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REV. J. J. READ
Vol. 3, p. 1003-1004

Authorities on the subject of the advancement of the American Indian
are agreed that no agency has been more powerful than the Protestant
missionary in bringing the red man from a state of savagery to a
moderately high standard of civilization. Certainly there are no more
interesting chapters in the history of the Indian than those that
relate to the hardships, privations, industry and philanthropy of the
pioneer missionary. But for his influence and painstaking labor there
would never have been developed so great a fund of pretty romance, so
rich an intermingling of the blood of reds and whites, out of which
has been developed as high professional talent as the transfusion of
the bloods of any other races show, and the work of the missionary
also helped to bring about the highly organized form of government
which was maintained in some of the tribes. In any record and
appreciation of the missionaries who long labored in old Indian
Territory, a high place must be given to the late Rev. J. J. READ.

The story of his life as a missionary begins while he was pastor of
a large and fashionable Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, and
with his marriage to Miss Lillah PORTER, a leader in church, social
and club life in the City of Austin. The second chapter finds them,
forty years ago, in the wild solitude's of the Choctaw Nation,
setting about the task of learning the Indian tongue in order that
the cause of Christ might be advanced among the heathens-for Indian
Territory forty years ago was regarded as a foreign missionary field
just the same as if an ocean separated it from the rest of America.
Chapter three covers a period of twenty-two years and embraces more
than a mere volume of experiences that are as vital to Oklahoma
history as all the Indian treaties and all the Indian laws. The
devoted labors of Mr. Read ended with his death in 1898.

Born at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1843, he was the son of William
and Mary Louis Read. He was educated in a plantation school in
Mississippi, where he had one of those picturesque classical
instructors who were often the peer of any members found in college
faculties. Later he attended Oakland College at Oakland, Mississippi,
and finished his preparation for the ministry in a theological
seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Columbia, South Carolina. Mr.
Read served four years as a soldier in the Confederate army, entering
the ministry soon after the war and being assigned to a church in
Texas. Until he took up missionary work he filled some of the best
pastorates in Texas. In 1876 he was elected superintendent of Spencer
Academy of the Choctaw Nation, located ten miles from the present
village of Doaksville. This was one of three important schools
maintained in the Choctaw Nation at that time, the others being known
as Wheeler Academy and Pine Ridge Academy.

After five years Rev. Mr. Read resigned from the presidency of the
academy and was transferred by his church to the Chickasaw Nation. He
and his young wife settled four miles from the present site of
Wapanucka, on a tract of land still owned and occupied by Mrs. Read.
Boggy Depot, twelve miles distant, was their nearest postoffice, but
Mr. Read shortly started a movement to have the postoffice
established nearer his home. It was necessary that the distance to
Boggy Depot be measured in order that the Postoffice Department could
be assured of the distance filling the requirement of the rules of
the department. Mrs. Read accordingly tied a red cloth to a buggy
wheel and counted the revolutions of the wheel all the way to Boggy
Depot, by which simple means the distance was officially established.
Mrs. Read was given the honor of selecting the name for the office,
and she took from Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans" the euphonious
word Wahpanucka [sic], which was the name of a chieftain clan of the
Delaware Indians. The field of labor in this region embraced four or
five charges, scattered from a point north of Stonewall to Red River
and west to the Santa Fe Railroad. At each place Mr. Read organized a
church and in due time assisted in the construction of a church
edifice at most of them. Indians who had been converted sawed and
hauled lumber and worked under his direction as carpenters. In the
beginning he held services under trees and bush arbors and in crude
schoolhouses. Like the pioneer country doctor of Indian Territory, no
ugly demonstration of the elements or other agency which were within
the power of man to endure deterred him from his work, and thousands
of Indians revere his name today. Among those who were his students
in Spencer Academy are Dr. E. N. WRIGHT, one of the leading men today
of the Choctaw Nation; Peter HUDSON, a Choctaw leader who frequently
has been suggested for governor of the nation; Rev. Silas BACON, for
a number of years principal of the Goodland Indian School; and Rev.
William McKINNEY, who later graduated from Harvard and became a
prominent politician among the Choctaws.

Throughout all his years in Oklahoma Mr. Read was a member of all
organizations that assisted in uplifting the red men and the pioneer
white men, and individually did such a work that its record should
always be a permanent memorial to his name. He was affiliated with
the Masonic Lodge. To Mr. and Mrs. Read were born six children: E. D.
Read, a civil engineer in Oklahoma; Rev. J. L. Read, now pastor of
the Central Presbyterian Church at Little Rock, Arkansas; Mrs. T. N.
BINNION, wife of a traveling salesman of Pauls Valley; D. L. Read of
Arizona; Mrs. R. T. BALL of Wapanucka; and T. P. Read, who lives with
his mother and conducts the old farm at Wapanucka.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Dorothy Marie Tenaza, Dec. 12, 1998.