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Biographies
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Cyrus Harris
Five-term governor of the Chickasaw Nation, Cyrus Harris was born near Pontotoc, Mississippi, on August 22, 1817. He began his formal education in 1827 at the Monroe Missionary Station in Mississippi. From 1828 to 1830 he attended a school for Indians in Tennessee. Harris and his mother, Elizabeth Oxbury, a Chickasaw and Cherokee mixed-blood (Harris's father's identity is uncertain), left for Indian Territory in 1837 and arrived at Blue River in present Johnston County, Oklahoma, in 1838. Harris moved three more times before settling at Mill Creek, where he resided until his death. Harris began his political career in 1850. He was elected the first governor of the Chickasaw Nation (created in 1855) in 1856, and was reelected in 1860, 1866, 1868, and 1872. The Chickasaw Nation aligned with the Confederacy during his second term. His 1872 acceptance speech dealt with several important issues facing the Chickasaws, including post-Civil War reconstruction, education, and lawlessness. Supporters of Harris submitted his name for governor in 1878, but in a contested election Benjamin C. Burney won by five votes. To maintain order, Harris withdrew and retired from politics. Harris was married three times and had eleven children. He died at his home in Mill Creek on January 6, 1888, and was buried nearby. In 1961 his remains were reinterred at Drake in Murray County, Oklahoma.
Douglas Henry Johnston
Governor of the Chickasaw Nation from 1898 to 1902 and 1904 to 1939, Douglas Henry Johnston was born at Skullyville, Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, on October 13, 1856. Named after Douglas H. Cooper, Johnston was the son of Col. John Johnston, Sr., a white man, and Mary Cheadle Moncrief, a Chickasaw. They lived on a plantation along the South Canadian River until the Civil War, when the family moved to Blue in present Bryan County, where both parents soon died. Douglas was raised by his half-brother Tandy Walker and educated at Tishomingo and the Bloomfield Academy. After completing his studies, Johnston worked as a farmer and stockman. In 1881 he married Nellie Bynum. In 1884 he was appointed superintendent at Bloomfield Academy, serving until 1897. Before Nellie died in 1886, she gave birth to two sons. In 1889 Johnston married Lorena Elizabeth Harper, a Chickasaw, and the union produced a daughter. In 1898 the Chickasaw National Party nominated Johnston as a candidate for governor. His opponent, Hindman H. Burris, was more experienced, but Johnston won a decisive victory. While he enjoyed popular support, Johnston's political opponents attempted to unseat him. Critics charged that his lavish lifestyle was made possible at tribal expense. Although the accusations led to an indictment in 1905, no wrongdoing was proved. Johnston's mansion near Emet became known as "the Chickasaw White House" and served as a center for tribal business and social gatherings. Under Johnston the Chickasaw Nation ratified the Atoka Agreement in 1897, and he worked within its framework to achieve the best terms for his people. He pressured Washington politicians into passing the Supplemental Agreement of 1902. This legislation modified the Atoka Agreement and allowed the Chickasaw and the Choctaw to create a "Citizenship Court" to rehear tribal citizenship cases that had been accepted by the Dawes Commission. The court eventually revoked nearly four thousand fraudulent Dawes Roll admissions claims, saving the tribes some $20 million. In 1907 the State of Oklahoma attempted to nullify the Atoka Agreement provision that disallowed taxation of allotted lands for twenty-one years. Johnston led those opposing the action, and in 1912 the Supreme Court upheld the treaty stipulation. Another victory for Johnston's administration came in 1924, when the Chickasaw gained permission to file suit against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Claims to recover funds the government illegally obtained from tribal resources. Johnston served the Chickasaw as governor until his death on June 28, 1939. He was buried at Tishomingo. [Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]
Montford T. Johnson
