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 92

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 92

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JOHN SMITH. One of the principal factors in the growth and development of Henryetta, Okmulgee County, is the abundance of cheap cost fuel found here in the shape of natural gas. This product, developed under careful management by experienced men of fore- sight and ability, has attracted to this region much outside capital, and has brought here men of acumen who are constantly looking for an opportunity and who have here founded industries and enterprises which have served to add materially to Henryetta's business pres- tige as a center of activity. A firm that has advanced from a modest venture of small capital and operation into what is probably the largest owner of natural gas production in the world is that of Smith & Swan, the headquarters of which are located at Heuryetta. Messrs. Smith and Swan, early in the development of oil and natural gas in this territory, secured both by pur- chase and development large number of gas producing wells. They are holders of a franchise covering the supplying of gas to this and nearby cities, and the service as rendered under this franchise has been an exceptional one, both because of the excellence of the product and the reasonable character of the charge. The members of this firm are justly accounted as among the leaders in business life of this and the surrounding

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community, and their success has been a deserved one, whether considered from the standpoint of prosperity won through individual effort, or whether as success that has carried with it a large measure of added pros- perity to the localities in which operations have been carried on.

John Smith, the senior partner of the firm of Smith & Swan, was born in MeKean County, Pennsylvania, April 2, 1858, and is a son of Casper and Anna D. (Dehn) Smith, the former a native of Saxony and the latter of Bavaria, Germany. Casper Smith belongs to a family which numbered among its members men high in the governmental service in Germany, but this did not prevent the authorities from forcing him to do mil- itary service in the struggles of 1848 in that country. He had, however, no desire for the life of the soldier, and eventually managed to make his escape and to flee to a steamer, on which he was a stowaway for a few days until discovered. At that time, fearing that he might be sent back to his native land if his identity were to be discovered, he changed his name. He finally landed at New York City, from whence he made his way to Pittsburgh, and there met and married Anna D. Dehn. Later they went to McKean County, Pennsyl- vania, at which time Mr. Smith gave up the trade of tailor which he had followed in the large cities, and turned his attention to farming in the vicinity of Cler- mont. All six children were born on that farm, but in 1874 the family moved to Smethport, Pennsylvania, where the father died in February, 1909, at seventy- four years of age, the mother surviving until February 26, 1911, when she died aged seventy-eight years. They were good and honorable, God-fearing people, who had the respect and confidence of the people of their com- munity and who helped in various ways in their local- ity's development.

The next to the eldest of his father's children, John Smith, was reared on the homestead farm and received a very limited education in the public schools of his native county. He is really self-educated for he never attended school to exceed thirty days after eight years of age. His father was the incumbent of many local offices, such as county commissioner and state road commissioner, and left the farm work entirely to his son, who finally rebelled, and at the age of sixteen years left the parental roof and started out in life for himself. Going to Buffalo, New York, he made his home with a lumber firm and was engaged in lumber scalping for ten years, when he returned to his home community. Subsequently, he was awarded the con- tract to furnish lumber for two revenue cutters to be built at the yards of the Union Dry Dock Company, Buffalo, New York, during President Cleveland's first administration, and the success of this venture encour- aged him so that he extended his operations into ship- ping large quantites of lumber to the dry docks of the Great Lakes and New York. He later branched out into handling cherry and hardwood, of which he sold large quantities, then disposed of a great amount of hemlock, and finally built a mill at Crosby, Pennsyl- vania, and put out 150,000 feet of finished lumber a day. About this time circumstances over which he had no control caused Mr. Smith to meet with financial . reverses, and to recuperate his lost fortunes he entered the oil fields of Pennsylvania, thus entering a business with which he has been identified ever since. For some years he operated in Pennsylvania, later was a well known figure in the fields of Ohio and Indiana, and in 1903 located at Independence, Kansas, where his home is still situated. In 1905 he engaged in ventures at Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where he installed a gas dis-

tributing plant and carried on operations, but October 1, 1913, sold out there and put in his entire efforts at Henryetta, which is the only plant he owns save that at Mounds, Oklahoma. Formerly he had plants at Poca City, Oklahoma, and Independence, Chautauqua and Peru, Kansas, but has disposed of his interests in all. Since 1904 he has been in partnership with J. B. Swan, also a business man of broad and thorough experience in gas, oil and coal interests, in which they are known as the most extensive operators in the field. They have the best gas holdings in the state, producing 150,000,000 feet of gas daily, and the territory is not even nearly developed at this time. They also have interests in the allied products of gas and oil, and own two coal mines, one of which is now producing 200 tons daily. Mr. Smith has been president of the Mines National Bank since its organization. He is a republi- can and a member of the Masonic fraternity.

