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 9

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 9

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LEROY H. KEYS of Bartlesville is a sterling representa- tive of the old Cherokee Nation. He is a native of the Cherokee Nation, and has spent most of his life in and around the present site of Bartlesville, where his busi-

ness activities and his civic influence have couuted for much in local development. As a farmer, oil man, prop- erty owner, he has been known for his successful man- agement of every enterprise he has undertaken. He is a genial gentleman, a wholesome and public spirited citizen aud a man whom the Bartlesville community counts as one of its livest and most esteemed citizens.

Born in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, March 16, 1864, he was the only son of Isaac W. and Jane (Ramsey) Keys. His mother died when he was an infant. Both parents were natives of the Southern States, and were part blooded Cherokees. When that tribe was removed west of the Mississippi River during the '30s, Isaac Keys went along, and he and his wife spent the rest of their lives in the new district set aside for the homes of the Indians. The history of the family is thus closely associated with the history of Indian Territory from the very beginning. Isaac Keys was a Southern sympathizer and fought with Gen. Stand Waitie during the Civil war, and most of the family were Confederates, either actively or in sympathy. Isaac Keys was one of sixteen children, and some of them were in both armies, including his brothers George and Judge Riley Keys, who allied themselves with the Northern forces.

Aside from his participation in the struggle between the North and South Isaac Keys devoted most of his life to farming and stock raising. He was honest and honorable, stood high in the community, and his death, in the spring of 1887, marked the passing of one of the worthy old time citizens of what is now Eastern Okla- homa. By his second marriage he had no children, and by a third marriage the three daughters were: Jessie, now deceased, married Sam Jordan and left a daughter Ruby M., who is now living with her grandparents; Nellie, deceased; and Myrtle, who lives at Nowata, Okla- homa. There were also four orphan children reared in the home of Isaac Keys. Three of them were the Cobb boys, William, John and Mack, William having died some years ago, while the other two are prominent in Nowata County. The other orphan reared in the Keys house- hold was Georgia Russell, whom Mr. Leroy Keys has always esteemed as an own sister. She first married James Stokes, and their children were as follows: Floyd, deceased; Olive, who married Tom Mix and has one child, Ruthe; Gretta, who married L. C. Rothe, and they have one child, Russell. After the death of James Stokes she married Walter Brown, and they now reside north of Bartlesville.

With such sterling family associations, it is not sur- prising that Leroy H. Keys has always been extremely loyal to the country which gave him birth, and his own accomplishments have brought him the highest rank among the influential citizens of Indian blood in Okla- homa. Almost his entire career has been spent in the Cherokee Nation and Oklahoma State, with the exception of four years, 1885-88, in Santa Rosa, California. As a boy he acquired a common school education, and his early life was spent in working on cattle ranches. He has been accustomed to meeting hardships and dangers and has never flinched from the responsibilities of existence. For many years he has been an active and prosperous farmer, and with other members of the family received his allotment of eighty acres, which now con- stitutes one of the valuable tracts of land in Washing- ton County .. For two and a half years, up to April, 1915, he was proprietor of a livery establishmeut in Bartlesville, but then sold out, and is now giving his attention to his farming interests. There are several oil wells on his property and he has not only shared in the great material wealth of this section of the

Leroy At Keys

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state, but has also helped to create and utilize those abundant resources.

In early times Mr. Keys herded cattle over the present site of Bartlesville as an employe of P. L. Yocum. In 1876 he accompanied his father on a trip to Colorado, from which state they returned in the spring of 1877. That was a journey which he recalls with a great deal of interest, since he saw some buffaloes, then being rapidly dissipated and soon to disappear almost entirely from the great plains, and he also saw a great many antelope. In 1901 Mr. Keys participated in the rush of new settlers into the Kiowa and Comanche country in Southwestern Oklahoma. Though he sold his business as a liveryman he is still owner of the building in which it is conducted and he owns several other pieces of good property in Bartlesville.

