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HON. J. L. MCKEOWN
Vol. 5, p. 1763

As an expert accountant, has been prominently identified with
various departments of the government of the State of Oklahoma and
retired from the office of financial secretary of the Oklahoma
Agricultural and Mechanical College at Stillwater, Payne County, when
he was elected a representative of that county in the fifth general
assembly of the State Legislature.  Entering the Legislature with an
experience of a number of years as an expert accountant in the
service of the state, both as a member of the official staff of the
state examiner and inspector and as financial secretary of the state
board of agriculture, Mr. McKeown came to his new duties specially
well equipped, particularly for the service assigned to him in
connection with committee work, in which capacity he became one of
the influential members of the house of representatives in the
legislative session of 1914-15.

Mr. McKeown was born in Wisconsin in the year 1873, and is a son of
Patrick and Julia McKeown.  His father, a native of Ireland, came to
American when a young man and for many years was a successful
representative of the great basic industries of agriculture and stock-
growing--first in Wisconsin and later in Missouri.  He whose name
initiates this article was a child at the time of the family removal
to Missouri, where he received his preliminary educational discipline
in the public schools.  In 1899 he was graduated in the Missouri
State Normal School at Warrensburg, and he then turned his attention
to the pedagogic profession, of which he was for five years one of
the successful and popular representatives, as a teacher in the
public schools of Missouri.  Later he completed a thorough course in
scientific accounting, in the Spaulding business College in Kansas
City, that state, and for the ensuing five years he gave his
attention to work as an expert accountant, a portion of the time
through assignment to important special work in Oklahoma Territory.
When the state government was organized in 1907, Mr. McKeown assisted
in planning and executing the first work of the office of state
examiner and inspector, and upon his retiring from this department he
entered the service of the state board of agriculture, by which he
was assigned to the position of financial secretary at the Oklahoma
Agricultural and Mechanical College at Stillwater, a post of which he
continued the efficient and valued incumbent until his election to
the lower house of the State Legislature, in 1914.  Prior to his
election to this office Mr. McKeown had accomplished valuable service
for the state through his interposition and investigation as an
expert accountant, and it is specially worthy of note that he
effected in this capacity the discovery of the issuing of fraudulent
state warrants to the amount of $37,000, this discovery having
resulted in the prosecution and conviction of a trusted attaché of
the office of the state auditor.

In the fifth Legislature Mr. McKeown was assigned to the following
named committees of the house of representatives:  appropriation,
education, general agriculture, banks and banking, initiative and
referendum, manufacturing and commerce, and oil and gas.  He was
specially concerned in legislation affecting the oil and gas
industries and that pertaining to the State Agricultural and
Mechanical College with which he had been actively identified.  He
took an active interest in the preparation, championship and
enactment of the noteworthy oil conservation bill, especially by
reason of the fact that he is personally interested in the oil
industry, as an operator in the celebrated Cushing field, a part of
which is in the county of which he is a representative.  He is
secretary of the Cimmarron River Oil and Gas Company and vice
president of the Cimarron Oil, both of which have valuable producing
wells in the Cushing field of Oklahoma.  Mr. McKeown was joint author
of the admirable good roads measure that was passed by the Fifth
Legislature, this being considered one of the most important passed
at that session in touching the interests of the rural communities of
the state.  He was joint author also of measures fixing proper
penalties for the desertion of wives and children by recalcitrant
husbands and fathers.  Mr. McKeown was zealous in the supporting of
adequate appropriates for the Oklahoma Agricultural & Mechanical
college in his home City of Stillwater, one of these appropriations
having been for the replacing of buildings that had been destroyed by
fire and the loss of which seriously crippled the work of the college.

The political allegiance of Mr. McKeown is given to the democratic
party; he is affiliated with Guthrie Lodge No. 426, Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, in the City of Guthrie and also with the
Modern Woodmen of America.  In addition to his interests in the oil
and gas industry he is a stockholder of the Employees Building & Loan
Association of Guthrie.

In 1906 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. McKeown to Miss Effie
LOVELL, of Guthrie, this state; they have no children.  Mr. McKeown
has two brothers and two sisters:  James is a farmer near Eldorado
Springs, Missouri; William T. is engaged in the practice of law in
the city of Kalispell, Montana, and is one of the representative
members of the bar of that section of the Treasure State; Mrs. A.J.
CLARK resides in Portland, Oregon, where her husband is foreman of
the repair shops of the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company; and
Miss Kate McKeown is a resident of Kansas City, Missouri.

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)