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Biographies
R. N. ARMSTRONG
R. N. Armstrong is a sterling representative of all that is praiseworthy in financial and industrial circles in Coal County and since 1911 he has been president of the Farmers National Bank at Tupelo. The spirit that manifests itself in many bankers in the rural districts of Oklahoma—the spirit that organizes commercial clubs, good roads clubs, that endorses better methods of agriculture, that conserves resources and contributes to commercial prosperity—is found in a marked degree in the subject of this sketch. Living in a practically undeveloped country, he has an abundance of raw material on which to work and the varied resources that are still in their infancy in his home community receive much of his attention and financial support. The Town of Tupelo, which is the junction of three railroads and is located in one of the best agricultural regions of Oklahoma, is developing rapidly under the leadership of such men as Mr. Armstrong. This town is but nine years old yet it has a modern brick school building, two banks, two cotton gins and several up-to-date general stores. Surrounding it is a fertile soil that produces an abundance of wheat, oats, corn, cotton, alfalfa, kafir corn and other products. As Mr. Armstrong was reared on a farm in Missouri he has a splendid appreciation of the value of agricultural education and much of his time is devoted to the improving of agricultural conditions.
A native of the great State of Illinois, R. N. Armstrong was born in the year 1879 and he is a son of James T. and Ethel (Rollins) Armstrong, who removed to Missouri in 1883. Six sons were born to Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong and concerning them the following brief data are here incorporated: J. C. is assistant secretary of the Kansas City Title & Trust Company, of Kansas City, Missouri; W. P. is manager of the coffee department of the Interstate Wholesale Grocery Company, of Joplin, Missouri; A. R. is connected with the police department of Pittsburg, Kansas; W. B. and W. T. are prosperous ranchers in the vicinity of Arthur, Missouri; and R. N. is he to whom this sketch is dedicated.
Mr. Armstrong was reared to the sturdy discipline of the parental farm in Missouri and after a public-school education he attended college at Rich Hill, Missouri. Subsequently he was a student for two years in the Warrensburg Normal School and for two years thereafter he was a popular and successful teacher in the public schools of Missouri. In the year 1901 he entered the National Bank of Commerce in Kansas City as bookkeeper. Five years later we find him launched in the grocery business in Kansas City but one year in that line of enterprise sufficed and he then again turned his attention to banking. In the fall of 1907 he located in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and there became assistant cashier of the National Bank of Commerce. Three years later he settled in Stonewall, Oklahoma, and assumed the responsibilities of the position of cashier of the First National Bank. The year 1911 marks his advent in Tupelo and here he and his associates purchased the Farmers & Merchants State Bank, which was shortly afterward incorporated as the Farmers National Bank, with a capital stock of $25,000; this institution now has deposits amounting to about $75,000. The other officials of this reliable institution are: W. C. Duncan, vice president; and J. M. Wilson, cashier. Among the stockholders are P. A. Norris, of Ada; A. G. Adams, president of the First National Bank of Ada; H. T. Douglas, president of the Shawnee National Bank; F. J. Phillips, president of the Greenville National Exchange Bank of Greenville, Texas; B. F. Edwards, president of the Central National Bank of St. Louis; Tom Randolph, president of the National Bank of Commerce of St. Louis; F. C. Dillard, a lawyer of Sherman, Texas; Mike Mayer, president of the First National Bank of Coalgate; E. J. McKinney, of Ada; and R. E. Fowler and Price Statler, of Tupelo.
In fraternal circles Mr. Armstrong is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in which he is noble grand of the local organization; and in connection with his business he is a valued member of the Coal County and the Oklahoma State Bankers associations. Mr. Armstrong is well known as a very expert and judicious banker—one who is always looking for the welfare of his bank and of his customers. In all his dealings he is the soul of honor and his word is as good as his bond. He is considered one of the strong men on finance in this section and his success in his chosen line shows that he has special talents for banking. He manifests a deep and sincere interest in all that affects the welfare of his municipality and he commands the loyal respect of his fellow citizens.
[Source: A Standard History of Oklahoma Volume 4 By Joseph Bradfield Thoburn - Submitted by a Friend of Free Genealogy]
JOSEPH F. RUMSEY
The American Ice and Oil Company of Oklahoma City is one of a number of companies miles north of Centrahoma. Some 1,400 acres of this plot are under cultivation and in 1915, 500 acres were planted with oats and 100 acres with wheat. Breeded cattle, horses and hogs are raised each year and the place is splendidly equipped with a fine residence and barn; nothing is spared in the way of late improvements in farm implements and other devices to lighten and facilitate work. Mr. Jackson is known as an able manager and his ranch is one of the best aud largest show places in the county.
