Early Indian Territory and Oklahoma Land Development
Kershaw graduated from Elmwood, Illinois, High School and worked his way through college waiting tables, selling nursery stock and selling real estate. Kershaw graduated from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he was a charter member of the honorary law fraternity, the Benjamin D. Magruder Chapter of Phi Alpha Delta in 1904. Professionally, he first became an Immigrant Agent for the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, also known as the Frisco railroad, selling land to farmers for farms along the wide railroad right-of way in Northeastern Oklahoma. He bought many farms along the way, and in 1904 moved to Oklahoma himself. He was one of the founders of the Farmer's State Bank in Morris (in 1905) and the First National Bank of Morris (in 1908), (Indian Territory) Oklahoma. In 1910 he purchased the controlling interest in the National Bank of Okmulgee, Oklahoma. With the connections he had established with the railroad, he platted the town site of Morris, Oklahoma. The town of Morris was named after H. E. Morris, a railroad executive with the Frisco railroad. The railroad went through the center of town, between Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The town of Morris was founded in 1904, before statehood. Oklahoma became a state in November 1907.
In Morris, Oklahoma, many of the street names were named after towns Kershaw was familiar with in Illinois, such as Elmwood, his place of birth, along with Pekin and Peoria. Hughes Street, the main street of Morris was named in honor of the General Immigration Agent for the Frisco Railroad, and President of the Frisco System Land & Immigration Association, Samuel A. Hughes. He also named a short street Frisco, after the railroad which brought him to Oklahoma, and streets were named after several Presidents, including Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson as well as one after Benjamin Franklin, one of the early leaders of the United States.
Kershaw always maintained strong financial ties to Muskogee, including his appointment in 1910 as an agent for the Bartholomew Motor Company, of Peoria, Illinois, representing the Muskogee area. The Bartholomew Company produced the Glide (automobile company) car, an entry-level 4 to 7-passenger touring car. Kershaw used one of these touring cars to transport potential buyers interested in buying farms in the area. His appointment as an automobile dealer was short-lived as he foresaw the future being more profitable in the real estate sales and development business than in the sale of automobiles.
Kershaw was a delegate representing the City of Muskogee at the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress held in Kansas City, Missouri, in November 1911. In December 1911, Kershaw was a delegate representing the State of Oklahoma at the Nineteenth National Irrigation Congress in Chicago, IL. The Congress was influential in recommending conservation and reclamation of arid lands in the newly populated areas of the country. The Congress help draft legislation for the creation of water reservoirs for the future drinking water and hydro-electric power generation needs of the country. Over time, Oklahoma developed more man-made reservoirs of water than any other state and today has more lakeshore frontage than any other state in the country, with the exception of Minnesota.
Read more about this topic: L. R. Kershaw
Famous quotes containing the words early, indian, territory, oklahoma, land and/or development:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We found ourselves always torn between the mothers in our heads and the women we needed to become simply to stay alive.With one foot in the past and another in the future, we hobbled through first love, motherhood, marriage, divorce, careers, menopause, widowhood—never knowing what or who we were supposed to be, staking out new emotional territory at every turn—like pioneers.”
—Erica Jong (20th century)
“I know only one person who ever crossed the ocean without feeling it, either spiritually or physically.... he went from Oklahoma to France and back again ... without ever getting off dry land. He remembers several places I remember too, and several French words, but he says firmly, “We must of went different ways. I don’t rightly recollect no water, ever.””
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
““I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,” cried she.
“Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Ultimately, it is the receiving of the child and hearing what he or she has to say that develops the child’s mind and personhood.... Parents who enter into a dialogue with their children, who draw out and respect their opinions, are more likely to have children whose intellectual and ethical development proceeds rapidly and surely.”
—Mary Field Belenky (20th century)