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. V, Part 69

Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 644

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. V > Part 69

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

GEORGE M. BURKHARDT. For a young man a little be- yond thirty, George M. Burkhardt has had a long busi- ness experience and is well established as one of the proprietors and the active manager of the abstract com- pany at Frederick in Tillman County.

Mr. Burkhardt represents the thrifty and substantial element of Texas citizenship that was introduced into that part of the Southwest from Germany. He was born at Round Top in Fayette County, Texas, December 3, 1884, a son of Louis G. and Bertha R. (Ullrich) Burk- hardt. His grandfather Burkhardt was born and mar- ried in Germany, came over with his family, and was an early farmer settler in Fayette County, Texas. The grandfather Adam George Ullrich was born in Baden, Germany, and at the age of eighteen crossed the ocean and settled on a farm in Fayette County, Texas. He was employed by the owner of the farm, but later bought the place, and still lives ou that farm, which is

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crossed by the line between Fayette and Washington counties, Texas. He was born in 1834, and is thus more than fourscore years of age. Louis G. Burkhardt was born in Fayette County, Texas, in 1853, and died ncar Round Top on his farm in 1887. He and his brother and a sister owned 270 acres near that village. He was a member of the Lutheran Church. His wife, Bertha R. Ullrich, was also born in Fayette County, and is now living in Washita County, Oklahoma. Their children were: Lina, the wife of Ernest Stein, farming people in Washita County, Oklahoma; Lizzie, wife of Gottlieb Stehr, a farmer in Custer County, Oklahoma; George M .; Amanda, who married Oscar Hoepfner, a farmer in Washita County, Oklahoma; and Katy, wife of Henry Funk, who lives in the Town of Bessie, Oklahoma. After the death of Louis G. Burkhardt his widow married C. H. Koch. He was born in Hesse, Germany, emigrated to Fayette County, Texas, and later to Washita County, Oklahoma, where he died in 1909. The children of this second marriage are: Justus Koch, who is a farmer in Washita County, Oklahoma; Otto Koch, also a farmer in the same county; Blandina, who is employed in the telephone office at Hobart in Kiowa County, Oklahoma; Christian, a farmer in Washita County; and Adam, a farmer in the same county.

George M. Burkhardt received more or less regular instruction in the public schools of Round Top up to the age of nine, at which time his mother removed to Cop- peras Cove, Texas, where he continued school attend- ance up to the age of fourteen. At that date he showed an indication of the reliance which has always charac- terized him by running away from home, and returning to his native Village of Round Top, continued his studies in the German language for two years. He then returned to Copperas Cove and was employed on his mother's farm up to the age of twenty. In 1904, realizing the need of better educational preparation, Mr. Burkhardt entered the Hills Business College at Waco, Texas, and after completing his course there engaged in the real estate business at Holland in Bell County, Texas, for two months. His next location was at Belton, the county scat of Bell County, where he was in the abstract business in the employ of A. M. Montieth up to the summer of 1907. At that time Mr. Burkhardt identified himself with Lawton, Oklahoma, but on the 18th of November of the same year entered the employ of the Moncrief Cook Company in the abstract business, and on Febru- ary 28, 1909, came to Frederick to represent the same company. In 1910 E. J. Schowalter and Mr. Burkhardt bought the Moncrief Company's interests in the abstract business and Mr. Burkhardt has since had the sole man- agement of this important concern, since Mr. Schowalter is vice president of the Chattanooga State Bank of Chat- tanooga, Oklahoma. Mr. Burkhardt's offices are in the rear of the First National Bank Building.

Up to the summer of 1912 Mr. Burkhardt was a regu- lar republican, but has since been affiliated with the democratic party. He has served as councilman in Fred- erick from the Third Ward and is now secretary of the board of education. Fraternally his affiliations are with Belton Lodge No. 51 of the Knights of Pythias in Texas, with the Brotherhood of American Yeomen and his church is the German Lutheran.

On October 22, 1910, at Lawton, Oklahoma, Mr. Burk- hardt married Miss Sadie S. Cory, daughter of W. H. Cory, who resides at Douglas, Arizona, where he and his son Walter C. Cory conduct a garage. Mr. and Mrs. Burkhardt have two children: Frances Blandina, born August 31, 1911; and Laureada Lavelle, born April 8, 1914.

