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WIRT FRANKLIN
Vol. 3 p. 1210-1211

Maintaining his residence at Ardmore, the attractive metropolis and
judicial center of Carter County, Mr. FRANKLIN is actively and
prominently identified with oil production in the fields of this part
of the state and is one of the wideawake, progressive and popular
young business men and public-spirited citizens of the favored
commonwealth in which he has found ample opportunity for the
achieving of independence and definite success.

Mr. Franklin is a scion of colonial stock in both the paternal and
maternal lines, and is a representative of the sterling old family of
which Benjamin Franklin was a distinguished member. William H.
Franklin, grandfather of him whose name introduces this article, was
born in Mercer County, Kentucky, on the 13th of June 1813, and as a
young man he became a pioneer settler of Macomb in McDonough County,
Illinois. He was a prominent lawyer and influential citizen of that
county and was a member of the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk
War. He attained the patriarchal age of more than ninety years and
died in the City of Houston, Texas, while there for a visit, in 1904.
The original progenitors of the FRANKLIN family in America came from
England in the seventeenth century and settled in Virginia. Each
succeeding generation having given strong and worthy men to aid in
civic and material development and progress in various states of the
Union.

William Blake HUDGINS, the maternal grandfather of the subject of
this sketch, was born in Kentucky, in the year 1820, served as a
stalwart and gallant soldier in the Seminole Indian War and was a
pioneer in Missouri, where he became a prosperous agriculturist and
stock-grower. He died at Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1894, and his
death was the direct result of a severe wound which he received while
serving in the Seminole war, the bullet having never been extracted
from his body.

Wirt FRANKLIN was born at the home of his maternal grandmother, in
Richmond, Missouri, on the 22d of March, 1883, the home of his
parents at the time having been at Junction City, Kansas, and his
mother having been at the time of his birth a guest in the home of
her mother. Mr. Franklin, the former of whom was born in McDonough
County, Illinois, in 1853, and the later who was born at Richmond,
Missouri, on the 12th of May, 1855. John H. Franklin was reared to
adult age in his native county, and in addition to receiving good
educational advantages he there learned the trade of telegrapher. As
a telegraph operator he found employment at Richmond, Missouri, where
he met and wedded Miss Irene HUDGINS. In the meanwhile he gave close
attention to the reading of law. In company with his young wife he
finally returned to Macomb, Illinois, where he proved himself
eligible for and was admitted to the bar of his native state. Within
a short time he removed to Junction City, Kansas, where he engaged in
the practice of law. In 1887 he removed to Russell, that state, where
he built up a large and important law business and became a prominent
and influential citizen. During the administration of President
Harrison, Mr. Franklin served four years as deputy auditor of the
fiscal department of the United States War Department, in the city of
Washington, D. C., and in 1892 he returned to Illinois, where he
continued in the practice of his profession in Toluca, until 1895. In
the autumn of the following year he removed to Lacon, Illinois, where
he continued in practice until 1907. He then, just prior to the
admission of Oklahoma to statehood, came to this vigorous
commonwealth and engaged in the practice of law at Lawton, the
judicial center of Comanche County. He has since continued his
successful practice at that place and has gained secure prestige as
one of the representative members of the Oklahoma bar. His political
allegiance is given to the republican party, and while a resident of
Kansas he served as prosecuting attorney of Russell County, besides
which he held in Illinois the office of state's attorney of Marshall
County, a position of which he continued the incumbent twelve years.

He and his wife are members of the Congregational Church and in the
state of their adoption their circle of friends is limited only by
that of their acquaintances. Of their children the eldest is Mabel,
who resides in Los Angeles, California, and who is the widow of
William H. OCKER, her husband having been a skilled operator of
wireless telegraphy. Blake is a lawyer by profession and is serving
as assistant general counsel for the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance
Company, in Los Angeles, California. Wirt, the subject of this
review, was the next in order of birth. Veta completed in 1915 a post
graduate course in domestic science and arts at Columbia University,
New York City, and is now at the parental home. Julia is the wife of
Frank M. HEAD, who in engaged in the insurance business at Lawton,
Oklahoma. Harry is in the employ of the Crystal Oil Company, in the
Healdton Oil field of Oklahoma.

