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DR. H. COULTER TODD.
It is a proof of the rapid growth of Oklahoma City and its
assumption of metropolitan proportions, that professions and
industries have spread out into specialized forms here to
as great extent as in cities with a century of history behind
them. A few years ago one would not have looked for specialists
in medicine outside of the few largest Cities of the country,
and yet at the present time the larger cities of the southwest
have representatives of the different branches of the profession
with all the advantages of training and study that the best
schools of the world offer, and with talent and skill that
need not yield precedence to the best in America. Oklahoma
deserves and demands the highest talents and the greatest
industry that men possess, and in the sphere of medicine as
in other professions and industries there can be no question
that the demand bas been answered by men of the highest qualifications.
Dr. H. Coulter Todd, of Oklahoma City,
is a specialist in diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat,
who has availed himself of the highest facilities in post-graduate
work to fit himself for this department of special practice.
During the winter of 1905-06 he studied in London and other
European centers, principally in the Royal London Ophthalmologic
College and the Central London Throat and Ear Hospital. Since
then he has been practicing his specialty in partnership with
Dr. Buxton, another distinguished member of the medical profession
in Oklahoma City.
Dr. Todd has been identified with the practice
of medicine and surgery in Oklahoma. City since the fall of
1902, when he came from the east with the intention of building
a name and place for himself on his own merits, an end that
he has succeeded in attaining during the past five years.
He is president of the Central Oklahoma Medical Association,
having been elected in January, 1901, at the annual meeting
held in Enid; is also a member of the Oklahoma County and
the American Medical associations. In addition to his private
practice, Dr. Todd is secretary of the medical department
of the Epworth University, an institution which, although
of recent establishment, is in a flourishing condition, and
its faculty contains some of the most brilliant men in the
medical profession in the southwest. Dr. Todd is professor
of anatomy, of clinical otology, rhinology and laryngology.
Dr. Todd inherits his faculty of research and scholarly skill
from a line of ancestors who have been prominently represented
in the professions and in public and private life in America
since the colonial period. His parents were Rev. F. S.
and Sarah Elizabeth (Black) Todd. On the paternal side,
the Todds were a prominent Scotch family distinguished in
scholarship and professional ability, especially in theology.
Rev. F. S. Todd, who is still living, is and has peen for
a long number of years a minister of the Baptist church in
New Brunswick and the state of Maine. His father, Rev. Dr.
Thomas Todd (grandfather of Dr. Todd) was probably
the most distinguished of the family in the ministry, having
been widely known all over the Canadian provinces, not only
as a theologian and church dignitary, but as a profound scholar
whose
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learning comprehended many branches of knowledge
aside from his regular profession. He was one of the board
of regents of Acadia College in Nova Scotia, and in numerous
ways was distinguished in the field of letters and scholarship.Sarah
Elizabeth Black, Dr. Todd's mother, who is now deceased,
belongs to an American family of English origin, whose home
was in the colonies before the Revolution, but their allegiance
to the cause of the United Empire Loyalists estranged them
from their neighbors during the struggle for independence
and in consequence they moved to the Canadian provinces.
Dr. Todd was born in the province of New Brunswick,
at the town of Woodstock in 1874. Receiving the best of educational
advantages, he graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts
from Acadia College, Nova Scotia, in 1897, and has since received
the degree of Master of Arts from the same institution (Acadia
College is affiliated with Oxford University of England).
His medical education was acquired in the medical department
of Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, Maine, where he was graduated
as M. D. in the class of 1900. Until coming to Oklahoma he
practiced in the town of Brunswick. Dr. Todd was married at
the town of Calais, Maine, to Miss Carrie Eulilla Lenehan.
They have one child, Dane Lee Todd.
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cont.
DR. ARCHA K. WEST.
The present dean of the faculty of the medical department
of Epworth University, and likewise one of the founders of
this school, is Dr. Archa K. West, one of the ablest
physicians 'and surgeons of Oklahoma. Since locating in Oklahoma
City in 1899 he has achieved high success and distinction
in his profession, and besides having been so active in making
Epworth University medical department a strong factor in medical
education, has been honored in other ways to indicate his
high rank. He is ex-president of the Oklahoma Medical Association,
is a member of the various medical societies, including the
American Medical Association and in 1907 was selected as delegate
from the new state of Oklahoma to the annual convention of
the American Medical Association.
Besides a thorough equipment for practice obtained
in the regular courses of medical preparation, Dr. West during
his early life had a training that only a few physicians have,
even those living in the southwest. He was born at Waynesboro,
Mississippi, July 9, 1865, but lived there only thirteen years,
and at that age accompanied the family to Uvalde county, Texas.
For the following dozen years his chief activities and experience
were connected with the great Texas cattle range. He was a
real "cow puncher," and in that vocation rode his
cayuse all over western Texas from San Antonio to El Paso.
This sort of life gave him a training that he has found of
great practical value in his subsequent career. When he began
his professional preparation, he pursued most of his studies
at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, but finished
his medical education at the Memphis Hospital Medical College,
where he was graduated in the class of 1894. He first practiced
at Smithville, Bastrop county, Texas, until moving to Oklahoma
City in 1899. Here Dr. West is chief surgeon of the Oklahoma
Street Railway Co. Dr. West was married in Uvalde county,
Texas, to Miss Mary Hancock, and they have six children
Leonard H., Willis K., Leah P., Maury A., Gillean R. and
Katharine May.
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cont.
JOSEPH M. POSTELLE.
