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 99

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 99

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Judge Tolbert is a democrat, and for many years has been prominent in the councils of his party. He was elected as judge of the Seventeenth Judicial District of Oklahoma, comprising Kiowa, Washita, Custer and Blaine counties, November 6, 1907, at the beginning of statehood, and continued to serve with dignity and ability until his retirement, January 11, 1915. Judge Tolbert was chairman of the platform committee at the Democratic State Convention in 1912 and has also been a member of the committee on several occasions. In 1914 he was a candidate before the democratic primaries

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for the nomination for Congress from the Seventh Okla- homa District which had just beeu created and which had no representative in Cougress. In a hotly contested cam- paign, he was defeated by about 400 votes out of almost 20,000 cast.

He has been identified with movements which have served to elevate the standards of legislation in Okla- homa, having several times served as chairman of the committee on Remedial Legislation and Judicial Reform of the Oklahoma State Bar Associatiou. He is the author of the law which provides for summoning jurors and witnesses by the United States mail, and by tele- phone and telegraph. Ho prepared this bill and wrote to each member of the Oklahoma Legislature, and the bill was promptly passed, in January, 1910. Judge Tol- bert was instrumental in securing the passage of the law for providing adjourned terms of the distriet courts, thereby enabling the district judge to adjourn regular terms from time to time, thus keeping the court in each county open at all times. He served on the school board while a resident of Vernon, Texas, and held a like position at Hobart for many years, having always taken a deep interest in educational matters. In the Metho- dist Episcopal Church, South, of which he is a member, he is serving as lay leader.

Judge Tolbert is a member of the Hobart Lodge No. 198, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Chapter No. 37, Royal Arch Masons; Commandery No. 10, Knights Templars; Hobart Council, Royal and Select Masters and Indian Temple, Ancient Arabie Order of Nobles of the Mystie Shrine, Oklahoma City. He belongs to the Kiowa County Bar Association, the Oklahoma State Bar Asso- ciation and the American Bar Association, to the latter of which he was a delegate in the conventiou held at Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1910. Hobart and its in- dustries and interests have always secured his unwaver- ing support, and at the present time, in addition to being a stirring member of the Chamber of Commerce, he is president of the Hobart Industrial Company, an or- ganization of 110 active business men of the city, founded to look after the welfare of the town. It was through Judge Tolbert's efforts that the Carnegie Library was secured for Hobart and he was president of the first board of trustees of this institution and remained as a member of the board until the library was completed.

At Farmington, Texas, in 1886, Judge Tolbert was united in marriage with Miss Emma Gilbert, a daughter of Miles G. Gilbert, a Kentuckian by birth who now re- sides at Vernon, Texas, and is engaged extensively in farmiug and stock raising. The mother of Mrs. Tolbert was a Williams of Virginia and a direct descendant of George Washington. Five children have been born to Judge and Mrs. Tolbert: Raymond A., Virginia Gil- bert, Ruth Ann, James R., Jr., and Miles G. Raymond A. Tolbert was born March 17, 1890, at Vernon, Texas, and there attended the public schools. During 1907-10 he attended the Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, and from 1910 to 1913, the University of Okla- homa, at Norman, Oklahoma, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1912 and that of Bachelor of Laws in 1913. He belongs to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a Greek letter fraternity, the Phi Delta Phi, an honorary legal fraternity, and the Sigma Delta Chi, a journalistic fraternity, and while at college was a member of the student committee that secured a $125,000 law building for the university from the Legislature. When he was admitted to the bar, in 1912, he became associated in practice with his father and has continued as his partner to the present time, being known as one of the promis- ing young members of the Oklahoma bar. He is also president of the Hobart Public Library Board.

Virginia Gilbert Tolbert was born August 17, 1892, at Vernon, Texas, and is a graduate of Hobart High School and of the University of Oklahoma, in 1914, with the de- gree of Bachelor of Arts. She was president of the Young Womeu's Christian Association at the university, as well as being president of the Women's Council in the students' self-governing committee. During the past two years she has been instructor of science at the Hobart High School, and is a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta and the Owl and Triangle, a women's honor society, consisting of the six best all-round womeu stu- dents at the University of Oklahoma.

