Blaine County Oklahoma Biographies

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Jesse Chisholm was born in Tennessee about 1806, his father, Ignatius Chisholm being a white man of Scotch descent, and his mother a Cherokee woman, whose sister, Talahina Rogers, married Gen. Sam Houston. Jesse Chisholm, it is said, could speak fourteen different Indian languages and was frequently called upon to act as interpreter between the army officers of Fort Gibson and the Indians of the wild tribes of the Plains. He began the manufacture of salt within the present limits of Blaine county many years before the Civil War. He also established a ranch and trading post at Council Grove, on the North Canadian (i. e., about six miles west of the site upon which Oklahoma City was afterwards built,) Here he traded with anyone and everyone, making forays into other regions to bring back buffalo robes and the like to stock his post. Cattle were sometimes included in the goods that he traded, and as such, Jesse Chisholm probably did trail cattle over at least a portion of the trail that would later bear his name.and obtained great influence among the tribes of the Southwest, by whom he was recognized not merely as a friend, but also as a counselor, arbiter and brother as well.  Jesse grew up to be a very fair man and earned the respect of both whites and Indians. His legendary diplomatic skills frequently called him away from his business and he found himself starting over several times.Not all of the conflicts Jesse was called on to mediate were between whites and Indians. As eastern tribes were removed to Kansas and Indian Territory in Oklahoma, conflicts arose between tribes and even within tribes as various factions found they couldn’t agree. Jesse has been portrayed as a man who listened to all sides of a conflict before offering his advice. He was also aware of duplicity of the parties involved and while interpreting managed to couch his translations so as to be most agreeable to the parties involved. He was an adopted- member of the Wichita- Caddo tribes. His death, which occurred on March 4, 1868, was felt to be a serious loss to these tribes. He was buried near the North Canadian River, in Blaine county. [Source: "A History of Oklahoma" by Joseph B. Thoburn and Isaac M. Holcomb, Doub & Company, San Francisco, 1908, Page 105 - Submitted by Jim VanderMark]

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Elva Shartel Ferguson, territorial Oklahoma first lady, newspaper editor, and journalist, was born in Novelty, Missouri, on April 6, 1869, to David E. and Mary Jane Wiley Shartel. She was raised in Sedan, Kansas, where she married Thompson B. Ferguson in 1885. The couple participated in three land runs and moved permanently to Watonga, Oklahoma Territory, in 1892, where they established the Watonga Republican newspaper. The newspaper was a joint endeavor from the beginning. Elva Ferguson participated in every aspect of the work, from writing editorials to selling subscriptions. As her husband became more involved with territorial Republican politics, she often assumed complete responsibility. She gave birth to five children, but only two survived infancy: Walter, a newspaperman and banker, and Tom, Jr., who died during World War I. In 1901 Pres. Theodore Roosevelt appointed Thompson Ferguson as governor of Oklahoma Territory, and the couple moved to the capital at Guthrie. In addition to her duties as first lady, Ferguson continued to write political news for the Republican throughout her husband's tenure. The Fergusons returned to Watonga and full-time newspaper work in 1906. Elva Ferguson's reminiscences of territorial politics, Indians, outlaws, and frontier life provided the basis of Edna Ferber's novel Cimarron, published in 1930. When RKO Studios developed a motion picture from the novel, Ferguson served as a technical advisor for the newspaper print-shop scenes. In 1937 Ferguson published her own account of newspaper life in early Oklahoma, entitled They Carried The Torch: The Story of Oklahoma's Pioneer Newspapers. After her husband's death in 1921, Elva Ferguson managed the Watonga Republican alone until she sold it and retired in 1930. She became a leader in Oklahoma Republican Party politics in her own name. In 1924 she served as chair of the state delegation to the Republican National Convention. In 1926 she was a member of the executive committee representing Oklahoma at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition and two years later became vice chair of the state Republican committee, serving until 1932. Free of newspaper responsibilities, she traveled extensively in Europe and enjoyed membership in the Order of the Eastern Star and American Pen Women organizations. Elva Shartel Ferguson was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1933. Near the end of her life she received many honors, including Oklahoma Mother of the Year in 1946. She died in Watonga on December 18, 1947.

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T.B. Ferguson was born in 1857 near Des Moines, Iowa. Although he was trained to be a teacher and a Methodist minister, Ferguson began writing occasional articles for a local newspaper and became interested in journalism. After the 1892 land run, Ferguson brought his family to Watonga, Oklahoma where he established the Watonga Republican. He remained the publisher of this newspaper until his death in 1921. Ferguson was appointed territorial governor in 1901 by President Theodore Roosevelt. During his administration, deficit spending was eliminated and he strongly supported increasing funds for education and prison reform. He organized the Board of Agriculture and strongly promoted Oklahoma's participation in the St. Louis World's Fair in 1903. Ferguson pressed for legislation setting qualifications for persons teaching school in Oklahoma. He pressed for the "herd law," which required land to be fenced to prevent herds of cattle from damaging or destroying settlers' crops. Governor Ferguson was also responsible for a law allowing osteopaths to practice in Oklahoma and upgrading Oklahoma's mental institutions. Perhaps his greatest contribution was his unwavering devotion to the cause of immediate statehood for Oklahoma Territory. Ferguson was governor from November 1901, until January 1906, longer than any other territorial governor. After Governor Ferguson's death in 1921, Mrs. Ferguson managed the newspaper until 1930. In 1927 the famous novelist Edna Ferber stayed in the Ferguson home where she found much of the material for her novel Cimarron.

