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HARRISON MORTON KIRKPATRICK
Vol. 3, p.988-989

A few years ago when the Choctaw Lumber Company found it necessary
to build a railroad into the timber region of McCurtain County in
order to more profitably develop the lumber industry, a site near the
center of McCurtain County was selected as the terminus. On this site
a town was built and it was called Broken Bow. It was named after the
town of that cognomen in Nebraska, the birthplace of Harrison Morton
Kirkpatick, who is attorney in McCurtain County for the Choctaw
Lumber Company and for the Texas, Oklahoma and Eastern Railway
Company owners of the railroad from Valliant to Broken Bow.

The interesting relationship between the Choctaw Lumber Company's
interest and Mr. Kirkpatrick extends farther than, that for his
father, Judge John S. Kirkpatrick, of Kansas City, Missouri, was one
of the pioneers of Broken Bow, Nebraska, and is general attorney for
the Choctaw Lumber Company. There is still another link of local
history interest. Harrison M. Kirkpatrick after educating himself in
the law, came to Oklahoma to live permanently and his identification
with the new region was strengthened when he was married to Miss Mary
Dale JAMES, daughter of one of the most interesting and picturesque
pioneers of the Choctaw Indian country. The identification went still
a step farther when Mr. Kirkpatrick possessed himself of valuable
agricultural lands in McCurtain County and thereby became a permanent
factor in the development of the new country. The case of Mr.
Kirkpatrick is interesting because it is an example of the embracing
of a young man of some of the manifold opportunities that abide in
the rich land of lore and romance occupied for a few generations
principally by the Choctaw Indians. Here the young lawyer builds
modernly upon a foundation of unique legal and political activity
carried on by a nation of original wild men whose conception of a
republican form of government enabled them to perfect a system of
government of, for and by themselves that probably was the most
perfect system ever devised by an Indian Nation.

Mr. Kirkpatrick was born in the presidential campaign year of 1888,
hence the Christian names given him by his parents. His father, who
is a native of Iowa, became a pioneer of Nebraska, where he prospered
early in the profession of law. In early years he was prosecuting
attorney of Custer County and this was the beginning of a political
career that made him a member of the Supreme Court of the state and
later of the Nebraska Game Commission. He was once a law partner of
Judge Silas A. Holcomb, who afterwards was a member of the Nebraska
Supreme Court, governor, and chairman of the State Board of Public
Control. Hon. John S. Kirkpatrick made a specialty of corporation law
after leaving public life and moved to Kansas City, where he is
general attorney for the Choctaw Lumber Company, several other large
lumber enterprises and two railway lines. L. E. Kirkpatrick, a
brother, lives in Seattle, Washington, and has been prosecuting
attorney, and is now attorney for the vice commission of the State of
Washington and a member of the board of trustees of the Anti-Saloon
League of America. The parents of the elder Kirkpatricks live at
Seattle. The mother of Harrison M. Kirkpatrick was Miss Isabel CROFT,
daughter of a Nebraska pioneer.

Harrison M. Kirkpatrick's education was acquired in the public
schools of Nebraska, the Lincoln High School, the Kansas City High
School, the United Brethren College at York, Nebraska, and the Kansas
City School of Law, from which he received his degree of bachelor of
Laws in 1910. He was admitted to the bar of Jefferson City, Missouri,
during that year, and in the following year engaged in practice at
Idabel, Oklahoma, where he has since continued. Besides being
attorney for the Choctaw Lumber Company and its varied interests, he
represents in a legal capacity the Wilson Lumber Company of Bokhoma,
and carries on a large private practice of a general character. An
attorney for the Choctaw Lumber Company is one of the most important
of its officials, for the purchase of land and timber in the old
Choctaw Nation is beset by many difficulties in the nature of title
defects, the tracing of ancestry and heirship and the opposition of
rival claimants and purchasers. All these issue and others were
involved in a suit in 1915 prosecuted by Mr. Kirkpatrick for a
company, which involved about 200 individual Indian allotments. Under
an agreement with the state, consummated a few years ago, the Choctaw
Lumber Company may not buy and sell land, and its principal
activities now involving land relate to the commercial timber coving
the property.

Mr. Kirkpatrick was married December 25, 1912. to Mary Dale JAMES,
of Idabel. They have a daughter, Dorothy James, born October 22,
1913. Mr. Kirkpatrick has three brothers and three sisters: John C.,
who is a ranchman in Northwest Nebraska; Lester D., who is a farmer
in Custer County, Nebraska; Martin, who resides with his parents and
is attending high school at Kansas City, Missouri; Miss Ruth, who is
a graduate of Westport High School, Kansas City, Missouri, and now a
student in Otterbein University, Westerville, Ohio; Miss Ina, who is
a graduate of Westport High School, Kansas City, and of the Leander-
Clark College of Toledo, Iowa, and now a student of Northwestern
University; and Mrs. Marie BOHART, who is the wife of a farmer living
at Plattsburg, Missouri.

Mr. Kirkpatrick is a member of the United Brethren Church, of the
Masonic lodge at Idabel and the lodge of the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks at Hugo, and is professionally connected
with the McCurtain County and Oklahoma State Bar Associations. He is
developing about 800 acres of valuable farm land which he owns in
McCurtain County, and oil and gas producing lands which he and his
associates have leased in Okmulgee County and in the Healdton field.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Earline Sparks Barger, December 18,1998.