Special mention should be made of the handsome home which he built at a cost of $6,000, and is located at 918 Cherokee Avenue, in Bartlesville. It is not only one of the beautiful places of the city from the standpoint of material structure, but it is also a real home in comfort and family associations, and within its walls Mr. Keys finds his chief pleasure. On May 8, 1891, he married Miss Belle Thomas, who was born in Arkansas June 11, 1869, and came to Indian Territory when a young lady. Her father, who was born in Jackson County, Alabama, spent his life as a farmer, and married Miss Lavinia West, who was a native of Crawford County, Arkansas. In the Thomas family were four sons and two daughters, and all of them lived either in or near Bartlesville. Mr. and Mrs. Keys have five children: Albert Leroy, a farmer in Washington County, married Hattie Montgomery. The second child is Pearl. Raymond W. was married in June, 1915, to Miss Jeanette White- turkey, and they have an infant daughter named Maxine. Olive M. is still at home with her parents. The other child, Lela J., died at the age of three years.

E. P. CLARK. An atmosphere of romance surrounds the experiences of the hardy pioneers in the several historic land openings of Oklahoma, and it would be a volume of surpassing interest which might select and give record to the many narratives heard from the lips of those early settlers. Numerous little incidents in the life of E. P. Clark, now manager of the Chicka- sha Milling Company at Verden, make his career an extraordinary one. When he is in the proper mood Mr. Clark can relate experiences that furnish a delight- ful and refreshing hour to his audience. He lacks only two months of being an Oklahoma Eighty-niner, and was a participant in three Oklahoma openings, those of the Cherokee Strip, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Country and the Kiowa and Comanche district. His travels have been transcontinental in the seeking and establishing of homes, but most of twenty-six years have been spent in Oklahoma.

E. P. Clark was born in Monmouth, Illinois, August 5, 1866, a son of Horace and Jeanette (Coutlet) Clark. On both sides the ancestry goes back before the Revo- lutionary period in American history. One of the maternal ancestors came to America with Lafayette and fought under that great Frenchman during the war for independence. Horace Clark, the father, died at Medford, Oregon, in 1914, at the age of seventy-six. Mr. E. P. Clark has a half brother, Carl B. Clark, who is an instructor in engineering in a college in New York State.

Mr. Clark's first schooling was in Janesville, Wisconsin, to which place his father removed when the former was a small boy. The next year the family moved to New York and in that state he attended a school at Sandy

Creek. The following year was spent in school at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and his common school education ended at Eldora, Iowa. As a young man he did farming at Anthony, Kansas.

These experiences sum up his career until he came to Oklahoma. Soon after the original Oklahoma opening in 1889, he conceived the idea of growing vegetables for the market in the new country. Buying a supply of garden seeds he dispatched John Freeman from Anthony, Kansas, to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, to put out the first garden. Later, after Mr. Clark had concluded an assignment in a salt plant in Kansas, and with only a few dollars for expenses, he set out on foot for Okla- homa. Settlements were few in the new country and it was wild and much frequented by bad men. His journey first led him to Bluff City and later to the Crisine Ranch, in what was then the Cherokee Strip. At that ranch he rested for a time, and then resumed his journey on foot, arriving in due time at Pond Creek, where he fell in with a man driving an ox team. They were companions for several days in the tedious journey towards the promised land, getting poor and insufficient food all the way. Their destination was Hennessey, and on the day of their arrival Mr. Clark was approached by George Bear, a druggist, who asked him to sign a petition for the removal of the county seat from King- fisher to Hennessey. Clark protested that he was not a citizen of the territory, having just arrived, but his name went on the petition.

After a few days he reached Kingfisher and found that Freeman had arrived there with his garden seed and was well on the way toward a lucrative income. Mr. Clark's money was all gone and he set about working at odd jobs to pay for his food. Working with him was Amos Ewing, called "Shorty" in those days, who after- wards became one of the leading men in republican poli- ties in the territory and was a member of the recent Fifth Legislature, from Logan County. Mr. Clark dug post-holes and cellars and worked as a section hand until he had saved fifty dollars, which he invested in a bakery at Hennessey. He sold this later and entered the fur trade, which he followed for several years in Oklahoma and Kansas. It is of interest that he was employed for a time in a store belonging to Fred Ehler, who remains one of the picturesque pioneer citizens of Hennessey. Later he entered the milling business under George H. Block, who is another of the interesting char- acters of the early days and a well known capitalist and lumber dealer of the present day. With the excep- tion of a short time spent in Lee's Summit, Missouri, Mr. Clark has continued uninterruptedly in the milling business, as salesman and plant manager. He has been manager of the Chickasha Milling Company 's plant at Verden about a year. In coming back to Oklahoma in 1914 to take the Verden station of this company, he found luck lurking in numbers of ill reputation. He came out of door No. 13 in the Union Station at Kansas City, took train No. 23 and arrived in his office at Chickasha on Friday the 13th.

