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 25

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 25

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In the fall of 1888, at White Bead Hill, Chickasaw Nation, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Joseph S. Key, of Sherman, Texas. A year later at Atoka he was

received into full connection by Bishop E. R. Hendrix of Kansas City, and in 1891 was ordained elder by Bishop Hendrix at Oklahoma City. During his ministry he has witnessed more than a thousand conversions and additions to the church.

Up and down the Indian Nation this itinerant preacher has traveled more than a quarter of a century. With the exception of four years spent as presiding elder of the Choctaw-Chickasaw District, 1903 to 1907, and three years filling stations at Hugo, Afton and Wagoner, he has been a circuit rider. During his labors on the two- nations district, Indian and white charges were com- bined and the services of an Indian interpreter fre- quently were required. Among the interpreters with whom he was associated was Willis Folsom, who proba- bly was the greatest Methodist preacher the Choctaw tribe has produced.

Willis Folsom preached for forty-eight years. Once while Rev. Mr. Pipkin was on the San Bois Circuit, where he became an intimate friend of Principal Chief Green MeCurtain of the Choctaw Nation, Mr. Folsom in the midst of the Pipkin sermon, which he was inter- preting to the red men present, took his seat in apparent disgust. "Go ahead," he said to the white preacher, who looked at him in amazement; "you talk too fast; I can't interpret."' While on the San Bois Circuit Mr. Pipkin frequently had the noted Belle Starr as a mem- ber of his congregation. A member of her band once stole a shicker off his saddle.

His district work required long drives into the sparsely settled and mountainous Choctaw Nation. On one of these he and his son were lost for a day in the Kiamichi Mountains. It was winter and storming and they slept under a buggy curtain and . laprobe at night. They were searching for a little meeting place the Indians called Salt Creek Church. His Indian brethren fed him well, as they always have done in case of presiding el- ders, though he had to eat in the open or under a cover that was little shelter against rain and snow.

While on the district he built churches at Idabel, Garvin, Fort Towson, Soper and other places. The lit- tle Methodist edifice at Fort Towson was the first his denomination ever had erected at that historic place. He also built many parsonages. As a circuit rider he built churches at Texanna, San Bois, Paola, Noble, Briar- town and other places and parsonages at San Bois and Noble. He had the church at Hugo remodeled while he was stationed there, and a parsonage built.

Three years ago Rev. Mr. Pinkin took a supernumerary relation with the conference, but on request of his pre- siding elder organized churches at Ida, Moyer, New Hope, Finley, Cloudy and Nelson. Two years ago he was superannuated, but the first year he filled the Antlers Circuit on account of the pastor assigned to that circuit having failed to arrive. During 1915 the pastor assigned to the Tuskahoma Circuit failed to arrive and Mr. Pipkin has that charge. He preaches at Tuskahoma, capital of the Choctaw Nation, and at the Choctaw Female Semi- nary, four miles from Tuskahoma.

PARIS PIPKIN. That highly patriotic sentiment and romance that exists in the old Choctaw Nation caused some young men of Antlers a few years ago to undertake the organization of a Choctaw Brigade of the Oklahoma National Guard. Mr. V. M. Locke, now principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, and Paris Pipkin, now a druggist of Antlers, proceeded to organize Company L of the National Guard. Both had seen service in the Ameri- can Army, Locke as a volunteer during the Spanish- American war and Pipkin as a soldier in the regular service. Locke was appointed captain and Pipkin sec- ond lieutenant. On September 25, 1912, Mr. Pipkin

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was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant, a position he held until January 14, 1914, when he was commis- sioned by Governor Lee Cruce as captain. Later his busi- ness required attention and he resigned from the Guard, being succeeded by Ben Davis Locke, who was commis- sioned by Governor R. L. Williams. Mr. Pipkin during his years of service in the National Guard participated in all the important activities of that organization and ranked as one of its best officers.

The service of Mr. Pipkin in the United States army began in 1904 when he enlisted as a member of Company G of the Twenty-second Infantry. In April of that year his regiment was transferred to the Philippines and sta- tioned on the Island of Mindanoa. During his year's service there he participated in three minor engagements against the natives and with the exhibition of such qualities as to bring him special mention for bravery in the discharge papers which he received by purchase in April, 1906. After his regiment was returned to the States it was stationed at Alcatraz Island off San Francisco, where Mr. Pipkin was made overseer in a military prison. He left San Francisco for his former home in Indian Territory eight days before the great earthquake in 1906.