A cattle rancher and entrepreneur, Montford T. Johnson was born in November 1843 along the Blue River north of Tishomingo in present Johnston County, Oklahoma, the former Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory. He was the son of Charles B. Johnson, an Englishman, and Rebekah Courtney, a Chickasaw. Raised by his maternal grandmother's family after his mother's death and his father's desertion, Johnson suffered from chronic illness throughout much of his life. Nevertheless, he built a ranching empire in present central Oklahoma and played a positive role in the growth of the Chickasaw Nation. Johnson was a contemporary and a friend of Jesse Chisholm, the legendary scout and trader, who convinced him to establish cattle ranches on the unruly western edge of the Chickasaw Nation. In 1868 Johnson established his first ranch, located about two miles northeast of present Washington in McClain County, and hired a Chickasaw freedman, Jack Brown, to run and share in the operation. This was the first of many business ventures manned by nonwhites that flourished under Johnson's leadership. Over the next twenty-five years Johnson expanded upon his operations, enlisting the support of the Campbell and Bond families, who were related through marriage. Those ranches ranged from Johnsonville, north of present Byars, Oklahoma, west to present Newcastle, and continuing west and north to present Chickasha and Tuttle. Silver City, where Johnson ran a trading store, was north of Tuttle and had the Chisholm Trail as its main street. For a number of years Johnson also maintained a ranch outside of the Chickasaw Nation at Council Grove, in present western Oklahoma City. Johnson was running cattle as far west as present Hydro, Oklahoma, in the late 1880s. As Johnson's children came of age, in particular his oldest son, Edward Bryant "E. B.," they played active roles in the family enterprises. E. B., who was college educated, and a partner, Joe Lindsay, bought out Montford Johnson's interest in the Silver City store in the early 1880s. E. B. later took over all of the family business operations. After Johnson's first wife, Mary Elizabeth Campbell, died in 1880, he married Addie Campbell and moved northeast of present Minco, Oklahoma, where he lived until his death on February 17, 1896. He left twelve children from the two marriages. E. B. Johnson consolidated their property into three ranches after the Dawes Commission allotments. He also expanded the family's cattle operations into the Texas Panhandle. The Johnson businesses continued to thrive until the 1980s when they were dissolved into individual holdings. [Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]
J. J. Kinney
The virile characteristics of the American people as a whole, their enterprise and progressiveness is often ascribed to the complex mingling of races from the various European nations, the individuals of which by intermarriage transmit to their offspring the better and more forceful qualities of the races to which they respectively belong, this process being repeated and the result intensified in succeeding generations. A still more interesting process may be witnessed in some parts of the great West, where men of white blood have intermarried with the original proprietors of the soil—the American Indians. That the red man possessed, and still possesses, certain noble and praiseworthy characteristics will not be denied by the unprejudiced student of ethnology, and the mixture of Indian blood with that of Northern whites especially has produced a new race which is already developing in a highly interesting and satisfactory manner and giving evidence of power and capacity that may make it an important factor in shaping the destinies of this country. In any event it seems bound to take a worthy place as a component element of American civilization. A majority of intermarried citizens in Oklahoma came from the southern states. In the person of J. J. Kinney, however, we have the grandson of a former governor of the Chickasaw Nation and the son of a Pennsylvanian who nearly half a century ago drove out into the West in search of adventure and fortune. Mr. Kinney was born January 13, 1889, near Sulphur, Idaho Territory, his parents being John H. and Minnie (Harris) Kinney. The father was an interesting figure of the early territorial days. For four years he drove a stage coach through the wild country of the Chickasaw Nation, between Boggy Depot and Pauls Valley, and for several years he was a deputy United States marshal when outlaws and thieves were overrunning the territory. Mr. Kinney's mother was a daughter of former Governor Cyrus Harris of the Chickasaw Nation, who died over forty years ago, near the old capital.
