Volume 9 , Issue 51

Pioneer Porter C. Burge - Hopeton, OK

This is another Northwest Oklahoma Territory pioneer that settled around Hopeton, Oklahoma (about 7 miles South of Alva). This information came from the 1916 history book of Oklahoma, A Standard History of Oklahoma, by Joseph B. Thoburn.

Porter C. Burge was prominent among the men whose activities had lent encouragement to the agriculturists of Woods county. Burge was manager of the Hopeton Elevator company, at Hopeton, Oklahoma. This farmers' co-operative enterprise reflects the untiring zeal of Porter Burge, who had advanced its fortunes to the prominence of a necessary commercial adjunct.

Porter C. Burge was born December 23, 1865, on a farm in Bureau County, Illinois, a son of Reuben and Eliza (McDonald) Burge. Reuben Burge was born in 1833, in Ohio, and went as a young man to Illinois and setled inBureau County, where he passed the remaining years of his life in successful agricultural operations and died in 1867. Rueben was married in 1863 to Eliza McDonald, who was born in 1840, in Bureau County Illinois, daughter of Thomas and Martha (Perkins) McDonald, and to this union there were two children:

Porter C.;

John E., born September 9, 1867, whow as resident of Los Angeles, California in 1916.

In 1872 Mrs. Burge was married to Levi Renner, and to this union there were born six children:

Chester;

Frederick;

A son who died in infancy;

Clarence;

Myrtle, who died at the age of sixteen years;

Manuel.

Mrs Renner still survived, resided at Nickerson, Kansas in 1916.

When Porter C. Burge was eight years old he was taken by his mother and stepfather to Reno County, Kansas, and reared to manhood and completed his education in the public schools. He was brought up to agricultural pursuits,a nd reained in Kansas engaged in farming until 1893. In 1893 he came to Oklahoma Terriotry and located on government land in Woods county. He was still the owner of his original homestead, located one mile from Hopeton, in addition to which he had other valuable land, all of which was under a high state of cultivation. in 1916.

In 1898, Porter Burge felt the agriculturalists of his community needed better representation, protection of their interests. With others, he organized the Farmers Federation Of Alva, the first farmers' grain and coal company organized in Woods county. Porter was identified with this enterprise until 1904, when he and others, was the organizer and promoter of the Hopeton Elevator Company, at Hopeton, Oklahoma, which he had since been manager.

It is probable that no one enterprise of the county had done more to raise the standards of agriculture, to encourage agricultural development. In 1914 the Hopeton Elevator Company shipped about 30,000 bushels of wheat. Mr. Burge conducted an agricultural implement business on his own account, at Hopeton, under his able direction this had also proven an unqualified success.

Porter C. Burge married December 23, 1888, at Nickerson, Kansas to Eliza E. Gillock, born in 1873, in Greene county, Indiana, a daughter of jackson Gillock, a farmer of Indiana and Kansas. While Porter and Eliza Burge had no children of their own, their hearts had gone out to the little ones, and two children, Roland and May Dowell, had been reared in their home to honorable man and womanhood.
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