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 90

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 90

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In 1901 Mr. Ramsey came to Creek County, Oklahoma, and established his residence in Kiefer, and engaged in the work of his trade. He became one of the leading contractors and builders of the town and continued his activities at his trade until February, 1908, when he was appointed by the county commissioners to the office of justice of the peace, being one of the first to occupy this office in the county after Oklahoma had become a state, in 1907. Under the original appointment he continued his service in this magisterial position for three years, and by reappointment he served an additional two years, at the expiration of which he was retained in office by popular election, his tenure of the position continuing until he was appointed to his present office, that of post- master, on the 6th of June, 1913. The Kiefer postoffice is of the third class and gives a salary of $1,500 a year. Mr. Ramsey is giving a most efficient and acceptable administration and has done much to systematize and improve the service in the various departments of the office over which he has charge.

Mr. Ramsey was reared in the political faith of the democratic party, and his allegiance thereto has never abated by one jot or tittle. While a resident of Galena, Cherokee County, Kansas, he served as chief of the city 's police department and later, while a resident of Corry, Missouri, he held similar official preferment, besides having served also as deputy sheriff of Dade County. His party fealty and effective campaign service have made him influential in political affairs in Creek County, Oklahoma, and he was appointed postmaster of Kiefer without his own solicitation, Hon. James S. Davenport, representative of this district in the United States Con- gress, having twice written to him and urged his accept- ance of the office. During the first decade of his resi- dence in Oklahoma Mr. Ramsey was actively concerned with practical work on the cattle range, and he has otherwise been familiar with life on the frontier, in his youth having frequently hunted buffalo through the sec- tion in Southern Kansas in which the family home was maintained. He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and is an alert and broad-minded citizen who takes lively interest in all that touches the civic and material wellbeing of his home town and county.

The first marriage of Mr. Ramsey was solemnized in 1871, when Miss Mary Wamick became his wife. She was summoned to the life eternal in 1882, and is survived by two sons: Alvis, who is a resident of Los Angeles, California, and Homer, who maintains his residence at Concordia, Kansas. In 1884 Mr. Ramsey wedded Miss Cynthia Goodall, and their devoted companionship was terminated about a decade later, by her death, in 1895. She is survived by three daughters: May is the wife of Dr. Willard Johnson, of Aline, Alfalfa County, Okla- homa; Ruby is the wife of William Dobson, of Concordia, Kansas; and Lena is the wife of George Timmons, of Shawnee, Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. In 1898 Mr. Ramsey contracted a third marriage, when Miss Alice Clark became his wife, and they have six children: Vera, Orville, Maurice, Pansy and Pearl (twins), and Dorothy.

JOHN DARST, M. D., has been in practice in Okla- homa for the past ten years. He is a graduate of Rush Medical College of Chicago, from which he acquired his M. D. degree with the class of 1903. During that year he was an interne in the Monroe Street Hospital and St. Mary's of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago. During 1913 Dr. Darst interrupted his private practice in order to take post-graduate work in diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

As a physician he did his first regular practice in Hardin County, Texas, for one year, as local surgeon for the Kirby Lumber Co., and in May, 1905, he removed to Indian Territory and was located at Paoli until 1908, in which year he removed to Wynnewood. Here his offices are in the First National Bank Building, and he ,enjoys a lucrative practice. He is examining physician for a number of old line insurance companies, also exam- ining physician for Wynnewood Camp No. 539, Wood- men of the World. He is a member in good standing of the County and State Medical societies and the American Medical Association.

There is some interesting ancestral history connected with Dr. Darst. His paternal great-grandfather was a native of Germany, where his name was spelled Durst. He was a member of a substantial family in that country, but incurred hostility of the ruling classes and was impressed into the army, where it was contemplated that he would be killed. In the meantime his estate was confiscated, and when he returned alive and tried it get it back he was granted twenty-four hours in which to leave the country. He escaped to Holland, and soon afterward bound himself and wife out to the captain of a trading vessel in order to pay their passage across the ocean. They located at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and worked for several years in order to release themselves from the voluntary bondage they had undertaken in order to reach America. The great-grandfather thenceforward hated Germany with such fervor that he would not permit his four sons to speak the language, and he changed his own name from Durst to Darst. All members of the Darst family in America have this origin. A brother back in Germany was prominent as Professor Durst of Heidelberg University, who continued his scholastic posi- tion and lived to be a very old man.