M. D., who fills the chairs of Materia Medica and Therapeutics
and of Gastro-Intestinal Diseases at Epworth University medical
school, is one of the prominent physicians of Oklahoma City,
where he has been engaged in practice since 1900. With a large
practice in general medicine he has also gained a distinctive
reputation as a specialist on diseases of the stomach. In
connection with his offices, it should be noted, he has a
general laboratory that has the most extensive and modern
equipment in the southwest, and is a much appreciated convenience
to the medical profession of Oklahoma City, particularly for
all kinds of chemical analyses, blood analyses, etc.
As a member of the faculty of Epworth University
medical school Dr. Postelle has been a very useful and energetic
worker, not only as an instructor in his special branches,
but for the improvement and upbuilding of the school. Both
as an educator and as a practitioner he has become a valuable
factor in the active citizenship of Oklahoma City. Dr. Postelle
was born in 1865, during a temporary residence of his parents
at Lafayette, Indiana. On the paternal side his ancestry is
French Hugenot, his great-
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grandfather coming from France to Virginia,
and the family later becoming identified with North Carolina
and east Tennessee. At the old family home at Ducktown in
east Tennessee, near the Carolina line, Dr. Postelle spent
his youthful years, attending the public schools and the Ducktown
Academy. His first study of medicine was under a private tutor,
Dr. L. Lankford, of Norfolk, Virginia, and he completed his
medical education by graduation from the Baltimore Medical
College in 1894. Before coming to Oklahoma City he was engaged
in practice at Ducktown. Dr. Postelle has advanced in proficiency
by constant study of the sciences connected with his profession.
At the Turck laboratories and Post-Graduate Medical School
of Chicago he took courses in diseases of the stomach, and
his private investigations consume a considerable share of
his time. He is a member of the staff of St. Anthony's Hospital,
and also a member of the county and state and the American
Medical Association. Dr. Postelle was married at Ducktown
to Miss Emma Bray of that town. She is a descendant
of a well known English family of that name. Their four children
are Joseph Fred, Guy, Ruth and Kathryn.
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cont.
DR. GEORGE DAVIDSON McLEAN
has practiced in Oklahoma City since September, 1902. He has
a large general practice in the city, and is one of the most
successful of the younger physicians. Professionally, he is
connected with the county, state and the Southwestern Medical
societies, and also the American Medical Association. Dr.
McLean, is a graduate of the medical department of the Vanderbilt
University at Nashville, having been a member of the class
of 1902. Besides an extensive preparation for his profession,
he received an excellent literary education preliminary thereto,
being a graduate with the class of 1897 from the University
of Mississippi at Oxford.
Dr, McLean inherits the profession of medicine from his father
and grandfather, and other members of the family in the different
generations have also been physicians. Dr. McLean was born
at Winona, Mississippi, in 1877, a son of Dr. J. L. and
Margaret (Rainey) McLean. His father, who lived for a
long number of years at Winona, where he was born, moved to
Memphis, in 1902, and is one of the prominent practitioners
of that city, also holding the chair of gynecology in the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of that place. Ancestrally,
the family is Scotch and of long and distinguished residence
in America. Several members of the McLean clan came from the
north of Scotland to America in 1720. The military record
of the family in America begins with conflicts against the
Seminole Indians in Florida, and later, at King's Mountain
and other battles of the Revolution, the McLeans fought against
their traditional enemy, the British. After the achievement
of American independence, some of the Doctor's immediate ancestors
settled in east central Tennessee and were among the founders
of the city of Nashville. His grandfather was a pioneer of
Mississippi, moving to that state when it was occupied principally
by the Choctaw Indians. Dr. McLean's mother, now deceased,
was also of direct Scotch ancestry, the Raineys having come
from Scotland about the same time as the McLeans.
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cont.
GREGORY A. WALL, M. D.
The president of the board of directors of the Oklahoma Medical
College, and also one of the incorporators of the institution
in the fall of 1907, is Dr. Gregory A. Wall, who has
been successfully engaged in practice in Oklahoma City since
1900. In the college he occupies the chair of diseases of
women. He is a physician of long experience, and this with
his professional ability makes him a valuable head for the
new school.
Dr. Wall was born at Waterloo, Monroe county,
Illinois, January 1, 1866. Both parents were natives of Ireland,
whence they came to America and settled in Monroe county,
Illinois, in the forties. The mother died during the infancy
of her son Gregory, but the father, John Wall,
is still living, at Springfield, Missouri, most of his life
having been spent in agricultural occupations. The grade and
high schools of Waterloo furnished Dr. Wall his preliminary
education. He prepared for his profession in St. Louis Medical
College, from which he was graduated in 1886, when twenty
one years old. For the following ten years he was engaged
in practice at Topeka, Kansas, where he had a large and profitable
following until 1896, when he was compelled to relinquish
practice on account of ill health, and did not actively resume
it until he moved to Oklahoma City in 1900. Just before locating
in Oklahoma he pursued
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general post-graduate work in Chicago. Dr. Wall
is a member of the Oklahoma County and State Medical societies
and the Southwest Medical Association. He was married in this
city to Miss Sallie Stiff, who was born and reared
in McKinney, Collin county, Texas.
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cont.
DR IRA L RAMEY, who
located at Oklahoma City in 1903, has gained a profitable
practice as physician and surgeon, and has been especially
successful and has made a reputation as a specialist in surgery
and diseases of women. He deserves his high rank among the
medical fraternity by his close application and a prolonged
period of study, which he has carried on almost without interruption,
since he received his degree from medical school, twenty-five
years ago.