Ruth Ann Tolbert was born March 4, 1894, and grad- uated from Hobart High School in the class of 1912, following which she took a two-year course at the Uni- versity of Oklahoma, and in 1914 became a teacher in the public schools of Geary, Oklahoma. She subse- quently began attending summer courses at the state university, from which she will be graduated with the elass of 1917. She is a popular member of the Kappa Alpha Theta, and a member of the Womeu's Council at the university.

James R. Tolbert, Jr., was born December 7, 1897, at Vernon, Texas, and graduated from Hobart High School in the elass of 1915. In the fall of the same year he entered the University of Oklahoma, where he is now a student. Miles G. Tolbert, boru in July, 1899, is a senior in the Hobart High School.

AL J. JENNINGS. Undoubtedly one of the most widely known citizens of Oklahoma is Al J. Jennings, who in 1914 made a spectacular race for nomination as governor before the primaries and stood third in the list of seven candidates. The vicissitudes and tense interest of his career are familiar to thousands and thousands of people all over the United States and the world through his autobiographic story which ran serially for many num- bers in The Saturday Evening Post in 1913, under the title "Beating Back." While a lawyer by profession, Mr. Jennings has always had an ambition for the lecture field, and in 1914, after the eonelusion of his political campaign and after his name had become so widely familiar through his life story as told in The Saturday Evening Post, he took to the platform, and has since been one of the leading lecturers and has appeared in all the important centers of the United States and Canada.

His father was the late Judge J. D. F. Jennings, who gained many distinctions on account of his valued public service in Oklahoma. Judge Jennings was born in June, 1831, in Tazewell County, Virginia, where his parents were also natives. Educated at Emory and Henry College, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church as a circuit rider, and preached for many years. He also studied medicine, and when the Civil war broke out was commissioned a surgeon in the Confederate army. His service was with the Forty-first Virginia Infantry and continued from the start until the close of the great struggle. In 1865 he located at Marion, Illinois, where he was a Methodist minister, a physician, and in addi- tion to carrying on these vocations he studied law. In 1872 he was elected county attorney of Williamson County, Illinois, and held that office for two years. In 1874, on account of the ill health of his wife, he started back by boat to his old Virginia home. His wife died in Adams County, Ohio, and he thereupon abandoned the journey. He then located at Manchester, Ohio, where he practiced law until 1880, and then practiced in Apple- ton City, St. Clair County, Missouri, until 1884. In the latter year he became one of the pioneer settlers of Comanche County, Kansas, and established himself as a lawyer at Coldwater. He was elected the first probate

anna Laskey

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judge of Comanche County and filled that office for two terms, four years. In 1888 Judge Jennings moved to Baca County, Colorado, and was engaged in practice at Trinidad until 1889.

He was an original Oklahoma eighty-niner, having par- ticipated in the rush in April of that year and securing a tract of Government land eight miles south of King- fisher. His reputation in other states followed him to this new community and he was soon a leader in demo- cratie politics and was selected as a delegate to terri- torial and other conventions. In 1893, with the opening of the Cherokee Strip, Governor Renfrow appointed him the first probate judge of Woodward County, and he was elected to succeed himself at the first regular election. In 1895 Judge Jennings moved to Shawnee, where he continued in the practice of law, and in 1896 was elected probate judge of Pottawatomie County and by re-elec- tion held the office four years. With these many honors of professional and public life, he retired in 1901 and in that year moved to Slater, Missouri, where he died in June, 1903. Judge Jennings was a Knight Templar Mason.

He was twice married. In 1853 he married Miss Mary Elizabeth Scates, who was born in Virginia in 1834 and who died at Rome, Ohio, in 1874. In 1885 Judge Jennings married Miss Mattie Holt, but all his seven children were by his first marriage. Zebulon Jen- nings, the oldest of the children was born in 1855 and died in 1879. John D. F., Jr., was born in 1857 and is now a well known lawyer of Oklahoma City. Edward E., who was born in 1859, was a pioneer lawyer of Okla- homa, being senior of the law firm of Jennings & Sharp, at Purcell, the latter member being now an associate justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Edward E. Jennings was assistant county attorney of Canadian County in 1893-94, and was murdered at Woodward October 18, 1895. He was married in 1884 to Lena Nichols, who died in 1887, leaving one child, John E. Frank F. Jennings, the fourth of the children of Judge Jennings, was born September 25, 1861, was admitted to practice law in 1884, and in 1886 became one of the founders of the Town of Boston in Colorado, and for three years served as county clerk of Las Animas County; in 1889 he took part in the first opening of Oklahoma. Frank F. Jennings married Miss Nelle C. Bunyan, October 1, 1906. She was born in Meade County, Kansas, October 23, 1885, a descendant of John Bunyan, author of "Pilgrim's Progress, "' and she herself has attained some note as a newspaper woman in the states of Oklahoma and New Mexico. She is the mother of one child, Frank, Jr., born July 19, 1907. The next in age is Al J. Jennings, the youngest is Mary Dell, who was born in 1870 and is the wife of Edward Kipple of Kansas City, Missouri.