Mr. Clark was married twenty-one years ago at Hen- nessey, to Miss Grace L. Fowler. The half-brother of Mrs. Clark, Harry Fowler, has lived with them as a member of the family, but at the present time is in Alaska. The five children are named Horace, Helen, Henry, Hazel and Herbert. Mr. Clark is affiliated with the Improved Order of Red Men and was formerly a member of the United Commercial Travelers and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. He was a member of the first grand lodge 'of Red Men in Oklahoma and assisted in its organization. He is a member of the

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Retailers Association and the Commercial Club at Verden, and for two terms was city clerk at Hennessey.

JOHN LINSY ALLEN. One of the oldest cattlemen in the Panhandle district of Oklahoma is John Linsy Allen, whose home is now at Boise City, Oklahoma, where he is assistant postmaster, his wife, Mrs. Allen, being the chief in that office. Mr. Allen is also a prominent democrat in his section of the state and is widely known among all the cattlemen of that district.

He was born October 21, 1871, in a log house on a farm in Hancock County, Illinois, a son of James T. and Mary M. (Phillips) Allen. His father, who was a son of Ethean Allen, a native of New York and of Scotch ancestry, was also born in Hancock County, Illinois, April 1, 1846, and has been a prominent stockman all his active career. From Illinois he moved to Missouri in 1872, when his son, John, was about one year old, and for eleven years farmed and raised stock in Sullivan County. Iu 1883 he went to Kansas, continued cattle raising on the open range in Clark County for two years, and then went still further west to Las Animas County, Colorado. There he engaged in the cattle busi- ness for eighteen years, and for nine years operated a large ranch in No Man's Land of Oklahoma. In 1914 he retired, and is now living at Lamar, Colorado. In 1868 he married Miss Phillips, a daughter of Brice and Lavina Phillips, who were natives of Pennsylvania. Mrs. Allen was born November 16, 1848, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. To their marriage were born five sons, all of whom are still living: Alfred B., born in 1869, is now postmaster at Lobatos, Colorado; John L. is the second son; Crittenden E., born in 1875, is a cattlemau in Cimarron County, Oklahoma; Thomas Eldon, born in 1878, is now county judge of Baca County, Colorado; and Charles Alva, born in 1882 is a beet sugar manu- facturer at Rocky Ford, Colorado.

John Linsy Allen received his early education in the public schools of Sullivan County, Missouri, and in Las Animas County, Colorado. When only eighteen he took up the life of a cowboy on the open range and was employed by various outfits and also on his own account in Indian Territory, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana for a period of seventeen years. In recent years his operations have been confined to the states of Colorado and Oklahoma, and he is particularly well known in the old No Man's Land of Oklahoma.

In 1910 Mr. Allen was elected a member of the board of county commissioners of Cimarron County and was re-elected in 1912, giving four years of his time and attention to that office. He is very influential in the democratic organization. On February 4, 1915, at Boise City, Oklahoma, he married Miss Adalee Allison, who was born in Texas November 20, 1885. Mrs. Allen com- pleted her education in the University of Chicago and for a number of years prior to her marriage was engaged in teaching. In 1915 she was appointed postmaster of Boise City. Fraternally Mr. Allen is a Knight Templar Mason and also an Odd Fellow.

HERBERT E. SMITH. It is as a lawyer of broad and varied experience that Mr. Smith is chiefly identified with the State of Oklahoma, where he has lived since 1908. His home and offices are in Okmulgee, where he has gained prominence and success as a general attorney, but much of his practice is connected with land, oil and gas interests and litigation.

A Virginian by birth, he is of an old and interesting family of that commonwealth. Born in Petersburg, Vir- ginia, August 22, 1871, he is a son of E. D. T. and Mary Elizabeth (Pace) Smith. His parents were also born in

Virginia, and both families were of colonial stock. The great-grandfather Smith came from Scotland and located in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. In the successive gener- ations there have been representatives of the family in every important war iu which this country has had a part. Mr. Smith's parents both died in Virginia in 1912, their deaths occurring only twenty days apart. His father was aged ninety and his mother eighty. The father spent most of his active career as a farmer, and at one time served as mayor of his home city of Peters- burg. He was a Confederate soldier throughout the Civil war under the command of General William Mahone. He was captured near Norfolk, and was one of the men drawn by lot to be shot by the Federal authorities. He escaped when Lee informed Grant that if Confederate prisoners were put to death he would shoot three Federals for every Confederate so put to death. One of Mr. Smith's most interesting possessions is the diary kept by his father for many years and detail- ing many of his experiences while a soldier. He escaped from the northern prison in which he was held, and was shot three times while swimming in Chesapeake Bay. All of Mr. Smith's uncles were soldiers in the Civil war, and at three different times the northern and southern armies were engaged in fighting on the old Smith homestead at Petersburg.

