Oklahoma Genealogy and History - presented by Genealogy Trails

Wooward County, Oklahoma Biographies

Thomas Leonard Hieronymus (1911-1994)

PHILLIP COLGAN FERGUSON, (1903-1978)

Phil Ferguson was born in Wellington, Kansas, August 15, 1903. His parents were W. M. and May Deems Ferguson, who had married in 1897. His father was a rancher and banker in both Kansas and Oklahoma. The younger Ferguson attended public schools in Wellington and the Kemper Military School in Missouri. He graduated from the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1926.

Following college Ferguson engaged in agriculture and cattle ranching near Woodward, Oklahoma. Eventually he became director of the Bank of Woodward, which his father had purchased. On December 29, 1927, he married Martha Sharon, the daughter of E. L. Sharon of Ottawa, Kansas. The marriage ended in divorce. Ferguson later remarried, and his second wife's name was Naoma. By his two wives he had six children: Sharon, Phillis, John, Phillip, Susie, and Masie.

In 1932 Ferguson was a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Eighth Congressional District, but he lost his party's nomination to E. W. Marland. When Marland ran for governor in 1934, Ferguson was elected to take his congressional seat. He served in the House of Representatives from January 3, 1935, to January 3, 1941. By sitting on the Committee on Flood Control, he played an important part in initiating federal involvement in soil conservation and water resources development. He was instrumental in establishing programs that constructed reservoirs and planted native grasses in northwestern Oklahoma. He also sat on the Census, Elections, Public Buildings and Grounds, Irrigation and Reclamation, Rivers and Harbors, and Agriculture Committees. Before the Great Depression, Eighth District voters regularly elected Republicans to Congress, and they resumed this practice in 1940 by putting Ross Rizley into office instead of returning Ferguson. The latter believed he lost because he did not support the Townsend Old Age Plan.

During World War II Ferguson served in the U.S. Marine Corps from March 2, 1942, to August 1, 1944. He saw action in the Pacific Theater in Company A, First Battalion, Ninth Marines and in the Marine Raiders Regiment. He was commissioned a major and received the Silver Star for his actions.

Returning to Oklahoma after the war, he reentered politics. In 1950 he ran for governor but lost in the Democratic primary. During the 1950s he switched party affiliation, and in 1958 he became the Republican Party candidate for the gubernatorial seat. He was no match, however, for J. Howard Edmondson's highly successful "Prairie Fire" campaign.

After leaving Congress, Ferguson served on the Federal Reserve Board in Oklahoma City and as director of the Farm Credit Administration in Wichita, Kansas. In later life he continued his banking and ranching interests. He was a president of the Northwest Cattlemen's Association and vice president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association. He was also a charter member of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1976 he published a bilingual collection of children's stories titled Stories for the Grandchildren, or Cuentos Para Nietos. Ferguson died in Tijuana, Mexico, on August 8, 1978. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean at San Diego, California.

DICK THOMPSON MORGAN, (1853-1920)