GRANVILLE T. AYERS. In the year succeeding that in which Oklahoma was admitted to statehood Mr. Ayers became a teacher in the public schools of Beaver County, and during the intervening period he has continued as one of the prominent and influential figures in the edu- cational affairs of this western section of the state, his broad pedagogic experience and his marked executive ability having met with consistent recognition when, in the autumn of 1914, he was elected county superintendent of schools, a position in which his administration is fully justifying the popular choice for the incumbent of this important office and is proving potent in advancing the standard of general school work in Beaver County. Mr. Ayers has been identified with educational work for virtually twenty years and has honored his chosen profession by his character, his scholarly attainments and his worthy achievement. As one of the representative citizens and valued officials of Beaver County he is specially entitled to specific recognition in this history of the state of his adoption.

In Wayne County, Illinois, Mr. Ayers was born on the 9th of April, 1874, and the place of his nativity was far from being one of sumptuous order, though it was a true home in which comfort and refinement were in evidence,- a log house of the pioneer type being at the time the parental domicile on one of the excellent farms of the county mentioned and the place being owned and opera- ted by the father of the future Oklahoma pedagogue. Superintendent Ayers is a son of Robert S. and Sa- mantha (Newman) Ayers, the former of whom was born in Gibson County, Indiana, in 1831, and the latter of whom was born in Kentucky, in 1841. Robert S. Ayers is a son of Christopher Ayers, who likewise was born in Indiana, where his parents settled in the earlier pioneer era in the history of that state. The entire active career of Robert S. Ayers has been marked by close association with the basic industries of agriculture and stock raising, in connection with which he continued his operations in Indiana until 1870, when he removed with his family to Wayne County, Illinois, where he developed and improved a valuable farm and where he is now living retired, in the city of Fairfield, the county seat, his eighty-fourth birthday anniversary having been celebrated in 1915. He was a personal friend of Abra- ham Lincoln, whom he accompanied on the latter's can- vass during the historic Lincoln and Douglas campaign, in 1860. In 1855 was solemnized his marriage to Miss Samantha Newman, a daughter of Turner Newman, who was a native of Kentucky. Her grandfather, John Henry Newman, was a native of England and came to the United States in 1824 and settled on Duck River, Kentucky, where he purchased 2,000 acres of valley land, the original deed to this property being now in the possession of his great-grandson, Granville T. Ayers, subject of this review. Mrs. Samantha Ayers passed the closing period of her gentle and gracious life at Fair- field, Illinois, where she died in the year 1901. Of the five children the only son is he to whom this sketch is dedicated and who was the fourth in order of birth. Estella, who was born in 1856, is the wife of John MeLain, and they have five children, -- Homer, Lena, Or- rin, Paul and Kathryn. Wilmoth, who was born in 1858, is the wife of Solon Hill and has three children,-Ayers, Earl and Katerine. Jesse May, born in 1860, is the wife of James Monroe and they have four children, Orilla, who was born in 1862, is the wife of Robert Lewis, of Louisville, Clay County, Illinois, and they have one child.

After duly availing himself of the advantages of the public schools of Wayne County, Illinois, Granville T. Ayers completed an effective course of higher study in Hayward College, at Fairfield, that county, and at the

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age of twenty-two years he initiated his pedagogic career as a teacher in the public schools of his native state, where he continued his labors as an educator for a period of twelve years, during two of which he was an instruc- tor in the Illinois State Reform School, at Pontiac.

In 1908 Mr. Ayers came to Oklahoma and engaged in teaching in the schools of Beaver County, his services in this capacity having continued until he was elected to his present office, that of county superintendent of schools, in the autumn of 1914, since which time he has worked with characteristic zeal and efficiency in the broader field of educational activity. He is a stalwart supporter of the cause of the republican party, is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, and both he and his wife hold membership in the Christian Church.