Mr. Smith was married in 1886, at Arcade, New York, to Miss Nettie S. Howard, a native of Rochester, New York, and they are the parents of two children: Clar- ence B. is a student at Manlius, New York, in the senior year, and valedictorian of his class, his record of having the highest standing in all grades for that year (1915) of any student in the school. He graduated June, 1916. Merion Elizabeth is in her senior year at Hosmer Hall, St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Smith is a large, well preserved man, a jolly, lovable fellow, and has hosts of warm friends. He is a self-made man.

ARTHUR H. GEISSLER. Probably the most forceful figure in the republican party in Oklahoma today is Arthur H. Geissler, of Oklahoma City, who came to Okla- homa at the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893, and has been variously identified with affairs as a banker, lawyer and business man.

In 1910 Mr. Geissler was elected without opposition as chairman of the Republican County Committee of Okla- homa County, and was again chosen unanimously in 1912. During each campaign, under his management, the republican party elected most of its candidates in that county, which at the time was strongly democratic.

The Republican State Committee in August, 1912, unanimously elected Mr. Geissler as its vice chairman, and in September he became chairman of the State Com- mittee, and was re-elected to that position by the repub- lican state convention at Tulsa on February 12, 1914. In transferring his field of work from an individual county to the state at large, Mr. Geissler again demon- strated his ability as an organizer and leader. The results of the campaign of 1914 indicate the truth of this assertion, since at the election in the fall of 1914 the republicans came within 5,000 votes of electing their candidate for governor in the face of a normal demo- cratic plurality of 25,000. The state convention held at Oklahoma City in March, 1916, re-elected him by accla- ination to a four-year term as state chairman and also made him a delegate-at-large to the republican national convention.

Arthur H. Geissler was born in 1877, and came to Woods County, Oklahoma, at the opening of the Chero- kee Strip in September, 1893. During that year he had begun the study of law in Chicago, and was admitted to the bar in 1896, when not yet twenty years of age. In 1903 Mr. Geissler took a course in comparative juris- prudence and diplomacy at the Columbian (George Washington) University of Washington, D. C. He has traveled extensively and repeatedly in Latin America and Europe. Aided by his knowledge of Spanish, French and German, he has acquired an intimate understanding of

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the history, literature and life of the various nations on the two western continents.

For the past fifteen years Mr. Geissler has been promi- nent as a banker and insurance man. From 1901 to 1910 he was vice president of a bank at Carmen, Okla- homa, and was president of the Farmers Bank of Lambert from 1902 to 1907. In 1904 he eugaged in the insurance business at Oklahoma City, and in 1909 became president of The Reliable Hail Insurance Company, and still remains as the executive head of this well known Oklahoma company.

Mr. Geissler is a thirty-second degree Mason, and also a Knight Templar and Shriner, and has affiliations with the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Khorassan and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. In 1905 occurred his marriage to Miss Julia Henderson Adams of Wash- ington, D. C. Mrs. Geissler, who is an accomplished linguist and a woman of exceptional culture, was edu- cated in France, Germany, England and New York. Her father was Edward White Adams, a Louisiana sugar planter. Her mother was a daughter of Maj .- Gen. James Pinckney Henderson, first governor of the State of Texas and later a United States senator, and to whom Congress presented a sword in recognition of his distin- guished military services in the war with Mexico.

JOHN R. HOOD, M. D. The village of Indiahoma, Comanche County, figures as the professional head- quarters and place of residence of Dr. John Robert Hood, who has built up a substantial practice in this county and is one of the honored and progressive citizens of his home village.

