John Graves Leeper Biography

JOHN GRAVES LEEPER

John Graves Leeper was born at Chillicothe, Livingston County, Missouri, May 23, 1854, died at Sherman, Texas, March 2, 1931. He was the son of James Leeper and Elizabeth Graves Leeper. His father was a pioneer merchant of Chillicothe. He conducted a large general store and his trade territory extended over two or three counties. His business was established before the Civil War and continued until about 1879. He was a substantial citizen, very active in church work, and especially interested in the Methodist school at Fayette, Mo.

After finishing the course in the common schools of his home town Graves Leeper, the subject of this sketch, attended the Methodist college at Fayette in the early seventies but did not complete the course of study as he was not interested in all the abstract subjects taught in the school, and besides he had other things on his mind.

He left his home in Missouri and located in North Texas in 1879 and engaged in the lumber business. He and his brother, J. D. Leeper, established the Leeper Brothers Lumber Company and their business was soon extended over several counties in North Texas. They had yards at Denison, Gainesville, Decatur, Bowie and perhaps other towns in North Texas.

When Oklahoma was opened to settlement Graves Leeper came in at the run and was in Oklahoma City for some time after the opening. The firm of Leeper Brothers had established yards at several places along the Santa Fe in Oklahoma and the Chickasaw Nation.

He returned to Texas and made his home at Bowie for two or three years. At the opening of the Kiowa and Comanche country in 1901, Leeper Brothers established a chain of lumber yards along the Mangum branch of the Rock Island road west of Anadarko, with Graves Leeper in charge of the business. He made his headquarters at Old Mountain View while this town was located north of the Washita River, in Washita County and was there when the railroad built west and helped move the town two miles south across the river and into Kiowa County where it is now located.

After disposing of all their interests along the Rock Island they established a lumber yard in South Oklahoma City (Capitol Hill) and he was again a resident of Oklahoma City. His health having failed, he located in Sulphur, Oklahoma, were they also had business interests. Graves Leeper made his home at Sulphur until he was elected to the office of Secretary of State in the fall of 1926. He assumed the duties of this office in January, 1927, and served the full four year term, only retiring when his successor, his old friend, General R. A. Sneed, was sworn in to succeed him in January, 1931.

He had been in poor health for several years and had not been able to give the duties of his office his full time. Several times he thought that he would not be able to hold out until the end of his term and he only lived about six weeks after retiring from office.

Among the men of prominence whose passing we have recorded in the Chronicles none were better known, nor has there been a more unique character. There are few readers of this publication who did not know Graves Leeper at least by reputation.

Not only in Oklahoma was he well known, but if you ever lived in North Texas, where he was in business for years, or Chillicothe, Missouri, where he was born and raised, you would have known him by reputation. He was a man of strong intellectual endowment and an outstanding citizen in every place he had lived.

He was a most congenial man and as a wit and humorist he never had but one man his equal who claimed Oklahoma as his home. You have missed something if you never spent an evening with Graves Leeper and heard him tell stories and jokes on the early settlers. He needed no prompting but could entertain his friends for hours with humorous stories.

His memories of the early settlers of Missouri when he was a boy were almost uncanny. If you ever lived in North Missouri he could regale you by the hour telling the ludicrous yarns of Old Sam Thompson and Bob Lauderdale, two well known characters of Livingston County, Missouri, whom Graves had known when he was a boy. Nor did he spare his own kin, two or three of whom were Methodist preachers, from his shafts of wit in telling his stories. He was related to the Ashby family, the most distinguished member of which who ever lived in Oklahoma was the Hon. Stump Ashby, who represented Pushmataha County in the second and third state legislatures. His younger brother, now deceased Cyrus S. Leeper, was a member of the Constitutional Convention.

Graves Leeper's knowledge of humanity, his happy-go-lucky manner of speaking and his ready wit made him in demand at all meetings of business or professional men. He was perhaps at his best as toastmaster for he could always think of something to please the audience even though it embarrassed the speaker he was introducing. His speeches were not of the cut-and-dried kind like those of a Chautauqua lecture, for the fact is that he seldom told the same story twice—the same way. It was worth the price of the ticket to the banquet at the sheriffs' convention to hear Graves tell of his appointment to the job as deputy sheriff the day he became of age, by his uncle, the then sheriff of Livingston County, and also how he came to resign when he learned the duties of the said office.

"He was a fellow of infinite jest." There are no end of Graves Leeper stories. If they were all published they would make a book of wit and humor better than anything Mark Twain ever wrote. His stories will be told whenever good fellows get together for the next hundred years.