J. J. Kinney in his boyhood acquired the elements of knowledge in the common schools of the Indian country, his education being continued by a subsequent course in the Selvidge Business College at Ardmore, in which he prepared himself for the banking business. He then became assistant cashier of the Bank of Commerce at Sulphur, and afterwards was assistant cashier for three years in the Farmers State Bank at Holdenville. In 1914 he went to Ardmore. where he was engaged in banking for one year, remaining there until December, at which time he removed to Mill Creek, becoming assistant cashier of the First State Bank. Mr. Kinney is recognized as a successful business man, and he is also an accomplished musician, having unusual talent, which is being constantly developed. As a tenor singer he has made a number of public appearances, his voice and style winning him unstinted praise and admiration. His appearance once before the Baptist State Convention at Shawnee was an event, and it is probable that his talent may lead him to the Chautauqua platform, and that later, after the close of the present war, he may seek advanced instruction from some of the great vocal masters of the Old World. The principal part of his vocal training hitherto was received from Prof. Fred H. Poulter. Mr. Kinney is also an accomplished violinist, having received instruction on the king of instruments from Professor Brower of Mill Creek, one of the most talented violinists in the state. Mr. Kinney is a member of the Baptist Church and of several fraternal orders, including the Homesteaders, the M. W. A., the K. L. of S. and the Praetorians. He is interested in valuable properties in the Healdton oil fields and takes a lively interest in the development of his farm near Mill Creek. Mr. Kinney has three brothers and four sisters: James C. Kinney is engaged in the grocery business in Oklahoma City. Levi Kinney lives in Sulphur. Ludie E. Kinney is connected with the Roberts, Johnson & Rand Shoe Company at Buckhannon, West Virginia. Mrs. Nannie Polk is the wife of a ranchman near Sulphur. Mrs. Ida Jackson is the wife of an oil operator at Muskogee, and Mrs. Lillie Cozby is the wife of a farmer near Mill Creek.
In July, 1909, J. J. Kinney was united in marriage with Josephine Kuykendall of Cleburne, Texas, daughter of a well known missionary Baptist preacher, who followed his sacred calling for a number of years in Texas, was a missionary in Mexico for seven years, and who now lives in Hornbeck, Tennessee. Mr. and Mrs. Kinney have two children: Maurice Julia, aged four, and William Randolph, aged two years.
[Source: A Standard History of Oklahoma Volume 4 By Joseph Bradfield Thoburn - Submitted by Barb Ziegenmeyer]
Johnston Murray
Oklahoma's governor from 1951 to 1955, Johnston Murray was born July 21, 1902, in Emet, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, to William Henry "Alfalfa Bill" and Mary Alice Hearrell Murray. Johnston Murray was the second son of four boys and one girl. The family lived in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, where the children attended public school. Later, when his father served as a U.S. representative, the younger Murray attended school in Washington, D.C. Murray married Marion Draughon of Sulphur, Oklahoma, in 1923. Their only child was Johnston, Jr. Six years into their marriage, they divorced. In 1924 Murray graduated from Murray State School of Agriculture (now Murray State College), Tishomingo, where he had played football. After graduation he followed his father to Bolivia, where the elder Murray established an agricultural colony. On May 1, 1933, Murray married Willie Roberta Emerson. He received his law degree from Oklahoma City University in 1947. On January 9, 1950, Johnston Murray, a Democrat, announced his intention to run for governor. He won the primary runoff by 1,009 votes. His opponent, William O. Coe, an Oklahoma City attorney, decided to use the divorce proceedings filed by Murray's first wife accusing him of child desertion. To Coe's surprise, Marion Murray supported her ex-husband's candidacy. As governor Murray's plans to reduce state spending and to reform state government were thwarted by strained relations with state legislators. As Johnston Murray was prohibited constitutionally from succeeding himself, his second wife, Willie, decided to seek the Democratic gubernatorial election in 1954. However, she failed to gain enough support to win the election. Several months afterward, they endured a bitter divorce, with prologued proceedings in which Willie Murray accused him of public drunkenness and adultery. With the divorce finalized in February 1956, Murray later married Helen Shutt. Politically and financially ruined, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he worked for an oil well servicing company and later a limousine service. While Murray was working at the limousine service, Oklahoma state senator Gene Stipe saw him and suggested that he return to Oklahoma to practice law. In February 1960 Murray formed a law partnership in Oklahoma City with Whit Pate, who had served as a legal assistant to the former Gov. J. Howard Edmondson. Murray later became a staff lawyer for the Oklahoma Department of Public Welfare. He died on April 16, 1974, in Oklahoma City, and was buried next to his father in Tishomingo. [Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]
William Murray