Dr. Ramey was born in Medora, Jackson county,
Indiana, in 1857. In 1869 his parents moved to Perry county,
Arkansas, and there he finished his literary education. He
studied for his profession in the College of Physicians and
Surgeons of Chicago, graduating in 1882. His practice was
begun at Perryville, in his home county, but after a few years
he moved to Mena, Arkansas, in the western part of the state,
Mena being a division point on the Kansas City Southern Railway.
Besides attending to a large general practice, he was surgeon
for the Kansas City Southern at that point. He lived at Mena
until his removal to Oklahoma City about five years ago. Dr.
Ramey's first wife was Mrs. Mollie (Stover) Rainey,
a native of Tennessee, daughter of John Stover, a prominent
man of that state. Mrs. Ramey died in Arkansas, leaving two
children, Mrs. Ethel Meador and Eugene B. Dr. Ramey's
present wife was before her marriage Miss Louise Owen,
a native of Tennessee. They have two children: Mrs. Maud
Barrow of Memphis, Tennessee, and Miss Hallie,
now attending school at Birmingham, Alabama.
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cont.
DR. FRANCIS M. JORDAN.
One of the oldest of the pioneer physicians of Oklahoma is
Dr. Francis M. Jordan, who retired from active practice
about six years ago, but is still well known to the profession.
Dr. Jordan has been in the southwest for nearly a quarter
of a century. After spending the early part of his professional
career in Illinois, he moved to Kingman in Kingman county,
Kansas, about 1883, located at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1886,
being physician for St. Luke's hospital a year, and in 1887
came to Purcell, Indian Territory. During the two years preceding
the Oklahoma opening he was surgeon for the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe Railroad and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe
Railroad at this point, and was also, examiner for several
life insurance companies.
This practice brought him an intimate knowledge
of this region, and when Oklahoma was opened to settlement
in 1889, he was close at hand and joined in the rush with
thousands of others from the south line of the territory;
Being attracted to the site now covered by Oklahoma City he
chose to take up a quarter section lying about a mile east
of the town (the northeast quarter of section 35, town 12,
range 3 west). He had to dispute the occupation of this land
with "sooners," and a seven years' contest in the
courts was necessary before he could establish his claim and
receive a patent from the government for his homestead. At
this excellent situation, almost alongside a growing town
with unlimited possibilities, he built a home and engaged
in practice in addition to improving his homestead. Since
retiring from practice he has been busied with the supervision
of his property interests, due to the fact that the growth
of Oklahoma City has overspread what was at the time of his
settlement, farm land well apart from the townsite. Part of
his estate has been sold for city subdivisions and other purposes,
but he still keeps thirty-five acres for a homestead that
is one of the most attractive and valuable places in the vicinity
of the city. His residence, situated on an elevation that
commands a view of city and country, is a landmark. Of late
years Dr. Jordan has made a specialty of fruit-raising, but
in earlier years when, general farming was the principal occupation
of Oklahoma, his place was a profitable wheat, cattle and
dairy farm. The land adjoining this place was selected in
1907 as the permanent site for the Oklahoma State Fair.
Dr. Jordan has been a member of the medical
profession upwards of forty years. He was born in Menard county,
near Springfield, Illinois, in 1836, a son of Henry and
Keziah (Hall) Jordan. His home life and early surroundings
were elevating and are of more than ordinary interest. His
father, a native of Ohio, had located at Springfield,
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Illinois, before the capital of the state was
located there. In Menard county, where most of his life was
spent, he was one of the prominent early citizens. He was
sheriff of the county at the time of the arrest and trial
for murder of Duff Armstrong, a trial that has become
a feature of national history because of the prominence of
the attorney who defended ArmstrongAbraham Lincoln,
then at the beginning of his career. Lincoln lived at old
Salem, just six miles distant from the Jordan home, where
he was an occasional visitor. Another celebrity who found
hospitable entertainment in the Jordan household was Peter
Cartwright, known through the middle west for his energetic
and successful work as an evangel of the Methodist church.
The Jordan house served as this preacher's sanctuary several
times, and later Mr. Jordan donated the ground for the Methodist
church that was built near his home, and throughout his life
was a prominent member of that denomination. Henry Jordan
moved from Menard county in 1852 to Elkhart in Logan county,
and thence to Macon county. On the maternal side Dr. Jordan
has a grandfather who was a soldier in the Revolution.
Dr. Jordan received his early education in Menard
county and in Springfield, graduated from the state normal
at Bloomington in 1863, and for three years was principal
of the graded school of Elkhart in Logan county. For some
time he also engaged in farming and cattle raising. He began
the study of medicine under private tutelage at Decatur, Illinois,
and also began practice there, but soon after located in Chicago
where he remained three years, having his office at the corner
of Twelfth and Loomis streets. In 1870 he continued his professional
studies in Rush Medical College, but did not take the final
course and graduate from that well known medical school, until
1879. From Chicago he moved to Sangamon county, Illinois,
practicing at Berlin and later at Pleasant Plains. Politically,
Dr. Jordan has a distinction that certainly belongs to few
citizens of Oklahoma, in that he is one of the original members
of the Republican party, voting for John C. Fremont,
in 1856, and has been a member of the party ever since. The
doctor was married in Illinois to Miss Rachel M. Mitchner.
They have two children, Aura and Frank T.
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cont.
JOHN
LOUIS MITCH. Oklahoma City was represented in the
convention by two delegates, John Louis Mitch and W.
C. Hughes. Mr. Mitch served as a member of the committee
on revenue and taxation, the committee on education, and the
committee on revision, compilation and style of the constitution.