Dick Thompson Morgan was born on December 6, 1853, at Prairie Creek, Vigo County, Indiana. His parents were Valentine and Frances Ann Thompson Morgan. Dick Morgan attended country schools before entering Prairie Creek High School, from which he graduated in 1872. In 1876 he received a bachelor's degree from Union Christian College at Merom, Indiana, and in 1878 a master's degree. He was also a professor of mathematics at the school. In 1880 he graduated from Central Law School of Indianapolis and was admitted to the bar. He served in the lower house of the Indiana state legislature in 1880-81. In 1878 he married Ora Heath, and in 1880 they had their only child, a son, Porter Heath Morgan. He moved to Kansas in 1885 and from there to Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1889. He relocated to Perry in 1893, El Reno in 1901, and Woodward in 1904. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt appointed him registrar of the U.S. Land Office at Woodward, where he served until May 1, 1908. Wherever Morgan lived, he actively participated in the Christian Church. He published a number of titles, including Morgan's Digest of Oklahoma Statutes and Supreme Court Decisions (1897), Morgan's Manual of the United States Homestead, Township, and Mining Laws (1900), Morgan's School Land Manual (1901), and Land Credits: A Plea for the American Farmer (1915). While residing in El Reno, he was president and treasurer of the Western Investment Co., which published the periodical Oklahoma Real Estate Register. In 1908 Morgan was elected as a Republican to Oklahoma's Second District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he served from March 3, 1909, until his death on July 4, 1920. After redistricting in the 1910s, he represented the Eighth District. While in the House, the congressman served on the Claims, Railways and Canals, Expenditures in the Treasury Department, Public Lands, and Judiciary committees. At the time of his death he was the second ranking Republican on the last committee. He developed a legislative interest in agricultural lands, and he sponsored the 1916 rural credits law that created the federal land bank system. Morgan won all of his elections by small margins. In 1910 and again in 1912 opponents contested his victory, in 1910 and 1912, leading to investigations by the House Committee on Elections. At that time, Oklahoma's "grandfather clause" denied many African Americans the right to vote. Democrats claimed that his totals contained hundreds of votes from ineligible blacks. In 1914 the elections committee exonerated the Republican. Dick T. Morgan died of pneumonia in Danville, Illinois, while en route from Washington, D.C., to Oklahoma. He was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Oklahoma City.

CHARLES SWINDALL, (1876-1939)

Considered one of Oklahoma's ablest and most colorful attorneys, Charles Swindall was born on February 13, 1876, near Terrell, Texas. He was the son of Jonathan W. and Mary Standley Swindall. Educated in the Terrell public schools, the future U.S. Representative attended Vanderbilt University and graduated with an LL.B. from Cumberland University in 1897. That same year he opened a law office in Woodward, Oklahoma, but soon moved to Day (later Ellis) County where he served as county attorney. By 1900 he had returned to Woodward where he became known for his work with the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association. In a short time, he got convictions in thirty-three of thirty-five cattle rustling cases. Married in 1911 to Emma Endres, Swindall took an active part in Woodward political and social life. During World War I he almost gave up his legal practice to concentrate on Red Cross work.

A Republican, he served as a delegate to the 1916 Republican national convention and was a member of the Oklahoma State Republican Committee from 1919 to 1929. In November 1920 he was elected to the U.S. Congress from the Eighth District to fill the unexpired term of Rep. Dick T. Morgan, who had died while in office. During the remaining four-month term Swindall served on the Public Land Committee. Because Oklahoma law required that a candidate file for a primary fifty days before the election, he was unable to seek a full term in Congress.

Following his stint in Washington, he returned to Woodward. He made an unsuccessful attempt to regain the seat in 1922. In April 1924 he was appointed as a district judge of Oklahoma's Twentieth Judicial District and later elected to a four-year term. Believing that strict law enforcement was the only way to deter crime, he handed out severe penalties. In 1927 he became the first Oklahoma judge to sentence a person to death for committing a robbery with firearms. The sentence was later reduced to life in prison. In 1928 he was elected to a six-year term as a justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. In one of his most notable opinions, he declared that a law granting perpetual franchises to utility companies was unconstitutional. He asserted that lawmakers failed to protect Oklahomans from monopolies and trusts.

In 1934 the state election board refused to acknowledge him as the Republican candidate for reelection to the court because he refused to support only Republican nominees. He believed each person had the right to decide the merits of a candidate regardless of his or her party affiliation. He thus excused himself as a justice and became a litigant in the case of Swindall v. State Election Board. He won a favorable decision guaranteeing the free exercise of the right of suffrage. Despite the court victory, voters defeated his reelection bid.

Swindall returned to private practice in Oklahoma City. In 1936 he made another unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. Congress. On June 19, 1939, He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in Oklahoma City. He was interred in Memorial Park Cemetery.