Tulsa County, OK Biographies

BARTLETT, Dewey Follett, a Senator from Oklahoma; born in Marietta, Washington County, Ohio, March 28, 1919; educated in Marietta, Ohio, public schools and Lawrenceville Preparatory School, Lawrenceville, N.J.; graduated, Princeton University 1942; during the Second World War served in the United States Marine Corps as a dive bomber pilot in the South Pacific Theater 1943-1945; moved to Oklahoma; oilman, farmer, and rancher; member, Oklahoma State senate 1963-1966; Governor of Oklahoma 1967-1971; unsuccessful candidate for reelection as Governor in 1970; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1972 and served from January 3, 1973, to January 3, 1979; was not a candidate for reelection in 1978 due to ill health; died in Tulsa, Okla., March 1, 1979; interment in Calvary Cemetery.
[Contributed by A. Newell.]

Walter Clinton Burnham, eldest child of Alvina Westerman and Frank Burnham, was born in Wakeeney and had his early schooling there. He attended Kansas University four years, graduating in Civil Engineering
in 1910.   After leaving the University he was with the Illinois Steel Bridge Company and later with the Kansas City Bridge Company.
Mr. Burnham was in the first State Highway Department of Oklahoma.   As a member of the American Association of State Highway Officials he served for many years on a National Committee of Bridge
Engineers.   During the eleven years that he was in the Highway Department he served in the capacity of State Engineer, State Bridge Engineer and State Construction Engineer.   When the Grand River Dam Authority began operations in 1940 he was appointed Hydraulic Engineer. During the War the plant was operated by the Government.   In 1946 Mr. Burnham moved to Tulsa where he continued with the Southwestern Power Administration, an agency of the Interior Department.   He was in charge of Design,
Planning and Production.   In September, 1958, Mr. Burnham received a gold medal - the "Distinguished Service Award" from the United States Department of the Interior.

Walter C. Burnham Is a Mason, a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is a Registered Professional Engineer, a member of the Military Engineers; The Tulsa Engineers' Club; and S.A.R. No.
78905. He is an Episcopalian and is a member of Trinity Church in Tulsa. For several years he served as vestryman and senior warden of St. John's Episcopal Church in Oklahoma City. The Burnhams maintained their Oklahoma City residence from 1915 to 1942 except for a two year period. They now live at 2405 East 24th St., Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mr. Burnham retired in 1957. Besides his consulting work, Mr. Burnham manages his 500-acre farm and has considerable oil interests.

Oil magnate Josh Cosden, born in Maryland on July 8, 1881, earned and squandered two fortunes. Before traveling to Oklahoma to capitalize on the emerging oil industry, he worked as a drugstore clerk in Baltimore, Maryland. Around 1910 he established a refinery in Bigheart, Oklahoma. Partly with the funds from this venture, in 1913 he built a refinery, one of the largest of its time, in West Tulsa and organized Cosden and Company. Soon he incorporated the Cosden Pipe Line Company and the Cosden Oil and Gas Company, controlling the crude oil and its transportation to his refinery. In 1917 he consolidated these into Cosden and Company, incorporated under Delaware law. In 1918 Cosden built Tulsa's first skyscraper, the Cosden Building, later the Mid-Continent Building, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NR-79002029). Many estimated Cosden's wealth at $50 million. Married twice, he divorced his first wife, Ottille Loewensprung, and wed Eleanor Neves, the former Mrs. Charles Roeser, who had lived across the street. He then left Tulsa, living extravagantly and enjoying high society in New York. In addition to his business dealings he played the stock market. The Cosdens maintained luxurious residences in New York, Florida, and Rhode Island. His stable of thoroughbred race horses earned him prominent recognition as one of the elite of Eastern society, and he lavishly bought his own railroad car and yacht. In 1924 Cosden and his wife hosted the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. In 1925 Cosden lost control of his finances, and the Mid-Continent Petroleum Company acquired his refinery and other oil assets. He also had to sell his mansions. By 1928 he established headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, and invested in the exploration and drilling of the West Texas oil fields, accumulating another fortune estimated at $15 million. The Great Depression again depleted his funds. On November 17, 1940, Josh Cosden died of a heart attack in Arizona aboard a train traveling to El Paso. The Daily Oklahoman's obituary claimed that in the week before his death Cosden's reputed final assets had sold at a public auction in New York