U.S. Representative and governor of Oklahoma William Henry David "Alfalfa Bill" Murray was born in Toadsuck, Texas, near Collinsville, on November 21, 1869. He was the son of Uriah Dow Thomas Murray, a farmer, and Bertha Elizabeth Jones. He grew up in north central Texas before running away from home at the age of twelve. For seven years he worked as an agricultural laborer attending public schools sporadically. After attending College Hill Institute, a secondary school at Springtown, he became a public school teacher in Parker County. Murray often demonstrated his talent as an orator. He spoke widely in opposition to the Peoples or Populist Party while a member of the faction of the Democratic Party led by James Stephen Hogg. Murray campaigned actively for Hogg when the latter sought the governorship. Establishing himself as a leader in the alliance and the Democratic Party, Murray moved to the larger community of Corsicana where he founded a newspaper, the Corsicana Daily News; he served as both editor and publisher. Twice a candidate for the state senate, he lost both contests. The newspaper failed financially, and Murray moved to Fort Worth where, after reading widely in legal texts, he became an attorney. Admitted to the bar on April 10, 1897, Murray's practice did not flourish, and in March of 1898 he departed for Indian Territory. Murray settled in Tishomingo, the capital of the Chickasaw Nation, immediately establishing relations with tribal leaders. His legal practice proved lucrative, especially after he married Mary Alice Hearrell, niece of the Chickasaw governor on July 19, 1899. His ties to tribal leaders made him a prominent figure in the Nation, and he became deeply involved in Chickasaw politics. A major effort was made to obtain statehood for Indian Territory in 1905, and Murray helped to write the constitution for the proposed state of Sequoyah. While the movement failed, his role at the constitutional convention in Muskogee and his frequent speaking engagements gave him prominence in the Territory. Murray spoke extensively in support of the Democratic Party and for diversification of agriculture. His orations in favor of the cultivation of alfalfa led to his sobriquet, "Alfalfa Bill." After the movement for separate statehood for Indian Territory failed, a joint statehood convention with Oklahoma Territory was held in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, in 1906, and Murray and his allies dominated the meeting. Supported by delegates from Indian Territory and by alliance members he won election as president of the convention. Murray wrote major sections of the constitution using his authority as presiding officer to force inclusion of his ideas. Voters in the Twin Territories approved the proposal, and on November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was admitted to the union. Though conservatives such as William Howard Taft denounced Murray's handiwork, the Oklahoma Constitution included numerous examples of reforms being advocated nationally by Progressives in both major parties. Murray won a seat in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in the First Legislature, and his colleagues elected him speaker of the house. He battled for legislation to curb business excesses and to enhance agriculture during the next two years. Murray constantly defended "the boys at the fork of the creek," his rural supporters. Defeated for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1910, he sought election to the U.S. House of Representatives two years later and won an at-large seat. Following congressional reapportionment, he ran in the new Fourth District in 1914, winning another term. During his four years in Washington Murray made few significant legislative contributions, but he championed Pres. Woodrow Wilson's preparedness program. Isolationist sentiment in his district swept Murray out of Congress in 1916, and he again failed to win the gubernatorial nomination two years later. Strong support in rural southern and western Oklahoma could not overcome the opposition he roused in the towns and cities. Discouraged by successive defeats, Murray left the United States in the 1920s as he sought to establish an agricultural colony in southern Bolivia. Murray's sons and their spouses, with a few neighbors from Tishomingo, settled in Bolivia where they suffered numerous hardships when support from the Bolivian government failed to materialize. Harsh living conditions demoralized the settlers, and when the colony collapsed, Murray returned to Oklahoma where he found political and economic chaos. While some Oklahomans had enjoyed unprecedented prosperity in the 1920s, the state government was torn by the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, the impeachment of two governors, and the ascendancy of the Republican Party. The collapse of agricultural prices and a catastrophic decline in the petroleum revenues fomented an economic crisis. Murray discovered that his reformist ideas and agrarianism now resonated with voters who faced financial ruin. In 1930 Murray ran for the governorship on a reform platform, and his fiery oratory swamped a wealthy oilman who opposed him in the Democratic primary. Despite the strenuous efforts of the metropolitan press to portray him as a radical, the flamboyant Murray won an overwhelming victory in the general election. Confusing notoriety with popularity, in 