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 53

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 53

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On November 24, 1914, Mr. Hunt was married to Miss Essie Hayden, who was born in the Cherokee Nation, daughter of C. Hayden, a prominent banker and stock- man of Oklahoma.

JUDGE WILLIAM HUNTER WOODS. Seldom are thorough qualifications for public service given more distinctive recognition than in the appointment by President Wilson of William Hunter Woods to the office of United States Probate Attorney for the district of which Purcell is the official headquarters.

Judge Woods is a lawyer of sound learning and long experience and resigned from the office of county judge of McClain County to accept his present post. While living in his native state of Texas he was a successful worker in the educational field. He was admitted to the Oklahoma bar fifteen years ago.

Born in Milam County, Texas, February 23, 1876, he was descended from an old American family and one that has furnished many useful citizens and hard work- ing members of the industrial, professional and business callings. The Woods family is a commingling of Scotch, Irish and English stock and they became settled in Virginia and North Carolina in colonial days. Judge Woods' great-great-grandfather, whose name was either Samuel or John Woods, was a Revolutionary soldier. His great-grandfather John Woods was probably born

in North Carolina, was a planter, and died in West Vir- ginia. Judge Woods' grandfather Samuel Woods was born in Tennessee and died in the western part of that state where he was a planter and slave owner.

Dr. A. D. Woods, father of Judge Woods, was born in Tennessee in 1846, was reared in that state and married there Miss Mary A. Woods, who was a distant relative, and was born in West Tennessee in 1844 and died at Rogers, Texas, in September, 1914. From Tennessee Doctor Woods moved to Texas and lived in Milam and Bell Counties until his death near Rogers in the latter county in 1901. He was a graduate of the medical department of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and a man of rare ability and conscientious performance who devoted himself for many years to a large practice in the country districts of North Central Texas. For three years during the war between the states he was a mem- ber of the famous Forrest's Cavalry of the Confederate army and in one battle he had ten bullet wounds through his sleeve while one ball passed through his wrist. He gave some public service as a member of the school board, was a democrat, a member of the Presbyterian Church and of the Masonic Fraternity. Doctor and Mrs. Woods became the parents of five children: Carey H., who died in infancy; Frank L., who is a farmer and cotton ginner near Rogers, Texas; William Hunter, Sam- uel H., at Hereford, Texas; and Eva, who died in infancy.

William Hunter Woods spent his boyhood chiefly in Milam County, Texas, where he attended public schools, and in 1894 graduated from high school at Davilla, Texas. Then four years of successful work as a teacher in Milam and Bell Counties, and largely with the earn- ings from this work he paid his tuition for a higher education. He attended the medical department of the University of Texas in 1898-99, but on account of ill- health abandoned the idea of a professional career in that line, and in November, 1899, went to a ranch near Purcell, Oklahoma, where he spent a year recuperating.

Thus for more than fifteen years Judge Woods has been a resident of McClain County. One item of his earlier service which should be remembered was four years as superintendent of the city schools of Purcell. In the meantime he had begun the industrious reading of law in the offices of Johnson and Carter at Purcell. He was admitted to the bar in 1901 but did not begin prac- tice until 1905. From 1911 to December, 1913, he served as county judge of McClain County, resigning in the middle of his second term to accept appointment from President Wilson as a United States Probate Attorney.

Perhaps there is no position under the auspices of the Federal Government that requires a more tactful and delicate administration than that of Indian Probate Attorney. He is the legal representative for all "re- stricted Indians" in a large district, originally com- prising McClain, Garvin, Stephens, Grady and Pontotoc, from which Pontotoc County has subsequently been separated. Judge Woods has been called upon to serve as the intermediary in all kinds of business transactions between the Indian wards of the government and the, white people, and is called upon frequently to perform services for the Indians such as were never contemplated in the original instructions governing the duties of pro- hate attorneys. He has proved considerate, firm and just and has won the confidence of the Indians and is not only their official but real friend and adviser.

While living at Purcell, Judge Woods has served as city attorney and is president of the school board. He is a democrat, a member of the Presbyterian Church, is affiliated with Purcell Lodge No. 27, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, with Purcell Chapter, Royal Arch

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Masons, with Purcell Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America, and belongs to the County and State Bar Associations.

