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O. H. P. BREWER
Vol. 3, p. 953

Muskogee's present postmaster, a lawyer by profession, O. H. P.
BREWER, has for a number of years been one of the leading men of the
old Cherokee Nation, gained his first public honors under tribal
government, was a member of the constitutional convention, and has
had an active part in Oklahoma affairs since statehood.

Born at Webbers Falls, Indian Territory, a hamlet twenty-five miles
southeast of the enterprising City of Muskogee, O. H. P. Brewer is
the offspring of pioneer stock, his parents being Cherokee citizens
who voluntarily emigrated form Georgia to the Indian Territory in
1838 in accordance with the terms of a congressional act. His father,
O. H. P. Brewer, was educated in the public schools of the Cherokee
Nation and also at Mount Comfort, a private school at Fayetteville,
Arkansas. He was commissioned captain in the Cherokee Brigade of the
Southern Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil war. He served
with distinction in this capacity and was commissioned colonel for
meritorious and distinguished activity during the progress of the
military operations of the Cherokee people. Perhaps no younger
officer in the Confederate army of the Cherokee Nation won greater
distinction and honor nor enjoyed greater confidence and respect at
the hands of his superiors than he, He filled many positions of honor
and trust under tribal government as a member of the Cherokee
Council, an member of the Cherokee Board of Education, as tax
collector for the Cherokee Nation in the matter of royalties growing
out of the leasing of the Cherokee Strip, to a livestock association
with headquarters at Caldwell, Kansas, and was a member of the
Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation at the time of his death on
December 20, 1891. The mother, Delia A. (VANN) Brewer, was educated
in the tribal public schools, the Sawyer School for Girls at
Fayetteville, Arkansas, and at the Young Ladies Seminary at Mount
Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Mr. O. H. P. Brewer was likewise educated in the tribal public
schools, the Cherokee National Male Seminary and was graduated from
the University of Arkansas. Following his graduation from the
university he spent seven years upon the home plantation at Webbers
Falls, devoting his time to the agriculture and the acquisitions of
knowledge from a section of good books, the heritage of his father.
He was then elected by the voters of Canadian District (a tribal
subdivision corresponding to a county subdivision ) a member to the
Cherokee Senate in which body he served actively on the Committee on
Education. He advocated with all the activity of a vigorous
personality and the persuasive powers of an alert mind before the
Senate Committee on Education, the largest appropriation for
educational purposes in the history of the Cherokee Legislature, and
through his efforts the committee unanimously reported to the Council
in favor of the appropriation. On the floor of the Cherokee Senate in
the face of determined and strenuous opposition he championed the
cause of the committee report, and after days of forceful argument he
overcame all antipathy to the measure, and had the satisfaction of
seeing the same placed upon the statutes of the Cherokee Nation. At
the expiration of his term he was elected by joint session of the
Cherokee National Council a member of the Cherokee Board of
Education. He served six years as president of said board and won the
admiration and respect of the white inhabitants of the Cherokee
Nation and the members of his tribe, by speaking constantly for the
cause of education in almost every neighborhood while supervising the
schools of the Cherokee Nation; appealing to the citizens to grasp
the opportunity of cultivating the minds of the younger generation in
order that the good work might in the future rebound to the credit of
his people. The Cherokees were the pioneers in the establishment of a
free school system, and their educators have been sincerely devoted
to the supremacy of the tribe and the results of racial care and
pains has fostered the development of men like O. H. P. Brewer whose
good work will shine forth upon succeeding generations so that the
historian of the future may truthfully record that in the closing
days of the governments the Indians so loved, when the Indian
Territory was bereft of its swaddling clothes and made to assume the
lofty station of statehood, that the Cherokees, at least, recognized
the importance of being prepared for the emergencies and
responsibilities entailed by such a change of condition so that they
expanded all their best efforts toward a betterment of tribal
condition and a greater stimulation of national ambition.

During the fall of 1906 he was elected a member of the
constitutional convention by the electors of the Seventy-seventh
Constitutional District, overcoming a normal republican majority and
defeating his opponent by 325 votes. In this body he served as
chairman of the Committee on Education, member of the Committee on
Public Buildings, member of the Committee on Engrossment. Through his
influence as chairman of the Committee on Education the provision for
the maintenance of separate schools for white and negro children and
the section providing for a compulsory system of education in the
State of Oklahoma was incorporated in our organic law.

At the beginning of statehood he was appointed, though he did not
accept either place, member of the State Board of Examiners and a
member of the State Text Book Commission by Oklahoma's first
governor. During the summer of 1908 he was placed in charge of the
Oklahoma State Farm Loan Department, which had to do with loaning out
upon Oklahoma farms, as preferred security, $5,000,000 appropriated
under the terms of the enabling act. He resigned from this position
on the 15th of April, 1910, returned to his home in Muskogee,
commenced the study of law and was in due course admitted to the bar.
During the campaign of 1912 Mr. Brewer took charge of Senator Robert
L. OWEN's headquarters and managed his campaign for re-election in
the territory comprehending the eastern half of the State of
Oklahoma. On May 7, 1913, Mr. Brewer was appointed postmaster at
Muskogee by President Woodrow WILSON, and his appointment was
confirmed by the United States Senate on the same days.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Vickie Neill Taylor January 4, 1999.