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His activities have covered a period of progress in the history of the Indian race that is without parallel from the standpoint of civilization development in the history of the United States. He has been one of the most prominent individual factors in that development. He was the picturesque schoolmaster of the frontier, lured from the sober, set East into a raw land of marvelous opportunities; was the love and later the husband of an Indian maiden whose teacher was in a school forty miles inland from a region that boasted of a railroad, became superintendent of one of the leading tribal schools of the Chickasaw Nation; was the maker of laws in the first legislative body assembled after the two territories became a state; a merchant in the pretty village of Wapanucka; and now the head of a state institution designed to inspire the principals of moral restraint in the minds of wayward boys. Such is the substance of the career in Oklahoma of Mr. Skeen. His birth occurred in 1853 in Randolph County, North Carolina. His parents were James C. and Emily (THORNBURG) Skeen. His father, a native of North Carolina, was a farmer and served as a soldier in the Confederate army. The paternal grandfather, Allen Skeen, was a large slave owner in North Carolina prior to the war, and a man of great talent and ability, characteristics that were well displayed while he was a member of the legislature of his state. Allen Skeen's son, R. H. Skeen, grained prominence as a pioneer educator in North Carolina, where he was the founder of a school at Mount Gilead. Mr. Skeen's uncle, Capt. William Thornburgh, was a gallant soldier in the Confederate army, and at the time of his death was serving as secretary-treasurer of a southern railroad company. Mr. Skeen has one brother, Dr. M. P. Skeen, now a successful practicing physician at Artesia, New Mexico. For a man who has accomplished so much in life Mr. Skeen deserves the greater credit because of the limited and meager opportunities of his youth. In early childhood he attended some of the common schools in North Carolina, but after the outbreak of the Civil War conditions were such that schools could no longer be maintained and he started his practical life without even the full equipment of a common school education. Starting out to make his own way in the world, in his self- supporting activities he interspersed an assiduous attention to reading and studies, and by systematic work equipped himself for the profession of teacher. He began work as a teacher soon after coming to Indian Territory in 1873. In the heart of the untamed Chickasaw Nation, twelve miles from the present site of Wapanucka, he made settlement. White men in that region were known only in the capacity of traders and soldiers. The red men had made little progress toward the attainment of those conditions which are the essential elements of civilization. The country was almost desolate in appearance. In a crude schoolhouse he gathered together the first band of young Indians to become his pupils, and so impressed was he with the opportunities for doing a great work in the line of education in the new country that he resolved to continue in the profession. In due course of time he gained the love of Matilda FULSOM, a pretty daughter of one of the great men of the Choctaw Nation. Her father was Col. Sampson Fulsom, who had served as an officer in the Confederate army during the war, had represented his nation before the departments at Washington, and was one of the leaders of his tribe in matters of educational advancement. Mr. Skeen and the Indian maiden were married, traveling twenty miles to the home of a friend when the ceremony was performed. They are the parents of two children: Walter Skeen, now engaged in the mercantile business at Wapanucka; and Mrs. J. O. SURRELL. He had been teaching only a few years when he became interested in the politics and policies of the Chickasaw government. As an intermarried citizen Mr. Skeen was elected a member of the Chickasaw Legislature, and his usefulness in that body was so apparent that his district subsequently sent him to the Senate. He resigned his place in the latter body before the end of his term in order to take the superintendency of the Wapanucka Institute, a Chickasaw institution. He remained in charge of that school for nine years, and these nine years Mr. Skeen considers the most important period of his life, since they were filled with the zeal of educational-missionary work that was the most essential element necessary to the raising of the Indian people to a higher standard of civilization. If an educator may be known by the fruits of his work, certainly Mr. Skeen is entitled to a high degree of honor. Among his students at Wapanucka in that time was Ben F. HARRISON of Calvin, who during his five years in the Wapanucka Institute gained the groundwork for a successful career, the record of which includes membership in the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention and the Oklahoma Legislature, and four years of service in the office of secretary of state. J. S. MAYTUBBY who afterwards was superintendent of education in the Chickasaw Nation, was a student under Mr. Skeen for five years, and other pupils at Wapanucka were Dr. S. C. DAVIS, now of Blanchard, Oklahoma, and Mike LEFLORE, a wealthy Indian at Bennington. An important distinction that belongs to Mr. Skeen comes from his work as one of the founders of the democratic party in Indian Territory. Until he and a few other white men began to agitate the principles of that party practically all the Indians had been republicans, though only nominally so, since they were unable to vote and had no privileges as American citizens. Many of them deserted that party when the speeches of the new settlers began to make the woods ring. It is a noteworthy fact that deserves to be recalled that the Chickasaws were the only one of the Five Civilized Tribes that prohibited the negro from participating in their elections. Mr. Skeen was among those who first convinced the Department of the Interior that the white children of this section were sadly neglected in the matter of educational facilities, and so ably did he impress hi arguments upon Congress that in short time an appropriation was secured to the amount of $30,000 to be expended for local school purposes in the Chickasaw country. For his labors in Congress in behalf of the Indian people Mr. Skeen expresses special appreciation of former United States Senator J. W. Bailey of Texas. The flowering of Mr. Skeen's activities in political affairs came at statehood. Through his efforts in traveling over a large section of the former Chickasaw and Choctaw nations a large portion of the funds necessary for the first campaign of his party were raised. He himself aspired to membership in the Constitutional Convention, but was defeated for that post by William H. MURRAY of Tishomingo. Soon afterwards, however, he was elected a member of the first State Legislature from Johnston County, and in the first Oklahoma Legislature had the distinction of being author of the first bill introduced in the House of Representatives. This was the bill that provided for separate coaches, waiting rooms, etc., for whites and blacks, and it was one of the first pieces of legislation that went into practical effect in Oklahoma. While in the Legislature Mr. Skeen was chairman of the committee on Federal Relations, but his chief interest was in securing measures affecting the educational affairs of the new state. After returning to Wapanucka from his legislative term Mr. Skeen engaged in the merchandising business, and continued there until September 1915, when he took charge of the State Training School at Pauls Valley. To this position he was elected by the State Board of Education under the administration of Governor R. L. WILLIAMS. Before beginning his duties he visited different boys' training schools in Missouri, Colorado and other states, and as a result of his study of improved methods his administration begins under most favorable auspices. Mr. Skeen is a member of the Methodist Church and is affiliated with the orders of Odd Fellows, Masonry, Knights of Pythias and the Woodmen of the World. He has been grand master of Oklahoma in the Odd Fellow Lodge, and was a charter member of the second lodge of that order instituted in Oklahoma, Tishomingo Lodge No. 2, I.O.O.F., founded in 1876. He has also taken thirty-two degrees in Scottish Rite Masonry. While his career has been one of notable breadth and an important individual contribution to the development of the older portions of Oklahoma, in his home town of Wapanucka he is recognized as one of its organizers, and was the first man to be distinguished with the office of mayor. While serving as mayor he collected enough fines in that time of numerous law violations of all kinds, with which to establish and conduct the first school maintained in the little settlement. Typed for OKGenWeb by: Earline Sparks Barger, December 19, 1998.