Al J. Jennings was born in Tazewell County, Virginia, November 25, 1863. After completing his education in the University of West Virginia, he joined his father at Coldwater, Kansas, in 1884 and was admitted to the bar there. In 1889 he took part in the opening of Okla- homa, locating at Purcell in the old Chickasaw Nation and practicing before the courts of the eastern district of Texas, being admitted to the United States court at Paris, Texas, in 1890. Many of the incidents of his exciting career are vividly told in the autobiographic narrative above mentioned. In 1891 he removed to El Reno, and in 1892 was elected county attorney of Canadian County. In 1903 Mr. Jennings began practice at Lawton, Oklahoma, and his power and versatility in handling criminal cases soon brought him a reputation of more than state wide prominence. In 1911 he came to Oklahoma City and in 1912 was nominated for county

attorney of Oklahoma County. It is generally believed that he was legally elected, though he was counted out on account of an alleged error which later proved unjustified, though he was not given the office.

Mr. Jennings is a member of the Baptist Church. On January 6, 1904, at Lawton he married Miss Maude E. Deaton, daughter of James E. and Effie L. (Person) Deaton. Mrs. Jennings was born March 2, 1881, in Polk County, Iowa. She is a talented musician and singer and a graduate of Drake University of Iowa.

MRS. ANNA LASKEY. That woman has come to her own in the vigorous young State of Oklahoma is mainly due to the efforts of such able, earnest and noble repre- sentatives of the sex as this well known and highly honored citizen, whose labors in the cause of equal suffrage and for the basic principles of right and justice have been unflagging, who is recognized as a woman of exceptional intellectual power and self-reliance, whose character has been moulded through fellowship with adversity and the overcoming of formidable obstacles, and who has preserved through all the strenuous experiences of a strenuous and virtually public career, the gentleness, the kindliness and the abiding human sympathy and tolerance that denote the true gentle- roman. Though direct, vigorous and implacable in defense of a just cause that enlists her fealty, and imbued with superior mental powers, she has naught of intellectual bigotry and bends all of her energies to the conservation of the general good. She is one of the really distinguished women of Oklahoma, feared as an adversary and admired and loved as a friend, and it is a matter of much gratification to be able to present in this history of the state a brief review of her career.

Mrs. Lasky was born at Watertown, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, on the 28th of April, 1871, and is a daughter of Theodore and Florentina (Watchke) Klaffke, both natives of Germany, where they were reared and educated and where their marriage was solemnized. In 1865 the parents immigrated to the United States and after a short period residence at Haverstraw, New York, they removed to Wisconsin and established their home at Watertown. In his native land Theodore Klaffke had learned with all of thoroughness the trade of miller, and in America he found ready demand for his expert services, as he had much to do with the building, equipping and placing in operation of some of the largest Wisconsin flouring mills of the day. Prior to coming to this country he had served seven years in the German army, and he was in the prime of life at the time of his death, which occurred in 1873, at which time his daughter Anna, subject of this sketch, was but two years of age. When Mrs. Laskey was a child of eight years her widowed mother removed with the family to Floyd County, Iowa, and established her home on a farm. In that county Mrs. Laskey earnestly prosecuted her studies in the public schools, and in 1887 she was graduated in the high school at Charles City, that state. From a previously prepared and appreciative estimate are taken, with minor paraphrase, the following statements, with- out formal marks of quotation.

