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There his distinguished talents had been early recognized by appointment and election to offices of grave responsibility, and when he came to Oklahoma he brought with him a reputation as one of the strong and forceful men of law of his day. In his new locality he soon took his merited place among the men directing legal and judicial machinery, and his subsequent activities have but served to add to and embellish his reputation gained in the Sunflower State. Judge Strang was born December 31, 1854, in the Village of Trumbull Corners, Tompkins County, New York, and is a son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Case) Strang, natives and agricultural people of the Empire State. The public schools of his native locality furnished Judge Strang with his early education, following which he attended an academy at Ithaca, New York, and took a full course in the institution at Watkins, in that state. He was reared on his father's farm, it having been his intention to become an agriculturist, but one day, while operating a threshing machine, he met with an accident which cost him his right hands, and when he had recovered he realized the necessity of adopting a professional career. For two years Mr. Strang was engaged in teaching school in the country districts adjacent to his home, and during this time to apply himself to the study of law, to which he began to give his entire attention in 1869. In 1870 he removed from Ithaca, New York, to Westfield, Pennsylvania, and there completed his legal training under the preceptorship of Hon. Butler B. Strang, his cousin, and at that time a noted jurist. Judge Strang was admitted to practice in 1873, when but nineteen years of age, and for four years continued in the enjoyment of a large and representative legal patronage at Westfield, and during three years of that time served efficiently as district attorney. In 1877 Judge Strang went to Kansas and entered upon a career that was destined to make his name known among the foremost men of his profession. Locating at Larned, the same year he was elected county attorney of Pawnee County, and served in that capacity for two years. Up to this time he had been a stanch republican, and on going to Kansas had plunged energetically into political affairs. In 1880 he stumped the state in behalf of the successful prohibition constitutional amendment. In that same year, without his solicitation, his party nominated him for state senator of his senatorial district, and he was subsequently elected by a large majority. He became the author of the bill putting into force the prohibition constitutional amendment, introduced and drafted many other important and successful measures, and was an active member of a number of important committees. He resigned after the first session of his four-year term in order to accept the appointment by Governor John P. St. John to the office of district judge of the Sixteenth Judicial District of Kansas. He served one year by appointment and two terms of four years by election in that important office, but declined a third nomination. In 1890 Governor Lyman U. Humphrey appointed Judge Strang a member of the Kansas State Supreme Court Commission, and in that connection he rendered a faithful and highly commendable service of three years. In 1893 Judge Strang resigned and came to Oklahoma. Here he opened a law office at Guthrie and embarked upon an active practice, but he was not long allowed to act merely as a private citizen, for in 1895 he was petitioned by leading men of his community to make the race for the office of county attorney of Logan County on a law enforcement platform. To this he consented, was elected to the office, and fulfilled every pledge made to the voters, his record during his two years' of office being one that strengthened materially his place in the esteem and confidence of the people. In 1897 Governor Barnes, at the suggestion of the late President McKinley, one of Judge Strang's old and personal friends, appointed the judge to the office of attorney general of Oklahoma, a position which he held for two years and only resigned because of an attack of ill health. In 1905 he was nominated by acclamation and was elected probate judge of Logan County, an office which he retained for ten years and from which he then retired to give his entire attention to his private practice. Judge Strang seems to have assimilated the principles of jurisprudence and to be able to supply from his intellectual reservoir a correct solution to any new combination of details that will withstand the severest criticism. Before the court his mastery of legal principles, familiarity with precedents and power of logical and forcible argument make him well nigh invincible. As counsel his services have been in great demand, and he has been extensively retained in important and complicated litigation not alone in Oklahoma, but in various other states, before the highest tribunals. Judge Strang has one daughter, Lulu, who is the wife of M.E. Trapp, lieutenant- governor of Oklahoma. Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Norma Capehart March 6, 2003. SOURCE: Thoburn, Joseph B., A Standard History of Oklahoma, An Authentic Narrative of its Development, 5 v. (Chicago, New York: The American Historical Society, 1916).