Wirt FRANKLIN gained his rudimentary education in the public schools
of Russell, Kansas, 1889-91, and thereafter attended the public
schools of the City of Washington during the four years that the
family home was sustained in the national capital. Thereafter he
continued his educational work in turn at Macomb, Galesburg and
Lacon, Illinois, in the high school of which last mentioned city he
was graduated as a member of the class of 1900. For the ensuing two
years he was a student in Columbian University, now designated George
Washington University, in the City of Washington, and in the
meanwhile he had learned stenography and typesetting.

In February, 1902, Mr. Franklin assumed the position in the service
of the Dawes Commission, at Muskogee, Indian Territory, and he held
this association two years. Thereafter he did effective service as
law clerk in charge of the preparation of decision matters pertaining
to enrolment matters in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. He
resigned this post in October, 1905, and, duly fortified by prior
study and by attendance in the law department of the Columbia
University, he then engaged in the practice of law at Muskogee, in
partnership with Samuel A. APPLE. The firm opened also an office at
Ardmore, and the partnership alliance continued until June, 1906,
when the law business of the two offices was consolidated at Ardmore,
where Mr. Franklin built up and controlled a substantial law
practice, in which he devoted special attention to Indian citizenship
cases presented before the Department of the Interior and before
Indian committees in Congress, and to land contests in the land
offices of the Dawes Commission.

Since 1913 Mr. FRANKLIN has found it expedient to lay aside his law
practice and give his time to his important activities in connection
with the oil-producing industry, of which he has become a prominent
and influential representative in Southern Oklahoma. He maintains his
offices in the Baird Building at Ardmore, and was one of the pioneer
operators in the Healdton Oil field. He aided in effecting the first
leases of land and in the drilling of the first well in this now
important field. In this enterprise he formed a partnership
association with Roy M. JOHNSON, concerning whom individual menton
[sic] is made on other pages of this work. In this field he holds six
hundred acres of land, and the holdings of the firm of Apple &
Franklin, in which his coadjutor is his former law partner, have a
valuation of approximately half a million dollars. Mr. Franklin was
the first president of the Crystal Oil Company and is still a member
of its directorate. He is treasurer of the Apple-Franklin Oil
company, president of the Ardmore Oil Producers Association, and
president of the Plains Oil & Gas Company. Further and tangible
evidences of the success that has attended the well ordered endeavors
of Mr. Franklin are those given in his ownership of 1,000 acres of
valuable land in Southern Oklahoma and approximately $25,000 worth of
city property in Ardmore.

In politics Mr. Franklin maintains an independent attitude and gives
his support to men and measures meeting the approval of this
judgment, without considering strict partisan dictates. His wife
holds membership in the Episcopal Church of Ardmore. He is identified
with the Ardmore Chamber of Commerce and the Dornick Hills Country
Club, and his Masonic affiliations are as here designated: Ardmore
Lodge, No. 31, Ancient Free & Accepted Masons; Ardmore Chapter, No.
11, Royal Arch Masons; Indian Consistory, No. 2, Ancient Accepted
Scottish Rite, at McAlester, in which he has received the thirty-
second degree; and India Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles
of the Mystic Shrine, in Oklahoma City. He holds membership also in
Ardmore Lodge, No. 648, Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks, and
the Ardmore Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America.

At Lacon, Illinois, In August, 1902, was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. FRANKLIN to Miss Mary Cecile COLLYER, daughter of the late John
a. COLLYER, who was a successful contractor and builder in that city.
Mr. and Mrs. FRANKLIN have two children, Chester, who was born
October 17, 1903, and Priscilla, who was born March 23, 1913.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Jacque Hopkins Wolski, November 3, 1998.