Doctor Hood was born at Columbia, Adair County, Kentucky, on January 1, 1870, and he is a scion not only of a pioneer family in the fine old Bluegrass State, but also of one that was founded in the historic Old Dominion Commonwealth of Virginia prior to the war of the Revolution, the lineage tracing back to staunch German origin and the original orthography of the name having been Hutt. Adair County, Kentucky, figures also as the place of nativity of the parents of Doctor Hood, who is a son of Joseph and Frances (Waggoner) Hood, both of whom there passed their entire lives, the mother having been summoned to eternal rest in 1898 and her birth having occurred in 1833; the father was born in 1835 and during his entire active career he was closely identified with the agricultural and live-stock industries in his native county, where his death occurred in 1905. Joseph Hood was a gallant soldier of the Union during three years of the Civil war, having been a member of a Kentucky regiment of volunteer infantry and having participated in many engagements. At the battle of Lost Mountain he received a severe grape-shot wound under the left eye, and from the effects of this injury he continued to suffer to a greater or less degree until the close of his long and worthy life. He was a stalwart adherent of the democratic party and was affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the Grand Army of the Republic. Both he and his wife were consistent members of the Methodist Church, South. Concerning the children the following brief record is entered: Maria is the wife of John Riall, a farmer in Adair County, Kentucky ; Susan is the wife of John Bault, a farmer at Cane Val- ley, that state; Joellen is the widow of George Harden and resides at Elkhorn, Kentucky; Eliphalet is a sub- stantial farmer near Monroe, Kentucky; Dr. John R. of this review was the next in order of birth; Mary is the wife of William Burkhead a prosperous farmer near Grandfield, Tillman County, Oklahoma.

In the public schools of Columbia, Kentucky, Dr. Hood continued his studies until his graduation in the

high school, as a member of the class of 1892. There- after he gave his attention to teaching school and to attending the Hospital College of Medicine in the City of Louisville until his graduation in that institution, in 1897, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He con- tinued iu the practice of his profession in his native state until 1900, when he came to Oklahoma Territory and established his residence at Carrier, Garfield County, where he continued his professional activities until the autumn of 1902, when he removed to his farm, seven miles south of Indiahoma, where he continued in practice until 1912, in the meanwhile giving his supervision to the improvement and general operation of his farm, which he still owns and which he had developed into a valuable property. In 1912 the doctor removed from his rural home to the village of Indiahoma, where he is the only resident physician and surgeon and where he con- trols a large and representative practice which extends throughout the wide area of country normally tributary to the village. Dr. Hood is actively identified with the Comanche County Medical Society and the Oklahoma State Medical Society, besides holding membership in the American Medical Association. In a fraternal way he is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America, the Woodmen of the World and the Independent Order of Oddfellows, being medical examiner for the local organ- ization of both the former in his home town. Both he and his wife are zealous members of the Christian Church at Indiahoma and he is serving as a deacon of the same. His political fealty has never been deflected from the democratic party and as a citizen he is progres- sive and liberal. He has served as deputy health officer of Comanche County, and prior to his removal from his native state he had held the position of assistant health officer of Casey County, Kentucky.

At Casey Creek, Kentucky, on the 22d of December, 1896, was solemnized the marriage of Dr. Hood to Miss Minnie Me Whorter, daughter of Charles B. McWhorter, who is now a successful agriculturist in Tillman County, Oklahoma. Doctor and Mrs. Hood have four children : Nina, Bernice, Robert and Edwin, all of whom are attending the public schools in their home village with the exception of the youngest.

LAWRENCE P. MILLSPAUGH. Recognizing the fact that in the field of journalism there is plenty of room for men of energy and brains, Mr. Millspaugh has chosen for liis calling the newspaper business with what degree of success is shown in his present well edited newspaper, the Amorita Herald, and the excellent business which he enjoys. Brought up in the Middle West, when ready to enter upon his own career he realized the opportuni- ties of Oklahoma, and has had no reason to regret his choice of location there in 1911, since he has steadily risen in his vocation and in the confidence of those among whom he has made his home.

He represents a substantial old family of Indiana. Peter Millspaugh, his grandfather, was born in Fayette County, Indiana, March 18, 1842, and died near Mat- thews, Indiana, March 21, 1888. He was a carpenter by trade. In 1862 he moved to Grant County, Indiana, and on the 29th of December of that year he married . Miss Essenior Reeder, a young lady of many amiable qualities. She had the distinction of being a first cousin of Bishop Milton Wright, the father of the renowned Wright brothers of aeroplane fame. She was born May 29, 1846, and died April 29, 1875.