When Anna was two years old her mother was left a widow, and at the age of eleven years this devoted daughter became a mainstay to the family, managing the business of the household in the intervals out of school. She naturally developed into a self-reliant woman and a staunch advocate of equal rights for women. She has remained thoroughly and without reservation the defender of the cause of womau suffrage and her labors have been worthy of the honors accorded to those of the great pioneers in the cause, whose efforts

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anticipated hers. She is recognized to-day as one of the most effective advocates of equal suffrage to be found in the West.

At the age of seventeen years Mrs. Laskey began teaching in the district schools of her home county, where she continued her successful pedagogic work during a period of two years. She was one of the anibitious young women who came to the present State of Oklahoma in 1889, the year that marked the opening of the same to settlement and the year in which Okla- homa Territory was organized. A pioneer in the fullest sense of the term, it was but natural, with her loyalty and self-reliance, that she should become a leader in the demand for woman suffrage in the new territory. In the state organization among the women she served the same four years as auditor and treasurer. She has been active also in seeking to obtain wholesome legislation in Oklahoma and has been chosen for "third-house" duty in the Legislature from the earliest territorial period to the present time.

In 1892 when Sidney Clarke became a candidate for the State Senate from the Oklahoma City District, he was invited by the suffragists to address the state meet- ing of their organization, and in this address he pledged the women his loyal support in the Legislature. They aided in every legitimate way to further his election, and when the final test came they were rewarded by his receding from his promise and standing in opposition to them in a critical moment. The House had passed a bill granting equal suffrage to the women of the terri- tory, but when the bill reached the Senate pressure stronger than that which the women were able to enlist was brought to bear, and even their pledged advocate aided in their defeat. From that time forward Clarke was a dead letter in Oklahoma politics, because of the stubborn opposition which he met at the hands of such courageous women as Mrs. Laskey and her associates.

Mrs. Laskey was the first woman in the state to make the race in the democratic primary for the office of county clerk. This was in Oklahoma County, in 1912. She ran a neck and neck race with two men opponents and many believed that she had won, but the election board gave the certificate to one of her opponents, who later assumed the office but who lost the same after a contest following the general election. During the cam- paign of 1910, when the question of woman suffrage was submitted as a constitutional amendment, Mrs. Laskey gave all of her time and expended much of her own money to further the canse. She was really the first woman of prominence in the state to take a firm stand for woman suffrage and in 1890 she applied to the national organization for assistance. Immediately upon the receipt of her letter this national organization sent Miss Laura Gregg into the territory and wrote Mrs. Laskey to meet her and join her in the work, which she did gladly. Through these early efforts the Territorial Legislature in 1890 granted the women suffrage in school matters throughout the territory.

When Oklahoma was admitted as a state and the election was called to choose delegates to the constitu- tional convention, Mrs. Laskey decided that she would insist upon her right to vote for delegates. In the Daily Oklahoman, soon after the election, the following letter from Mrs. Laskey was given a place at the head of the editorial page of that great state paper and with the following prefatory comment: "Sometimes an argu- ment is made so strong as to stagger one. The Oklaho- man is in receipt of a communication of that classification and deems it eminently worthy of reproduction and con- sideration. Then followed the text of the letter written by and bearing the signature of Mrs. Laskey and its

perpetuation in this article is a consistent action from a logical and also historical standpoint :

"Editor Oklahoman: Some of your women readers may be interested in my experience in trying to vote for the constitutional delegates. I told my husband several weeks prior to the election that as I had been a pioneer in Oklahoma, a tax-payer and a school teacher, that by all the laws of justice I should be entitled to vote for the delegates who were to draft the constitution under which I must live. No man could have a greater interest at stake than I. So I determined to try to vote my opinions. My husband believes as I do, that wives and mothers in Oklahoma, who have faithfully shared the hardships of the territorial days, are entitled to all the rights and privileges of inen. We drove to the school house where the election was held. On entering, I met the pleasant faces of my neighbors and friends, two of whom were the clerks. One was a former pupil of mine and of whom I have the kindest and happiest recollec- tions, for he was always a diligent student. I said pleas- ant faces,-I meant surprised faces, when they found out my intentions to vote. The clerk said, 'We are not going to give you a ballot.' I replied, 'I have not asked you for one.' But I proceeded to take one which lay on the desk. The clerks were nonplussed. I entered the booth at the rear of the room and stamped my ballot. Then folding the ballot, I walked toward the ballot box. This was guarded by a naturalized resident, and this foreign-born guardian told me, an American-born woman, that he would arrest me if I attempted to deposit my ballot. I answered that I would be proud to be arrested in the cause of justice and right.

