Muskogee County, OK
Biographies
Jesse Carroll
Culbertson
William Edward
Delehant
Jesse A.
DeWitt (New)
Edmondson
Family (New)
Zeb Pettigrew
Jackson
(New)
August Ferdinand
Krumrei
Belle
Starr
- "The
Outlaw
Queen"
Stephen P.
Mann
(New)
George K. Powell (New)
James J. Rooney (New)
Henry O.
Valeur
(New)
Grover P.
Watkins
(New)
Milton Gooddell
Young
Governor Charles N. Haskell was the son
of George R. and Jane H. Reeves Haskell. The state of
Oklahoma's first governor
was born
on March 13, 1860, in
West Leipsic,
Putnam County, Ohio.
The Haskell
family
descended from
the 1622 Massachusetts settlers. After his father died of
pneumonia on January 13, 1863, his mother worked for
the
local Methodist church
as a bell
ringer and custodian
in
order to
support her family.
Charles was the
second
youngest of
six, having three
sisters and two brothers. His education
was
provided through the local schools. At seventeen he
began teaching in the area
and also studying law in his spare time. Admitted to
the
Ohio bar in 1880, he moved to
Ottawa, Ohio, the following year were he began
to practice
law. During his time
there he became
interested in
construction and
building,
especially of
railroads. Haskell is
known to have also
lived in New
York
City for short
periods of time,
and before moving to Muskogee, he and his
family would go
to San
Antonio,
Texas, during the summer.
It was not until
1901
that he moved to Muskogee,
Oklahoma,
after being approached on one of his
southern travels by
Judge John R.
Thomas about acquiring a rail line from
Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Muskogee. Working
in
conjunction with the town
businessmen, Haskell turned the
small town into a small city of twenty-five
thousand
inhabitants. Muskogee also
boasted four competing rail lines, a hotel,
and an opera
house. Active in
local
politics, he
served as a
delegate to
the Sequoyah
Constitutional Convention in 1905, where he
was elected
vice president. The next
year he was chosen as a delegate to the
Constitutional
Convention in Guthrie
and was then elected
majority floor
leader
of the Democratic
Party. At
the
convention he stood
out as one of the most
important
leaders for Oklahoma,
especially in
helping to draw up the state
constitution.
Most notable was his
push to draw up
a
separate
prohibition
article in conjunction,
with but
separate from, the actual constitution. His
fame at the
convention allowed him
to win the office of governor in 1907 by over
thirty
thousand votes. As the
first
governor
he
carefully controlled the banking
law in
Oklahoma, as well as reformed prison
laws. However, he is
remembered most
for moving the state capital from Guthrie
to
Oklahoma City, an action
that brought about
considerable
controversy. At the
1908
Democratic
National
Convention,
Haskell was elected as treasurer of
the
Democratic Party and helped push William
Jennings
Bryan's
nomination for
president.
Haskell's other
significant
contributions while governor
included
establishing the
Oklahoma
Geological Survey, the
Oklahoma School for the Blind,
the
Oklahoma College for Women, and the State Department
of
Public Health. In
addition, he helped to create the
Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals in 1908. He
was
succeeded in 1911 by Lee Cruce
after many accusations about bribery by large
corporations
and misappropriated
funds. Haskell ran for
the U.S.
Senate
in 1912,
losing to Thomas P.
Gore.
Both
the town Haskell
(formerly Sawokla) and Haskell
County,
Oklahoma, bear his name in
honor and
remembrance of his service as
governor.
Haskell returned to
private
business, where
it is said he made
and lost many
fortunes until his death. He was married
twice,
first to
Lucie Pomeroy of
Ottawa,
Ohio, in 1881. This marriage produced Norman,
Murray, and
Lucie. However, Lucie
Pomeroy died in 1888.
His second
marriage to
Lillie Elizabeth
Gallup
in 1889
produced three more
children, Frances, Jane, and
Joseph
(Joe). On July 5, 1933,
Charles N.
Haskell died of pneumonia resulting
from
complications of a stroke he
suffered in March
1933.
