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Thirty years ago when Colonel Sneed was a merchant in Pauls Valley, he conceived the idea of establishing a health and pleasure resort on the ranch of Perry FROMAN which embraced the 848 acres of land now marking the area of Platt National Park. He organized and incorporated the Sulphur Springs Company, which came in possession of 640 acres of the Froman ranch. The land was fenced and the company began advertising the medicinal properties of the sulphur and bromide water. A history of this corporation is interesting in view of its calling to the attention of Congress the possibilities of the region for health and pleasure purposes and also because of the men associated with Colonel Sneed. Among the incorporators were Calvin and Thomas GRANT, who were among the most prominent pioneers of the Chickasaw Nation; Charles D. CARTER, of Ardmore, since statehood a member of Congress; Dr. J. A. RYAN, of Oklahoma City, a pioneer physician of the southern part of the Chickasaw Nation; Samuel KENNERLY, of Gainesville, Texas, a merchant well known in North Texas and Oklahoma for over thirty years; Judge W. A. LEDBETTER, of Oklahoma City, formerly a lawyer of Gainesville, Texas, and Ardmore, who was a member of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, and H. L. STUART, a member of the present law firm of Ledbetter, Stuart & BELL, of Oklahoma City. The Sulphur Springs Company's tract, with additional land, was taken over under an act of Congress by the United States Government, in 1902, and Platt National Park created. It was named in honor of United States Senator Orville H. PLATT, of Connecticut, who had taken great interest in establishing this national playground. When in February, 1914, Colonel Sneed received his commission and returned to the park as its superintendent, he naturally was gratified with the realization of his dream of a quarter of a century before. This is Colonel Sneed's second appointment at the hands of the Department of the Interior. The first was made in 1885, in which year he became a citizen of the Indian country. The position was that of licensed Indian trader and the commission was signed by J. D. C. ADKINS, commissioner of Indian Affairs, who formerly had been representative in Congress from the Eighth District of Tennessee, in which Colonel Sneed lived. Colonel Sneed established himself as licensed trader at Fort Sill, then under command of Maj. John W. CLAUSE of the Twenty-fourth Infantry. Fort Sill was then in the heart of the great Comanche and Kiowa Indian country, and there was not a fence between Red River and Caldwell, Kansas. The nearest railroad point was Henrietta, Texas, sixty-five miles distant. From Henrietta all that was required for the post and its environs was hauled. A daily mail route existed between Fort Sill and Henrietta, the mail being carried by stage coach. During the four years Colonel Sneed remained at Fort Sill, he became intimately acquainted with several army officers who have since been promoted to stations of distinction. Among them was Gen. Hugh L. SCOTT, now chief of staff of the United States army, who was then a lieutenant in the Seventh Cavalry. He knew Major PURINGTON of the Third Cavalry; Captain BULLIS, a well known Indian fighter; Col. T. A. BALDWIN, then a captain, and Frank B. Baldwin. He knew the leading Indians of the day, including QUANAH PARKER, last chief of the Comanches; GERONIMO, the noted Apache warrior who was a prisoner of war at Fort Sill; and LONE WOLF, the hereditary chief of the Kiowas. "I have never done business with more honorable men than were the Comanches and Kiowas thirty years ago," says Colonel Sneed. "They practised square dealing, which meant that they always paid their debts. I sold them many thousands of dollars worth of goods on credit and never went out to collect a dollar. When the Indian received his lease money from the government, he straightway paid his debts." In October, 1890, Colonel Sneed moved to Pauls Valley, Indian Territory, a town bearing the name of Smith Paul, whom thousands of Indian Territory citizens knew for many years in the territorial development period. Colonel Sneed entered the general merchandise business in Pauls Valley and for years sold goods over a territory embracing probably 2,000 square miles. In 1895 the citizens of Pauls Valley sent him to Washington in the interest of a United States Court for the town. Representative Joseph W. Bailey, of Texas, championed the cause of Pauls Valley before Congress and the Department of Justice, and Pauls Valley won at the end of a spirited contest with Wynnewood. When the Kiowa and Comanche Indian country was opened to settlement in 1901, Colonel Sneed returned to the scene of his first business endeavors in the Southwest. He leased school land in the neighborhood of Mount Scott and built a beautiful stone residence in the shadow of that peak. The site of the home is upon the spot on which Capt. George B. MCCLELLAND and Captain MARCEY, his brother-in-law, pitched their tents during a historic expeditionary tour of the Southwest in 1852. It was here on July 18th of that year that Captain McClelland completed a measurement of the highest peak of the Wichita Mountains and named it in honor of General Winfield Scott of the United States army. Richard Alexander Sneed was born August 28, 1845, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, a son of Albert Gallatin and Maria Frances (BULLOCK) Sneed. The Sneed family came originally from Derbyshire and Stafford counties, England. Colonel Sneed is not the only member of his family to have a military record. His grandfather, Stephen Sneed, served as a captain in Gen. William MORGAN's command in the