"I wonder whether there will be as vigorous a pro- test against me when I go to pay my taxes as when I asked for representation as a taxpayer! It is a poor rule that will not work both ways. Queer sort of pro- tection that makes women pay taxes but denies us our right to express our opinions. I laid my ballot beside the box and drove on to the house of a friend, where I took dinner. My host came in later and said he left the men who were in charge of the polls discussing what to do with my ballot. One suggested its destruction, another called it a mutilated ballot, still another termed it an illegal ballot: all agreed that it could not be destroyed, as all ballots must be accounted for.

"I returned home, and as I passed the school house the clerks grasped the ballots from the desk and sat on them, while with a determined hold on the seats of the desk they securely held down the ballots until I was out of sight. To the credit of the men at the polls be it said that the majority were in favor of woman suffrage. Where is the justice of depriving intelligent women of a share in public affairs which are so vital to the homes of Oklahoma? How much would the American man feel that he was protected if the right of the ballot were denied him and he was promised priv- ileges instead?"

Mrs. Laskey still retains the deepest interest in public affairs in Oklahoma and is actively identified with organizations and enterprises tending to advance the general welfare and to' conserve good government in all departments of state, county, city and village service. Her pleasant home, on Capital Hill, Oklahoma City, is known for its gracious hospitality and for its pervading atmosphere of culture and high ideals.

At Nevada, Iowa, on the 25th of September, 1889, was solemnized the marriage of Edward A. Laskey to Miss Anna Klaffke, he having been born at Belvidere, Illinois, on the 15th of June, 1852. The one child of this union is Glenn Eugene, who was born on the 28th of August, 1894, and who is now a member of the class of 1917 in the University of Oklahoma, at Norman. He

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has achieved prominence not only as a bright and ambitious student but also as one of the best all-round young athletes of his native state, he having already won many medals in state and national field-day sports, principally in collegiate circles.

HUGH M. BEAR. A residence of nearly fifteen years at Okeene has been amply sufficient time for Mr. Bear to establish a sound reputation as an able lawyer and counselor, and in addition to his large and extensive general practice in all the courts of his district his name has been associated with the substantial welfare of that community.

The original American ancestor of Mr. Bear was Adam Bear, who came from Germany during colonial times and made settlement in the famed Shenandoah . Valley of Virginia, where he developed a plantation and spent the rest of his life. Some intermediate ancestors came West and became identified with the pioneer settlement of Central Missouri. Cooper County in that state has been the home of the Bear family for several generations. Hugh M. Bear was born at Tipton, Cooper County, Missouri, February 19, 1872, while his father, J. H. Bear, was born in the same locality in 1836. His father is still living at Tipton, and one and the same farm has been his home for more than half a century. This farm, comprising 160 acres, is located five miles north of the Village of Tipton. The senior Mr. Bear, though in advanced years, still looks after his farm and has been very successful in the raising of stock. He is a deacon in the Baptist Church. His wife's maiden name was Mary D. Morris, who was born in St. Clair County, Missouri, in 1844, and died in Cooper County in 1913. They were old-fashioned parents in that they brought into the world and did their best to train to honorable and useful manhood and womanhood a large number of children. These were ten in number and a brief record of them is as follows: Minnie is the wife of Oliver Groves, a farmer and stock man in Cooper County, Missouri; Annie married Holbert, a brother of Oliver Groves, and they live on a farm in Cooper County; Alfred is a farmer in Cooper County; the next in order of age is Hugh M .; Mary, who lives at Bunceton, Missouri, is the widow of Robert Davis, who was a farmer; Martha married Alfred White, a farmer in Cooper County; Nannie is the wife of Robert Franks, a farmer in Oregon County, Missouri; Ada, who died in 1900, married William Davis, who is a farmer in Cooper County; Alma is the wife of Fred Shrout, who owns a farm near Bunceton, in Cooper County; and George V., who was graduated from the Warrensburg Normal School of Missouri with a life certificate to teach in that state, and also has a life certificate in Texas, and is now identified with school work at McAllen in Hidalgo County in Southern Texas.

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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