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FRANK HILTON GREER
Vol. 3, p. 1111

Frank Hilton Greer is a native of Kansas, having been born at
Leavenworth on July 21, 1862. He has lived all his life in the West.
The parents of Mr. Greer were pioneers in Kansas, and the boy at
twelve years of age began making his own living, and has been at it
ever since. He is a son of Samuel Wylie and Clotilda HILTON Greer.
The father was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1824. He
was educated in the Pennsylvania schools and graduated from Oberlin
College, Ohio, as a Presbyterian preacher. He came to Kansas in 1854,
in the turbulent days preceding the war, and took an active part in
all the anti-slavery campaign of which Kansas was the center. He was
one of the first state superintendents of public instruction in
Kansas and did much in laying the foundation for the splendid public
school system of that state. Just prior to Lincoln's inauguration he
went with seventy-four other sturdy westerners to Washington City as
a personal guard for the President. These organized as the "Frontier
Guard," the first organization growing out of the Civil war. These
men were the first to enlist in that war. The duty of guarding the
President during and some time after the inauguration being over, Mr.
Greer returned with the other Kansans and organized Company I,
Fifteenth Volunteer Kansas Cavalry, of which company he was elected
captain and served with it throughout the war. The mother was born in
Xenia, Ohio, and became a school teacher, and it was at her knee that
the subject of this sketch received most of his education, as his
opportunity for other schooling was scant, and then only in the
common schools. The printing office has been called the best of
universities, and it proved so in this case. Here it was that Mr.
Greer got his broad and practical education. The father died in 1882
at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother in 1897, at the age
of sixty-four. There were eight children in the family, of whom six
are living, Frank Hilton being the fourth in order of birth.

Early in life Mr. Greer went into a newspaper office as a printer's
devil and graduated in all the departments of the business,
continuing the newspaper profession until four years ago, when he
moved to Tulsa. He is now president of the Greer Investment Company,
with offices in the Iowa Building.

Mr. Greer is a member of all branches of Masonry-both the Scottish
Rite and York Rite, and the Shrine-and is a K. C. C. H. of the
Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He belongs also to the Knights
of Pythias A. O. U. W., Elks and Odd Fellows. He is a member of the
Episcopal Church. He has held but one public office, that of a member
of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1893.

In 1911 Mr. Greer was married to Laura Leigh HANSON, a woman of the
fine literary and social attainments, and they reside at 1501 South
Baltimore, Tulsa.

Mr. Greer has taken prominent part in all the public affairs of
Oklahoma, having located in Guthrie in 1889 on the day of the opening
of old Oklahoma to settlement. He is a republican in politics,
unswerving in his beliefs, not only in politics but in everything
else, and although not seeking public office, has been active in
everything that he believed would forward the political welfare of
Oklahoma. He has taken a prominent part in the state's material
progress.

Mr. Greer is one of the directors of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce,
and exerts his public spirit constantly for the growth of Tulsa. He
is a fluent and popular public speaker. His diversion from business
is literature, and his home contains probably the largest and best
selected private library in Oklahoma.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Earline Sparks Barger, November 2, 1998.