Pioneer, wildcatter, and entrepreneur Robert Galbreath participated in five Oklahoma Territory land runs. Born in Pickaway County, Ohio, on December 22, 1863, he visited David Payne's Boomers at Kansas in 1884 and traveled to California in 1888, returning through Indian Territory. These trips encouraged Galbreath to join thousands of others in the 1889 race for the Unassigned Lands and to settle in Oklahoma. Along with his younger brother, Herman, Galbreath staked a claim near Hennessey, but they soon sold, relocating to Edmond. There, Robert Galbreath served as a deputy U.S. marshal, a mail carrier for the Star Route, and Edmond's postmaster. He also started a newspaper. He made subsequent runs in part to report for the paper and for land speculation. In 1893 he raced in the Cherokee Outlet Opening and relocated his family (he had married Mary Ellen Kivlehen in 1892) to Perry. There he initiated the Perry Evening Democrat before accepting a 1895 appointment as a United States Commissioner (these were examining judges who determined whether enough evidence existed to send a case through the federal court system), with his headquarters in Shawnee. In 1899 Galbreath moved to Oklahoma City to concentrate on real estate and partnered with Charles Colcord. With the backing of Colcord and Charles "Gristmill" Jones, Galbreath began wildcatting in the Red Fork Field. Gaining experience and success, he decided to explore farther south. He collaborated with Frank Chesley and drilled a well on the Ida E. Glenn farm, hitting a large oil pool at 1,481 feet on November 22, 1905. As the state's first major oil field, the Glenn Pool ushered in a hectic oil boom period, creating Tulsa as an oil capital, where Galbreath again moved. In 1907 he drilled another successful well in the Bald Hill Field. In 1909 he sold most of his Glenn Pool leases to J. E. Crosbie. In 1912 Galbreath unseated Tate Brady as a Democratic National Committeeman. In 1914 he built the three-story Galbreath Hotel in Bromide, hoping to establish a health spa using the area's mineral water. He also mined for iron and manganese in the region. Robert Galbreath continued his oil activities until he died in Tulsa on December 12, 1953. He attended the Boston Avenue Methodist Church, affiliated with the Elks Lodge, and was a charter member of the 1889er Society, an organization of original participants in the 1889 Land Run.

