Volume 10 , Issue 7

Pioneer W. Milton Bickel - Woods Co., OK

W. Milton Bickel was its first Democratic representative to the State Senate, in 1914, for the Fifth Senatorial District.

W. Milton Bickel overcame a normal republican majority between 700 and 900 in that senatorial district and went into office with a plurality of twenty-one votes. This election had brought to the Senate a valuable member and a lawyer of broad experience. His election was also a high tribute to his personal standing and his commendable record as county judge in Woods County. Bickel held that office four years, and during that time only two of his decisions were reversed by higher courts. As a county judge, Mr. Bickel was a Democrat in a county that was normally republican, and it was his popularity associated with his services as county judge that undoubtedly enabled him to seek with success the higher official honors which brought him to the State Senate.

W. Milton Bickel was born in McPherson county, Kansas, in 1877, the son of H. M. and elizabeth Bickel. There was an interesting bit of family history concerning Michael Bickel, the paternal grandfather, of German extraction, who lived in the southern states before the war, practicing his profession as civil engineer.

When the war broke out he became a member of a confederate regiment formed in Mississippi. At the same time his son, H. M. Bickel, was living in the NOrth, having been reared in Iowa, joined an Iowa regiment for service in the Union army. These two soldiers, on opposing sides in teh great conflict, fought against each other in the battle of Shiloh.

W. M. Bickel afterwards became prominent in McPherson County, Kansas, was one of the leading Democrats there and in 1884 was candidate for Congress in the Seventh Kansas district, but was defeated by the republican nominee. From 1884 to 1888, during Cleveland's administration, he held the office of receiver of the United States Land Office at Larned, Kansas, and after that was engaged in the practice of law. He moved to Alva, Oklahoma, in 1893, soon after the establishment of that town.

Senator W. Milton Bickel received most of his education in Kansas, attending the public schools and graduating from the high school at Larned, Kansas, and after completing a course in shorthand and typewriting in a business college at Wichita took up the study of law in his father's office, and for some time was his father's secretary.

W. Milton Bickel was admitted tot he bar at Alva in 1898. Three years previously, at the age of eighteen, he had been appointed journal clerk in the office of United States Judge J. L. McAtee, a position he held four years, until his retirement in 1899. For the following two years he was deputy county treasurer of Woods County.

In 1901 Senator Bickel engaged in the banking business as cashier of the Bank of Ingersoll, Oklahoma, and later was cashier of the Bank of Commerce at Alva. In 1910 Bickel was elected county judge of Woods County, and in 1912 was re-elected to that office.

W. Milton Bickel married in 1902 to Rosa B. France of Woods County. Their two children were named marshall and Beryl, who were twelve and five years of age in 1916, respectively.

Senator W. Milton Bickel's legislative record was an advocate for a repeal of the county tax assessor law, offering instead a measure providing that only counties expressly so voting should possess that office. Bickel introduced and championed a measure amending the constitution so as to provide that women should have equal suffrage with men in case an election was held for that purpose, in which only women voted, a majority of all women otherwise qualified should declare in favor of such amendment. -- Vol. 3, pg. 1230, A Standard History of Oklahoma, by Joseph B. Thoburn
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