John Darst, the grandfather of Dr. John, was born in Virginia, in 1826, became a farmer and stockman, and died at Eureka, Illinois, in 1893. Frank Darst, his son, and the father of Dr. Darst, was born in Woodford County, Illinois, in 1852. He was married there in 1877 to Janet Elizabeth Murray. She was born in Yarmouth, England, in 1851, and three years later, in 1854, her parents came to America and settled in Woodford County, Illinois. It was at Eureka, Woodford County, Illinois, that Dr. John Darst was born July 16, 1878. He was the oldest of four children, the others being: Wilmer Marion, a farmer at Barney, Iowa; James Murray, an electrical engineer at Cleveland, Ohio; and Margaret Martha, who is a missionary in China.

Dr. John Darst acquired his early education in Eureka and Galesburg, Illinois, having attended Knox College at Galesburg for one year. In 1898 he graduated B. S. and Ph. B. from Valparaiso University at Valparaiso, Indiana, and then spent four years in Rush Medical College at Chicago. Fraternally he is affiliated with Bethel Lodge No. 109, Knights of Pythias, at Wynne- wood, of which he is past chancellor commander, and also with the local camp of the Woodmen of the World. In 1904 at Mason City, Iowa, Dr. Darst married Miss Julia Holmlund. She was born in Sweden, and came from that country when about eighteen years of age, locating at Mason City, Iowa. She became a trained

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nurse and was thus employed in the Monroe Street Hos- pital at Chicago when she met her husband. Dr. and Mrs. Darst are the parents of three children: Marie Maud, born May 23, 1905; Helen Jeannette, born August 23, 1911; and John, Jr., born September 26, 1915.

LAFAYETTE WALKER has the distinction of being the oldest resident attorney of Hughes County. Hc began practice there about seventeen years ago. His work has taken him into close touch with public affairs, particularly in the service of the Interior Depart- ment and in connection with Indian affairs. He is now one of the probate attorneys under the Indian Depart- ment looking after the interests of the Seminole Indians.

He was born in Carroll County, Arkansas, in November, 1867, a son of William and Mary (Ramsey) Walker. He comes of substantial old Southern stock. His father was born in Overton County in Middle Tennessee, June 6, 1823, while the mother was born in North Carolina June 5, 1834. The mother went to Arkansas when a child, was married there, and the parents spent most of their years in that state, where the father died November 8, 1911, and the mother on March 3, 1912. William Walker was a pioneer farmer in Arkansas, where he had home- steaded one of the best farms in Carroll County. He was honored for two terms by election as county judge. Dur- ing the war between the states he was in the Confederate army and served as quartermaster in the brigade com- manded by General Stan Watie, the famous Cherokee gen- eral. He was a Methodist and in politics a democrat. In the family were five sons and four daughters, and five of them are still living.

The first twenty-four years of his life Lafayette Walker spent on the old farm in Arkansas. A common school education was supplemented by a course in Clark Acad- emy, and for more than two years he was employed as a private tutor and was a regular teacher for portions of three years. He began the study of law, came to Okla- homa and continued his reading with George E. Nelson at Muskogee, where he was admitted to the bar before Judge John R. Thomas on December 8, 1898.

After one year of practice at Muskogee Mr. Walker removed to Holdenville August 4, 1899, and he is the only one of his contemporaries at that time who are still practicing law in Hughes County. He conducted a general practice until 1904, when he was appointed by the United States Treasury Department to represent the receiver of the Capital National Bank of Guthrie and the National Bank of Holdenville. On April 28, 1915, he was appointed United States Probate Attor- ney in Indian Field service, and in November, 1915, was given charge of the probate affairs of the Seminole Nation. This is a work in which Mr. Walker's broad experience, intimate acquaintance with the older life of Indian Territory, and his thorough knowledge of Indian law and customs enable him to render the highest degree of efficient service.