At Lexington, Oklahoma, in 1905 Judge Woods married Eva F. Moseley. Her father, S. P. Moseley, is a merchant in Fort Worth, Texas. To their marriage have been born four children : Evaline, William H. Jr., Frank and Katherine, the three oldest being uow students in the Purcell public schools.

HENRY E. NOBLE. The fine little City of Alva, eounty seat of Woods County, claims as one of its representative business men and popular citizens the cashier of the Central State Bank, and this well known figure in financial circles in this section of the state has proved himself one of the liberal and progressive men of Alva, where he served as a member of the city council during the first four years after the municipal government was carried forward under the city charter.

Mr. Noble, who was one of the organizers of the bank of which he is cashier, established his home at Alva in the year 1893, when he came to Woods County as one of the pioneer settlers upon the opening of the Cherokee Strip. He opened the first hardware establishment in the ambitious young village and during the intervening years he has not only kept pace with but also been a recognized leader in the work of development and progress in this now thriving little city. Mr. Noble claims the fine old Badger State as the place of his nativity and is a scion of one of its sterling pioneer families. He was born at Albauy, Green County, Wis- consin, on the 13th of October, 1856, and is a son of Edmond B. and Nancy B. (Throop) Noble.

Edmond B. Noble was born in Wyoming County, New York, on the 10th of September, 1828, and his parents were natives of New England, within whose borders the respective families were founded in the colonial era of our national history. Edmond B. Noble was reared and educated in his native state and there he continued his residence until he became a poineer of Wisconsin. There he followed mercantile pursuits until 1876, when he removed with his family to Kansas and became one of the pioneer settlers of Harper County, where he secured a tract of Government land and where he was actively .coucerned in the formal organization of the county. He developed one of the excellent farms of that section of the Sunflower State and there continued his residence upon his old homestead until 1888, when he removed to Medicine Lodge, the judicial center of Barber County, where he engaged in the mercantile business. In 1900 he came to Woods County, Oklahoma, and purchased a farm five miles west of Alva, where he passed the residue of his honorable and useful life and where he died on the 13th of March, 1912, at the venerable age of eighty-three years and six months. He was a consistent member of the Baptist Church and was long in active affiliation with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, his political allegiance having been given to the republican party.

In 1851 was solemnized the marriage of Edmond B. Noble to Miss Nancy B. Throon, who was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1832, and whose death ocenrred at Albany, Wisconsin, on the 10th of October, 1876, her father, Daniel H. Throop, having been a native of Warsaw, Wyoming County, New York. Of this union were born four children, of whom the first, Frank, died in infancy: Henry E .. of this review, was the next in order of birth; Flora May, who was born May 31, 1862, at Albany, Wisconsin, married, in 1881, James H. Mc- Keever. their present place of residence being the City of Wichita. Kansas, and their two children being Gertrude and Edmond H .; Millie R., who was born at

Albany, Wisconsin, on the 4th of March, 1868, beeame the wife of Huston H. Case, in 1891, and her death occurred, without issue, on the 4th of July, 1893, in Kansas City, Missouri, her remains being interred in the cemetery at Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

In 1878 Edmond B. Noble contracted a second mar- riage, when he wedded Mrs. Betsie J. Hoyt, and the two children of this union, Rena and Walter, survive their father, as does also their mother.

HIe whose uame introduces this article is indebted to the public schools of his native village for his early educational training, which was effectively supplemented by a course in the Worthington Business College, at Madison, the fair capital city of Wisconsin. In this institution he was graduated in 1875 and while attending the same he employed his otherwise leisure hours by serving a thorough apprenticeship to the tinner's trade, which he thereafter followed, as a journeyman, for two years, in the State of Iowa. He then went to Auburn, New York, where he assumed the position of bookkeeper in the mill machinery manufacturing establishment of his uncle, Gardiuer E. Throop. After retaining this incumbency two years he returned to the West, in 1880, in which year he became bookkeeper for an agricultural implement establishment at Winfield, Kansas, where he remained thus engaged for a period of five years. In 1885 he removed to Medicine Lodge, that state, where he engaged in the hardware and implement business in an independent way and where he continued his opera- tions in this line until he discerned better opportunities, incidental to the opening to settlement of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma Territory, in 1893. He was among those who became at that time pioneers of this now opulent and progressive section of Oklahoma and at Alva he opened the first hardware store in the new town. He brought to bear in the enterprise an exeellent knowl- edge of the business, the strictest principles of fairness and integrity and most progressive policies, so that, with the rapid development of the agricultural resources and other business activities of Woods County, he developed a large and prosperous trade. Mr. Noble retired from the hardware and farm implement business in 1912, and in the following year he became associated with G. A. Harbaugh, Thomas F. Fennessey and others in the organization of the Central State Bank of Alva, of which he has since been cashier. Through his straightforward and careful executive policies this bank has become one of the stable and popular financial institutions of Northern Oklahoma, with deposits somewhat in excess of $320,000 at the opening of the year 1915.