On the 22d of October, 1914, was solemnized the mar- riage of Mr. Ayers to Miss Mary White, who had been a popular teacher in the schools of Clay County, Illi- nois for eight years prior to her marriage. Mrs. Ayers was born in Posey County, Indiana, on the 20th of Sep- tember, 1885, and in the same county were born her parents, Joseph and Mary (Montgomery) White. Mr. and Mrs. Ayers represent a distinct intellectual and moral force in their home community and also are zealous in the furtherance of high civic ideals and all things that make for the educational, moral and material welfare of their home city and county, where their circle of friends is coincident with that of their acquaintances, Mrs. Ayers being a leader in church and social activities at Beaver.

C. GUY CUTLIP. While Mr. Cutlip has for a number of years been successfully practicing law in Seminole County, with office and home at Wewoka, he is a pioneer white resident of old Oklahoma, and witnessed or parti- cipated in three different land openings. He was with his father at the beginning of settlement in the original Oklahoma, was at the opening of the Kickapoo, Sac and Fox reservations, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reserva- tion, and the Cherokee Strip in 1893. He has interested himself in many of the important activities of Oklahoma during the last fifteen years, and though still young occupies a position of prominence in his section of the state.

He was born near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, April 6, 1881, a son of T. G. and Susan (Mills) Cutlip. His father was born near Parkersburg, West Virginia, and his mother in Tennessee. She was a daughter of Capt. William N. Mills, who was in the Confederate army under General Forrest, and after the war moved to Mis- souri and still later to Kansas. T. G. Cutlip went to Kansas in 1871 as a pioneer, was married near Medicine Lodge, and for some years was actively engaged in the cattle business in Western Kansas, until the destructive year 1886 brought about the loss of all his stock. He was a college graduate in law, and since then he has been in active practice in Oklahoma. From Medicine Lodge he moved to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in 1889, the year of the original opening of Oklahoma, and in 1895 located at Tecumseh, where his wife died in 1902 at the age of forty-three. T. G. Cutlip is still living in Tecum- seh and in the active practice of law. There were three children: C. Guy; William, who is secretary of the street railway at Muskogee and also at Shawnee; and Roy, of Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

C. Guy . Cutlip lived at home with his parents until 1901. He had a common school education, later studied law privately, and he and his wife also took several courses in the University of Oklahoma. Mr. Cutlip has been a resident of Wewoka since 1901.

As a young man he learned stenography and served

as court stenographer at Tecumseh for three years, serv- ing under Judge J. D. F. Jennings, and then for a number of years was with the firm of Cutlip & Blakeney. He was admitted to the bar at Tecumseh and was later given a license by the Supreme Court to practice in all the courts of the territory and later of the state. He was formally admitted to the Oklahoma bar January 21, 1908, soon after statehood.

For several years after moving to Wewoka Mr. Cutlip was cashier of the Exchange Bank and was also in the abstract business. After statehood he was appointed deputy county attorney, a post he held until 1910, and since that year he has been handling a large private clientage as a lawyer. He also has some gas and oil interests, and was one of the original stockholders and helped secure the leaseholds of the Black Panther Oil & Gas Company. At the present time he owns farming lands, handles stock and controls the operation of nearly 1,000 acres. In politics he is a democrat and in Masonry was for three years deputy grand master.

On March 22, 1903, Mr. Cutlip married Amo Butts at Tecumseh, Oklahoma, a daughter of Judge A. W. Butts. They have one child, Maxine, who is now ten years of age. Mr. Cutlip is the possessor of one of the most extensive literary libraries in the state.

ROBERT B. BRETZ. In the year 1891, which marked the opening of the newly organized Territory of Okla- homa to settlement, by presidential proclamation, Robert B. Bretz, the present county treasurer of the important county designated by the name of Canadian, became one of its pioneer settlers, and he has been closely and worthily identified with the development and upbuilding of this section of the state, where he owns and has effected the excellent improvement of the fine tract of land which he obtained by "making the run" when the former district of the Cheyenne Nation was opened for colonization. He has been one of the alert, progressive and public-spirited citizens of Canadian County, has given his co-operation in the furtherance of measures and enterprises that have conserved civic and industrial advancement, and that he has gained impregnable place in popular esteem is shown by his having been called to serve in the important fiscal office of which he is the present incumbent and the duties of which he assumed in July, 1915.