Representing the metropolis of the new state, both members
were very watchful of the interests of Oklahoma City, scrutinizing
with great care the provisions embodied in the fundamental
law with reference to municipal corporations. Mr. Mitch was
especially diligent and helpful in framing the school legislation,
having been closely identified with education ever since coming
to Oklahoma.
Mr. Mitch, who belongs among the pioneer citizens
of Oklahoma, was born and reared in Fayette county, Kentucky,
the year of his birth being 1850. His parents were of direct
French ancestry. He completed an excellent education at the
University of Kentucky at Lexington. Going west in 1878, and
spending the greater part of the following fifteen years in
Colorado, he was engaged at first in the sheep business on
an extensive scale and later in the cattle business. Starting
with a very limited number of sheep, in a few years he had
become one of the largest and most prominent livestock men
in Colorado, his sheep in very fact being scattered over a
hundred hills. But during the latter eighties occurred the
first hostile wool legislation, and as a consequence the price
of wool fell so rapidly that few of the sheepmen of this western
country escaped disaster and ruin. Mr. Mitch fed 5,000 head
of sheep at Hutchinson, Kansas, when the break came, and he
had to dispose of them at tremendous sacrifices, many of them
going for thirty-five cents a head. During most of his residence
in Colorado Mr. Mitch's headquarters were at Rocky Ford.
Shortly after the opening of Oklahoma in the
summer of 1889 he came to the territory for the purpose of
retrieving his broken fortunes and making his permanent residence
in the new and promising country. Edmond, in Oklahoma county,
was his first home, and while there he helped organize the
Bank of Edmond (which later became the First National Bank)
and was its cashier. The educational interests of the town
also received much attention and personal
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effort from Mr. Mitch. He has always been particularly
devoted to the welfare of the Territorial Normal School at
that point. On account of his earnest and efficient efforts
to keep the Normal in existence during the hard times and
his continued interest in the institution and its teachers,
he became known as the father of the Normal, of which he was
elected one of the board of regents.
Since 1901 Mr. Mitch has lived in Oklahoma City.
In 1902 he was elected register of deeds of Oklahoma county,
was re-elected in 1904, and gave the highest satisfaction
to the public in this important position. At the last general
election, 1907, he was also chosen delegate to the constitutional
convention. Mr. Mitch, though but fifty-eight years old, made
a record in the Civil war that entitles him to a veteran's
honor. As a mere boy he marched and fought in the Union ranks,
and to prove that he deserved as much glory as the alder soldiers,
he several times suffered wounds in battle. Mr. Mitch married,
at Edmond, Miss Lora D. Blizzard, a native of Indiana,
and later a resident of Kansas. She was a student at Edmond
and a teacher in the public school there. They have two children,
John Louis, Jr. and Lora May.
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cont.
ANDREW T. PAYNE.
The business record of Andrew T. Payne has been a steady
and continuous mounting of the ladder of his own building
to success and prominence. And success is not measured by
the height which one may chance to occupy but also by the
distance between the starting point and the altitude one has
reached. Andrew T. Payne began his career as a driver
of an express wagon for the American Express Company, at Macon,
Missouri, in 1881, and by a steady and persistent climbing,
going from one position to another as opportunity offered
and as his own worth and merit became known, he has now reached
the position of division superintendent .of the Wells Fargo
Express Company, with jurisdiction over all the new states
of the southwest.
Born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1862, he was but
a child when his parents moved to Iowa and located on a farm
in Wapello county, and he was reared as a farmer boy there.
From an express wagon driver in Macon, Missouri, he became
express messenger, and about 1882 began running on the Santa
Fe Railroad in the service of Wells, Fargo & Company on
their lines west and southwest of Kansas City. By subsequent
promotions from this company he came through Oklahoma in 1892
as a traveling auditor, and in this position he became familiar
with many of the interesting and thrilling incidents of the
early life in this state, particularly in the railroad express
service. Some of the most notable express robberies and train
hold-ups in the southwest took place in this country in the
early nineties. Mr. Payne also served as agent for his company
for some time at Wichita, Kansas, and during about seven years
previous to assuming the duties of his present position he
was assistant superintendent for the company at Kansas City.
Early in 1907, he was appointed division superintendent for
the Wells, Fargo Company of the Oklahoma Division, which embraces
all the new states, and in this position he travels over the
Santa Fe, Frisco, the Choctaw Division of the Rook Island,
the Midland Valley, and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe
lines. His headquarters and his home are in the city of Oklahoma.
Mr. Payne married Miss Anna Reynolds,
of Wapello county, Iowa, and their only son is Donald Payne.
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cont.
CHARLES A. McNABB
is known as one of the most successful farmers and horticulturists
in the southwest. He has accomplished his splendid results
through concentrated effort, deep thought and study of the
business and keeping abreast of modern methods and discoveries.
He was appointed by Governor Ferguson to the position of secretary
of the Territorial Board of Agriculture, and served in that'
office for two and a half years, his tenure of office expiring
on the advent of statehood, October 6, 1907. During that time
he worked energetically and unremittingly for improvement
in the condition and resources of the farmers in Oklahoma,
and a review of what he accomplished in that direction shows
that his work was of inestimable benefit to the state. He
organized farmers institutes in every county in Oklahoma Territory,
and up to the time statehood came in had organized twenty
of the counties in Indian Territory. He personally gave a
large number of lectures and demonstrations in these institutes,
his principal work being in urging and showing the financial
benefit of diversification of crops and of more extended stock
raising. The growing of alfalfa was one of his favorite
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enterprises for fanners, and directly as a result
of his efforts there have been thousands and thousands of
acres of Oklahoma lands given up to this profitable crop that
were formerly giving poor returns to their owners in wheat.