After the organization of the City of Alva Mr. Noble became a member of its first municipal council, and of this position he continued the incumbent four years, but his civic loyalty has been manifested rather through productive enterprise and ready eo-operation in progres- sive movements than through the medium of official preferment. He is one of the resourceful and influential business men and honored citizens of Woods County and in addition to his banking association he is exclusive agent for the Buick automobiles in this county. Mr. Noble has completed the circle of York Rite Masonry, and has attained to the thirty-second degree in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite.

On the 15th of January, 1882, at Montezuma, Iowa, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Noble to Miss Ida A. Norris, who was born in Ohio, on the 24th of Jan- uary, 1858, and she is a popular figure in the social activities of her home community, besides being a zealous member of the Christian Church. Mr. and Mrs. Noble have three children: Mary Edith, who was born at Winfield, Kansas, on the 7th of March, 1883, was

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afforded the advantages of the Northwestern State Normal School, at Alva, Oklahoma, and Hardin College, at Mexico, Missouri. In 1910 she became the wife of Edward J. Hampton, and they have one child, Noble D., born May 31, 1912; Ethel J. was born at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, November 21, 1887, is a graduate of same schools as Mary Edith, and is now the wife of Frank D. Crowell, concerning whom individual mention is made on other pages of this publication; and Henry Elbert, Jr., was born December 2, 1899. He is a graduate of the Alva public schools and of the Missouri Military Academy of Mexico, Missouri.

SAMUEL C. DAVIS, M. D. With a record of twenty years of successful work as a physician and surgeon, Doctor Davis of Blanchard is a descendaut from some of the original Cherokee stock in Indian Territory, and is one of the men of Indian blood who have qualified themselves for superior statious in the life of the new State of Oklahoma.

Members of the Davis family were very early settlers in the State of Mississippi and were also people of note in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctor Davis' grandfather was also a physician and surgeon, and a pioneer settler in Indian Territory, and engaged in the practice of medi- cine for many years at old Fort Gibson. He married a Cherokee Indian woman, and through her Dr. S. C. Davis of Blanchard is a quarter blood Cherokee. One of the sons of the pioneer Fort Gibson physician is W. H. Davis, who now lives in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and for many years was one of the leaders among the Cherokee people and did an important work as an educator.

Dr. Samuel C. Davis was born at Doaksville, in the Choctaw Nation of Indian Territory, October 31, 1869. His father, John L. Davis, was born near Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, in 1829, a date which indicates how very early the family was established in this new Indian country of the West to which very few of the eastern Indians had been removed at that time. John L. Davis served with the rank of captain in the Confederate army during the Civil war, and after the war rejoined his family who in the meantime had removed to the Choctaw Nation. There he followed farming and stock raising, was active as a cattle man and he died at old Doaks- ville in 1877. John L. Davis married Harriet Fulsom, a member of the prominent family of that name of Indian Territory. She was born at old Doaksville in the Choctaw Nation in 1850 and now resides at Hart, Oklahoma. Their children are: Dr. Samnel C .; Julia B., now de- ceased, who married George R. Collins of Ada, Oklahoma; Catherine, who lives at Stratford, Oklahoma, the widow of Joseph Pirtle, a farmer; and John L., Jr., who is a farmer at Stratford, Oklahoma.

Dr. Samuel C. Davis was reared and received his early education in the old Chickasaw Nation in the vicinity of Tishomingo and Wapanucka. He attended the Indian schools there for a time, but in 1877 his mother removed to Caddo, Indian Territory, where he attended district school, and was also a student in the old Robinson Insti- tute near Tishomingo, and in 1889 graduated A. B. from the Wapanucka Academy. His education was continued in the East through two sessions of the preparatory school at Mount Gilead, North Carolina, following which he entered the Baltimore Medical Uni- versity, where he was a student one year. In 1896 he graduated M. D. from the Louisville Medical College of Kentucky.