Of stanch German and Irish lineage, Mr. Bretz is a scion of a family that was founded in Pennsylvania in the colonial era of our national history, though he himself is a native of the Province of Ontario, Canada, his birth having occurred in County Oxford on April 8, 1861. He is a son of Gerhardt and Elizabeth (Jacobs) Bretz, the former a native of the Province of Ontario, Canada, and the latter of whom was born in the State of New York, of Irish lineage. Of the five children of this union Annie and Eliza are deceased, and the three surviving are Robert B., Elizabeth and William, all of whom reside in the State of Oklahoma. The mother passed the closing years of her life in the Province of Ontario and years later the father came to Oklahoma, where he resided in the home of his son, William, until he, too, was called to eternal rest at a venerable age. Gerhardt Bretz was a son of Jacob Bretz, who likewise was born in the Province of Ontario and whose father, Jacob Bretz, Sr., a native of Lancaster County, Pennsyl- vania, was a member of a Mennonite colony that immi- grated from the old Keystone State and settled in the Province of Ontario, Canada, in the pioneer days. The original progenitor of the Bretz family in America im- migrated from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania prior to the war of the Revolution, and the German

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language was retained by the family until the fifth generation in America preceding that of which the sub- ject of this review is a representative. Gerhardt Bretz was a carriage and wagon maker by trade and followed this vocation in the Province of Ontario for many years.

Robert B. Bretz received a good common school educa- tion in his native province, where also he completed a course and was graduated in the Guelph Business College. At the age of twenty-one years he assumed the position of bookkeeper in a hardware establishment in the City of Detroit, Michigan, but eighteen months later he re- signed and joined a company of Canadian colonists who went to the State of Louisiana and settled ou the old Stephanie Plantation, in St. Martin's Parish. In the purchase and operation of this plantation success failed to attend the colonists, and the property was finally sold to Kansas capitalists. Soon afterward, in 1891, Mr. Bretz came to the Territory of Oklahoma, where he was employed on the Mumford Johnston Ranch until the opening of the Cheyenne District to settlement, when he made the run and selected a homestead claim in what is now Canadian County. For a period of five years there- after he was compelled to make a vigorous contest to retain his homestead, his claim to which was made a matter of prolonged litigation, but he was eventually able to perfect his title to the property, which he still owns and which he has developed into one of the valuable farms of the county, though he maintains his residence in the City of El Reno, the county seat, where he estab- lished his home prior to assuming his present county office.

Mr. Bretz has been active and influential in public affairs in Canadian County and is here a prominent and influential figure in the local councils and activities of the democratic party. In 1910 he was elected county clerk, and the appreciative estimate placed upon his administration of the affairs of this office was indicated in his re-election in 1912 for a second term of two years. His services as a public official were not permitted to terminate upon his retirement from this post, as in the election of 1914 he was chosen county treasurer. He met formidable opponents in this election but the voters of the county manifested their confidence and high regard by according to him a splendid majority at the polls, his assumption of office taking place in August, 1915, and the fiscal affairs of the county being assured of most careful and effective administration during his regime in this important office.

In the State of Louisiana, in 1910, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Bretz to Miss Edith Sowers, whose parents were early settlers in Nebraska, whence they came as pioneers to Canadian County, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Bretz have two children-Daisy and William.

COL. JOHN W. JORDAN, of Cleveland, Oklahoma, is one of the distinguished representatives of the old Cherokee Nation. He has lived in what is now the State of Oklahoma more than seventy years. In the flush of young manhood he allied himself, like many of his people, with the Confederate cause and fought gal- lantly and bravely through the war. Since the close of that struggle has come a period of half a century of fruitful enterprise and as cattle man, oil producer, town builder and land owner, he is widely known all over the state.

Born December 9, 1843, his birthplace was six miles east of the old Cherokee capital Tahlequah. His parents were Levi and Malinda (Riley) Jordan. Levi Jordan was born in the State of Maine of Scotch-Irish ancestry. He was one of nine boys born to his parents, and it may be that he thought nine were too many for one household,

