LANDO D. MAJOR, a widely known and substantial farmer and stockman of Ryan, Jefferson county, came to this section of the state from Clay county, Texas. He was reared and educated in the Lone Star state, although born in, Blount county, Alabama, May 18, 1869, whence, when he was three years of age, his parents brought him to Ellis county, Texas. The family afterward removed to Clay county, in that state, and he was educated in its common schools and at the Dallas Business College. The latter training has been of continuous advantage to him, from the time that he commenced his useful career as a bookkeeper in a Bellevue store until the present days of his prosperity. Having saved a little money he gathered a small bunch of stock and left his business books and accounts for the free and more profitable life of the range. He began with less than one hundred head of mixed live stock, and borrowed the money with which to carry them and himself while his own capital was growing on the range. When he left the country about Bellevue and came to the vicinity of Ryan, in October, 1899, he had some 450 head for which he leased a pasture northeast of the county seat. He has since been a fixture in Oklahoma, and his expansion in the stock business has been noteworthy. Within a period of nine years he has increased his herd to 2,500 head and his pasture land to 12,000 acres, 1,000 of which is profitably tenanted and is actively producing cotton and corn. He owns in fee simple a good body of the soil of Jefferson county, and is a stockholder in the Ryan Cotton Oil Mill and the First National Bank of Ryan. In the fraternities, he is a Master Mason and an Odd Fellow.
      Mr. Major is the son of John H. and Mary (Bynum) Major, his father being a native of Blount county, Alabama, who passed most of his mature life as a successful stock farmer in Texas, and died in St. Louis, Missouri, after a short residence in that city. His widow, who lives in Chickasha, Grady county, is a daughter of Jesse Bynum, also a farmer, who came to Texas with his family and passed his remaining years in Ellis county. The children born to Mr. and Mrs. John H. Major were as follows: Lando D., of this biography; Theophilus, a resident of Chickasha, Oklahoma; Walter, who was in the stock business at Ryan for some years and died at that place in 1906, leaving a family; Victoria Texas, who married Dr. A. R. Prothro, of Granbury, Texas; Lester B., and John E., both of St. Louis, Missouri, and Jewell, who ia a student in the Polytechnic College, at Fort Worth, Texas. On October 25, 1891, Lando D. Major weddedJanie B. Brown, daughter of A. Don and Rachel (Boas) Brown, who migrated from Missouri to Young county, Texas, the marriage of their daughter occurring at Bellevue, Clay county, that state. The other children of the Brown family are: Lucy J., wife of Sidney Webb, of Bellevue, Texas; Mary B., wife of A. R. Manton, of Ryan; Annie B., who died unmarried, and Robert J., who married Mattie Thurman and lives in Clay county, Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Major's children are: Robert Roy, who died at the age of twelve; D. Don, Howard H., Leta and Mary.