1932 Murray sought the Democratic nomination for president. In rumpled, ash-covered, food-stained clothes Murray campaigned across the country advocating his platform, "Bread, Butter, Bacon and Beans." He won only one delegate outside of Oklahoma, and his opposition to Franklin Roosevelt earned him the disdain if not hatred of many New Dealers. When his gubernatorial term ended, "Alfalfa Bill" retired to his farm near Tishomingo and began to publish books and pamphlets attacking the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt. Murray's racism and anti-Semitism became ever more virulent as he defended segregation and condemned urbanization and industrialization. Defeat in the gubernatorial primary of 1938 proved his last political hurrah. Murray spoke out against Roosevelt in 1940, but the shaky, disheveled old man had few followers. Only in 1950, when his son Johnston Murray was elected governor, would the elder Murray return to the governor's mansion. Throughout his life he had championed agriculture and the family farm, often stating his firm belief that "civilization begins and ends with the plow." Murray died in Oklahoma City on October 15, 1956, after a paralytic stroke followed by pneumonia. [Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]
Penner Family
Possibly the oldest family-operated ranch in Oklahoma, the Penner Angus Ranch can trace its roots to 1855, when Cyrus Harris, a five-term governor of the Chickasaw Nation, founded the town of Mill Creek in present Johnston County and began raising stock, among many other pursuits. In 1891, according to Chickasaw Nation marriage records, Harris's daughter Amanda married Felix Penner, a Texas native born to German immigrants. Penner expanded the livestock operations and early in 1912 introduced Angus cattle to the area. The ranch eventually contained eleven thousand acres, with portions in Murray County. In 1907 at Mill Creek Penner established a bank, which his son Charles Penner managed until 1943. Charles and his brother Cyrus also continued the ranching operation. Felix Penner died in 1939. The ranch survived drought, economic downturns, and in 1948 a devastating tornado that killed nearly one hundred head of cattle and destroyed most of the farming equipment. The ranch encompasses the old town of Mill Creek, which had moved three miles east in 1901, after the St. Louis, Oklahoma and Southern Railway (later the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway) bypassed the original town. In 1995 the ranch received an Oklahoma Centennial Farm and Ranch award. At the time, the Penner Trust owned the Penner Angus Ranch and reported that the property contained nearly five thousand acres, developed around the families' original Chickasaw allotments.
[Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]
Charles C. Shaw
In his course as a physician, lawyer, legislator and public-spirited citizen Senator Shaw has been guided by the conservatism of discretion, with a native cleanness of thought and action. In his career there has been naught of the spectacular, but he has hewed straight to the line and has made his influence potent for good in all of the relations of life. He is engaged in the successful practice of his profession at Tishomingo, the judicial center of Johnston County, has been an influential figure in the councils of the democratic party in Oklahoma, and has effectively and worthily represented the Twenty-sixth Senatorial District of the state in the Fourth and Fifth General Assemblies of the Oklahoma Legislature.
Charles Cicero Shaw was born in Scott County, Arkansas, on the 6th of December, 1877, and is a son of William A. and Ellen Shaw, the former a native of Georgia and the latter of Alabama. The Shaw family was founded in America in the early colonial era, and representative of the same were patriot soldiers in the war for independence, so that by ancestral heritage Senator Shaw, of this review, is eligible for membership in the society of the Sons of the Amencan Revolution. William A. Shaw became one of the pioneer settlers of Scott County, Arkansas, and was there a successful contractor for a long period prior to his death, which occurred in the year 1884, his devoted wife having been summoned to eternal rest in 1881, when her son, Charles C., of this sketch, was a child of three years. Her father was an able and influential clergyman of the Baptist Church in the State of Alabama.
Senator Shaw, who is a physician as well as a lawyer, acquired his rudimentary education in the public schools of his native state and was about seven years old at the time of his father's death, so that he was doubly orphaned when a mere lad. In 1890 he went to Texas, in which state he continued his educational discipline, and in 1901 he became a resident of Oklahoma. Within a short time thereafter he went to Kansas City, Missouri, where he entered the University Medical College, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1904 and from which he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Thereafter he was engaged in the practice of medicine at Ada, Oklahoma, until 1907, the year which marked the admission of the state to the Union, and in the meanwhile he had studied law and been admitted to the bar, his tastes and ambition having led him thus to make a radical change of profession—a change which his success in the practice of law has fully justified.