Paris Pipkin is a native of Indian Territory, having been born at Vinita in 1885. As a matter of interest it may be stated that the first school which he attended was the Harrell Institute at Muskogee, a Methodist in- stitution which at that time was under the superinten- dency of Dr. Theodore F. Brewer, one of the advisory editors of this publication. He spent three years there and then attended school at Fort Gibson and at other points in the Chickasaw Nation and at Noble, in Cleve- land County, Oklahoma. His father, being an itinerant Methodist preacher, moved about from place to place while the boy was growing up, and in consequence he never acquired a finished or college education. After returning from San Francisco he attended the Univer- sity of Oklahoma School of Pharmacy, which enabled him to embark successfully in the drug business.

On locating at Antlers in 1906, Mr. Pipkin took a. position in a drug store which his father had estab- lished there, and later he purchased the store. He is a member of the Oklahoma Pharmaceutical Association and is one of the very active and progressive young business men of Antlers. On April 2, 1913, at Antlers Mr. Pipkin married Miss Inez E. Farr. Her father, Maj. J. G. Farr, was one of the oldest and most promi- nent intermarried white citizens of the Choctaw Nation. To their union have been born two children: Estelle and Paris, Jr. Mr. Pipkin has a brother and two sis- ters: Charles B. Pipkin, in business in Pauls Valley ; Mrs. J. M. Wright, wife of a farmer at Antlers; and Mrs. Kate Wallace, who is spending her widowhood with her parents.

While Mr. Pipkin's individual career has been of con- siderable interest and no small degree of influence and usefulness in Oklahoma, there is equal interest attaching to the life of his venerable father, Rev. W. P. Pipkin. Rev. Mr. Pipkin was born in Missouri, but since 1888 has been a member of the Oklahoma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. His wife's maiden name was Mary E. Wingfield, and in 1915 they cele- brated the fortieth anniversary of their wedding. The story of this fine old Methodist missionary and preacher, especially in his relations to Indian Territory and Oklahoma, is found in the following sketch.

DR. WILLIAM MCILWAIN is one of the pioneer physi- cians and surgeons of Lone Wolf. He came here in 1901 when the town was in its infancy and has been estab-

lished here since that time, with offices in the Hartson Pharmacy on Main Street, corner of Rock Island Avenue.

Dr. McIlwain is a native son of Indiana, born in Laurel, Franklin County, on March 4, 1858, and he is a son of Charles and Susan (MeGlynn) MeIlwain, both natives of Scotland.

Charles McIlwain was born in the year 1798. He came to America before he married and settled in Penn, Ohio, where he carried on contracting. He moved about a good deal, but eventually settled in Laurel, Indiana, and in 1861 he moved to Fort Recovery, Mercer County, Ohio, later going to Kansas and locating in Wilson County, near Fredonia. This was in 1870, and he was occupied in farming while living in Kansas. He died there in 1881, two years after the death of his wife and the mother of his family of fourteen children. She was born in Scotland in 1834 and was but forty-five years old when she died. The four eldest children, John, Andrew, Margaret and George, are deceased. Charles is a farmer near Lone Wolf. The eighth born was William of this review. Martha, Margaret and Isabel are deceased. Elizabeth married John Stuart, a farmer, who died, and she lives at Lone Wolf. Marie married E. A. Hackett, and they live in Kansas City, Missouri. Catherine, the youngest, died in 1900.

William McIlwain as a boy attended the country schools near Fort Recovery, Ohio, where the family moved when he was three years old. He later attended school in Wil- son County, Kansas, while they lived near Fredonia. He was a farmer's son and he led the life of the farm until he was twenty-one, getting such education as came his way, and when he left the farm he began teaching in the schools of Wilson County, which occupied him for three years. He then took a two years' course in the Manhattan Agricultural College of Kansas, after which he taught for nine years longer in Riley County schools. During the last five years he held a principalship. In 1895 he decided on a medical training and he accord- ingly entered the medical department of University of Missouri in that year. Three years later he was graduated with the degree M. D. Dr. McIlwain was first engaged in practice in Wabaunsee County, Kansas. He remained there until in early 1901, when he came to Oklahoma and settled in Lone Wolf. He has a substantial practice here and many staunch friends in the community.