Herbert E. Smith was one of seven sons, and his only brother now living is John Edward of Bradentown, Florida. Three members of the Smith family lost their lives during that brief but victorious conflict with Spain.

Reared on a farm, Herbert E. Smith has largely made his own way in the world. He acquired a common school education and at the age of sixteen he went to Rochester, New York, and found employment at various occupa- tions, keeping up his studies in night school. He studied law with Judge J. M. Mullen at Petersburg, Virginia, and was admitted to the bar August 23, 1892, the day following his twenty-first birthday. He practiced law in his native state less than three years and then went to Buffalo, New York, where he was admitted to practice in June, 1895. In 1898 he went to the Island of Porto Rico, where for six years he was engaged in practice as a lawyer and was the first American attorney to open an office on that island. In March, 1905, Mr. Smith went to Washington, D. C., and practiced as member of a law firm of that city until he came to Okmulgee, Okla- homa, on May 24, 1908.

In politics Mr. Smith is a republican. He is a traveler who has seen a great deal of the world, and has prac- tically visited all the important countries of the globe, his travels having been especially extensive in South America and Alaska. He is a man of many interests, and has the genial nature which makes him hosts of friends. In 1901 he married Cora M. Belden, who was born in Chautauqua County, New York, and who is directly related to the Curtis and Van Rensselaer families of old colonial New York stock.

GUY BARTON VAN SANDT, M. D. From the point of continuous practice Doctor Van Sandt is the oldest physician and surgeon at Wewoka. Soon after taking his degree of medicine he located in that little city in Eastern Oklahoma twelve years ago and has since been shown every mark of appreciation and favor in his capacity as a physician and also as a citizen and good worker for community welfare.

He was born at Montrose, Illinois, November 14, 1878, a son of Dr. H. G. and Henrietta F. (Morton) Van Sandt. His grandfather, John Van Sandt, was a native of Kentucky, but was an ardent abolitionist, was con- nected with the underground railway, and figured in a

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notable fugitive slave case. He was convicted before one court of having assisted fugitive slaves to escape to the North, but he carried the case to the Supreme Court, where he was defended by such notable attorneys as Chase and Stone. His character is also preserved in literature, and he is the figure known as Van Trump in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Dr. H. G. Van Sandt was born at Glendale, Ohio, in 1843, and served throughout the Civil war, having enlisted in the three months service with the 12th Ohio Regiment, and afterwards going to Illinois and enlisting in Com- pany I of the 125th Illinois Infantry. The greater part of his military service was spent as a scout, and he was detailed with Captain Powell. After the war he took up the practice of medicine in Missouri, remained there four years, then spent two years in the St. Louis Medical College and located permanently at Montrose, Illinois, where he carried on an active practice until his death in 1906. He also took a prominent part in republican politics, was a member of the Masonic Lodgs, and affiliated with the Grand Army of the Republic. His wife, Henrietta F. Morton, was born in Iowa in 1849, was reared in Jacksonville, Illinois, coming of a staunch Presbyterian family, and of old Boston and Mass- achusetts stock. She was married in Jacksonville in 1872, and she is still living, her home being at Montrose, Illinois. Of the eight children, the first three died in infancy. The oldest of those living is Dr. Van Sandt, John Arthur died in 1912; Harrison G. lives at Mont- rose, Illinois; Vallie V. is the wife of Harry Jenuine at Greenup, Illinois; Leona lives with her mother.

Doctor Van Sandt spent his early youth in Montrose graduated from high school, took a course in Whipple Academy at Jacksonville, Illinois, at Austin College in Effingham, and took the greater part of his medical work in Barnes Medical College of St. Louis, where he was graduated M. D. in 1903.