He has been a lifelong democrat, and is affiliated with the Scottish Rite bodies of Masonry and with the Mystic Shrine. On October 31, 1886, he married Miss Amanda M. Seitz, who was born and reared on a farm adjoining that on which Mr. Walker himself grew up in Carroll County, Arkansas. She was born March 31, 1871, a daughter of Abram and Evelyn Seitz. Mr. Walker and wife had five children: Carl, who died at the age of seven years; George Earl of Holdenville; Mary; Abe; and Robert Owen.

MCLAIN ROGERS, M. D. The chief of the staff of the Clinton Hospital and Training School, at Clinton, Dr. McLain Rogers, has won a leading place among the

surgeons of Oklahoma through years of constant and assiduous application and study, broad and varied train- ing in some of the best institutions of the country, and practical experience in several states. He is a native of North Carolina, born at Clyde, in Haywood County, June 5, 1874, a son of J. J. and Amanda (Stillwell) Rogers, and a member of an old Virginia family which came from England in Colonial days.

J. J. Rogers was born in North Carolina in 1835, and as a youth adopted the vocation of agriculturist, his entire life being passed on his plantation in Haywood County, where he carried on operations in farming and stock raising. He was a republican in politics and a deacon in the Baptist Church, in the faith of which he died in January, 1915, at Clyde. Mrs. Rogers, also a North Carolinian by nativity, died in 1896, at Clyde, aged fifty-six years. There were ten children in the family, as follows: J. H., who resides at Clyde and is engaged in farming; Alice, who is the wife of Dr. James Zachary, a dental practitioner of Norton, North Carolina; Lizzie, who is the wife of Oscar Holland, a farmer of Canton, North Carolina; J. B., who carries on farming at Clyde; Luxie, who is the wife of Dr. S. B. Medford, a graduate of Vanderbilt National University, Nashville, Tennessee, and a practicing physician and surgeon of Clyde, North Carolina; O. S., who is engaged in agricultural pursuits at Clyde; Dora, who is the wife of T. L. Green, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and now an attorney-at-law of Waynesville, North Carolina; McLain, of this review; George, who is a rural free delivery mail carrier of Clyde; and W. S., who lives on the old homestead place in Haywood County.

McLain Rogers attended the public schools of Clyde, and passed one year at Weaverville College, North Caro- lina, located near the City of Asheville. Leaving that institution in 1895, he entered the Internal Revenue Service, at Asheville, in which he worked for two years, and then entered actively upon the study of medicine. Graduated from the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, in 1902, with the degree of Doctor of Medi- cine, he began practice at his home town of Clyde, but after a few months decided that that was too restricted a community for an ambitious young doctor, and ac- cordingly, in January, 1903, turned his face toward the West, finally locating at Geary, Oklahoma. That place continued as his field of practice until July, 1909, when he came to Clinton, and here has devoted himself to the practice of surgery. He is surgeon and chief of the staff of the Clinton Hospital and Training School, the hospital having been established in 1909 and the school in 1911. The new hospital was built in 1913 and is situated at Hayes and Eighth streets, the large and airy modern buildings accommodating forty patients and being sur- rounded by spacious lawns. These buildings are a de- cided addition to Clinton's architecture. Doctor Rogers has always been a devoted student, and has taken sev- eral post-graduate courses at the Chicago Post-Graduate School, where he specialized in laboratory work and surgery. He has been president of the Custer County Medical Society, of which he remains a member, and is also associated with the Oklahoma Medical Society, the American Medical Association and the Western Okla- homa Medical Society, of which last-named he is now secretary. His skill in diagnosis and treatment, his suc- cess with many complicated and supposedly incurable cases and his faith in the best tenets of his calling, have created a demand for his services of the most desirable kind and have given him prestige among the surgeons of this part of the state. Doctor Rogers has served as city health officer both at Geary and Clinton, and is always ready to contribute of his best services in the interests of

Lafayette Naeller

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HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

health and sanitation. His political belief makes him a republican. Fraternally, the Doctor is affiliated with Geary Lodge of Odd Fellows; Clinton Lodge No. 339, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; India Temple, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, of Oklahoma City; and the local lodge of Elks.

At Ardmore, Oklahoma, Doctor Rogers was married to Miss Bessie Alexander, daughter of M. L. Alexander, who is connected with the State School Land Department at Ardmore. Doctor and Mrs. Rogers have no children.

