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Mr. McClure has here been engaged in the retail hardware and implement business since 1905, and is the leading representative of this important line of mercantile enterprises in the city. His belief in the still greater advancement of Tulsa has been manifested in action of productive order as well as through effective exploitation of the city's manifold advantages and attractions, and this municipality can claim no more loyal and enthusiastic a citizen than is he whose name introduces this paragraph and whose circle of friends in the community is co-extensive with that of his acquaintances. Mr. McClure claims the fine old Hoosier State as the place of his nativity and both his paternal and maternal grandparents were numbered among the sterling pioneers of that commonwealth. He was born in the City of Wabash, Indiana, the judicial center of the county of the same name, and the date of his nativity was December 25, 1865. In Indiana were also born his parents Thomas W. and Anna (SILVER) McClure, and there they continued to maintain their home during their entire lives, the father having passed away in 1898, at the age of sixty-six years, and the mother having been sixty-five years at the time of her death, in 1902. They became the parents of eight children, all of whom are living and of the number the subject of this review was the second in order of birth. Thomas W. McClure was reared on a pioneer farm in Indiana and his early educational advantages were those of the common schools of the period. He was about thirty years of age at the outbreak of the Civil war and was among the first of the loyal sons of Indiana to respond to President Lincoln's call for volunteers to assist in the preservation of the Union. He enlisted in the Fourteenth Indiana Heavy Artillery, with which well-ordered and valiant command he took part in many battles and skirmishes. In one of the several engagements at Fort Pillow, Tennessee was captured by the enemy, and he was taken thence to the odious prison pen at Andersonville. He finally escaped by means of a tunnel that had been laboriously excavated for some distance through the ground, and in thus providing a means for gaining liberty he was assisted materially by the two comrades who escaped with him, after the three had been held captive for some time. Taking the North Star for their guide, the three fugitives traveled by night, and in the meanwhile subsisted on sweet potatoes and such other eatables as they could find en route. On a rainy night they encountered the Confederate pickets, who were startled and affirighted (sic) at the appearance of the fugitives, whose capture, however, they finally effected. Mr. McClure and his comrades were making their way without boots or shoes, their trousers were in tatters, and to afford protection for the upper parts of their bodies they had encased themselves in flour sacks, which were drawn over their heads. Thus they must have seemed to their captors veritable apparitions when they first made their appearance. So extraordinary was their apparel and general appearance that after they had been placed on a train for the return trip to the prison, their guard placed them on exhibition in the freight car, to which they charged spectators an admission fee of 10 cents at the various points where the train stopped en route. The three comrades remained in prison at Andersonville until the close of the war, enduring untold hardships and horrors, and they received honorable discharge in the City of Washington, D. C., to which place they repaired after their release. Three and one-half years of service was given by and accredited to Mr. McClure in the great conflict between the North and the South, and his record was one of fidelity and valor. Returning to his native state, Mr. McClure engaged in the furniture business in the City of Wabash, where he continued to be identified with this line of enterprise for more than thirty years and up to the time of his death. He was a charter member of the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic and was one of its most influential and honored comrades, his political allegiance having been given to the republican party. Howard O. McClure attended the public schools of his native city until he had attained to the age of fifteen years, when he there entered upon an apprenticeship to the sheet-metal trade. He became a skilled workman in this line and thereafter learned the trade of machinist. He then became a locomotive engineer in the service of the Erie Railroad, and while thus engaged he maintained his home in the City of Chicago from 1886 to 1890. In the latter year he retired from the railway service and engaged in the retail hardware business in Chicago, where he continued to be identified with this line of enterprise until his removal to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he has maintained his residence since 1905 and where he holds precedence as the leading hardware merchant of the county, his business having here been established upon a somewhat modest scale soon after his arrival in the city, and fair dealings and progressive policies having enabled him to develop an enterprise of most substantial and profitable order. For the past seven years Mr. McClure has been a member of the board of education of Tulsa, and he is now serving as its president, in 1915. For two terms he held the presidency of the Tulsa Commercial Club, with whose progressive policies and high civic ideals he has been in the fullest accord, and during his second term as president, in 1909, the club equipped what became known as the "booster train," which made an extensive tour through the East, with stopovers in the cities of St. Louis, Cincinnati, Toledo, Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, Cleveland, Chicago and Kansas City. This noteworthy railway trip of exploitation had a duration of twenty-one days, and entailed the expenditure of $21,000 on the part of the Tulsa Merchants' Club, Commercial Club and Traffic Association. Mr. McClure was one of the most vigorous members of this expedition for the advancement and exploitation of the advantages of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma. Aside from his hardware business he has various other local interests, including real estate investments, and is vice president of the First National Bank of Tulsa. His political proclivities are indicated by the stalwart support he gives to the cause of the republican party. He is a member of the board of governors of the Tulsa Young Men's Christian Association, is affiliated with Delta Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and with Tulsa Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. On the 9th of June, 1892, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. McClure to Miss Matie PARCELLS, who was born in the City of Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana, and the only child of this union is a daughter, Loraine, who remains at the parental home and is one of the popular young women in the representative social activities of Tulsa. Typed for OKGenWeb by Lee Ann Collins, December 11, 1999.