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LEFT HAND

Left Hand (Nawat or Niwot) succeeded Little Raven as principal chief of the Southern Arapaho in 1889. According to Left Hand, he was born "in No Man's Land' [the present Oklahoma Panhandle] west of Fort Supply." He should not be confused with Left Hand the elder, the English-speaking Arapaho chief who was fatally wounded at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864. The two were not related. An orphan raised by his grandparents, Left Hand excelled at warfare and hunting. His name first appeared in tribal records around 1867. He reportedly led the attack (others credited the Arapaho chief Big Mouth) in which Maj. Joel Elliott and nineteen U.S. Seventh cavalrymen were killed during the Battle of the Washita in 1868. Although he spoke no English, Left Hand occasionally represented his tribe in Washington, D.C. He became the Southern Arapahos' head chief following Little Raven's death in 1889. Soon thereafter, Left Hand became interested in the ghost dance and fell under the influence of Sitting Bull, a Southern Arapaho religious leader. Swayed by Sitting Bull, Left Hand agreed to allot the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation in 1890. Left Hand's ghost dance participation was brief. He subsequently converted to Christianity and became a Baptist. Blind in his old age, he resigned his authority to Bird Chief in 1908. Left Hand died at Darlington, Oklahoma, on June 28, 1911, and was buried on his allotment northeast of Geary in Blaine County. He is interred near the grave of his friend Jesse Chisholm.
Source: Oklahoma Encylopedia of History and Culture

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Earnest. Hoberecht was born on Jan. 1, 1918, in Watonga, Okla., where he grew up. He earned a journalism degree from Oklahoma University, then worked as a reporter for The Memphis Press-Scimitar. He quit to go to Hawaii to work as a laborer at Pearl Harbor, and from there wound up covering the occupation of Japan.He returned to his hometown in 1966. There he ran a number of family businesses, including an insurance company and a title company. His writing was restricted to occasional letters to the editor complaining about low wheat prices.In 1969, he found himself sitting at a local lunch counter next to Mary Ann Shaklee Karns. They each had four children from a previous marriage, and they were married seven months later. She remembers contemplating having a home with eight children and telling him, ''We should get the Medal of Honor for this.''Mr. Hoberecht is survived by his wife; his four children, Tony Hoberecht of Tulsa; Trevar Hoberecht 3d of Las Vegas, Nev.; Nathalie Kitson of Edmond, Okla., and Shelley Hoberecht Spaeth of Watonga; his stepchildren, Mona Loudon of Oklahoma City; Anita Cowan of Watonga; Brett Karns of Watonga and Bruce Karns of Yukon, Okla.; a sister, Jeanne Hoberecht Mills of Lafayette, La., and 17 grandchildren. 

Mr. Hoberecht (pronounced HO-bright), turned a Tokyo assignment as a correspondent and news executive for United Press International into an improbable literary success story by filling a void created by a ban on American books.    He became a major literary figure in Japan just after World War II on the strength of some romance novels he wrote in a matter of weeks.  The ban was imposed by the United States Army out of fear that books like Sinclair Lewis's ''Main Street'' that were critical of American society might lead to Japanese derision of Americans, with possible political repercussions back home.But by writing novels in English and having them immediately translated into Japanese, Mr. Hoberecht became, for a little over two years, the best-known, and virtually the only, American writer available in Japan as it rebuilt itself and its society under the Allied occupation.Mr. Hoberecht was so popular that he had a fan club -- unusual by itself in postwar Japan -- with hundreds of thousands of members, many of them young women eager to learn how an American man might address matters of the heart.In a long magazine article about Mr. Hoberecht, the author James Michener said Japanese students often asked whether Mr. Hoberecht was better than Hemingway. He said one scholar had asked him to compare Mr. Hoberecht's writing with that of Jean-Paul Sartre.By day, Mr. Hoberecht wrote news articles and tried to recruit Asian subscribers for the wire service, United Press International. He wrote his novels after 5:30 P.M., generally by dictating to a secretary. A translator who had won considerable local attention with a Japanese version of ''Gone With the Wind'' then put it into Japanese. Mr. Hoberecht many times suggested that his success was partly due to the graceful style of the translation.Mr. Hoberecht first caught the attention of the Japanese reading public with a well-publicized kiss. As retold later in Collier's magazine, Mr. Hoberecht had visited a movie set with the intention of kissing Hideko Mimura, a highly regarded actress. He told her that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had suggested that kissing in movies would be ''a step toward democratization.'' When he kissed her on the set, she immediately fainted. It was sensational national news.He wrote his first great success soon afterward. That novel, ''Tokyo Diary,'' was published in 1946 and told of an American correspondent based in Japan falling in love with a Japanese movie star. The affair had to be secret because her studio forbade such fraternization. There was a murder and other complications, but the most popular part of the book was the description of a kiss, which Time magazine said at the time went into ''great quivering detail.'' Kissing, if done at all at that time in Japan, was a very private thing.The Collier's article suggested that the success of ''Tokyo Diary'' resulted from the publicity. The book quickly sold 300,000 copies and would have sold more except for a paper shortage, contemporary reports said. ''The Japanese women were crazy to find out how American men made love,'' Mr. Hoberecht told Mr. Michener.When the book was published in America, however, the response was disappointing, from reviewers to buyers. Life magazine called it ''the worst novel of modern times.''Nor was all the Japanese response favorable. One reviewer compared the novel unfavorably to modern Russian works and concluded, ''The people of America must be intellectual midgets.''Still, Mr. Hoberecht went on to write ''Tokyo Romance,'' which in many ways resembled ''Tokyo Diary,'' in just 27 days. Mr. Michener wrote that Mr. Hoberecht then wrote to his parents in Oklahoma for writing he had done in his boyhood and college years. This resulted in ''Unpublished Short Stories of Earnest Hoberecht.''Then came ''Shears of Destiny,'' a novel he had written before the war and could not publish in the United States. His last book before the ban on American books was rescinded was ''Democratic Etiquette,'' which included some suggestions about how to kiss.