William Harvey Millspaugh, father of the Oklahoma editor, was born September 24, 1864, near Matthews, Grant County, Indiana, where he resided a greater share of his life and followed the same occupation as his

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father. At various times he has also been a merchant and contractor, but is now engaged in farming in the vicinity of Green Forest, Arkansas. In November, 1882, he married Miss Catheryn Dickerson, a danghter of Mr. and Mrs. Houstou Dickerson, well to do farmers of Grant County near Fairmount. There were two children to this union, a son and a daughter, the son dying in infancy. The daughter Lulu was born July 27, 1885, and the mother died in March of the following year. William H. Millspaugh was married June 7, 1890, at the parsonage of Rev. Mr. White, a Methodist minister of Upland, Indiana, to Miss Mary Martha Danford, a young school teacher of Matthews, Indiana, and a daugh- ter of Joshua J. and Sarah E. Danford.

Joshua J. Danford, maternal grandfather of Lawrence P. Millspaugh, was born July 26, 1840, near Sharon, Ohio, where in early life he received the Masonic de- grees. His parents were prosperous farmers. His early ambitions were for politics and the law, but he never realized them to the extent of becoming a lawyer. While on a visit to relatives in Hopkinton, Iowa, he met and married Miss Sarah Evelyn Hill on October 23, 1865. Her parents were Harrison and Martha Hill, of the State of Maine. Soon after their marriage they returned to Ohio, where they remained until 1868, and then went out to Kansas and settled on a farm near Centralia. Of their seven children, Mary Martha, mother of Law- rence Millspaugh, was born near Centralia, Kansas, July 21, 1870, and lived at home until the death of her father on December 25, 1879. Her father was buried near Eufaula, Oklahoma, then an unsettled territory, where Mr. Danford had been prospecting and met liis death through exposure. ' The widowed mother later returned to her old home at Matthews, Indiana, where she met and married Noah Lyon.

After their marriage William H. Millspaugh, and wife returned to Matthews, Indiana, where he resumed the trade which in early life he had learned from his father. Mary Martha Danford before her marriage received a good education and for three years taught in the schools of Grant County. On April 13, 1891, their first child was born and was given the name Lawrence Peter Mills- paugh. Soon afterward the parents moved to Noble County, Ohio, and on a farm there, April 26, 1893, their second child was born, Rhoda L., who is now the wife of Fred W. Hankey, a mail carrier at Amorita, Okla- homa. Soon after the birth of their daughter the par- ents returned to Matthews, Indiana, where the father became interested in the oil and gas business. A third child was born at Matthews February 17, 1896, Frauces Marian, who is now the wife of William Mattingly, a mechanic of Harrison, Arkansas. In the spring of 1898 W. H. Millspaugh embarked in the mercantile business in Fowlerton, Indiana, and was a prosperous merchant there for a number of years. The fourth child, Sarah Phyllis, was born July 14, 1899; the fifth child, Leah Ruth, was born September 11, 1901; the sixth, Boyd D., was born January 18, 1905; and the seventh, Gwendolyn, was born September 4, 1908, while the parents lived at Fowlerton. After the death of their seventh child in March, 1909, the parents determined to come to Okla- homa, and in May of that year the father and oldest son, Lawrence, arrived at Amorita, followed by the re- maining members of the family a few weeks later. Dur- ing their residence in Amorita the eighth child was born, Gertrude Viola, April 26, 1911. In October, 1913, the Millspaugh family moved to Harrison, Arkansas, where W. H. Millspaugh entered the real estate and insurance business. Their ninth child, another daughter, was born February 14, 1914, and bears the name Mary Magdalene. The two oldest children continue to reside in Amorita,

Oklahoma, where they had married a year prior to the removal of the family to Arkansas.