In 1892 was celebrated the marriage of Mr. Jackson to Miss Belle Z. Thompson, the ceremony being performed at the Sacred Heart Mission in the Pottawotamie Nation. Mrs. Jackson is a woman of kindly and attractive personality and she and her husband have eight children, as follows: Leona is the wife of Morris Matthews, a merchant at Roff; Cora married David Hensley, a ranchman at Centrahoma; and Alfred, Ardelia, Simon, Green, Floyd and Onita are at home with their parents. Mr. Jackson has two half brothers and two half sisters: Robert and Lona Turnbull, of San Francisco, California; James Bolin, of Centrahoma; and Mrs. R. S. Moore, of Bokchito, Oklahoma.
Mr. Jackson is a valued member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows at Globe and he always manifests a great interest in matters affecting the general welfare of his home community, giving his hearty support to improvements of all kinds. He is a man of genial personality and his friends are legion.
[Source: A Standard History of Oklahoma Volume 4 By Joseph Bradfield Thoburn - Submitted by a Friend of Free Genealogy]
GEORGE A. TRICE
In Texas, where he lived until moving to Oklahoma, George A. Trice had a record as a successful teacher, legislator and lawyer. These experiences have come to maturity and fruition since he came across Red River into Oklahoma in 1908, and since that year has been one of the leading lawyers of Coalgate. It is said that in the past seven years Mr. Trice has participated in the trial of twelve hundred criminal cases in the courts of that section, and in one year was counsel in thirteen murder cases.
Mr. Trice was a member of the Texas Legislature which enacted the law permitting the adoption of a commission-form charter by the City of Galveston, from which the "Galveston Idea" has spread and permeated the municipal organic laws of cities in every part of the country. Oklahoma has a number of model charters based on the commission idea, and some share of credit for this must also be assigned to the Coalgate lawyer.
George A. Trice was born in DeSoto County, Mississippi, July 24, 1876, a son of William F. and Katherine (Broadway) Trice. His father, a native of Alabama and a Confederate veteran of the Civil war, settled in Ellis County, Texas, in 1878, and with Mrs. Trice is still a resident of that county. There were six children in the family as follows: George A.; Dr. Joseph, a physician and surgeon in charge of a hospital at Wonsan, Chosen (Korea); Edward, bookkeeper for a wholesale grocery company at Tyler, Texas; Mrs. Reb Parmelly, wife of a farmer and stockman at Abilene, Texas; Miss Bernice, an employe of the firm of Trice & Field at Terrell, Texas; and Raymond, still pursuing his education and living with his parents in Texas.
George A. Trice was reared on the home farm and attended the public schools up to the age of eighteen, at which time he began teaching and was a teacher in Texas until 1901. In the meantime he studied law at home and in the office of Watson & Robbins at Clarksville, Texas. After being admitted to the bar in the fall of 1001 he became a partner of David Watson, who had been senior member of Watson & Robbins, a firm which dissolved when Mr. Robbins was elected district attorney. With seven years of experience with that firm, Mr. Trice removed to Oklahoma in 1908 and located at Coalgate, where he became associated with the firm of Cutler, Trice & Mclnnis. This was later dissolved and Euel Moore, who had been a student of Mr. Trice in Red River County, became junior partner in the firm of Trice & Moore.
Mr. Trice was elected a member of the Texas Legislature in 1901, serving one term during the administration of Governor Lanham. He was a member of the joint committee of that session that wrote the present game law of that state, after which some other states have patterned. At Clarksville, Texas, he served as a member of the city council. He is an aetive democrat and has taken a conspicuous part in the campaigns of his party in Oklahoma. In 1915 Mr. Trice was appointed by Governor R'. L. Williams a member of the Oklahoma Commission on uniform state laws, and, with Judge D. H. McDougal and Robert Adams, the other members of the commission, assisted in furthering the cause of uniform laws at Salt Lake that year, during the session of the American Bar Association.
