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BIOGRAPHIES
Pike County Arkansas Genealogy Trails JOHN HANKS ALEXANDER EARNEST A. JONES CATHERINE FARRAR THRELKELD JOHN HANKS ALEXANDER Contributed by Kim Paterson John Hanks ALEXANDER, (6 January 1864 - 26 March 1894), was the first African American officer in the United States armed forces to hold a regular command position and the second African American graduate of the United States Military Academy. John Hanks ALEXANDER was born on 6 January 1864 at Helena, Arkansas to former slaves James Milo and Fannie Miller ALEXANDER. His father was a barber in Helena and acquired property there. All of the ALEXANDER children graduated from high school and three attended Oberlin College in Ohio. ALEXANDER graduated number one in his high school class in Helena and soon moved to Carrollton, Mississippi to take a position as a teacher. In late 1880 he visited his uncle in Cincinnati, Ohio and ended up remaining in that city. The next year he enrolled at Oberlin College and attended that institution until passing the entrance examination for West Point in 1883. Alexander was sponsored by Democratic U.S. Rep. George W. Geddes of Ohio. During his term at West Point ALEXANDER was generally accepted by the other cadets and was not subjected to as much intolerance as previous cadets. ALEXANDER was known as an excellent student, especially in mathematics and languages and was a skilled boxer while at the academy. He graduated in the class of 1887 ranking 32nd in a class of 64. ALEXANDER was assigned to the U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Robinson, Nebraska which was an all-black regiment commanded by white officers and nicknamed Buffalo soldiers. ALEXANDER became the only black officer in an actual command position. In 1888 he was transferred to Fort Washakie, Wyoming where he engaged in the normal activities of an officer with a western frontier posting. In 1894 ALEXANDER was sent to Wilberforce University, an all-black institution, as a professor of military science and tactics. Shortly after arriving ALEXANDER died unexpectedly of a ruptured aorta on 26 March, 1894. John Hanks ALEXANDER is buried in Xenia, Ohio. A military installation at Newport News, Virginia was named Camp Alexander in his honor. Source: Adapted from the article John Hanks ALEXANDER, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. ERNEST A. JONES Transcribed and contributed by Kim Paterson ERNEST A. JONES. From 1886, when the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad was first completed from Fort Worth along the Red River Valley territory, the JONES family has been conspicuous members of the business community at Quanah. Ernest A. JONES is president of the largest hardware concern of the city, and is an enterprising and progressing merchant. Mr. JONES began his career as a clerk, and his success has been due to the fact that he has studied the requirements of mercantile trade of this part of the state, and throughout all has always acted on the principle that real success is only a return for an adequate commercial service. Ernest A. JONES was born in Pike County, Arkansas, July 2, 1882, and his ancestry is Welsh on the paternal side and Scotch on his mother's side. Both branches of the family were early settlers in Virginia, having located there previous to the Revolutionary war. Grandfather Samuel JONES was a farmer and cotton planter in Arkansas, during the war entered the Confederate army, and lost his life while serving the south. The father of Ernest A. is Nathan L. JONES, a well known resident of Quanah, where he was one of the pioneers. Nathan L. JONES was born in Arkansas, in 1856, lived there throughout his youth, and in 1886 came to Texas. He arrived in this state with only a yoke of oxen as his capital, and from Erath County he went on into the northwest, along the line of the then building Fort Worth & Denver road, until he came to Hardeman County, where he built a small house on the present site of Quanah. For some years he was engaged in farming and stock raising, and for three years did a contracting and building business in Quanah, during the days when Quanah was experiencing its first boom. In 1899 he sold out his ranch and established a cotton gin. He was thoroughly familiar with the operation of a gin, having conducted a similar enterprise in Arkansas. He became president of the Quanah Gin & Feed Mill Company, operating gins in several of the towns, including Quanah. Nathan L. JONES was married to Miss Sarah Ann WHITE, who was born in Pike County, Arkansas, a daughter of Pleasant WHITE, one of the early settlers of that part of Arkansas. Nathan L. JONES and wife were the parents of thirteen children, all of whom are still living, and Earnest was the second born. The father served as county treasurer of Hardeman County for fourteen years, and has always taken an active part in civic affairs. He and his wife are worthy members of the Christian church, in which he has served as deacon. Ernest A. JONES was four years old when the family came to Hardeman County, and grew up and received his education in the public schools of Quanah. At the age of nineteen he started out on his own account, and his first position was as clerk in the grocery store of C. H. Harwell, at Quanah. He worked for that firm for two years, and then was bookkeeper with the Cameron Lumber Company until 1906. In that year he engaged in the lumber business with his father, and established the N. L. JONES Lumber Company at Hollis, Oklahoma. and also in conjunction they conducted a gin in that place. He was in charge of the enterprise for six years, at the end of which time he sold out and engaged in the hardware trade. The firm of E. A. JONES Hardware Company was then established at Quanah, and on January 1, 1913, was consolidated with the Lewis Sanders Company, and the new firm title is the Lewis-JONES