In 1907 Senator Shaw removed to Johnston County, where he has since continued in the active practice of law and where he holds distinctive precedence as one of the leading members of the bar of this section of the state. He became actively associated with political affairs in the formative period of the state government and has proved a veritable stalwart in the camp of the democratic party. In 1910 the doctor was chairman of the Johnston County Democratic Convention, and from 1910 to 1912 he represented that county as a member of the Democratic State Central Committee. As a supporter of Hon. William H. Murray, democratic candidate for governor, Doctor Shaw was specially active in the campaign of 1910, and in 1912 he was elected to the State Senate as representative of the Twenty-sixth District, his loyal and effective service continuing through the Fourth and Fifth General Assemblies of the Legislature. In the Fourth Legislature Senator Shaw was chairman of the committee on revenue and taxation and was assigned also to membership on the following named committees: Legal advisory, constitution and constitutional amendments, appropriations, privileges and elections, fees and salaries, public buildings and capitol, public printing, public health and congressional apportionment. In the Fifth Legislature he was chairman of the committee on public-service corporations, and a member of the committees on legal advisory, rules and procedure, judiciary No. 2, appropriations, roads and highways, education, public buildings, public health and committee on committees.
In the Fourth Legislature Senator Shaw was the floor leader of the majority in the memorable contest over the state capitol bill, the passage of which resulted in an early institution of the construction of Oklahoma's fine capitol. He was the author of the primary election law enacted in the same session of the Legislature, and in the Fifth Legislature he took a leading part in efforts to amend the election law of the state. As a loyal friend and supporter of the governor, Senator Shaw earnestly championed the policies of the administration in reference to a revision of the laws pertaining to courts and court proceedings and in the creation of a state tax commission. Concerning him the following estimate has been given and comes from an authoritative source: "'Senator Shaw is a conservative political partisan and is one of the most popular members of the upper house of the Legislature. Quiet and unassuming, he has taken little part in debate, but his broad conceptions of governmental matters, his mature judgment and his talent for work have made him one of the useful of the law-makers of Oklahoma." On June 1, 1916, Doctor Shaw was appointed physician and surgeon for the Oklahoma State Penitentiary located at McAlester, Oklahoma.
In the time-honored Masonic fraternity Senator Shaw has received the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, as a representative of which he is affiliated with the consistory at McAlester. He is identified also with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World, is a valued and appreciative member of the Johnston County Bar Association and the Oklahoma State Bar Association, and both he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church South. It may be noted that Senator Shaw has two brothers but no sisters and that both of his brothers are residents of Oklahoma, David A. being engaged in the practice of law at Poteau, LeFlore County, where he is also editor and publisher of tho Poteau Sun, and William C., who is a traveling salesman, being a resident of Ada, Pontotoc County.
In May, 1899, in Hunt County, Texas, was solemnized the marriage of Senator Shaw to Miss Emily Jane Edwards, and they have three children—Otto Edward, Charles Haskell and Jewell.
[Source: A Standard History of Oklahoma Volume 4 By Joseph Bradfield Thoburn - Submitted by Barb Ziegenmeyer]
Jonas Wolf
Jonas Wolf, a son of Capt. James Wolf and his full blood Chickasaw Indian wife, was born near Horn Lake in what is today De Soto County, Mississippi, on June 30, 1828. Captain Wolf was a character of some prominence among the Chickasaws, having been a signer of the Treaty of October 22, 1832. He removed with his family in the Chickasaw removal party which departed from Memphis on November 1, 1838, arriving at Doaksville on December 22nd. Shortly thereafter the Captain removed to lands south of Boggy Depot but later effected his permanent settlement on the Blue in the vicinity of the present town of Milburn, Johnston County, Oklahoma, where he and his wife passed away some years later. Meager educational advantages were afforded young Jonas Wolf during his adolescent years. He briefly attended school at Boggy Depot but the school of experience reenforced by self-education were the factors which prepared him for the efforts which he later undertook. Farming and stock-raising became his gainful pursuits. Early in life Jonas Wolf established himself upon a farm along the north bank of the Washita some five miles west of Tishomingo and south of Ravia which remained his home until his death and where he lies buried. He saw no service in either the Union or Confederate armies during the Civil War. Jonas Wolf became a member of the Presbyterian Church, South and later was ordained to the ministry of that denomination. Active participation in tribal politics did not seem to enlist his interest until later in life. He served consistently as a member of the Chickasaw legislature but had reached the age of 56 years when he first became governor. [Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]
