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HON. GEORGE W. FIELDS
Vol. 3, p. 1091-1092
Book has photo

A young and energetic member of the Oklahoma bar with residence at
Grove, in Delaware County, George W. Fields is one of the prominent
Oklahomans from the old Cherokee Nation of the state, has been
actively identified with public affairs in his county since the
beginning of statehood, and is now a member of the Oklahoma Senate
from the Thirtieth District.

George W. Fields was born in Delaware County in the Cherokee Nation
of Indian Territory, July 10, 1882, son of George and Sarah Fields,
who were member of the Cherokee Tribe. His father was of one-fourth
Indian blood and his mother of one-half Indian blood. There is also a
strain of Scotch, Irish and English in his ancestry, coming through
his father principally. His great-grandfather, Richard Fields, was a
native of Tennessee, descended from an English family, and spent most
of his life with the Cherokee Indians. In the early part of the
nineteenth century he was governor of a branch of the Cherokee Tribe
that lived in Texas. In Texas history his name is associated with
that of the Edwards brothers, who in 1826 established the short lived
Fredonia Republic in Eastern Texas, and Richard Fields as governor of
the Cherokees had a prominent part in that enterprise. After the
Fredonian rebellion and the failure of the project to which the
Edwards brothers were devoted, Richard Fields subsequently joined
Gen. Sam Houston and other Texans in their successful efforts to
accomplish freedom from Mexico.

George W. Fields attended the common tribal schools as a boy, and on
May 28, 1902, was graduated with the degree Bachelor of Science from
the Cherokee Male Seminary at Tahlequah, which for so many years was
the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Some years later his inclinations
turned to the law, and he studied that profession and was admitted to
the bar in December, 1913, at Oklahoma City. He has since engaged in
practice in his home town at Grove. On April 3, 1904 while engaged in
school work, Mr. Fields was married to Miss Jennie GLASS, in McDonald
County, Missouri, a popular young school teacher of Rogers County,
Oklahoma. To this union no children have been born. Mrs. Fields was
the prime mover in the promotion and organization of a club formed by
the wives of the legislators which bears the euphonious and
appropriate name "Ohoyohoma," a word in the Choctaw Indian language
meaning Women's Circle. This organization has recently been federated
with the state federated clubs. Mrs. Fields is a leader in social and
literary circles in her home town of Grove.

His success as a rising young lawyer is attested by the fact that
those in need of legal services come with the knottiest questions
found in that profession. He has already, during his brief term of
practice, gone to the highest courts in the state. He is at present
National Attorney for the Cayuga-Seneca Nation of Indians, west of
the Mississippi, residing in Northwest Oklahoma, who have large
interests in both lands and money in their former home, the State of
New York, as well as valuable individual allotments in Oklahoma.
Those who know him best are very lavish in their efforts to have him
enter the campaign for either Corporation Commissioner or for
Congress from the First District.

After leaving college Senator Fields was for five years a teacher in
the public schools of the old Cherokee Nation. He left that
profession, in 1907, the year that Oklahoma was admitted to the
Union, and at the statehood election was chosen the first registrar
of deeds of Delaware County. That office he held until elected a
member of the Senate in 1912. Senator Fields began his service as
senator at the beginning of the fourth session of the State
Legislature. His district embraces Delaware, Cherokee and Ottawa
counties.

As a member of one of the strongest, and most important of the five
civilized tribes, Mr. Fields during the Fourth Legislature was made
chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. In the Fifth
Legislature he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Education.
Living in a section of Oklahoma, formerly the Indian Territory, where
little progress had been made in public education and the
construction of public highways before give particular attention to
legislation relating to those two important subjects and they may be
designated as his hobbies. The Town of Tahlequah, in Cherokee County,
which is in his district, is the seat of the Northeastern State
Normal, and one of his ambitions has been to assist that institution
in securing appropriations commensurate with the needs of that part
of the state. Ottawa County, possessing the lead and zinc fields, the
only ones in the state, he has given special attention to that infant
but thriving industry. He has made special efforts in maintaining the
gross tax at a reasonable rate and to establish a branch of the
School of Mines at Miami, where practical miners are turned out. In
these he has succeeded.

Senator Fields is a thirty-second degree Mason, has been-an officer
of his local lodge at Grove, and is a member of the Scottish Rite,
India Consistory No. 2, McAlester, Oklahoma. He is also a Mystic
Shriner, Bedouin Temple, at Muskogee, Oklahoma, and is affiliated
with the Lodge of Elks at Vinita, Oklahoma. He is a member of the
Christian Church at Grove.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Earline Sparks Barger, November 23, 1998.