Mr. McNabb largely concentrated his efforts on the alfalfa
proposition in the northwestern part of Oklahoma, the "Strip"
country, beginning in Garfield county, with the result that
that section of the state, including the counties of Garfield,
Kingfisher, Grant, Alfalfa, Woods and Majors, now contains
some of the largest and richest alfalfa farms in the west,
and several alfalfa mills have been established in those counties.
The acreage of wheat has been cut down fifty per cent. Through
the influence of these institutes the farmers have also gone
more largely into other fields of profitable enterprise, such
as raising corn, fruit and high grade live stock. One of the
more recent questions that Mr. McNabb took up was that of
sheep raising, with the result that hundreds of farmers began
to make investigations and preparations for going into the
sheep business.
In horticulture particularly Mr. McNabb has
been looked upon as authority throughout the southwest for
a number of years, and has been very energetic in the development
of horticultural interests in Oklahoma. He was one of the
charter members of the original Oklahoma Horticultural Society,
organized in 1891. He was in attendance at every meeting but
one of that society from its organization until in 1907 it
was dissolved to give place to the present Oklahoma State
Board of Agriculture. Through the efforts of the Horticultural
Society a uniformity of action was obtained with reference
to the selection of varieties of fruits and the dissemination
of all kinds of information that aided very materially in
the development of fruit growing in the state. No man has
put in the amount of work for the public benefit as has Mr.
McNabb. To his individual efforts belong the credit of organizing
Oklahoma along civic improvement lines. He organized civic
improvement clubs throughout Oklahoma, and followed this up
with lectures giving valuable ideas in the work of civic improvement.
This work includes farming regions as well as cities, and
one of its main features is the influencing of farmers to
beautify the surroundings of their home. He is president of
the Oklahoma City Civic Improvement Club.
Since retiring from the position of secretary of the Oklahoma
Board of Agriculture Mr. McNabb has devoted a part of his
time to the real estate and loan business in Oklahoma City.
In the early years of the history of the city, before he purchased
his farm, he was for three years a member of the city council
from the Fourth ward.
Born in Green county, Ohio, December II, 1861,
Mr. McNabb is a son of Milton and Amanda (Didie) McNabb.
The father was also born in Greene county, and his father,
a member of a Scotch family, was born in western Pennsylvania
but was one of the first settlers of Ohio. His name was Abner
William McNabb, and he came on a raft down the Ohio river
looking for a location beyond the Alleghanies, locating first
on the Kentucky side, but remained there only a short while
and with his family located permanently in Greene county,
Ohio.
Charles A. McNabb came west in 1885 and
located in Winfield, Kansas. He had been reared on a farm,
and farming had been his principal occupation. On the 22d
of April, 1889, he took part in the opening of the Territory
of Oklahoma, locating on that day in Oklahoma City, where
he was in business until 1895 and then bought a quarter section
of land, the northeast quarter of section 22, township 12,
range 3, west, three miles north of Oklahoma City, and began
farming and horticultural operations. He has since sold a
part of this land, but still retains the principal portion
of the farm, and although he still carries on its work his
home is in the city. .
Before coming west he married in Dayton, Ohio,
Miss Callie Seeger, of that city, and their four children
are Fred C., Jeannette, Mildred and Marie.
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cont.
DAVID McKINSTRY.
Among the men of marked enterprise and business ability who
are pushing forward the wheels of progress and contributing
to the substantial upbuilding and improvement of the new state
of Oklahoma, is David McKinstry, a capitalist of Oklahoma
City, whose wise counsel and keen discernment have been and
are important factors in the success of many business concerns.
He is now president of the Perry Mill Company, a director
of the Pioneer Telephone Company and an officer of the Oklahoma
Refining Company, while in other concerns he is financially
interested.
Mr. McKinstry is a native of Ulster county,
New York, and his father was president of
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the Wallkill Valley Railroad. The McKinstrys
are of Scotch lineage of several generations residence in
the historic Ulster county. David McKinstry pursued
his early education in the local schools and afterwards attended
the Riverview Military Academy at Poughkeepsie, New York.
He continued to reside in his native county until 1892, when
he removed to the west, first locating at Denver, Colorado,
but in 1893the year of the opening of the Cherokee Strip
in Oklahomahe went to Perry, Noble county, where he
built a mill and established the business which for several
years has been conducted under the name of the Perry Mill
Company. This is one of the most important and successful
industrial plants in the state. It has a capacity of four
hundred barrels of flour per day and two hundred barrels of
corn meal, and in connection therewith is operating an elevator
with a capacity of two hundred thousand bushels. The company
enjoys a large domestic and export trade' in hard wheat flour,
and the excellence of its product is a guarantee of a continued
sale. The plant is thoroughly equipped for the conduct of
the business along the most modern lines of milling and as
a factor in its control Mr. McKinstry displays the capable
demonstrative direction and executive force which have been
marked characteristics in his life.
A man of resourceful ability, he has extended
his efforts to various lines. He built and managed the water
works and electric light plant at Perry, also erected and
put in operation an ice factory there and in many ways has
been prominently connected with the industrial upbuilding
and consequent prosperity of the town. Early in 1907, while
still retaining his mill and other interests at Perry, he
removed to Oklahoma City, and in that year began the erection
of one of the finest and costliest residences of the city,
located on West Fifteenth street near Walker. It was completed
in 1908 and would be a credit to a city of much larger size.
