of a ranch in the section later known as the Cherokee Strip in Indian Territory, this action hav- ing been taken about a decade prior to the opening of that section to settlement and Mr. Broadwell having been a lad at the time when he gained his first ex- perience in connection with ranching and cattle-growing in Oklahoma.

Mr. Broadwell is a son of William B. and Elsie (Jor- dan) Broadwell, and the other surviving children are George B., who is his coadjutor in business; Mrs. Mary E. Wilcox, who likewise resides in Oklahoma City; and Miss Jean B., who is a resident of Kansas City, Mis- souri. The widowed mother, now venerable in years, maintains her home in Oklahoma City, her parents having been pioneers of Illinois, where they settled in the year 1873, and her brother, Dr. Frank M. Jordan, having patented a homestead near the present site of' Oklahoma City shortly after the opening of the Terri- tory of Oklahoma to settlement, in 1889.

William B. Broadwell was born and reared in Illinois, where he continued to be identified with farming and stock-growing until his removal to Kansas, though he had the distinction of having been one of the gallant argonauts who made their way across the plains to Cali- fornia in 1849, at the time of the memorable excitement incidental to the discovery of gold in that common- wealth. He remained in California until 1852 and then

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returned to Illinois, where he became the patentee of the first double-shovel cultivator, this patent having been obtained from the State of Illinois in the early '50s but the protection of the same having not been adequate to enable Mr. Broadwell to reap his due finan- cial profit from the invention. In 1873 he removed with his family to Kansas and became one of the pioneer settlers in Reno County. Buffalo still roamed the Kan- sas prairies at the time and the Indians were a frequent menace to the settlers. The Broadwell ranch house be- came a rendezvous for neighbors, and also for immigrants passing through, at times when Indians manifested hos- tility. During one of these not infrenquent "Indian scares" the women and children of the pioneer families iu that section of Southern Kansas were sent to Hutchin- son for safety, the men remaining to protect their prop- erty and repel possible attack by the Indians. The Broadwell ranch was likewise a favored stopping place for men who were engaged iu collecting and hauling buffalo bones from the prairies, these bones, manufac- tured principally into fertilizers, being at that time sold at Hutchinson at the rate of $3.50 a ton. Mr. Broad- well was one of the first to plant cottonwood trees on the open prairies of Southern Kansas, and some of the trees which he thus planted in the pioneer days now have trunks that are fully three and one-half feet in diameter at the base. The pioneers depended upon the star-route service for their mail, which was delivered but once a week, the conditions that compassed the country at that time seeming almost impossible of con- ception on the part of the younger generation of the present day, when the same districts enjoy opulent pros- perity and the best advantages. William B. Broadwell was about eighty years of age at the time of his death and his name merits place on the roll of the honored pioneers of the Sunflower State.

After receiving a limited preliminary training in the pioneer schools of Kansas Frank Broadwell eventually completed an effective course in a commercial college in the city of Hutchinson, that state. In the meanwhile he had assisted his father in the work and management of the homestead ranch, and after leaving the business college he continued to be identified with agricultural pursuits for several years. He then supplemented his education by attending school again at Hutchinson. In 1878, when he was about fourteen years old, he became associated with his father in establishing a ranch in the section later known as the Cherokee Strip of Okla- homa, and for twelve years, under the conditions obtain- ing at the time of the great open ranges, he served as a cowboy on the prairies of Kansas and Oklahoma. In 1891 he established his residence at Guthrie, capital of Oklahoma Territory, and there became a contractor in the supplying of wood for fuel used by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. For a period three years thereafter he was engaged in coal mining in Arkansas, and he then returned to Hutchinson, Kansas. In 1901 he removed to Lawton, the present county seat of Co- manche County, Oklahoma, and there he was engaged in business until 1907, the year of the admission of the state to the Union, when he purchased a farm in what was known as the Big Pasture District of Comanche County. After remaining on the farm one year he re- moved to Oklahoma City, where he has since maintained his home and where he and his brother control a sub- stantial business in the handling of municipal bonds and other approved securities of the higher grade. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, is a citizen of marked loyalty and public spirit, and he has deep ap- preciation of the manifold advantages and attractions of the state of which he may consistently be termed a pioneer. Mr. Broadwell is a bachelor.