Revolutionary war, and was with that famous leader in the battle of Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Stephen Sneed named his first son for his commander at that battle. Albert Gallatin Sneed was captain of the home militia in North Carolina prior to 1835, and though sixty- four years of age at the time, served in the quartermaster's department in the Confederate army in 1863. Two of his brothers, Archibald and Junius Sneed, were paymasters in the United States army prior to the Civil war, with the rank of captain. On the maternal side Colonel Sneed's uncle, Erasmus Darwin BULLOCK, was captain of Second Dragoons, U. S. A., and served in the Florida war, resigning his commission in 1840. Colonel Sneed's parents were born and reared in Granville County, North Carolina, and in 1835 moved to Mississippi. Colonel Sneed spent his early life in Madison County, Mississippi, and all his education came from the township schools. He was still a schoolboy, aged sixteen and a half years, when on March 10, 1862, he enlisted for service in the Confederate army at Canton, Mississippi. He became a private in Company C, Eighteenth Regiment, Mississippi Volunteers, Barksdale's Brigade, Longstreet's Corps, Army Northern Virginia. On May 3, 1863, he was wounded at Fredericksburg and captured, and was recaptured two days later. Being disabled for the infantry service by this wound, he was appointed in June, 1864, ordnance sergeant of his regiment, and remained with his old command until April 6, 1865. Then at Sailor's Creek in Virginia, on LEE's retreat from Richmond, he with several thousand Confederates, was captured and sent to Point Lookout Prison, Maryland, where he arrived April 14th, the day President LINCOLN was killed. He remained a prisoner there until June 30th, when he took the oath of allegiance to the United States and started for home, arriving there July 11th. Colonel Sneed during the greater part of his active career since the war, has been a merchant and farmer. In August, 1874, he was elected circuit clerk of Madison County, Tennessee, and held that office eight years. In 1884 he was elected as secretary of the Tennessee delegation to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, which nominated Grover CLEVELAND. In October, 1885, he moved from Jackson, Tennessee, to Fort Sill, Indian Territory, and was a member of the firm of COLLIER & Sneed, Indian traders at Fort Sill, from 1885 to 1890. Then as already stated he engaged in the mercantile business at Pauls Valley, and during the nation-wide panic of 1893 lost everything he had including his home. He had sold goods extensively to the farmers around Pauls Valley on credit, and the impossibility of making collections forced him to the wall. He came out with personal credit, since he sacrificed everything he had and bravely and cheerfully faced life at the bottom of the ladder. On November 16, 1907, the day Oklahoma was admitted as a state, he was elected register of deeds in Comanche County, and held that office three years. He was also president of the Chamber of Commerce at Lawton for two terms, 1908-09. He has always been an active democrat, and was a member of the Democratic State Committee of Oklahoma in 1910. His appointment as superintendent of Platt National Park in Sulphur was made by the secretary of interior February 3, 1914, and he entered upon his duties February 14th. In looking back over his long and eventful career Colonel Sneed confesses that the achievements of which he is most proud, is the part he took in the establishment and founding of the Confederate Home of the State of Oklahoma. This home was established to care for the indigent Confederate soldiers and sailors, their wives and widows, and is one of the best equipped institutions of the kind in the South. He has served continuously as secretary of the board of trustees since it orginization in 1909. Colonel Sneed is commander of John B. Gordon Camp, United Confederate Veterans, at Lawton, and also judge advocate general on the staff of Maj. Gen. D. M. HAILEY of the Oklahoma Division of the United Confederate Veterans. The first secret organization with which Colonel Sneed was identified was the Ku-Klux-Klan, which he joined in Jackson, Tennessee, soon after the Civil war. In 1867 he took his first degrees in the Masonic Order at Jackson; was secretary of the lodge several years; was worshipful master one year, and in 1876 was knighted in the Jackson Commandery No. 13, Knights Temp. He is now a member of Lawton Commandery, Knights Templar. His parents were members of the Episcopal Church, and Colonel Sneed was reared in that faith, and is now a member of that church. On December 15, 1869, at Jackson, Tennessee, Colonel Sneed married Anne Robert Bullock, daughter of Micajah and Susan Morgan (BROWN) Bullock. Micajah Bullock was descended from John W. Bullock, of North Carolina, who was a captain in the Colonial army. Mrs. Sneed's brother, Hon. Ernest L. Bullock, was chairman of the railroad commission of Tennessee and was for two terms chancellor of the Twelfth Chancery Division of that state. Colonel Sneed and his wife have six children: Susan Morgan, unmarried; Francis Seawell, who married Lula R. CAMPBELL, of Gainesville, Texas; Richard Reynolds, who married Rebecca Perkins SPARKS, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Lucian Bullock, who married Edna CRUM, of Guymon, Oklahoma; Mary Dudley, wife of Walter R. LOVELL, of West, Texas; and Annie Linden, wife of Frederick SNYDER, of Pecos, Texas. Colonel Sneed's second son, Richard R. Sneed, is now secretary of state of Tennessee. His third son, Lucian B. Sneed, is postmaster at Guymon, Oklahoma. Typed for OKGenWeb by: Dorothy Marie Tenaza, January 10, 1999.