Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Ray E. Frazier Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

RAY E. FRAZIER

(Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler)

Ray E. Frazier, president of the Citizens State Bank at 31 years of age and the youngest in the state to occupy a position of that huge responsibility; one of the leading oil producers of the Mid-Continent field; a leader in all local civic movements and among the best citizens and ablest business men in Kansas, was born in El Dorado, September 15, 1876. His death, of influenza and of only a week’s illness, occurred at the Antlers Hotel, Colorado Springs, December 16, 1918, when he was but 42 years old.

Mr. Frazier easily was one of the most notable and successful business men of this entire section of the country. Within a period of less than twenty-five years, he had risen to the heights of business influence and personal love and esteem in his native city and had acquired a reputation for high commercial and civic ethics and for unsoiled integrity throughout the Mid-Continent region. One can only speculate to what eminence he might have achieved had not unhappy death stopped a career that only had shaped its foundation for greater and better service. Rolla A Clymer, brilliant editor the El Dorado Times, personal friend of virtually every Kansas leader and who, for years, has practiced the attractive custom of printing characterizations of local chieftains, wrote a most lovable tribute to Mr. Frazier, which follows:

“There is universal sorrow in El Dorado today over the death of Ray E. Frazier. It is not sorrow over the loss of a bank president, of a business man, of a civic leader, but over something that transcends all these—the loss of a friend. For Ray Frazier was richly human and warm-hearted and his soul was filled with human kindness. And the scores of people who knew him for what he was, grieve today not for the strong public character that is gone, bt for the loss of a man.

“A city’s strength is made up not in its number of industries, not in its banks and their accumulated thousands of deposits, not in its stores and plants and factories, not even in its beautiful and comfortable homes. Its real strength lies in its men. No town has too many men. The quality of real manliness is too rare to be a drug on the market. And that is why Ray Frazier is going to be so greatly missed, and why the sense of his loss is going to increase rather than grow less as months pass by. His essential quality was manliness. He stood four-square to all the winds that blew. He was honest and bluff and to the point. He left no doubts as to where he stood. He was a fighter and his opponents knew that he would fight hard with great masculine blows and to a bitter finish—but they knew he would be fair. There were no poison gas methods in Ray Frazier’s make-up.

“He occupied an enviable position in El Droado. He held a position of great trust for so young a man and held it capably. He directed scores of enterprises. He stood behind all movements for the civic advancement of the town. But these did not constitute his most unique characteristic. For in his personality, he linked the old life and the new in El Dorado. He was born of pioneer parents and he grew up in the old El Dorado, the quiet little town of sweetness and beauty that nestled in the curves of the Walnut. He was distinctly the town’s own boy. He ran barefoot on the dirt streets of the old town, he swam in the waters of the Walnut, he drove home the cows from their pasturage when the cool of evening fell. And then he became a young man and went away to school, and returned home after a season ready to begin work. His father was wise with wisdom of the man’s shoulders until he found them capable of bearing heavy responsibility. And thus Ray Frazier came into the fullness of his strength. And when the father died, he was able to step into a job that carried with its extensive powers and high trust—to every detail of which he has been faithful through the years.

“Now with this background of sensible rearing in the old-fashioned way, Ray Frazier was ready to step in and assume leadership when the oil wealth gushed forth from the ground to make Butler County famous and to give El Dorado a growth that was undreamed of in the day of its youth. The common sense of his fathers did not desert him; it was his ruling trait. And so, he with a few other men whose names will be honored when the final history of El Dorado is written, did not lose their heads in the first wild rush. They went slowly and surely and they built on the rock. Whatever of greatness El Dorado now has, whatever of future glory it may attain, whatever service it may be to the great world at large, much of the credit must go back to Ray Frazier and the men who stood with him, cool-headed and serene while the storm beat about them.

“One other trail illustrates Ray Frazier’s manliness. His right hand never knew what his left was doing. He was a rich man; he was beset with many calls for help. And none went away empty-handed. Moreover, the half of his charities was not known. In quiet and unassuming fashion, he gave hundreds to persons in need. And ever instance of his secret help lightened some load and cheered some heavy heart. He had a rare sense of humor. It was deeprooted and it bubbled out of his nature. It was a distinct asset in his success, for it carried him through many a hard situation. He was always ablt to laugh at his own misfortunes and to cause his friends to laugh with him. He laughed away the dark spots in his life and moved calmly through happy days.

“And so today in El Dorado, hundreds of hearts are saddened by the loss of a man, a man’s man cut off in his prime, a man who combined within himself the traditions of the old El Dorado and the modern keenness of the new, who was companion, helper and friend. In social and personal and business ways, here is a staggering loss the light of which El Dorado has not been called upon to withstand in recent years. But the tears that are falling today are for Ray Frazier—boy and man—for the companion who knew our joys and sorrows and whose sympathies flowed outward in a warm, human stream.”

Mr. Frazier was educated in the El Dorado public schools, and the Wentworth Military Academy, Lexington, Missouri. He graduated from Wentworth, in 1895, and that same year, or at nineteen, he became a clerk in the Merchants National Bank, founded in the 1880’s by his father, N. F. Frazier, Sr., and Ed C. Ellet. During the next four years, he occupied various subordinate position in the old Merchants Bank, and, when his father organized the present Citizens State Bank, 1899, he became assistant cashier and, later, cashier. In 1907, when N. F. Frazier, Sr., died, Ray E. Frazier became president of the institution and continued in that capacity until his death. Up to 1915, Mr. Frazier devoted his time to banking, livestock and, in association with his younger brother, N. F. Frazier, Jr., and who succeeded him to the presidency of the Citizans State, to the varied and enormous responsibilities consequent upon handling the estate of his father. In 1915, oil was discovered in the El Dorado area and Mr. Frazier became identified with that great industry. He was president, director or official of fully a half score petroleum producing enterprises, which extended far beyond the El Dorado field into Oklahoma and Texas. He rapidly became one of the recognized leaders and most successful in the Mid-Continent. He continued, however, to be strictly an El Dorado citizen, giving his first attention to the bank, which largely is a family institution, to his extensive land interests and to civic development, schools, churches, and all worthwhile movements. He was a generous supporter of the Chamber of Commerce, the Kafir Corn Carnivals, the campaign for paved streets, the white way, and all other movements tending towards the development of the city. Fraternally, he was a thirty-second Mason, with memberships in Patmos, El Dorado; Consistory, Wichita; and Midian Shrine Temple, also of Wichita. He was a charter member of the Country Club, the Knights of Mapira and other organizations. He took only an advisory interest in politics, but, fundamentally, he was a Republican. He was a communicant of no church, but his people were Methodists.

Mr. Frazier’s ancestral line dates back into Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, a detailed review of which is included in the sketch of his father on the immediately preceding pages. On June 17, 1903, he was united in marriage to Miss Henrietta Wilbur Ellet, who survives him and who makes her home in El Dorado. The ancestral lines, paternal and maternal, of Mrs. Frazier appear in the sketches of her grandfather, General Ellet, her father, Captain Ellet, and her mother, Frances Webster VanDorn Ellet, just preceding the sketches of the Frazier family.

One child, Henrietta, named for her mother, was born of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Frazier. She was born in El Dorado, November 13, 1905, and now is Mrs. George Thomas Wofford, Jr., of Birmingham, Alabama.