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Clarence Charles "Ducky" Nash (December 7, 1904–February 20, 1985) was an American voice actor, best known for providing the voice of Donald Duck for Walt Disney Studios. He was born in the rural community of Watonga, Oklahoma, and a street in that town is named in his honor.  Nash made a name for himself in the late 1920s as an impressionist for KHJ, a Los Angeles radio station, on their show, The Merrymakers. He later was employed by the Adohr Milk Company for publicity purposes. Dubbed "Whistling Clarence, the Adohr Bird Man", Nash rode the streets with a team of miniature horses and gave treats to the children. In 1932, Nash happened by the Disney Studio with his team of horses, and decided to leave a copy of his Adohr publicity sheet with the receptionist. As it turns out, his name was recognized from a reprise appearance on The Merrymakers a few days previous, and Walt Disney himself had been impressed by Nash's vocal skills. He was asked to make an informal audition.  Nash went through several of his voices, and Walt Disney happened by when Nash gave his impersonation of a family of ducks. Disney declared Nash perfect for the role of a talking duck in their upcoming animated short, The Wise Little Hen. The duck, of course, was Donald Duck, who Nash went on to voice for over 50 years, in over 120 shorts and films. The last film to feature Nash's famous voice was Mickey's Christmas Carol, released in 1983 although he continued to provide Donald's voice for commercials, promos and other miscellaneous material until his death.Donald Duck went on to become one of the most famous cartoon characters in the world, and a great part of this was due to Nash's distinctive voice. It may well be one of the most recognizable character voices in history. The voice is distinctive both for its ducklike quality and the fact that it is often very difficult for anybody to understand, especially when Donald flew into a rage (which happened fairly often). To keep Donald's voice consistent throughout the world, Nash voiced Donald's voice in all foreign languages the Disney shorts were translated to (with the aid of the phonetic alphabet), meaning Donald retained his same level of incoherency all across the globe. Mad magazine, in its 1950s comic-strip style satire of Disney characters, featured a "translation" of "Darnold" Duck's "quacky, incomprehensible" voice.  In addition to Donald's voice, Nash also voiced Daisy Duck (in her earliest appearances, when she was little more than a female version of Donald), as well as Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. He provided the voice for PJ in the cartoon 'Bellboy Donald'. Nash also provided the meows of Figaro the kitten in a handful of shorts.Several Tom & Jerry cartoons directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera featured a third main character, a duckling named Little Quacker. Red Coffee provided Little Quacker's voice, though the voice is sometimes attributed mistakenly to Nash because it sounds similar to Donald Duck's.He also voiced a bullfrog in Bambi, did dog yappings In 101 Dalmatians and did grizzly bear growls in The Fox and the Hound.  In the late 1970s, Nash was known for often taking walks in the neighborhood around Fremont Elementary School in Glendale, California, entertaining children with his Donald Duck voice.  Clarence Nash died in 1985 of leukemia and was interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California. The tombstone of the grave he now shares with his wife Margaret Nash (who died in 1993) depicts a carving of Donald and Daisy Duck holding hands over a heart.  After Nash's passing, Donald's voice has been taken up by Disney animator Tony Anselmo, who was trained under Nash personally. Anselmo is also among the many voiceover artists to have also voiced Huey, Dewey and Louie over the years. Later characters whose voices owe considerable credit to Nash's duck voice have been voiced by actors such as Jimmy Weldon, Frank Welker and Luba Goy. The most prominent of these is Weldon's Yakky Doodle for Hanna-Barbera.

Top picture is of Clarence Nash with Donald Duck. Immediately above is when Nash left Donald's foot prints at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood.  Below is a picture of Clarence's headstone that is located in Los Angeles. Even in death Clarence "Ducky" Nash still commenerates his life with Donald and Daisy Duck.  Rest in peace Ducky. You will never be forgotten.