. Dr. McIlwain is a democrat. His fraternal affiliations are numerous, including the Masons, Odd Fellows, Modern Woodmen, Woodmen of the World and the Royal Neigh- bors. In the Masonic Order he has membership in Lone Wolf Lodge No. 371, A. F. & A. M., and Hobart Chapter, R. A. M. He is Past Grand of Lone Wolf Lodge of the Odd Fellows, and has held other fraternal offices indica- ing his standing among his brothers. He is a member of the American Medical Society and the county and the state medical societies. Doctor Mellwain is unmarried.

THOMAS D. LYONS. Junior member of the well known Tulsa law firm of Rice & Lyons, Thomas D. Lyons is widely known as a capable attorney, has been identified with the Oklahoma bar since 1907, and has brought to his profession and his civic work a thorough education and training, and what he has already ac- complished is an earnest of a brilliant future. Mr. Lyons is also a member of Governor Williams' staff.

Born at Burr Oak, Winnesliiek County, Towa, July 2, 1883, he is a son of Richard F. and Sarah (Donlan) Lyons, now residents of Vermillion, South Dakota. His father, Richard F. Lyons, was born in the State of New York, August 15, 1848, and in young manhood entered business as a dealer in grain, stock and produce. In 1878 he went to what was then the far Northwest, lo- cating in Dakota Territory, where he bought two or

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HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

three thousand acres of land. Subsequently he returned east as far as Iowa, where he was married but in 1883 established his home permanently in Dakota Territory and for a number of years has lived at Vermillion, South Dakota, where his children completed their educa- tion in the State University. A democrat in political belief, Richard Lyons has long takeu an active part in public affairs, having for years been a member and for several years chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee, aud also having served as a member of the South Dakota State Constitutional Convention. His wife was born in Vermont, August 31, 1858, and still survives. There were eleven children in the family, ten of them living, with Thomas D. as the first in order of birth.

When he was about four months of age Thomas D. Lyons went with his parents to South Dakota and grew up in that state and attended the local schools there. He has been given liberal educational advantages, and in 1904 graduated from Notre Dame University at South Bend, Indiana, and then returned to South Dakota to pursue his law studies in the State University. He was graduated there with the class of 1907, and almost immediately came to Tulsa, in which city his work as a lawyer has been done. As a member of the firm of Rice & Lyons he is associated with Benjamin F. Rice. Their offices are in the First National Bank Building. Their practice is broad and general in its line. In poli- tics he is a democrat and a very able and fluent speaker and has taken some active part in the movements of his party all over the First Congressional district and in Oklahoma City, although he has not sought personal preferment.

After becoming well established in his profession Mr. Lyons recently brought a bride to his Tulsa home, and his marriage was a matter of much interest in Tulsa and was an interesting social event when celebrated on September 2, 1915, at Amsterdam, New York. Mrs. Lyons, before her marriage was Miss Clara C. Kennedy, third daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Kennedy of Amsterdam. They were married at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Amsterdam, and now reside at 1617 South Denver Avenue, Tulsa. . Mrs. Lyons is a graduate of Trinity College at Washington, D. C., aud took a very active part in various social organizations and charity work in her home town.

HON. SAM HOUSTON HARGIS. The Fifth Legislature contains a number of interesting men, both young and old, and among them is Sam Houston Hargis whose name at once suggests the great State of Texas, where he was born, who was a soldier of the Confederacy during the war between the states, and who for a number of years has been identified with Central Oklahoma as a farmer and salesman, his home being at Ada, and he is in the Legislature as a representative of Pontotoc County.

Capt. Sam Houston Hargis was born in the Re- public of Texas near Melrose in Nacogdoches County, August 8, 1842, a son of Joseph and Susan (Post) Hargis. Through his mother he is descended from soldiers of the Revolutionary war. His father, a native of Arkansas, built the first cabin at Melrose in Eastern Texas, and for several years was employed as a black- smith to Gen. Sam Houston, the hero of San Jacinto and the first president of the Republic of Texas. When Cap- tain Hargis was born Houston requested that he be chris- tened Sam Houston, in return for which the eminent Texan agreed to present his namesake, when he reached his majority, with a league of land.