Thus at the age of twenty-seven he was equipped with a liberal education and by character and native endow- ment for his real work in the world. For eleven years Doctor Davis practiced medicine at Hart, Oklahoma, then

spent a year at Lexington, and since January 17, 1909, has attended to a large practice as a general physician and surgeon at Blanchard where his offices are in the Stafford Building on Main Street. He is active in the various medical organizations and enjoys an enviable professional reputation.

His visible prosperity is also represented by the owner- ship of about 700 acres of farming land at Hart, Rose- dale and Blanchard, besides a number of town lots in Blanchard. Doctor Davis is a democrat, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and affiliates with Blanchard Lodge Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Roff Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, and Hart Camp No. 61 of the Wood- men of the World.

On August 13, 1896, at Roff, Oklahoma, soon after he came back from the East a young physician, he married Miss Linnie Mantooth. Her father was John Mantooth, a farmer and merchant. To their marriage have been born five children: Matilda Frances, born October 10, 1899, and now a sophomore in the Blanchard High School; Arvilla, born February 18, 1901, iu the eighth grade of the public schools; Samuel C., Jr., born June 12, 1904, in the fourth grade; Joseph, born June 10, 1907, in the third grade; and Olga, born December 30, 1912.

TERRY A. PARKINSON. In the management of the af- fairs of the counties of Oklahoma, one of the most im- portant departments is the office of county clerk, in the direction of which there are required advanced abilities of an executive nature. These are possessed in a prom- inent degree by the present county clerk of Wagoner County, Terry A. Parkinson, a resident of Wagoner since 1890 and a citizen who has displayed progressive views and energetic activities both as a business man and a public official.

Mr. Parkinson is a native of Coffey County, Kansas, and was born May 12, 1866, a son of James and Emma Jane (Randell) Parkinson. His father, born in Knox County, Illinois, May 18, 1840, was a small lad when taken from the Prairie State to Iowa, and there he was reared amid agricultural surroundings, being given ordi- nary educational opportunities, such as were offered by the district schools. In 1855, when but fifteen years of age, he left the parental roof, determined to enter upon a career of his own, and made his way to Kansas, where, being ambitious and energetic, he soon secured employ- ment, and for several years was engaged in teaming across the plains to New Mexico, for the pioneer firm of Fuller & Carney, for which concern he subsequently was engaged in buying cattle for the United States mili- tary posts in Kansas. While engaged in the latter occu- pation, Mr. Parkinson first visited what is now Eastern Oklahoma. When the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Rail- road was being constructed in what was then Indian Territory, James Parkinson became a sub-contractor in the construction of this line, and in that capacity built a stretch of twenty miles of track. Later he continued to be identified with this road in other capacities, prin- cipally in supplying railroad ties. Deciding to enter mercantile lines, Mr. Parkinson established a general store at Honey Springs, near where Checotah now is, but subsequently removed to the old Creek Indian Agency, where he also was proprietor of a mercantile establish- ment, continuing to conduct that venture until removing his family from LeRoy, Kansas, to Muskogee, in 1874. In 1882 he went to Springfield, Missouri, but soon de- cided no opportunities were to be found there as they were in the newly-opened country, and in the next year returned to Indian Territory and located at Red Fork. In 1892 he established his residence at Wagoner, Oklahoma, and here has continued to make his home, being alert

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and energetic in spite of his seventy-five years. His busi- ness experiences have been of a varied character and wide in their range, but in each line he has maintained a high reputation for integrity and probity, and he still re- mains a respected citizen and is numbered among Okla- homa's worthy and venerated pioneers.

Terry A. Parkinson obtained a common school educa- tion, was reared on the home farm in Kansas, and was eight years of age when his father removed the family to Muskogee. In January, 1890, following in his father's footsteps, he established himself in business as a mer- chant at Wagoner, but after three years disposed of his interests in that direction and turned his attention to the handling of cattle, a venture in which he had engaged as a side line several years before, and which grew and developed to such an extent that it demanded his un- divided attention. In this line he continued with varied success until his appointment, December 20, 1913, as county clerk, to fill a vacancy, and in 1914 he was chosen by the voters as his own successor in that office. . In the discharge of his official duties, he has shown himself thoroughly competent and faithful, and his administra- tion has been marked by many movements which have tended to strengthen the county's prosperity as well as to conserve the interests of the taxpayers. His only public experience prior to his entering the county clerk- ship, was as mayor of Wagoner, a position in which he had served one term. Clerk Parkinson is a democrat. A Mason fraternally, he has filled all the chairs in the blue lodge, chapter and council, and is generally popular with his fellow-members in the order, as he is in all the other walks of life.

