Volume 10 , Issue 3

Pioneer Lee A. Walton - Alva, OK

Maybe some Northwest Oklahoman's might remember this pioneer, Lee A. Walton, whose history was found in A Standard History of Oklahoma, pg.1604, Vol IV, by Joseph Thoburn. Lee a. Walton resided at Alva, Oklahoma, later moving to Victoria, Victoria County, Texas.

Lee A. Walton resided at Alva as a citizen of large, varied attainments, even as he was a man of wide experience and broad activities along lines that represent definite civic and material progress. Walton had been one of the influential figures in public affairs and industrial development in Oklahoma, where he established his residence in 1893, the year the Cherokee Strip was thrown open to settlement.

Lee Walton was a skilled civil engineer, and as such had done a large amount of important work both in Kansas and Oklahoma. It is specially worthy to note that Lee A. Walton was chief engineer of the surveying and construction of the first railroad line to enter the present thriving city of Beaver, Oklahoma.

As a youth Lee Walton studied law; he had been a successful representative of the pedagogic profession as well as that of civil engineer; he had been active as a newspaper editor and publisher; he had concerned himself with mercantile enterprises; and he had been specially resourceful in connection with the development and advancement of the basic industry of agriculture. All these things betoken his versatility, and his broad mental grasp and mature judgement had further made him specially well equipped for leadership in popular sentiment and action, so that it may readily be understood that he had exerted large and benignant influence in connection with the march of progress in Oklahoma, both under territorial and state government.

Lee Walton was a native of the old Buckeye state of Ohio, within whose borders both his paternal and maternal ancestors settled in the early pioneer era of its history. Walton was born at Rome, Lawrence County, Ohio, on 14 August 1859. He was a son of Thomas A. and Sarah E. (Massy) Walton, both natives of Ohio. The father having been born in Lawrence County, in 1830, and the mother in Lawrence County, in 1832, a daughter of John and Elizabeth (Darling) Massey.

Judge Thomas A. Walton was a son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Whitten) Walton, both natives of England, where a representative of the Walton family was the Duke of Leeds. The parents of Judge Walton were numbered among the representative pioneers of Ohio, in which state they continued their residence until their death. In his native state Judge Walton received advanced educational advantages as gauged by the standards of the locality and period, and he not only became an able civil engineer, but also a prominent lawyer and jurist in Lawrence County, Ohio, where he was engaged in the proactive of law as a young man and where he served for some time on the bench of the District Court.

In 1885 Judge Walton removed to Harper County, Kansas. After devoting two years to farming there he engaged in the same line of enterprise in Barber County, Kansas, where he continued his residence until 1893, when he participated in the opening of the Cherokee Strip, Oklahoma Territory and settled on a tract of land to which he entered claim in Old Woods County. He continued his residence until 1900, when he and his wife established their home at Victoria, the judicial center of the Texas, Victoria County. There they passed the remainder of their lives, Judge Walton passed away in 1906 and his widow in 1913. Their marriage was solemnized in the year 1854 and they became the parents of 5 sons and 4 daughters:

John A., born in 1855, died at age of seven years;

Charles A, born September 2, 1857, prosperous farmer in Victoria County, Texas;

Lee A.;

Nora E., born October 3, 1861, wife of Horace Frisbie, residing at Lamar, Colorado;

Samantha H. E., born December 25, 1863, died in 1911;

Cecilia Ella, born December 24, 1865, died in 1886;

Don A., born in 1873 and died in 1892;

T. Whit, born 1875, resident of Addicks, Texas.

Lee A. Walton passed the period of his childhood and early youth on his father's farm in Lawrence County, Ohio, and made good use of the advantages afforded by the public schools of his native county. When he was 16 years of age he proved himself eligible for pedagogic honors and engaged in teaching in a district school. He continued his successful work as a teacher and also initiated the study of law, in which he eventually gained a broad and accurate fund of technical knowledge. Under the direction of his father he studied and worked as a civil engineer, and served as deputy county surveyor of Lawrence County, under the administration of his father, this position having been retained by him when he was 17 years old.

In 1883, when he was 24 years of age, Lee Walton came to the West and entered claim to a tract of government land in Harper County, Kansas. He devoted two and one-half years to reclamation and other improvement work on his claim, and in connection with these pioneer farming operations he also found requisition for his services as a teacher in the local schools.

In 1885 he moved to Stevens County, Kansas, where he engaged in teaching school and where he served four years as county surveyor. For a time he was editor and publisher of weekly paper in the village of Moscow, Kansas, and the former vigorous town of Fargo Springs, Kansas, claimed him for a period as one of its leading merchants. During the last five years of his residence in Kansas, Lee Walton gave his attention principally to farming and teaching in Barber County.

When, in 1893, the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma Territory was thrown open to settlement, Mr. Walton was one of those who made the "Run" into this new region, and he had since been closely and prominently identified with this section of the state -- a valued exponent of civic and material development and advancement. Lee Walton was the owner of a valuable, well improved farm in the fertile Driftwood Valley, in Woods County, in which he gave his supervision, as in other various real estate and business interests. He maintains his residence at Alva, the county seat where his modern, attrative family home was a center of gracious hospitality and good cheer.

In politics Lee Walton had always been actively arrayed as a supporter of the principles, policies for which the republican party stands sponsor, and he was prominently concerned with the organization of tits contingent in Woods County. At the last session of the Oklahoma Territorial legislature, in 1907, he served as doorkeeper of the council or upper house of that body. In 1908 he was the republican candidate for county clerk of Woods County, his defeat for this office being compassed by only seventeen votes. In 1910-1911 he was associated in the editorial management of the Alva Morning Times. In 1883, fully six years prior to the opening of Oklahoma Territory to settlement, Lee Walton assisted in the surveying of the Cherokee Strip in Indian Territory, at the instance of and for the benefit of the cattlemen then operating in this region.

On April 23, 1883, was solemnized the marriage of Lee Walton to Frederica C. Farson, daughter of Henry C. and Louise (Seikerman) Farson, who were at the time residents of Ashland, Kentucky. Frederica Farson was born in the Province of Westpahlia, Germany, on 25 November 1864 and was a child of six years at the time of the family immigration to the United States, in 1870.

Lee and Frederica Walton had three children:

Lois F., born May 4, 1884, in Harper County, Kansas, graduated at Northwestern Normal School, at Alva, as the youngest member of the class of 1900, and in 1904 she became the wife of Loran A. Purcell. They maintained their home at Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and had four children: Emma C., Lois Esther, Walter Lee and Lloyd Kenneth.

Winifred Winona, born at Moscow, Stevens County, Kansas, on 18 April 1889, graduated from Northwestern Normal School as a member of the class of 1906 the youngest member of the class. Later she took post graduate courses in the University of Oregon and the University of California, in the latter of which she was graduated in the department of domestic science. She was engaged in teaching in the public schools of Washington.

Loren lee, born in Barber County, Kansas, on 3 September 1891, after completing a course at Northwestern Normal School, in which he was graduated in 1910; he entered the law department of the great University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, in which he was graduated in 1913, at the age of 21 years, youngest members of the a large class. Prior to this he had taken a years course of academic order in Leland Stanford University, at Palo Alto, California. Since 1913, he had been engaged in the practice of his profession at Alva, and he was one of the leading younger members of the bar of Woods County -- a painstaking, ambitious young attorney whose success in his profession was fully justifying his choice of vocation.

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