Pushmataha County Oklahoma Biographies - presented by Genealogy Trails

Pushmataha County, Oklahoma Biographies

Harrison Sterling Price Ashby , known in his later years as Stump Ashby, was born to Benjamin F. and Martina Virginia (Walton) Ashby May 18, 1848 in Chariton County, Missouri on their farm. He served in the Confederate Army in Co. B, 3rd Missouri Regiment, Shelby’s Brigade, Price’s Corps. He also claimed to have served for a time with Quantrell. Ashby later told Oklahoma Pension Commissioners he enlisted in the Spring of 1864 in Missouri and served until the war ended, and that he was a soldier in Co. B of D. A. Williams’s Regiment. When he registered for the Confederate Veterans Reunion in Dallas in 1902, he registered as a veteran of Co. E, 4th Missouri Cavalry. He was a very interesting character, and came to the Methodist ministry in his early twenties after having been, in turn, an actor, cattle driver, farmer, and school teacher. Ashby and his second wife, Amanda Elizabeth Wray, were married about 1880. In the late 1880’s he was removed from the ministry because of his increasing activism in political affairs, his criticism of the Methodist church’s failure to support reforms, and an “alleged fondness for the bottle.” In 1895, Ashby was living in the Smithfield community on the Stephen Richardson survey, on the south side of Little Bear Creek, somewhere in the general area of where Ember Oaks Drive turns sharply southeast and becomes Fireside Drive. Ashby's interest in politics began through his acquaintance with Judge Thomas L. Nugent, a member of his Stephenville congregation, who twice ran for governor on the Populist ticket. Ashby was one of the first Farmers' Alliance speakers and organizers in Texas. With Evan Jones,James M. Perdue of Mineola, R. M. Humphrey (white founder of the Colored Farmers' Allianceqv), William R. Lamb, Harry Tracy, and a few others, Ashby led the antimonopoly, Greenback wing of the Texas Farmers' Alliance. As an early supporter within the alliance of independent political action, he helped lead an independent political movement in Fort Worth that succeeded, in the midst of the Great Southwest Strike of 1886, in electing the mayor of the city. In Waco in May 1888 he helped organize a convention of farmers, laborers, and stockraisers, which led directly to a state Union Labor party convention in July, the first statewide independent political effort in which large numbers of Farmers' Alliance men were involved. As one of the Texas alliance's first district lecturers, Ashby helped pioneer the radicals' tactics of using Democratic hostility to the Sub-Treasury plan of 1889 to split the Farmers' Alliance membership from their traditional Democratic loyalty.

Ashby's Populist career began officially when, with Thomas Gaines of Comanche County and William R. Lamb, he organized the founding state People's party^qv convention, held August 17, 1891, in Dallas; this convention was coordinated with the state Farmers' Alliance meeting in the same city. As state party chairman in 1892 and 1894, Ashby organized the increasingly successful Populist state campaigns. Here his organizational skills and his ability to work with and for his black colleagues counted as much as his effective speaking ability, for which he gained his nickname, "Stump." Ashby was a delegate to the organizing convention of the national Populist party in St. Louis in 1892. During his Populist career he remained active in the Texas Farmers' Alliance; he was state lecturer from 1892 to 1894. In 1896 he ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on the Populist ticket.
That year ended Ashby's public prominence for a while, but he had returned to public activity as a Populist by 1900, when he campaigned in North Carolina for Marion Butler in the latter's efforts to retain his United States Senate seat. In 1902 Ashby attended the Texas state Populist convention as a delegate from Smithfield for the purpose of blocking a prohibition plank in the party's platform. About 1905, Ashby moved to Oklahoma.

Soon after this he moved to Mannsville, Indian Territory, where he farmed quite successfully and eventually became president of his local farmers' union. In 1910, he was living there with his wife and one child in Antlers Township, Pushmataha County. In that year, Mrs. Ashby said she had given birth to five children, three of whom were still living. He also returned to politics, this time as a supporter of Democrats William H. (Alfalfa Bill) Murray^qv and Charles N. Haskell. Ashby served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives as a representative of Marshall County to the First Legislature in 1907 and to the Third and Fourth legislatures from Pushmataha County. He died in Octavia, Oklahoma, in May 1923, as well known in Oklahoma as he had been in Texas for his politics and speaking ability. By the time of his death in Oklahoma many years later, he was well-known in northern Texas and Oklahoma for his ability to speak extemporaneously on a number of issues, hence his nickname, “Stump.” He applied for a pension there in 1921, while living at Octavia, LeFlore County, Oklahoma. He died on May 10, 1923, and lies buried beside his wife, A.E. Ashby (1853-1932) in the Octavia Cemetery. Ashby’s children with his first wife included Sullivan Gaylord Ashby, twins Martha and Mary Ashby, and Ida Ashby. His children in his second marriage included Alice Ashby, Benjamin Franklin Ashby, Louise Cunningham Ashby, and Beatrice Ashby who died in infancy at Smithfield.