William Halsell, was born on June 7, 1850, near the town of Decatur, Alabama, and son, Ewing, was born on February 12, 1877, in Jacksboro, Texas. In 1872, when working for his brother-in-law Dan Waggoner, William Halsell drove a herd of cattle from the Triple D Ranch in Texas up the Chisholm Trail to Indian Territory. The herd turned east at the Cimarron River, followed it to the Arkansas River, and then moved up the Verdigris River and east to Vinita. This less-traveled route was called the Halsell Branch of the Chisholm Trail. While attaining permission from the Cherokee government to drive through the nation, Halsell began a lifelong friendship with Dennis W. Bushyhead, later Cherokee principal chief. In 1877 William Halsell and his brother Glenn leased land along the Cimarron River and built a ranch headquarters five miles northeast of present Guthrie. In 1881 the brothers sold all their cattle and grazing rights to the Wyeth Shoe Company for $340,000. Nephews Oscar D. Halsell and Harry H. Halsell remained in this area, working their own herd of 250 cattle. After dissolving his partnership with Glenn, William Halsell, capitalizing on his wife Mary Alice's Cherokee ancestry, moved his operation into the Cherokee Nation. Now an adopted Cherokee citizen, he made Vinita his home and initiated ranching operations eight miles north of Tulsa near Bird Creek. Here, he used his Mashed O brand. Halsell enlarged his fortune by buying southern Texas cattle, shipping them to Bird Creek to fatten during the late spring and summer, and then selling them at a large profit. Using this method he had no herds in the cold months and thereby dodged the harsh winters or droughts that ruined many ranchers. He and then his son gradually began running cattle at Bird Creek year round. A civic leader in Vinita, in 1888 William Halsell funded Willie Halsell College, a school named for his daughter, who had died at the age of eleven. Halsell supported many projects that served the Vinita area. He engaged in real estate, buying town lots throughout the Cherokee Nation and, with partners, organized banks in Vinita, Claremore, and Tulsa. He held the initial presidency in the Claremore and Tulsa banks. In 1900 Halsell bought thirty-six thousand acres that had been Camp Supply, in Oklahoma Territory, of which he sold eleven thousand acres the next year, recouping his initial investment. In 1904 he sold the rest, because, he said, settlers would not allow him to ranch the area. In 1901 he bought nearly two hundred thousand acres of the former XIT Ranch in West Texas. In 1893 Mary Alice Halsell died, and William married Josephine Crutchfield, Mary Alice's niece, in June 1895. In 1899 William sold his Bird Creek Ranch to his son Ewing, who married Lucile Fortner, the daughter of a local doctor, in that year. Father and son enlarged their operations, leasing Osage pastures and acquiring more land in Texas. They also formed Halsell and Son Oil and Gas Company. Ewing bought about seventeen thousand acres of allotments in Nowata and Craig counties to create his own operation, the Big Creek Ranch. Later, he also bought a ranch in Kansas. In 1916 Ewing, his father, and his sisters, Eva McCluskey and Clare Holmes, formed the Halsell Cattle Company, which operated the Texas ranching interests. For his own enterprises Ewing used the Diamond Tail brand. In the early 1930s he installed feedlots at his Bird Creek and Big Creek ranches, and he and the Halsell Cattle Company co-owned one in West Texas. William Halsell died on November 25, 1934, in Santa Monica, California. He was buried in Vinita. Ewing Halsell, a boyhood friend of Will Rogers, was one of the five original donors for the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore and served on the design and building committee. He remained connected to the memorial throughout his life. In 1945 Ewing acquired the Farias Ranch in South Texas and moved the headquarters of the Halsell operations to San Antonio, Texas. Ewing Halsell died December 17, 1965, and was interred in Vinita. Later, Jim Ratcliff acquired the Big Creek Ranch in northern Oklahoma. In 1970 the Bird Creek Ranch ceased operation when the Lacy Management Company leased the land from the Halsell heirs. In 1957 Ewing and Lucille established the Ewing Halsell Foundation, a Texas-based charitable trust that has funded many social, educational, art, and health-care projects.

William Kelly Warren was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 3, 1897. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he struggled with poverty and constantly searched for ways to earn a buck. Warren worked in various occupations as a newspaper carrier, a Western Union messenger, a peanut vendor in a baseball park, a drug store employee, a door-to-door salesman and even a dance hall instructor. When he was 18 years old, Warren decided to leave his home town. With his job as a railroad filing clerk, he earned a mere 40 dollars a month, and he had heard of the lucrative job opportunities in Oklahoma. Warren arrived in Oklahoma in 1916, and by this time, Tulsa was well on its way to becoming the Oil Capital of the World. He soon became an accountant with Gypsy Oil Company. Later, he worked for Gilliland Oil Company and McMann Oil Company. Warren married Natalie Overall on September 21, 1921, and the couple had seven children. In March of 1922, the Warrens scraped together 300 dollars and organized a firm to purchase the output of gasoline plants handling natural gasoline and liquid petroleum gasses. The company began in two rooms of the Atco Building and had two employees—Warren and his wife. With Warren's ingenuity in the processing and marketing of liquidized petroleum gas, this tiny company emerged as the world's largest independent distributor of the product many years later. Warren generously contributed to many projects within the Tulsa community. The William K. Warren Foundation was chartered in 1948 for the purpose of donating to hospitals, churches, schools and worthwhile charities. Warren established Saint Francis Hospital in 1960. Warren served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Warren Petroleum Company from 1922 until retirement in 1961. He was a strong leader with an abundance of administrative ability.