Hardware Company, incorporated at twenty thousand dollars. Mr. JONES is president, and Alex M. LEWIS is secretary and treasurer. This is by far the largest hardware house in Hardeman County, and has an equipment from which every want of the people in this section in hardware and implements and tools of all kinds is supplied. The store space has ground dimensions of fifty by one hundred and twenty-five feet, besides a large upper story, and eight salesmen are employed in attending to the trade. Mr. JONES is a Democrat voter, is a member of the Commercial Club, and belongs to the Church of Christ. He was married July 9, 1903, in Center Point, Arkansas, to Miss Ada GARNER, a native of Arkansas, and a daughter of Thomas F. GARNER. The four children comprising their family are: Mildred, born in Quanah, June 6, 1904; Ruth L., born August 9, 1905, at Martin, Oklahoma; Augustus, born in November, 1909; and Stansell, born at Quanah, November 23, 1912. Mr. JONES is devoted to his home and family and has no diversions, outside of the family circle. Source: A HISTORY OF TEXAS AND TEXANS, VOL III, by Frank W. Johnson, a Leader in the Texas Revolution, c1914, p.1446. CATHERINE FARRAR THRELKELD Transcribed and contributed by Kim Paterson MRS. CATHERINE THRELKELD, M. D. The distinction of being the only woman physician in Oklahoma, and probably in the entire Southwest, to be appointed county commissioner of health, is held by Dr. Catherine Threlkeld, who holds this preferment in Pontotoc County and who is engaged in the successful practice of her profession at Ada, the county seat. Her appointment to this important office was made in the spring of 1915, by Dr. John W. Duke, of Guthrie, state commissioner of health under the administration of Governor Robert L. Williams. The appointment was of further interest in view of the fact that Dr. Threlkeld had been engaged in the practice of her profession little more than one year and had not taken up the profession of medicine until she had reared two daughters to adult age and had otherwise removed all other domestic restrictions to her ambitious and noble purpose. Being the wife of an able physician to whom she had given most effective assistance during a period of ten years prior to her preparing specifically for the same exacting profession, she experienced a constantly increasing ambition and desire to prepare herself thoroughly for the profession in which she has already gained marked success and prestige. When her younger daughter was three years of age Dr. Threlkeld yielded to her ambition to the extent of packing her trunk and making ready to depart for a medical school, but the instincts of motherhood prevailed and she sacrificed ambition to maternal devotion until her children had attained to adult years, when she found clear her way to the goal which she had long desired to gain. On the 2d of June, 1913, she was graduated in the American Medical College, in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, this being the medical department of the National University of Arts and Sciences, from which splendid institution she thus received her coveted degree of Doctor of Medicine, her active practice as a physician and surgeon having been initiated at Ada in January, 1914. Dr. Threlkeld was born in PIKE COUNTY, ARKANSAS, September 19, 1875, and is a daughter of Jackson H. and Mary T. (Reese) Farrar, the former a native of Arkansas and the latter of Tennessee, the father having been for many years a prosperous farmer and honored citizen of PIKE COUNTY. In addition to receiving the advantages of the public schools of her native state the doctor was afforded also those of Nazareth University, at Corinth, Arkansas, long before she began her technical education in her profession. At Corinth, Arkansas, in 1893, was solemnized the marriage of MISS CATHERINE FARRAR to Dr. Waller C. THRELKELD, who was born in Monroe County, Missouri, and who was graduated in Barnes Medical College, at St. Louis, that state, as a member of the class of 1901. His medical education and also a part of his literary education were obtained after his marriage, and for two years he was a student in Nazareth University, his wife's alma mater at Corinth, Arkansas. In 1901 Dr. Waller C. Threlkeld engaged in the practice of his profession at Allen, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, and his wife proved his able and faithful coadjutor in his practice while giving most solicitous attention to the rearing of their two daughters, Hope, who celebrated her twentieth birthday anniversary in 1915, and who until recently was a student in the East Central State Normal School of Oklahoma, at Ada, and Grace, aged eighteen, who was graduated in that institution as a member of the class of 1915. Dr. Catherine Threlkeld is one of the active and valued members of the Pontotoc County Medical Society, of which she is secretary and treasurer in 1915, and is identified also with the Oklahoma State Medical Society. Her parents now reside in the City of Fresno, California, and she is the eldest of their children, brief record concerning the others being here entered: John FARRAR is engaged in the real-estate business at Fresno, California; Mrs. C. C. THRELKELD is the wife of the president of the First National Bank of Dinuba, that state; Charles I. FARRAR is a prosperous agriculturist and stock-grower near Dinuba; Mrs. Walter BOLEN is the wife of a real-estate dealer at Dinuba; Mrs. William R. PIGG is the wife of the cashier of the Citrus Bank at Exeter, California; Houston FARRAR is the promoter of an interurban railway proposition at Fresno, that state; Mrs. Ray HINGLEY is the wife of a railroad man at Fresno; and Okla, Roy. Lillian and FORREST (FARRAR?) remain at the parental home. Source: A STANDARD HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA, VOL IV, PG 1443, c1916. Return to Pike County Index 2007 Arkansas Genealogy Trails |