Mr. Trice was married in 1904, at Vernon, Texas, to Miss Mamie Peck, who died in 1914, leaving two daughters, Katherine, aged six years, and Josephine, who is four years old. Mr. Trice is a member of the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Knights Templar of the Masonic Order, of the local lodge of the Woodmen of the World, and of the county, state and national organizations of his profession. He occupies his own comfortable, modern home at Coalgate. [Source: A Standard History of Oklahoma Volume 4 By Joseph Bradfield Thoburn - Submitted by a Friend of Free Genealogy]
BOONE WILLIAMS, son of Benjamin Franklin Williams and Mollie Boone Williams, born at Rienzi, Mississippi, October 9, 1872. A page in the Mississippi Legislature at the age of ten years, former United States Senator Thomas P. Gore, who had not then entirely lost his eyesight, being also a page at the same time. His father was elected sheriff of Alcorn County, Mississippi, in 1878, being reelected and holding said office until his death in 1887, at which time his son Boone was between fifteen and sixteen years of age. His disabilities being removed by the court he was appointed sheriff to fill the unexpired term of his father. In 1888 he removed to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was employed in an abstract office for about two years, and two years later he removed to a point near Sisterville, West Virginia, where he took charge of a coal mining company, remaining there until 1893, when he removed to Lehigh, Indian Territory, becoming bookkeeper for the J. J. Phillips, Mercantile Company, which afterwards was succeeded by the Felix Phillips Mercantile Company. Later with Felix Phillips, V. S. Cook and Dr. L. A. Conners, all now deceased, he and some others organized the first bank in that part of the Choctaw Nation, it being the Bank of Lehigh, later succeeded by the First National Bank of Lehigh. Boone Williams and others before the leasing act of 1904 was passed, secured leases from the Creek Nation on the famous Glenn Pool land, but same were not recognized by the Federal authorities. This oil company was known as the Indian Territory Oil Company. At another period, Boone Williams with Ex-Governor Humphrey of Kansas and others secured leases on zinc and lead territory in what is now Ottawa County, Oklahoma, and started operations but were forced to abandon the project for the reason at that time the machinery which is used today was not known and operation under the old system was too expensive.
He was an outstanding citizen in the territory now embraced by Coal County during his residence there, progressive and patriotic in every public endeavor such as building of school houses and commercial organizations and development of coal fields. At one time he was president of the Cattlemen's Association in the Choctaw Nation. He promoted the organization of an ice plant which was located at Phillips half way between Coalgate and Lehigh. He was a member of the executive committee of the single statehood association which fostered the movement for the admission of Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory as one state. Being nominated as the Democratic candidate for delegate to the constitutional convention from the Lehigh and Coalgate District, he was elected. In 1910 he was appointed by Governor Haskell as a member of the Capitol Commission. Afterwards he engaged in the insurance and real estate business until 1915, when he was appointed under the administration of Governor Williams as Warden of the penitentiary at Granite, Oklahoma. Holding this position for four years, he then resumed his insurance and real estate connections at Coalgate. In 1924 he removed to McAlester, Oklahoma, becoming secretary of the McAlester Chamber of Commerce. In 1926 he removed to Tulsa, Oklahoma, engaging in the brokerage business dealing in oil leases and oil royalties.
In 1927, his health failing, he retired from business and died on January 12, 1930.
He belonged to the Masons, Elks and Knights of Pythias, being a member of the Alpha Class of the Masonic Lodge at McAlester, Knight Templar, and was a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was buried at Lehigh on January 14th, 1930, burial services being conducted from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dan Farmer and laid to rest in the Lehigh cemetery under the auspices of the Masonic Lodge.
In 1900 he was married to Miss Agnes Larmour of Lehigh, Oklahoma, who survives him.
[Source: "Chronicles of Oklahoma", Volume 8, No. 3, September, 1930 - Submitted by Linda Craig]
ELIPHALET NOTT WRIGHT, M. D.
Much has been written in this publication concerning the work and influence of the Rev. Allen Wright, formerly governor and principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, and whose happy suggestion furnished the beautiful name of the State of Oklahoma. It was during his service on a commission of the Choctaws engaged in making the treaty of 1866 with the United States Government that Governor Allen Wright suggested the name which is now applied to the forty-sixth state of the American Union.
At Olney, Oklahoma, Dr. Eliphalet Nott Wright, a son of Governor Allen, is now engaged in the practice of medicine. He has been a member of the medical profession in Indian Territory and Oklahoma for fully thirty years. While he has accomplished much professionally, his name should be placed only second to that of his father in political influence.
A son of Governor Allen Wright, D. D., and Harriet Newell (Mitchell) Wright, Eliphalet Nott Wright was born April 3, 1858, at the present location of the Armstrong Academy near Caddo, Oklahoma. He acquired his primary instruction from private tutors and at the age of fourteen entered Westminster College at Fulton, Missouri. He remained there two years and at the age of sixteen entered Spencer Academy in the Choctaw Nation, where he finished his course in June, 1878. In September of that year he entered Union College at Schenectady, New York, where he graduated with the class of 1882, and then prepared for his profession in the Albany Medical College, where ho was graduated M. D. in 1884.
With this thorough equipment in the schools of his native country and from some of the best institutions of the East, Doctor Wright returned to practice in the environment in which he had been reared. He began practice at Boggy Depot in the Choctaw Nation. In October, 1884, he secured from the Choctaw Council the exclusive right to develop oil in the Choctaw Nation. He then organized a company, and in 1888 drilled in the first well near Atoka, which proved conclusively that oil exists in and around this location. The noteworthy feature of this undertaking was that it was the first oil well drilled west of Ohio, and antedated the oil development in the present State of Oklahoma by many years.