J. W. MASTER is the pioneer clothing merchant of Bartlesville. He had the first store of that kind in Bartlesville when it was a village of only 500 popula- tion. As a merchant he has prospered on the solid foundation of fair and square dealing, and has done his share toward the development of one of the leading cities of Northern Oklahoma. Mr. Master has spent the greater part of his life either in or close to the border of Oklahoma.

J. W. Master was born in Monroe County, Ohio, August 21, 1871, a son of H. C. and Sarah J. (Parks) Master. His parents were also natives of Monroe County, Ohio, and lived there until 1886. They then removed to Arkan- sas City, Kansas, and H. C. Master took part in the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893, and was the first man to hold the office of sheriff in Kay County. In 1894 he returned to Arkansas City, and in 1913 removed to Ramona, in Washington County, Oklahoma, where he and his wife now live retired. Practically all his life has been spent as a general merchant, and he has also dealt in real estate. He is a republican in politics, and has frequently been honored with positions of trust and responsibility. There were seven children in the family, three sons and four daughters, one of the latter being deceased.

J. W. Master learned the merchandise business with his father while getting an education in the public schools. From 1893 to 1903 he was with Newman Dry Goods Company of Arkansas City, and in the latter year, with a thorough experience and with more enterprise than capital, came to Bartlesville and established the first mercantile store handling men's clothing. He opened his stock of goods on Second Street, which was then the only thoroughfare in the village of 500 people. Sub- sequently he removed to Johnston Avenue, and now has the finest store of its kind in Washington County, lo- cated at 301-303 Johnston Avenue. He employs from seven to ten clerks and has a splendid volume of trade. He also owns a store at Ramona, in Washington County, with a stock of both men's clothing and dry goods, and this is conducted by his brother, W. H. Master, as man- ager. Formerly he owned a three-quarter interest in a store at Okmulgee, but sold that.

In August, 1895, Mr. Master married Miss Ada Nelson of Emporia, Kansas.

LLOYD E. WHITMAN, proprietor of the Capron Hard- ware Company, member of the city council and assistant postmaster, as well as ex-mayor of Capron, has been prominently identified with the business and civic inter- ests of this thriving community since 1911. He has been the architect of his own fortunes, for unfaltering perse- verance, strong determination, great energy and keen discrimination have brought to him excellent success, and he stands today as one of the substantial citizens of Capron, although now only in his thirty-fifth year.

Mr. Whitman was born October 4, 1880, on a farm in Sumner County, Kansas, and is a son of John and Eve (Church) Whitman. His father was born February 8, 1840, in Indiana, of which state his parents were natives,

and prior to the Civil war moved to Illinois, where he enlisted in 1862 in Company A, One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry. With this organization he served until the close of the war, participating in many engagements and accompanying General Sherman's troops on their famous "march to the sea." He was never wounded or captured, and at the close of hostilities was honorably discharged with an excellent war record. In 1876 he removed to Kansas, locating on a farm five miles north of the present Town of Oxford, in Sumner County, where he resided for eleven years. In 1887 he made removal with his family to Kearney County, Kansas, taking up government land, on which he resided for three years, and then went to King- man County, in the same state, that locality continuing to be his home until he made the race for land, in 1893, at the opening of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma. Locating on land five miles east of the present Town of Capron, he continued farming there until his retirement, and at this time is living quietly at his comfortable home at Capron. In 1861 Mr. Whitman was married to Eve Church, who was born in Illinois, January 12, 1840, and who died February 21, 1902, in the faith of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which she had been an active worker all her life. They were the parents of four sons and four daughters, as follows: Ella, born in 1862, who died in 1865; Ollie, born in 1866, who is engaged in farming in Montgomery County, Missouri; Effie, born in 1868, who married C. A. Lowe in 1889 and is now residing at Willows, California; James, born in 1870, who died in 1873; one who was born in 1872 and died in 1873; Hattie, born in 1874, married, in 1894, W. B. Combs and is now a resident of Mesa, Arizona; Leona, born in 1877, who married, in 1894, P. M. Combs and is now a resident of Nashville, Oklahoma; and Lloyd E., of this review.

