A History of the State of Oklahoma
Thomas N. Ratterree
During many years Thomas N. Ratterree has been prominently identified with the interests of Wilburton, and his residence here dates form the year of 1899. The firm of Ratterree and Company, of which he was the head, was established in 1901, and its members are undertakers and embalmers and dealers in furniture, hardware implements, harness, wagons, queensware of tinware. In August 1908, the firm of Ratterree and Company was dissolved and January 1, 1909, it again resumed business as Ratterree and MCMURRAY, two members of the original firm.
In taking up the personal history of Mr. Ratterree we find that he was born in Sebastian County, Arkansas, March 31, 1860, and he traced his lineage back to the land of Ireland, where the births of his great-grandparents are recorded. John C. Ratterree, his father, was born in Mississippi in 1834, but accompanied his father, Thomas Ratterree, to Arkansas when a boy, the latter establishing the home on a farm in Sebastian County, where he passed away in 1899, at the age of ninety-eight years. He chose for his wife Miss Fannie COBB, who became the mother of John C., Wiley, Thomas, William, Ed, Alexander, Elizabeth Gillham, Sarah Avery and Nancy Taylor.
John C. Ratterree passed his youth in the frontier settlements of western Arkansas, and his opportunities were only those peculiar to his commonwealth at that time. He was throughout life industrious and persevering, and inherited his family’s patriotic impulses toward the country’s flag. But when the war between the north and the south was inaugurated he was conscripted by the Confederates and was forced into their service for two yeas, when he escaped to the Federal lines and was from that time on until the close of the struggle a butcher supplying meat to the Union army. The rest of the sons in that family all served in the Union army.
His first wife was Telitha OSBORN, who died in 1864, after becoming the mother of James, of Sebastain County, Arkansas; Clara, who married a Mr. AVERY and died in Brooken, Oklahoma; Thomas N., mentioned below; and Frank, who died in Wilburton, Oklahoma. The second family of children which Mr. Ratterree reared by his marriage with Mollie GRAHAM were Arthur L., of Muskogee, Oklahoma; William, of Arkansas; Asa, of Wyoming; Flora, the wife of Mr. EAST of Booneville, Arkansas; and Jesse, whose home is in Wyoming.
The early educational opportunities of Thomas N. Ratterree were indeed poor, and when less than fourteen years of age he left the home and became a wage worker on the farm. Soon after this he went to Texas, where in Tarrant county he continued farm work for seven years. In 1881 he first became identified with the interests of Oklahoma, at first as a member of the floating population of the Choctaw town of Kully Chaha in LeFlore county. From there he drifted to Brooken, and there married and began accumulating property as a farmer and later as a well driller. He did not abandon that later occupation until two years after coming to Wilburton. At that time, having accumulated some capital, he joined with others in mercantile venture in this city in 1901. The large two-story brick business house in which the business was carried on was erected by him in 1903.
In November of 1887, Mr. Ratterree was united in marriage with Miss Mollie, a daughter of Lee EDMISTON. Mr. Edmiston came to the Choctaw country from Iowa during the Civil war period, and was there married to Miss Margaret TUCKER, a woman of Choctaw blood. Mrs. Ratterree has passed her life in Oklahoma, and is a direct descendant of Abigail ROGERS-GLENN, well known as a member of a Choctaw family. Of the six children born to Mr. and Mrs. Ratterree four are living: Ethel, wife of Robert MORRIS, of Wilburton, Medda, Cecil, and Hazel. John C. Ratterree cast his fealty with the Republican party after the close of the struggle, and his sons have followed in the same channel. Thomas N. Ratterree is a Master Mason, No. 108 of Wilburton, as was also his father, who was a member of the Masonic Lodge of Greenwood, Arkansas, and he has filled all of the chars in the Wilburton lodge. His people on his father’s side were Baptists and on his mother’s they are of the Presbyterian faith. Mr. Ratterree and wife are members of the First Baptist Church of Wilburton, Oklahoma.
Portrait and Biographical Record of Oklahoma (Chicago: Chapman Publishing Co., 1901),Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Mary Charles Dodd Hull, February 1999.