since as a very young lad he rau away aud made his way west to Illinois. He was still a boy when he enlisted in the regular army, becoming a member of the second regiment of United States Dragoons. This regiment was assigned to duty in Western Louisiana, along the border between what was then the United States and the country of Mexico. Soou afterward Texas undertook to win its independence from Mexican dominion and the company of which he was a member broke away from its command, enlisted in the service of the Texas Patriots, and took a part in the capture of Santa Ana and the winning of independence for the Lone Star Republic. After five years in the army Levi Jordan was honorably discharged with his regiment at Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, then one of the frontier posts in what is now Oklahoma. He remained in the Cherokee Nation after his discharge, took up work as a brick mason, and married there one of the Cherokee daughters. After two years she died, and Levi Jordan went abroad to Europe. After the close of the Civil war he returned to his native land, and died some place in the West. By his wife Malinda Riley he left one child, Col. John W. Jordan, who was reared by his maternal grandmother Riley. The Riley family came from the North of Ireland in colonial days and they intermarried with the Cherokees before the removal of the tribe west of the Mississippi.

Such were the circumstances of his birth and ancestry. John W. Jordan grew up in the Cherokee Nation, at- tended the Cherokee schools and learned both the English and Cherokee languages. He was just seventeen years of age when he enlisted in 1861 under the famous Gen. Stan Watie. With that contingent of Indian troops he served with the Confederacy until the close of the war. He saw much fighting from first to last, and did not escape unscathed. On July 17, 1863, at the battle of Honey Springs, southwest of Muskogee on Elk Creek, a minnie ball struck young Jordan in his belt and passed through his body. He still has the belt, with holes showing front and back. For two months a kindly woman cared for him, and he is firmly convinced that had he been taken to a field hospital his life could not have been saved. When he had been nursed back to comparative strength the young soldier returned to his regiment and was with it until the close of the war.

Since the war Colonel Jordan has taken a very promi- nent part in the United Confederate Veterans. At the time of statehood he was serving as major-general of the Indian Territory Division of the Confederate Veterans organization, and he took his division to Richmond at the unveiling of the Jefferson Davis monument during the Confederate reunion in that city.

After the war Colonel Jordan went to Texas and be- came extensively identified with the cattle business. Representing a number of wealthy Texans in the handling of their immense herds, he spent nine years on the free range, a life he loved so well. In 1873, returning to the Cherokee Nation, Colonel Jordan settled on a farm and since then has occupied himself independently as a cattle raiser. At the same time his service has been valuable to his people. He served as a Cherokee special agent in charge of the "outlet" or "strip" before its opening to settlement in 1893. In safeguarding the property rights of the Cherokees he carried a commission under Federal Judge I. C. Parker and also a United States Commission under Robert L. Owen, who was United States agent of the Five Civilized Tribes. He was the first settler on Cherokee land west of 96 I. M. in 1883, ten years before the strip or outlet was opened to settlement. Many legal battles were fought in an effort to remove Cherokee settlers from the land prior to the formal opening, but Judge Parker's ruling was favorable

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to those who entered that part of the domain before the Cherokees sold the strip to the United 'States.

Concerning Colonel Jordan's relations with what is known as "the triangle country," now part of Pawnee County, Oklahoma, a recent writer in Sturm's Oklahoma Magazine tells the story and some quotations should be made: "It was not until January, 1883, that any per- manent settlement was made. At that time J. W. Jordan, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, built the first perma- nent house in the triangle. He was the first Cherokee settler and his daughter Miss Dixie Jordan was the first Cherokee child born in the strip. This settlement had a greater significance than the mere fact that in the triangle was the first Cherokee settlement, for it also served as the hinge upon which hung greater events. It will be remembered that when David Payne organized his 'boomers' he first entered the Cherokee strip and was several times removed. Mr. Jordan at the time held a commission as special agent for the Cherokees, was deputy . United States marshal, and a scout under the war depart- ment." The Cherokee Cattlemen's Association occupied the strip by lease, and when their case was brought to trial Judge Parker ruled that the lands were given to the Indians by patent in fee and that they had not abandoned them inasmuch as they were held through their agent, the cattlemen; furthermore, he said that they were not abandoned, because J. W. Jordan, a Cherokee citizen, was an actual resident of the strip or outlet.

The same article recounts many of Mr. Jordan's early experiences with the outlaws, particularly members of the Dalton gang, which in the early days infested the regions of Northern Oklahoma.

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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: 644

Author: Thoburn, Joseph B. (Joseph Bradfield), 1866-1941
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 644