As already stated Lawrence Peter Millspaugh was born at Matthews, Indiana, April 13, 1891, and was six years old when his parents moved to Fowlerton, Indiana. His early education came from the public schools there, and he graduated with honor from both the grammar and high schools. While attending high school he spent his leisure hours working as an apprentice in the printing office at Fowlerton, and thus learned enough of the trade to settle iu his mind the desire and determination to stick to that vocation. After his graduation from the high school in 1907 he spent two years as a journeyman printer and reaped a wide range of experience in the different printing offices of Northern Indiana.

On coming with his parents to Oklahoma iu the spring of 1909 he resumed work as a printer, but soon deter- mined to become the editor and publisher of a paper of his own. Accordingly he took charge of the Ingersoll Review at Ingersoll in Alfalfa County in the spring of 1910, and in that fall purchased the plant and moved it to Amorita, establishing the Amorita Herald. Mr. Mills- paugh is publishing a bright, newsy, enterprising paper, and has built up an excellent circulation in Alfalfa County. Its columns have always been opeu to the boost- ing of movements launched for the welfare of the com- munity and its people, and as a molder of public opinion it is justly considered an orgau of no mean ability or influence. As its subscription has grown under Mr. Millspaugh 's energetic efforts, it has become a desirable advertising medium, and is now being generously sup- ported by the merchants and professional men, who recognize it as a force for advancement and progress.

On November 2, 1912, Mr. Millspaugh married Miss Edna Muryle Barrett, a daughter of Lawson and Minnie Barrett of near Amorita. Mr. Barrett is a prosperous farmer and stockman of Northern Alfalfa County. Mrs. Millspaugh was born near Haven, Kansas, August 19, 1895. To their marriage have been born two children: Albert Maurice, October 5, 1913, and Dorothy Madaline, December 1, 1914.

Mr. Millspaugh is one of the prominent Masons of his home town. He is secretary of the Amorita Com- mercial Club and gives his time and energies freely to the welfare of Amorita and the county.

JAMES E. FOSTER. It is a noticeable fact and one full of meaning, that people descended from Scotch-Irish stock are never backward about claiming such ancestry. The sturdy qualities and natural gifts of this combina- tion, are so admirable, that any community offers a welcome and benefits thereby. Among the early colonial settlers in Virginia were the Fosters, crossing the ocean from Ireland to the United States and becoming afterward honorably and usefully identified with many sections of the Union. They were pioneers in Kentucky, later in Indiana and Illinois, and in more recent years inaking themselves felt in many lines of honorable effort in Kansas, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. A well known and prominent member of this family is James E. Foster, who is superintendent of the city schools of Sayre, Oklahoma.

James E. Foster was born November 25, 1871, in Franklin County, Kansas, and is a son of James N. and Elizabeth (Taylor) Foster, the fifth in order of birth in a family of eight children, the record being as fol- lows: Henry B., who is pastor of a Methodist Episcopal church at Kansas City, Missouri; Mary Ella, who is the wife of Rev. John W. Slusher, a Methodist minister in the Missouri conference; William W., who resides on his farnı situated three miles west of Elk City, Okla-

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homa; John F., who lives on his farm located five and one-half miles southwest of Elk City; James E., residing at Sayre; Anna Estella, who is the wife of Archibald Watts, a farmer near Merkle, Texas; Arthur J., who is a teacher of English in the high school of Delta, Colorado; and Charles A., who is assistant auditor of a street railway company and resides at Pueblo, Colorado. James N. Foster was born in Putnam County, Indiana, in 1837, and was married at Greencastle to Elizabeth Taylor, who was born in 1839, at Terre Haute, Indiana, and died on the homestead farm of her husband in Oklahoma near Elk City, in 1902. After the birth of one child, James N. Foster and wife removed to Franklin County, Kansas, and in 1879, to Wild Cherry, Fulton County, Arkansas. In 1897 the family moved to Van Alstyne, Texas, and from there in 1900 to Oklahoma, Mr. Foster taking up a homestead in Beckham County, which his son, James E., now owns, but died in the same year, at Elk City. He was a man of great ability and wherever he lived became of importance. During the Civil war he served in the Kansas militia, and for a number of years represented Franklin County in the legislature. In his early political life he was a whig and later became a republican. Both he and wife were active members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he held dignified position, serving both as deacon and elder. He was one of the widely known members of the Odd Fellow fraternity.

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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