OWEN, Robert Latham, a Senator from
Oklahoma; born in Lynchburg, Campbell County, Va.,
February 2, 1856; attended
private
schools in Lynchburg,
Va., and
Baltimore, Md.; graduated
from Washington
and Lee
University,
Lexington, Va., 1877; moved to Salina, Indian Territory,
and
taught school among the Cherokee Indians; studied law;
admitted to the bar in
1880 and
commenced practice;
federal Indian
agent for the Five
Civilized Tribes
1885-1889 at Muskogee.He was a
member of the
Democratic
National Committee
1892-1896, organized the
First
National Bank of Muskogee in
1890 and was its
president for ten
years. Upon the
admission of
Oklahoma as a State
into the
Union in 1907 was elected as
a Democrat to the United
States Senate for
the term ending
March 3, 1913;
reelected in 1912 and
1918 and served from
December
11, 1907, to March 3, 1925; declined to be a
candidate for
renomination
in 1924; chairman, Committee on
Indian Depredations (Sixty-second Congress),
Committee on
the Mississippi River
and Its Tributaries (Sixty-second Congress),
Committee on
Pacific Railroads
(Sixty-second Congress),
Committee on
Banking and
Currency (Sixty-third
through
Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on the Five
Civilized
Tribes (Sixty-sixth
Congress); resumed the practice of law in
Washington,
D.C.; organized and
served as chairman of the
National
Popular
Government League from 1913
until his
death in Washington, D.C., July 19, 1947;
interment in
Spring Hill Cemetery,
Lynchburg, Va.
Affectionately known as "Miss Alice," Robertson was the first woman ever elected to Congress from Oklahoma and America's first female postmaster of a Class A post office. She was born January 2, 1854, at Tullahassee Mission in the Creek Nation of Indian Territory, to William and Ann Eliza Worcester Robertson. Robertson's grandfather was missionary Rev. Samuel Worcester, who accompanied the tribe on the Trail of Tears. Alice Robertson's early schooling was under the supervision of her parents. At age eighteen she was sent to Elmira College in New York, where she graduated near the head of her class. She was a clerk in the U.S. Indian Office in Washington, D.C., from 1873 to 1879. Returning to Indian Territory, she taught in the school at Tullahassee and later at Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1882 Miss Alice again returned to her home at Tullahassee and established the Nuyaka Mission. She was placed in charge of an Indian girls' boarding school, an institution which developed into Henry Kendall College (now the University of Tulsa). In 1900 Robertson was chosen as supervisor of Creek Indian schools, a post she held until 1904 when Pres. Theodore Roosevelt appointed her postmaster at Muskogee. Overcoming the difficulty she encountered as a female supervising male postal workers, she was Muskogee postmaster until 1913. Miss Alice was always known for her assistance to America's soldiers. She helped recruit troops for Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and personally prepared a field kit, with sewing necessities and a small Bible, for each soldier who left for the war. When fifteen thousand troops passed through Muskogee in 1916 en route to the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa, she met the trains and provided the men with sandwiches, cake, and milk. The ingredients had been grown on her farm, named Sawokla (the farm's name was taken from a Creek-language word meaning "gathering place"). She continued to assist America's fighting men when the United States entered World War I in 1917. Sawokla was also the name of Robertson's restaurant in downtown Muskogee. She fed as many as six hundred people per day in the years after World War I. In 1920, concerned about the direction of American society, she ran as a Republican for the Second District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her platform was simple: "I am a Christian, I am an American, I am a Republican." She used the classified section of the newspaper to report on her campaign. A typical advertisement read "Watermelons every day. Fried chicken extra good tonight. Our campaign seems to be going very well." Robertson rode the coattails of Pres. Warren G. Harding and was elected to Congress from the Second District as a Republican in heavily Democratic eastern Oklahoma. She arrived in the nation's capital with much talk of her being a woman, an old-fashioned one at that. She was sixty-six years old and had never been married. Only the second woman elected to the Congress, Miss Alice was the first woman to preside over the House of Representatives. After her election she announced that she would concentrate on promoting legislation to better the lives of Indians, women, farmers, soldiers, and working people. Then, unfortunately, she attacked the newly formed League of Women Voters, thinking it to be a "women's rights" group. Miss Alice failed to win reelection in 1922. Fledging women's groups and the Ku Klux Klan were among the many that campaigned against her. The former member of Congress lived much of the rest of her life in poverty. President Harding secured her a position in Muskogee at the Veterans' Hospital in May 1923. Monthly stipends from friends such as Lew Wentz of Ponca City and a $125 monthly salary for her position as a research assistant for the Oklahoma Historical Society kept Miss Alice from starvation for the remainder of her existence. She died in Muskogee on July 1, 1931.
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