Since coming here he has been elected one of the directors
of the Security National Bank, one of the leading financial
institutions of the state. His business capacity is so well
known as to make his co-operation continuously sought and
thus he has become a prominent factor in industrial and commercial
circles.
Mr. McKinstry was married in Wichita, Kansas,
to Miss Leona Herzer, and their position is one of
notable social prominence. Mr. McKinstry is a genial, cordial
gentleman, of marked individuality and strong force of character.
Such has been his business discernment and his unfaltering
industry that he seems to have accomplished at anyone point
of his business career the possibilities for successful accomplishments,
and as the years have passed he has progressed to a position
of prominence in the state, his labors proving a source of
value in its upbuilding and advancement in the territorial
days.
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cont.
MEADE MILLER, whose
valuable homestead farm lies southwest of the city and on
which natural gas prospecting is being done, was born in Madison
county, Kentucky, in 1876, and was reared on a farm in Jessamine
county, that state, receiving his education principally in
the schools of Nicholasville. Coming to Oklahoma in 1899 he
bought his present homestead seven miles southwest of Oklahoma
City, in section 26, Oklahoma county, where he owns four hundred
acres of rich farming land. He has been gratifyingly successful
in his farming and business operations, but in 1905 he moved
his home from the farm to Oklahoma City, where he owns a beautiful
residence in Maywood, No. 629 East Ninth street.
In March of 1908; while boring a well for water
a pocket of natural gas was struck on Mr. Miller's farm, with
such favorable indications of further resources of gas at
a greater depth that he with others at once organized a stock
company for drilling a test well on the Miller farm. .
Mr. Miller was married in Denver, Colorado,
to Miss May Benjamin, of Little Rock, Arkansas. Her
father, Judge Benjamin, was a very prominent citizen there.
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cont.
RICHARD AVEY. In every
city of considerable extent it will be found that the requirements
of business have caused an expansion beyond the original limits
of the business district, and as a result many private homes
once well aside from the bustling- activity of commerce and
industry have either been sacrificed to make room for business
or remain as conspicuous land marks of an earlier period,
In Oklahoma City one expects to find fewer examples of this
than elsewhere, since the city is so new and has really been
made over several times since it was founded. So great has
been the business development of the city within the last
ten years that the district devoted to business has encroached
upon and absorbed by the wholesale the areas
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where during the first years the citizens had
their homes. One of the milestones for the measurement of
the city's growth is preserved in a well known homestead at
505 North Broadway, where Mr. Richard Avey built his home
on coming to Oklahoma City in 1890. At that time all other
building operations were at a considerable distance from the
site selected for his home, and in fact he was among the first
to begin the extension of the residence district on the northside.
But in recent years not only has the residence area been extended
far north of his home, but even the business district is beginning
to , encroach upon his homestead. He now lives on Virginia
avenue, near Thirteenth, in a modern and beautiful residence,
into which he has recently moved.
Although retired from active business, Mr. Avey
has from the first been a public-spirited factor in the city's
development, and besides the acquirement of valuable property
interests has concerned himself with educational and other
affairs. Mr. Avey is an Englishman by birth, having been born
at Kentford, Suffolk, England, in 1837, and was educated at
Swindell's Academy, Newmarket, where he was a classmate of
the Rev. Charles Hadden Spurgeon. His father, before
the days of railroads in England, owned and operated a number
of mail coaches for the government in eastern England. Mr.
Avey came to the United States at the age of nineteen, locating
first at Ottawa, Illinois, but in 1859 moved to Coles county,
near Charleston, that state. This is the rich corn and broom-corn
belt of Illinois, and engaging in farming, Mr. Avey became
one of the leading farmers and prosperous citizens of the
county. He was honored on various occasions by election to
public office, especially to those which controlled school
affairs. In 1890, without disposing of his valuable property
in Illinois, he came to Oklahoma City to seek the benefits
of this more salubrious climate, and has enjoyed a pleasant
residence here since that year. He has interested himself,
in a conservative way in the growth and development of the
city, and has been well rewarded in a material way and in
the esteem of his fellow citizens. He has served as a member
of the city school board. By his marriage to Miss Celia
Oakland, which was celebrated in Coles county, Mr. Avey
has seven children: Newton, a member of the insurance
firm of Overholser and Avey; Oscar L., assistant cashier
of the American National Bank; William T., cashier
of a bank at Mattoon, Illinois; John L., publisher
of the Lindsay News, Mrs. Maud Widmeyer, of Wytheville,
Virginia; May and Martha. One of Mr. Avey's
brothers, Thoman, enlisted for service to his adopted
country during the Civil War and after three years of duty
gave up his life on the field of battle near Shreveport, Louisiana.
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cont.
COL. JAMES C. GOGGERTY.
Stockmen generally throughout the southwest country of Oklahoma
and Texas know personally or through business relations Colonel
James C. Goggerty of Oklahoma City, who has been identified
with the stock industry all his life and is particularly well
known as an auctioneer. Few men in this profession have gained
more satisfying success. He possesses by nature the rare and
peculiar, and unteachable, qualities that are prerequisites
for the success of the man who sells property from the block.
To begin with, he has for years enjoyed, and deserved, the
reputation of being thoroughly honest, with never a word of
misrepresentation from his lips. He satisfies himself by personal
investigation as to the weak points as well as the strong
points of anything he is called on to sell, and states them
frankly to his hearers. A crowd of buyers invariably show
the utmost confidence in honest, frank and genial nature,
and being in complete mastery of the details of his business
he never fails to obtain the highest prices for what he sells.