Captain Hargis received a meager common school edu- cation according to the facilities and opportunities that then existed in Eastern Texas. At the age of nine- teen he enlisted among the first volunteers for service in

the Confederate army as a member of Company D of the Second Arkansas Mounted Riflemen under General McIntosh. He was wounded in the battle of Wilson Creek and again at the battle of Pea Ridge. Later his regi- ment was transferred east of the Mississippi to Tennes- see aud throughout the remainder of the war he was among the troops commanded successively by Generals Bragg, Johnston and Hood. He was wounded in two of the great battles, Murfreesboro and Chickamauga. He was with the Confederate army that so bitterly con- tested the advance of Sherman's troops from Dalton to Atlanta, a distance of 138 miles, with sixty-four days of almost continuous and stubborn fighting. Captain Hargis was under General Johnston when he surrendered at Greensboro, North Carolina.

His father had died in 1859 before the beginning of the Civil war. When the war was over Captain Hargis set out for the home of his mother, then in Northwest Ar- kansas. After ascending White River to Jacksonport, the head of navigation at that time, he walked the re- maining distance of 300 miles and found his mother's estate practically in ruins. Together they returned to Texas and in 1870 settled in Cooke County, where Mr. Hargis began his career as a farmer. He thus lived for several years close to the southern border of Oklahoma, and finally transferred his home and his business inter- ests to this state.

While in Cooke County, Texas, Captain Hargis married Nancy E. Price, who is a relative of Gen. Sterling Price of the Confederate army. Of the ten children born to them, eight are still living: Mrs. John Steward, the oldest, lives in Gainesville, Texas; Henry P. is a traveling salesman with residence at Lindsay, Oklahoma; C. Crock- ett, of Ada, was for four years registrar of deeds in Pontotoc County; Sam H., Jr., is a member of the police force at Ada; Robert Lee is an employe of the city government of Ada; Mrs. Jennie Wilkerson is a resi- dent at Chickasha; Mrs. Dixie Thompson also lives at Chickasha; Mrs. Luke Jackson lives at Ringling, Okla- homa.

The first experience of Captain Hargis in political af- fairs was in the office of county weigher of Cooke County, Texas, filling that place four years. In 1886-87 he was a member of the Texas Legislature, during the adminis- tration of Governor Ross. At that time Temple Houston, a son of the first president of the Republic of Texas, was in the Senate. It was that Legislature which received the completed capitol building of Texas, which had been begun in 1882. While a member of the Texas Legisla- ture Captain Hargis was author of a law that established the first youths' reformatory in that state.

In 1914 Captain Hargis was elected member of the Oklahoma Legislature, and in the fifth session served on committees on agriculture, penal institutions and other subjects. He has advocated retrenchment in public ex- penditures, and among other constructive measures whichi has received his support he was author of a bill granting pensions to indigent soldiers and sailors of the Confed- erate army and their widows. Captain Hargis is a mem- ber of the Farmers Union, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and of W. L. Byrd Camp No. 1545 United Confederate Veterans, at Ada, of which he is commander. He is also commander of the Chickasaw Brigade, a dis- trict organization of the United Confederate Veterans of Oklahoma. In the Masonic Order he has taken the master's degrees.

FRED BRASTED. Known for his high literary and pro- fessional attainments, Mr. Brasted is one of the repre- sentative members of the Oklahoma bar, of which he has been a popular member since the late territorial days, and he is engaged in active general practice in Okla- homa City, with offices at 512-13 Colcord Building. He

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has furthered the educational work of his profession throughi contributions to its standard and periodical lit- erature and is also the author of a number of works of fiction, some with historic basis, all of which attest his exceptional literary ability. The genealogy of Mr. Brasted is one of specially interesting order, in both the agnatic and distaff lines. The original American progenitor of the Brasted finally came from Holland in 1640 and settled on Staten Island, New York, the original orthography of the name having been Van Breestede, and the present spelling of the patronymie having been adopted by the third generation of the American branch of the family, which is of the staunch old Kniekerbocker stock of the Empire State. John More, the maternal great-grandfather of Mr. Brasted, came from Scotland to America in 1772 and made settlement in Delaware County, New York. He was the maternal grandfather of the late Jay Gould, the railroad magnate. John More was a man of scholastic attainments and of strong individuality. He was educated in the University of Edinburgh, and that he held the rigid Scotch rectitude and determination, as well as being an ardent patriot in the land of his adoption, was significantly shown by his attitude at the climacteric period of the war of the Revolution. He prepared and issued a localized declara- tion of independence, to which he secured many signa- tures, and the general animus of which was shown by the last clause of the document, which prescribed that whosoever refused to sign the declaration should be ban- ished from the State of New York.

