EARLY COUNTISS. Probably the best farm home and one of the sightliest in Jefferson county is that owned by Early Conntiss, two and a half miles northwest of Waurika. From his dooryard one may overlook for miles the attractive landscape of southern Oklahoma, and within the range of vision lie the three towns of Hastings, Waurika and Addington. Several years ago Mr. Countiss came to this locality and bought the Brenneman half section, which was the first home of another well known farmer of this vicinity. On it he built the best farm house in the county, at a cost of $5,300, an ample barn at a cost of $1,400, and has otherwise beautified and improved this estate.
    Mr. Countiss is a successful man, prosperous beyond the average in his career, and in a comparison of performance and actual work done it would not be easy to find one who excelled. He had been reared on a farm in Mississippi, where he was trained by hard work rather than by the institutions of culture, though he obtained a fair knowledge of reading, writing and ciphering before he ventured into life alone. During the first few years he acted as foreman over negro farm hands in his home county. With the savings from this labor he purchased a two hundred acre timber tract and during the next eleven years made a farm of it. He cleared up about five thousand dollars as a farm and when he sold the place for $8,400, he had nearly a thousand dollars to represent the labor of each of the past sixteen years. Coming to Texas he invested some money in the famous black-land belt, but experienced difficulty in cultivating the soil and navigating it in wet weather, and also was dissatisfied with its productiveness. Having disposed of his Texas lands he located in what he believes to be an ideal farming country, and has since been known as one of the prominent citizens and highly successful farmers in the southeast corner of the old Kiowa-Comanche country. 
     Early Countiss was born in Calhoun county, Mississippi, July 13, 1861. His father, Hosea Countiss, born in Tuscaloosa county, Alabama, in 1830, was a farmer of moderate means, owned a few slaves, was a Confederate soldier during the war, and died in Calhoun county, Mississippi, in 1893. His wife was Mary Woodall, daughter of John Woodall. The Countisses were from Delaware originally, and the family was introduced into the south by John Countiss, grandfather of Early Countiss, who settled in Alabama, reared his family in comfort, and furnished seven sons to the cause of the Confederacy. One of them lost his life in the service, and the others were John, Daniel, Reuben, Peter, James and Hosea. There were also three daughters, Litha, Rachel and Jane. The mother of these children was Nancy Ray. John Countissdied in 1880, when about eighty-four years old. Hosea Countiss and wife had the following children:Clemmie, wife of Jefferson Hogg, of Miles county, Texas; Early; Annie, wife of George Edwards, of Sugden, Oklahoma; Ollie, wife of Joseph Sheffield; Ella, wife of Hanley Davis; and Marvin, of Arkansas. The mother lives with her son, Denton, in his comfortable home near Waurika. During the years of his effective labor in creating a competency, Mr. Early Countiss remained unmarried. During his eight years' residence in Bell county, Texas, he was married, August 6, 1903, to Miss Maggie, daughter of Bud and Kate (Hambrick) Buckley. The other children of the Buckley family were: William, Marion, Martin, Alonzo, Reginald and Bronson, all of Bell county, except Marion, who lives in Miles county; Lena, wife of William Miller; and Lula and Era, of Bell county. Mr. and Mrs. Countiss have three children, Alton, Angie and Marx, all of whom, by an unusual coincidence, were born on Sunday.