HON. JAMES HASKINS SUTHERLIN. When the Thirty- second Senatorial District sent James H. Sutherlin of Wagoner to the Senate in 1912, it gave to the Legislature the services of one of the most competent and scholarly lawyers of the state and a man of long experience in public life in Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Senator Sutherlin has been justly called one of the dynamic citizens of Oklahoma, and a man of light and leading in the Senate. He is a man of many parts, a student, a thinker, and the powers of an original mind have not only served him well in solving the intricate problems of legal practice, but also in helping to formu- late the well-balanced program of legislation for the new state.

The record of his individual services in the State Sen- ate during the past four years will furnish instructive material to the historian of the future who endeavors to understand and interpret the politieal life of Oklahoma during the first ten years of statehood.

In the fourth Legislature Senator Sutherlin was chair- man of Judiciary Committee No. 1. He was author dur- ing that Legislature of an important measure that low- ered tax levies, and took a conspicuous part in legislation affecting oil and gas, the production of which is an important industry in his part of the state. He also took a leading part in favor of the passage of legisla- tion establishing the capital at Oklahoma City and for building the same. He attempted the passage of a resolution reorganizing the judiciary of Oklahoma, and that was the measure to which he gave his particular attention during the session of the Fifth Legislature. In the fifth session he was also a leader of measures designed to make the production of oil and gas more profitable, particularly with reference to conservation, production and transportation. He was one of the joint authors of the oil conservation bill which became a law. He also rendered active assistance in the pas- sage of the home-ownership measure presented by Sen- ator Campbell Russell. In the Fifth Legislature he was chairman of the Committee on Constitution and Constitutional Amendments, and a member of com- mittees on Apppropriations, Ways and Means, Privileges and Elections, Education, Public Buildings, Oil and Gas, State and County Affairs, and Legislative and Judicial Apportionment. In his legislation work he has taken an active part in maintaining the liberal policies of the Oklahoma constitution.

Much attention has been attracted over the state to Senator Sutherlin's proposed constitutional amendment affecting the judiciary, to which he gave much thought, study and labor. It was introduced by him in the Fifth Legislature. The proposed bill has been highly commended as a measure which would serve to simplify and correlate the various judicial powers vested in the state, and a brief digest of the proposed bill is worthy of record in this sketch.

As introduced during the session in the Fifth Legis- lature his measure provided that the judicial power of the state should be vested "'in the senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, a supreme court, courts of appeals, district courts, courts of justices of the peace and municipal courts" and provided that the Legislature might abolish the present Criminal Court of Appeals. All other courts, except the Senate as a court, were made inferior to the Supreme Court, and that court was given general supervisory jurisdiction over all courts.

The court system of the state at the time of the pro- posal of this amendment to the constitution consisted of a Supreme Court, commissioners to the Supreme Court sitting in divisions of three each in an advisory eapacity to the Supreme Court and whose written opinions were usually adopted in toto by the Supreme Court; a Crimi-

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l Court of Appeals (a statutory court), district courts, a County Court in each county and justices of the peace. The main changes proposed in this amendment sought to abolish the commission to the Supreme Court and also to abolish the County Courts and establish instead one Supreme Court composed of a chief justice to be elected by the state at large and four associate justices to be elected from districts; Courts of Appeals to sit throughout the state; District Courts (one court of original jurisdiction) ; and courts of justices of the peace. The amendment provided that all appeals should be directly from the District Court to either the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court should have jurisdiction on appeal only in cases where the amount involved exceeded $3,000, and in all extraordinary matters, such as suits involving taxation or the fiscal policy, divorces, alimony and con- stitutional questions regardless of the amount involved.

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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