On January 1, 1904, Doctor Van Zandt began practice at Wewoka, and while he was not the first physician to locate there, he has seen those who were here when he came leave or retire, and thus he is the oldest practitioner and also is a recognized leader in his profession. He is a member of the county and state medical societies and the American Medical Association and belongs to the Railway Surgeons' Association.

On April 9, 1903, Doctor Van Sandt married Miss Lucile M. Cuddy. The marriage ceremony was per- formed by John D. Vincil, who also gave him his medical diploma. Mr. Vincil was grand secretary of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Missouri. Mrs. Van Sandt was born in Kansas, but was reared chiefly in Oklahoma, being a daughter of Joseph and Emma (Suppiger) Cuddy. They have one son, Max. Doctor Van Sandt is a republican, has served as county chairman, and in Masonry is affili- ated with the thirty-second degree Consistory, with the Mystic Shrine and is also a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

GEORGE W. PULLEN. From a primeval landscape that marked sections of the picturesque Cherokee Nation a quarter of a century ago Hon. George W. Pullen, rep- resentative of Murray County in the Fifth Legisla- ture of Oklahoma, has evolved a picture that affords an effective presentment of progress, prosperity and culture. This depicture in a material way represents his fine and essentially modern farmstead of 153 acres, two miles distant from the thriving little City of Davis. On the farm the purest of water flows in superabundance from streams and wells, the fertile soil brings forth its increase as one season follows another, and on the estate is to be found one of the finest farm residences in Mur- Vol. V-3

ray County, this attractive home being situated on a rise of ground and constituting one of the many evidences of peace, comfort, prosperity and appreciative enterprise in developing the splendid natural resources of that favored section of the state, where Mr. Pullen is known and honored as a progressive and public-spirited citizen.

George W. Pullen was born in Lawrence County, Ten- nesee, on the 20th of February, 1862, and is a son of Jesse and Mary (Atwell) Pullen, both likewise natives of Tennessee, to which state the parents of Jesse Pullen removed in an early day from Virginia. Jesse Pullen was a prosperous farmer of Tennessee and in that state both he and his wife passed their entire lives. He whose name initiates this article passed the period of his boy- hood and youth on the home farm and though his early educational advantages were limited to a somewhat irregular attendance in the local schools he early de- veloped a fondness for study and reading, showed ambi- tion in the acquirement of knowledge, and through individual application amply stored his retentive mind with information which well equipped him for the re- sponsibilities and productive activities of later years. He was but thirteen years of age at the time of his father's death and upon his youthful shoulders thus fell heavy responsibilities. He remained on the homestead farm until he was twenty-three years of age, and with all of filial solicitude provided for his widowod mother. At the age noted Mr. Pullen went to Alabama, in which state he remained three years, at the expiration of which he returned to Tennessee. Two years later, in 1892, he numbered himself among the pioneer settlers near Davis, Indian Territory. There he secured a tract of land in a section that was chiefly notable for its unreclaimed stretches of land, covered with sage brush and practically unsettled. Houses were few and widely separated and the population was very small. In the midst of the virgin wilds he erected a primitive dwelling and then essayed the task of developing a farm. That he has brought to bear much energy, discrimination and progres- siveness is best demonstrated in the extent and condition of his finely improved landed domain of the present day, and he is known as one of the leading agriculturists and stockgrowers of Murray County, where in recent years he has given special attention to the raising of high-grade Jersey cattle.

Liberal in the support of all measures and enterprises tending to advance the civic and material welfare of his home county, and known as a man of much acumen and judgment, Mr. Pullen naturally became influential in public affairs and his high standing in the community was shown by his election, in November, 1914, as repre- sentative of Murray County in the Fifth General As- sembly of the State Legislature. He proved a sincere, loyal and valuable working member of the House of Rep- resentative, in which he was assigned to the following named committees: Charities and corrections, roads and highways, manufacturing and commerce, and pure food and drugs. In his home county, at Sulphur, is situated the State School for the Deaf, and his interest in the same was shown significantly by his obtaining from the Fifth Legislature appropriations for the institution to the aggregate amount of $159,000, of which the sum of $20,500 is applied for the erection of new buildings. He introduced a bill requiring that the records of county officials be checked or audited every two years, but this bill was killed in the committee room. Another bill which he introduced and which met the same fate, made requirement that teachers in the public schools undergo medical examinations to determine whether or not they were afflicted with tuberculosis. Mr. Pullen was a

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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