In 1885 Doctor Wright was employed as chief surgeon to the Missouri Pacific coal mines at Lehigh, Oklahoma, a position which he filled until 1894. In the meantime on April 26, 1888, he married Miss Ida Bell Richards of St. Louis, Missouri.
Though he has always been devoted to the interests of his profession, Doctor Wright has been called to the performance of public duty so much that his name is perhaps better known in public life and leadership than in the profession to which he has been devoted for more than thirty years.
In 1890 he was appointed by Governor Wilson N. Jones, of the Choctaw Nation, as national agent, having full charge of the revenues of the nation arising from the development and exportation of timber, stone and coal. These revenues amounted to about $300, 000 annually, and were used by the Choctaw government for the maintenance of the Government and its schools.
Doctor Wright's greatest public service was in connection with the negotiations between the Choctaw Nation and the Dawes Commission. In 1893, soon after the bill passed Congress creating the Dawes Commission to treat with the five civilized tribes, for the purpose of securing allotment of land in severalty and the breaking up of tribal relations, Doctor Wright was appointed on a commission of twelve Choctaws to meet with similar delegates sent from the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles and Osages, which met at Checota, Oklahoma, to deliberate upon the advisability of treating with the Dawes Commission. This convention went on record as opposing the making of any treaties.
In 1895 Doctor Wright was elected a member of the Choctaw Council. He was elected as the advocate of a policy to treat with the Dawes Commission. Thus he was the first prominent citizen of any of the five civilized tribes to advocate such a policy. His course was met by strong and bitter opposition, and as he was the only member of the council who believed in such a policy it required his strongest efforts to procure a hearing for the Dawes Commission before that body.
However, as a result of his constant appeals to his people, who had every reason to repose utmost confidence in his judgment and integrity, he succeeded early in 1896 in organizing the Tushkahoma Party which favored treating with the Dawes Commission. In June of the same year a convention of the Tushkahoma Party was held in Atoka and nominated Hon. Green McCurtain for principal chief. The campaign for this election in August developed a greater political activity and more bitter animosity than was ever known to exist among the Choctaw people. Doctor Wright had charge of this campaign, and was successful in electing his candidate for chief and for members of the council. At the convening of the council in October, 1896, Doctor Wright was appointed on a commission of five to treat with the Dawes Commission.
The significant part of this was that this Choctaw Commission was the first appointed by any of the Five Civilized Tribes for negotiations with the Dawes Commission. Out of these negotiations developed the movement which finally brought about the creation of the State of Oklahoma, as the result of the union between Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory. Thus as Doctor Wright's father had suggested the name Oklahoma, it was Doctor Wright's able leadership when the time came for breaking up tribal autonomy that proved a strong factor in extending the name Oklahoma over all Indian Territory and in finally creating a state of that name.
In December, 1896, following the meeting of the council, there was drawn up the first agreement with the Dawes Commission. However, Doctor Wright, as a member of the Choctaw delegation, refused to sign this agreement since it did not carry out the policies intended by the council and filed a minority report against it. He carried his opposition before the Interior Department and Congress, in January, 1897, and finally succeeded in defeating its ratification. On account of his opposition in this instance, Doctor Wright did not cooperate in drawing up the Atoka Agreement. There was no inconsistency in Doctor Wright's action. He heartily believed in the good results that would follow the cooperation between the civilized tribes and the Dawes Commission for the purpose of effecting allotment of land* in severalty and the breaking up of the tribal relations. However, he was opposed to certain features of the agreement as finally reached, and he did not hesitate to carry his opposition to the limit. A strong following of the Choctaw people upheld his policies in this course, but about that time he withdrew from politics and gave his undivided time and attention to his profession and the development of his own allotment of land.
In 1907 when the Choctaw Nation was facing grave dangers in the carrying out of their treaty provisions, Governor McCurtain again called Doctor Wright to his Assistance and appointed him as a regular standing delegate to Washington to represent the nation before Congress and the department. The death of Governor McCurtain in 1910 ended all representation of the Choctaws in Washington.
In addition to these activities prior to statehood, Doctor Wright was so confident of the ultimate union of the two territories into one state, that in 1904 as president of the Indian Territory Medical Association, he bent all his influence into uniting the medical societies of the two territories into one. Thus he succeeded in creating the Oklahoma State Medical Association.
Doctor Wright has also found time to take an interest in national politics. As a republican he was elected chairman of the Territorial Convention to elect delegates to the National Convention which nominated President McKinley. Doctor Wright now lives quietly at Olney, and though somewhat retired from his former active participation in affairs, he is a stanch and true friend of the Choctaw people, and one of the most capable representatives of the old regime still living in the new State of Oklahoma.
[A Standard History of Oklahoma , by Joseph B. Thoburn , 1916 -- Transcribed by Cathy Ritter]
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