He has made sales amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars
throughout the southwest, and besides live stock and general
auctioneering, has conducted some of the largest and most
successful townsite and town lot sales in this section of
the country.
Colonel Goggerty was born at Anamosa, Jones
county, Iowa, in. 1856, where his mother is still living.
His father, Henry Goggerty, who died at the old home
in Anamosa in 1900, was one of the first white settlers of
Jones county, locating there in 1844, before Iowa became a
state. Colonel Goggerty was reared on a farm and gets his
close and thorough knowledge of live stock, especially horses,
from many years of study and connection with the practical
business of stock raising. Leaving home in 1876, he spent
a time in Montana, then came to Texas, and for several years
was engaged in that now almost obsolete custom of taking horses
over the old trails from the Lone Star state into Kansas.
His home from 1879, until he moved to Ok-
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lahoma City in 1900, was at Circleville, near
Holton, in Jackson county, Kansas. On coming to Oklahoma City
he built his present home at the corner of Second street and
Central avenue, and purchased several other lots in that neighborhood.
Some of these lots he has since sold at large advances. On
Second street, between Central avenue and Stiles avenue, he
owns and conducts a horse barn, and does a large business
in fine driving and saddle horses. Colonel Goggerty is secretary
of the Oklahoma Auctioneers' Association. He was married in
Holton, Kansas, in 1880, to Miss Martha Roby, daughter
of Barton and Elizabeth (Rouse) Roby of that place.
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cont.
LEWIS THOMAS. After
an active career covering participation in the pioneer development
of Kansas, an active experience as soldier in the war of the
rebellion, and many years passed in farming, Lewis Thomas,
now a retired resident of Oklahoma City, joined in the settlement
of Oklahoma during the first year of the opening and has since
been identified with this great southwestern empire. He came
to Oklahoma county in June, 1889, and bought a farm near Spencer
postoffice, on what is known as the Nine Mile Flat, east of
Oklahoma City. He has had a full share of the experiences
which befell the early agriculturists of this section, and
passed successfully through them developing a valuable farm
property, and in 1906 retired to the city, chiefly in order
to afford more convenient educational facilities to his children,
some of whom had already been educated in this city. At the
southeast corner of Ames and Nineteenth street, near Epworth
University, he built one of the beautiful homes that adorn
this desirable residence section. He has had a varied life,
and fully deserves his comfortable retirement.
Mr. Thomas was born in Davis county, Indiana,
December 23, 1842. In the following year his parents moved
to Buchanan county, Missouri, living on a farm eighteen miles
from St. Joseph for twelve years, and then moved over into
Kansas, locating on a farm about fifteen miles from Leavenworth.
During Mr. Thomas' youth, Kansas was the scene of turbulence
that marked the freestate movement, and the family homestead,
which was about eighteen miles from Lawrence, was directly
in the path of the fierce civil warfare that produced such
dreaded figures as Quantrell. He recalls vividly the terrors
and hardships that beset the family in those days, and relates
some interesting incidents of the well known characters who
rose to prominence amid the contentions of the period. In
the spring of 1858 the family moved to Butler county, in the
southern part of the state, and as ranchers and farmers and
stock-raisers took an active part in the pioneer development
of that section of Kansas. In 1862 Lewis Thomas enlisted
at Easton, Kansas, in Company G, Ninth Kansas Cavalry, for
service in the Civil war, afterward becoming a member of company
C of the same regiment. His early service was on the frontier
in Colorado against the Indians, but later his regiment took
an active part in the service along the Kansas border and
in southwest Missouri. In 1864 he traversed the state of Arkansas,
beginning at Fort Smith, and in June 1865, was discharged
at Duvall's Bluff. From the close of the war until his removal
to the new country of Oklahoma Mr. Thomas was actively engaged
in farming in Butler county, Kansas. Outside of the public
sacrifice that marked his career as a soldier and the quiet
interest in public life that marks the good citizen, he has
never participated in political life, although two of his
brothers were formerly prominent in Butler county politics,
one of them being sheriff and the other probate judge. Mr.
Thomas was married in Butler county to Miss Elspa A. Huller,
a native of Indiana. They have a family of eight children,
namely: Mrs. Maggie Davis, James M., Leander, Bertha, Etta
May, Maude E., William F. and Iva E.
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cont.
JOHN F. WINANS.
Winans' Highland Terrace, a beautiful residence addition of
the city with which all are familiar, has a history that well
illustrates how Oklahoma City has developed within the last
few years. It is a part of what was originally a quarter section
homestead, in the language of the survey being known as the
northeast quarter of section 28, township 12, range 3 west,
and adjoined the first Oklahoma City site on the north. One
of the homesteaders of April 22, 1889, was John F. Winans,
an enterprising lawyer and business man who took part in the
rush with an eye open to the possibilities of future development,
and in selecting this particular piece of land chose a fortune,
though it took some years of patient waiting for him to realize
it. This homestead now lies entirely within the city limits,
extending north from Sixteenth street, and being intersected
by
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Walker, Hudson, Harvey, Robinson and Broadway.
Part of it has already been laid out in lots and occupied
for residences, and the remainder will be developed as the
movement of population demands. The attractive name is a happy
title for this excellent addition, whose heights command extensive
views of both the city and the surrounding country. The management
of this property is now the principal business care of its
owner. Oklahoma City has been his permanent home ever since
the opening, but for several years he was in the general land
office at Washington, having been appointed to a responsible
position there because of his expert knowledge of land matters
and land warrants.