Lloyd E. Whitman received good educational advan- tages, attending the public schools of Sumner County, Kansas, and Woods County, Oklahoma, and Northwestern Normal School, at Alva, this state. In 1902 he began farming. operations on his own account, when he settled on a claim in Harper County, Oklahoma, where he lived and farmed for six years. He still owns this claim, which comprises 320 acres of fertile land, all under a high state of cultivation and yielding him handsome returns. Desiring to enter the commercial field, in 1908, in order to learn the business, Mr. Whitman took a posi- tion as clerk in a hardware store at Alva. After about three years there he felt qualified to embark in business on his own account, and 1911 founded the Capron Hard- ware Company, an incorporated concern, and opened au establishment at Capron. Under his able, progressive and energetic management this business has grown and prospered and is now justly accounted one of the leading enterprises of the community. Mr. Whitman bears an excellent reputation in business circles, having been faithful to all engagements and always maintaining a high standard of business ethics. In 1912 and 1913 he served Capron in the capacity of mayor, has since that time been a member of the city council, and since 1911 has been assistant postmaster. In civic as in business life he has been faithful in the discharge of his duties and obligations, and his public services have done much to advance the interests of his adopted place. He is a republican in his political views, while his religious con- nection is with the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which his family are also members.

On October 16, 1901, Mr. Whitman was married to Miss Zena Fesk, who was born July 27, 1883, in Wilson County, Kansas, daughter of F. M. and Candis (Matkin) Fesk, natives of Indiana, who now live at Alva, Okla-

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HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

homa. Mr. and Mrs. Whitman have two children: Elmer Lloyd, born May 6, 1906; and Ernest Clayton, born June 21, 1908.

LEMUEL W. OAKES. Under terms of the Treaty of 1866 the Choctaws were compelled to grant land or its equivalent to negroes who had been their slaves before the Civil war. This class of negroes were termed Freed- men. Allotments were made in due time, but in the early '80s new claimants for land or money arose among negroes of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and probably some other Southern states, to the number of several hundred. It was a demand for enrollment similar to that which has been made insistently during recent years by members of the Choctaw Tribe in Mississippi. The prin- cipal chief of the Choctaw Nation appointed a com- mission to hear and pass upon these claims. The com- mission was composed of Lemuel W. Oakes, now of Hugo; R. J. Ward, now of Spiro; and the late Ben Watkins, an intermarried citizen and educator. Cole E. Nelson, a prominent fullblood minister, educator, merchant and lawyer, was at that time attorney general and he counseled with and advised the commission. The result of the commission's labors was that only twenty- one of the negro applicants were given their demands. Under the law an applicant whose claim was valid had a choice of forty acres of land or one hundred dollars in money, the money to satisfy in full all claims the appli- cant possessed. Some of the successful ones took land and others the money and left the territory.

This was not the only public service rendered by Lemuel W. Oakes as a Choctaw citizen. For ten years he was a member of the Senate of the Choctaw Nation, serving under the administration of Principal Chief Jackson McCurtain and J. M. Smallwood. He was' a member of the McCurtain faction in one of the heated contests provoked by Victor M. Locke, a leader of the full blood element. While he was a member of the Senate Henry Ward and Joe Bryant occupied the posi- tion of President of the Senate, and Senator Oakes was filling his seat at the death of Chief Jackson McCur- tain. At one time he also held the office of revenue col- lector of the Third Judicial District of the Nation.

Lemuel W. Oakes was born at the old town of Good- water, situated twelve miles east of the present site of Hugo. His parents were Thomas W. and Harriet N. (Everidge) Oakes. His father was a native of North Carolina, but came to the Choctaw Nation shortly after the removal of the tribe from Mississippi. He was a carpenter, and among his early activities was the erec- tion of the first council house of the Choctaw Nation at Tuskahoma. The building was constructed of large pine logs, about 1850. He was also employed in the building of houses for chiefs, Indian agents and others during the establishment of permanent settlement. He built the Goodwater Mission School, which was one of the earliest small schools of the Nation. A white man himself he gained Choctaw citizenship by marriage into a prominent Choctaw family. His wife's brother was Joel W. Everidge, for many years chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Choctaw Nation. Judge Everidge is buried in the Everidge private burying ground near old Goodwater.

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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