In 1891 Mr. Parkinson was married to Miss Addie Cobb, daughter of Joseph B. Cobb, of Wagoner. They have eight children, all living, and the two oldest daugh- ters are married and each have two children.

PAUL R. BROWN, M. D. Actively engaged in general practice as a physician and surgeon in the City of Tulsa since 1904, Doctor Brown has achieved prestige as one of the specially able and successful representatives of his profession in this state, and is fully upholding the honors of a vocation that has been signally dignified by the services of his father, who was for more than a score of years a prominent surgeon of the United States Army, -a connection in which he served at many important army posts in the Union.

Dr. Paul R. Brown was born at the United States mili- tary post of Fort Shaw, Cascade County, Montana, on the 12th of July, 1876, the third in order of birth of the five children of Dr. Paul R. and Anna Marie (Mellins) Brown, the former of whom died in the year 1908 and the latter of whom now resides at Ithaca, New York, in which state she was born on the 12th of January, 1845. Of the five children three are now living.

Dr. Paul R. Brown, Sr., was born in New York City, on the 4th of November, 1846, and in preparing himself for his chosen profession he received the advantages of the celebrated College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, the present medical school of Columbia University, and also those of Berkshire Medical College, in Massachusetts. He initiated the practice of his pro- fession at Lenox, Massachusetts, but in 1874 he entered upon his long and distinguished as a post surgeon in the United States Army, his first assignment having been to Fort Wood, New York. He was stationed at Fort Shaw, Montana, from 1876 to 1878, and was then transferred to Fort Hamilton, New York, when he was later sent to Fort Davis, Texas, where he remained four years. At the expiration of this period he returned to New York, where he remained at Fort Niagara until his assignment to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he remained about

four years. Thereafter he held official position as post surgeon in turn at Fort Sidney, Nebraska, Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming, Little Rock Barracks, Arkansas; and Fort Hamilton, New York. In 1897 he resigned his com- mission with the army, after a continuous service of twenty-one years, and thereafter he continued his resi- dence in the State of New York until his death, in 1908. Doctor Brown was a man of specially high professional attainments and of exalted integrity of character,-one who commanded the respect and confidence of all with whom he came in contact in the various relations of life. After his retirement from the army service he was re- tained as lecturer on obstetrics in the medical department of Cornell University, at Ithaca, New York, for three years. He was an honored member of the New York State Medical Society, the American Medical Associa- tion, and the Association of United States Army Sur- geons. As a scion of a family early founded in America he was affiliated with the Society of the Sons of the Colonial Wars, and his ancient Dutch lineage in his na- tive state was signified through his membership in the Holland Society of New York, while another ancestral strain entitled him to his membership in the Huguenot Society of South Carolina.

The childhood and early youth of Dr. Paul R. Brown, Jr., to whom this review is dedicated, was marked by itinerary conditions and influences, owing to the various changes of residence made by his father in his service at different army posts. His preliminary education suffered no handicap, however, and finally he completed a course in the high school in the City of Brooklyn, New York, where also he attended the Brooklyn Polytechnic Insti- tute. In fortifying himself for his exacting profession he received the best of advantages, as indicated by the fact that in 1901 he was graduated in the medical depart- ment of the University of Maryland, in the City of Bal- timore, and by his having thereafter taken an effective post-graduate course in the medical department of Cor- nell University, of the faculty of which his father was a member at the time. His professional novitiate after receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine was served at a town in New York, where he continued in practice until 1903, when he came to Oklahoma Territory and es- tablished himself in practice at Guthrie, the territorial capital. One year later he removed to the City of Tulsa, where he has continued his earnest and effective labors as a general practitioner, with a substantial and repre- sentative clientele. He is one of the appreciative and popular members of the Tulsa County Medical Society, of which he is president at the time of this writing, in 1915, and is actively identified also with the Oklahoma State Medical Association and the American Medical As- sociation. The doctor is alert and public-spirited as a citizen and in politics is not constrained by strict partisan lines, as he prefers to support the men and measures meeting the approval of his judgment.

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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