John F. Winans was born on a farm in
Seneca County, New York, but was reared at Clyde, in Wayne
county, to which place his parents moved when he was seven
years old, and where he attended the Clyde high school. His
parents had come to Seneca county from Elizabeth, New Jersey,
when the former place was a wilderness. On May 10, 1861, he
enlisted at Clyde in Company D, Sixty-seventh New York Infantry,
and, this regiment being assigned to the Sixth Corps, Army
of the Potomac, he saw service in all the great historic battles
of Virginia and the east, including Gettysburg, Antietam,
Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, the Peninsular campaign,
etc. He was severely wounded in the head at the battle of
Spottsylvania Court House, May 12, 1864, and spent several
months in the hospital. About the time he returned home, his
father died, and he devoted a number of months to keeping
up the home farm. He then found opportunity to study law in
the office of Judge Cole at Clyde, where he was admitted to
the bar. In the late sixties he moved west, arid during brief
periods of residence in several states he was engaged in teaching
school and in law practice and the abstract business. Springfield,
Missouri, was his place of residence for some years, and it
was from that city that he went to participate in the rush
to Oklahoma. In Oklahoma City he is a member of the Baptist
church, and is prominent in the local G. A. R. post, having
held most of the offices in the post. While living- in Springfield,
he married Miss Cora B. Raney, a native of Memphis,
Tennessee. Their two children are George Clark Winans
and Mrs. Edna L. Howell.
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-99-
cont.
WILLIAM H. MERCHANT.
The chief representative of the State Life Insurance Company,
of Indianapolis, Indiana, in Oklahoma, is William H. Merchant,
who is general manager, with offices at Oklahoma City, for
the district embracing Oklahoma. He was transferred to this
position in the spring of 1907, having previously been in
charge of the company's business in Alabama, with headquarters
at Birmingham, Alabama. Although he entered the fie1d of life
insurance only a few years ago, he has displayed rather conspicuous
ability in this line, having gained results where others have
tried hard and failed and for this reason he has been advanced
rapidly from soliciting agent to an executive position. It
was through the influence of his brother in-law, the president
of the Citizens Life Insurance Company of Louisville, Kentucky,
that he took up life insurance, and when this business gained
a capable worker the field of daily journalism lost a correspondent
of great natural ability and successful experience.
Though never identified with the press in Oklahoma,
Mr. Merchant's career is so closely connected with the newspaper
profession that it seems natural to place him among the newspaper
men of the state. At least his biography has the interest
of a "human document" to the men who depend upon
the activity of the current press for a living. He was born
at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1868, was reared in that city,
but at an early age was compelled to depend on his own work
for support and for that reason .had few school advantages.
The liberal education and extensive knowledge which a brief
acquaintance reveals him to possess were largely self-acquired,
and the result of years of close observation and study. He
was not very old when he developed the "nose for news"
which- is so essential to newspaper reporting, and when he
sought opportunity in the city of New York he had little trouble
in getting an assignment on one of the morning papers, at
first as a substitute, but later as a regular reporter. His
newspaper experience includes employment with many of the
best known of America's newspapers, and he was successively
on the World in New York; on the Record and the Chronicle
of Chicago; on the Post Dispatch, the Pulitzer paper, of St.
Louis; and from St. Louis went to San Francisco to join the
Examiner's force. Later he was a representative of the Associated
Press at Honolulu, during the unsettled times in the Sandwich
Islands preceding their cession to the United States, and
it fell to Mr. Merchant to report
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the diplomatic negotiations and other events
that received so much newspaper space in those days. When
President McKinley made his notable trip through the west,
to California and return, Mr. Merchant accompanied the party
as representative of the Hearst papers, and at the end of
the trip he received a personal letter from the President
commending him for the accuracy and truthfulness of his correspondence.
On another occasion the Providence Journal and a syndicate
of eastern newspapers sent him to South America as correspondent.
His most notable work in the newspaper field was as war correspondent
during the Spanish-American war, when he represented the New
York World. Most of the time he spent aboard the U. S. Steamship
New Orleans, from which he viewed all the combats of the navy
with the Spanish forces on the Cuban shore, participating
in the landing of the army under General Shafter and later
the landing of the army under General Miles, at Porto Rico.
At the evacuation of Havana, while he was on the steamship
Arethusa, he was struck in the shoulder by a Mauser bullet.
It is one of the results of modern methods of warfare that
the position of the correspondent is one of equal danger with
the private soldier, and requires unusual qualities of daring,
endurance and loyalty to duty. Mr. Merchant has some trophies
that testify to his own record in the last American war. One
is the U. S. Government bronze medal presented to him in August,
1907, for heroism in face of the enemy, the medal bearing
the dates of the naval engagements of May 31, June 6, 14 and
16, 1898. He has also received a medal of similar import from
the state of Rhode Island.
For several years he signed his newspaper correspondence
with the name of R. E. Porter, and became as familiar
to a large circle of daily readers under this nom de plume
as under his real name. He had the faculty for getting at
the essential facts of the news, and he got correct information
if it was possible to obtain it. This reputation of being
honest and exact in his newspaper articles is a matter of
pride to him at this time, and as a result he was able to
command the best salaries on some of the leading newspapers
of the country. His writing was marked by force, yet his diction
was eminently simple, and he resorted to the embellishments
of language only when the theme required it. Although no longer
connected with the newspaper service, he is an interesting
and esteemed figure in the press circles of Oklahoma because
of his prominence in former years. His wife is a native of
Atlanta, Georgia, and was Miss Fannie Fay Lester, a
descendant of Revolutionary stock, on her mother's side while
her father, Colonel James S. Lester, is a prominent
Tennesseean.
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