A pioneer rancher of Texas County, Oklahoma, Boss Sebastian Neff was born on March 5, 1866, near Lewisburg in Preble County, Ohio. A son of Jacob and Margaret Wampler Neff, Boss attended school until the age of fourteen. Soon thereafter he read a book about Indian Territory and Texas cattle ranching. The writing inspired him to venture westward, and he became a stockman in 1883.

Neff traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, where he failed to find employment. For the next several years he roamed from the Texas Panhandle to Montana, working as a hunter, teamster, and cowboy. His labors occasionally took him onto the free grass of the Oklahoma Panhandle, then known as No Man's Land. In 1886 Neff engraved his name on Autograph Rock on the historic Santa Fe Trail in present Cimarron County, Oklahoma. He also visited Black Mesa and the ruins of Camp Nichols.

In 1887 Ira Neff, Boss's brother, settled south of the Oklahoma Panhandle in Hansford County, Texas, and together they fenced two sections of land adjoining Palo Duro Creek. Boss purchased his first cattle in 1888 and grazed them near a dugout he had acquired on Hackberry Creek in present Texas County, Oklahoma. Neff branded his herd with the NF mark that he used until 1923. He moved to a sod house along the Beaver River north of present Hardesty in 1889.

The Oklahoma Organic Act of 1890 made No Man's Land a part of Oklahoma Territory. Neff filed a homestead claim and helped organize Beaver County. He remodeled his soddy and then married Ida Eubank in 1893. The house served as their residence for five years and was the birthplace of three of their eight children.

Neff built a large home in 1898. He then had some fifteen hundred cattle and forty-five sections of pasture. Life in the region was harsh. A tornado destroyed the Neff home in June 1900 and wolves, loco weed, and prairie fires threatened his cattle. Neff rebuilt as settlers occupied the Oklahoma Panhandle. By 1907 much of his formerly open-range acreage was legally owned by farmers.

Neff moved his family to Hooker, Oklahoma, in 1909 and purchased a feed store. He sold a portion of his Texas County ranch land in 1916 and later divided the remainder among his children. In 1918 he became president of a Texhoma, Oklahoma, bank. A member of various fraternal organizations and historical societies, Boss Neff was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1937. He died at Liberal, Kansas, on March 15, 1947, and was buried at Hooker.

RIZLEY, ROSCOE (1892-1969)

Born in a prairie dugout near Beaver, Oklahoma, on July 5, 1892, and known as Ross, Rizley was the son of Robert M. and Arabella Narcissus McCown Rizley. Educated in the Beaver public schools, the future U.S. Representative then took courses at the summer normal school also at Beaver. After he received his teacher's certificate, Rizley taught in the rural schools of Beaver County in 1909 and 1910. In 1911 he attended Hill's Business College in Oklahoma City. After a brief stint as deputy registrar of deeds of Beaver County in 1912, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to attend the Kansas City School of Law from which he received an LL.B. on June 1915.

Admitted to the Oklahoma bar in 1915, he began his practice of law in Beaver in a partnership with R. H. Loofbourrow. The following year he married Ruby Seal, also of Beaver. The couple had seven children. In 1918, he became county attorney of Beaver County, a position he held until 1920 when he moved to Guymon in Texas County. Over the next several years he practiced law and was very active in Guymon civic affairs. Not only did he serve as Guymon city attorney, he was a member of the school board and chamber of commerce, helped organize the Lions Club, and participated in various fraternal organizations.

A lifelong Republican, Rizley was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1930. Although serving but one term, he had achieved some distinction in public service in the state. By the late 1930s the Republican Party in Oklahoma was on the verge of collapse. Indeed, he supported abandonment of the party in favor of a "grass roots" coalition of all anti-New Dealers. The Republicans, nevertheless, rallied and nominated him as their gubernatorial candidate in 1938. Although defeated, he rebounded two years later and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Oklahoma's Eighth District. He held this congressional seat for four terms.

During his eight years in Congress he served on various committees, including Agriculture, Rules, and Expenditures in the Executive Department. As a member of this last committee, he chaired the Subcommittee on Surplus Property and was instrumental in exposing the waste and disorder in the disposal of government property following World War II. His pioneer work with this subcommittee ultimately led to the establishment of the General Services Administration. In his last term he also chaired the Special Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures.

In 1948 he made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Edward H. Moore. Robert S. Kerr, the former Oklahoma governor who was the Democratic candidate, launched a partisan attack on the congressman and charged that he was both a military and economic isolationist. Following his defeat, Rizley resumed private law practice.

With the Republican victory in the presidential election of 1952, he again entered public service. From March to December 1953 the former congressman served as a solicitor for the Post Office Department, from December 1953 to December 1954 as assistant secretary of agriculture, from December 1954 to February 1955 as special assistant to the postmaster general, and from February 1955 to April 1956 as a member of the Civil Aeronautics Board. While with the CAB, he was named to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

In 1956 he resigned his CAB post to become judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, thus becoming one of the few people to serve in all three branches of the federal government. Interestingly, Kerr made the motion for Rizley's confirmation in the Senate. Rizley served as a federal judge until his death in Oklahoma City on March 4, 1969. He was interred at Elmhurst Cemetery in Guymon.