The descendants of John More have a well-ordered family organization, and the same has been pronounced by the New York World to be the most complete and effective association of the kind in the United States. Chapters of the organization are maintained in New York City, Chicago and Denver, where annual meetings are held. Every five years a general assembly of the members of the association is held at the old homestead of John More, in Delaware County, New York, where has been erected a fine monument and a memorial church, the latter having been the bequest of Helen Gould prior to her marriage. In the interests of the association is pub- lished a periodical known as the More Family Journal, `and its circulation is limited to the members of the organization.

While thus considering the family history of him whose name initiates this review, it may consistently be stated that his brother, Rev. Albert J. Brasted, is first lieutenant and chaplain in the coast artillery service of the United States army and is stationed at Fort Screben, Georgia. A sister, who. became the wife of William F. Gray, passed several years in China and at Ragoon, Burmah, where she devoted close attention to the study of the languages and customs of these oriental lands. She finally returned to the United States and here her death occurred in 1907. Both in a direct and collateral way the Brasted family has been specially well known for literary ability and for exceptional academic attain- ments.

Fred Brasted was born at Findley Lake, Chautauqua County, New York, and is a son of Nathan Russell Brasted and Adaline (More) Brasted, the former of whom passed to the life eternal in 1910 and the latter of whom still maintains her home in the State of Iowa, she having celebrated her seventy-third birthday anni- versary in 1914. Nathan R. Brasted was reared and educated in the old Empire State and when the Civil war was precipitated upon the nation he promptly mani- fested his loyalty to the Union by enlisting in the One Hundred and Twelfth New York Volunteer Infantry, with which gallant command he participated in many

engagements marking the progress of the great inter- necine conflict and in which he held the non-commis- sioned office of orderly sergeant. In later years he perpetuated his interest in his old comrades in arms by his active affiliation with the Grand Army of the Republic. Mr. Brasted was for many years active and influential in the councils of the republican party and for a quarter of a century he was one of its prominent representatives in the State of Iowa, where he estab- lished the family home in 1884 and where he continued to reside until his death.

After duly profiting by the advantages afforded in the public schools of the Hawkeye State, where he was reared to adult age, Fred Brasted entered the University of Iowa, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1893 and from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Science. Thereafter he was a student in the law department of Drake University, in the City of Des Moines, Iowa, and in the capital city of the state he finally became court reporter for the Sixteenth judicial district, a position which he retained until 1898, when he became private secretary to Hon. Leslie M. Shaw, governor of Iowa, a post which he held during the years 1898-9. In 1899 he was admitted to the Iowa bar and in that state he was engaged in the practice of his pro- fession until 1903, when he came to Oklahoma Territory and established his residence in Oklahoma City, where he has since continued in active practice and where he has built up a substantial and representative law busi- ness, the character and scope of which vouches alike for his technical ability and his personal popularity.

In politics Mr. Brasted accords unwavering allegiance to the republican party and he is an effective exponent of its principles and policies. He holds membership in the American Political Science Association, is affiliated with the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, is a member of the Union League Club in the City of Chicago, and is actively identified with the American Bar Association, the Oklahoma State Bar Association, and the Oklahoma City Bar Association. In his home city he is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and holds membership in the Men's Dinner Club. Mr. Brasted has made valuable contributions to leading law periodicals and other professional publications, and, aside from his published works of individual order, he has given inter- esting sketches and other literary contributions to various magazines. He is the author of "The Gang, " published in 1910, and in 1914 were published his two works enti- tled, "Boss Bradgate" and "Mattie." Both he and his wife are earnest and zealous members of the Baptist Church, and he served as second vice president of the Northern Baptist Convention, 1908-11, and as first vice president of the same in 1912-13.

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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