Charles E. Trumbo. It is in the field of banking and finance that Charles E. Trumbo has chiefly distinguished himself, and he came to Oklahoma about thirteen years ago after a varied country and metropolitan banking experience in his native State of Missouri. Mr. Trumbo is now cashier of the Citizens’ State Bank of Wagoner, but has been president and otherwise officially identified with the executive management of several other institutions in the eastern part of the state, and has interests which would also classify him as a farmer.

His birth occurred on a farm in Linn County, Missouri, May 24, 1870. His parents were Charles W. and Mary F. (Carter) Trumbo, the former a native of Kentucky and the latter of Missouri. Charles W. Trumbo, who was of fine old Kentucky stock, went to Missouri when quite young and though possessed of little money started out with an energetic spirit and worthy ambition to gain for himself and family the best possible advantages of life and at the same time do service to others. For a number of years he lived on a farm in Linn County, and while in the active work of that vocation was one of the most successful agriculturists in his part of the state. About 1888 he extended his interests to the banking business at Linneus, and for many years was president of the Farmers & Merchants Bank of that city, continuing the active head of the institution until about five years ago, when he retired. He has now reached the eighty-second milestone on a well directed life, and from small beginnings has reached a success that makes him one of the wealthy men of Linn County. He reared a family of seven children, and their mother, a woman of many excellences of heart and mind, died several years ago. Charles W. Trumbo in polities has always been a stanch democrat, and served with distinction in the Thirty-fifth General Assembly of Missouri and has held several local offices. He has shown the example of high character to his children, and in addition gave them splendid educational advantages and other opportunities for successful beginnings.

The first eighteen years of his life Charles E. Trumbo spent on his father’s farm near Linneus, and acquired his early education from the district schools in that neighborhood. After passing the entrance examination he became a student in the academic department of the University of Missouri, but after a year specialized in commercial law, and for a similar period was a regular student in the business or commercial course. He received a diploma from the commercial department of the university, as it was then maintained, and returned home to become cashier of his father’s bank, the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Linneus. During nine years of service as cashier he gained an intimate knowledge of all details of the banking business, and supplemented that training by one year as mailing clerk and paying teller in the Traders National Bank of Kansas City. The stockholders and directors of that institution then sent him in October, 1902, to organize the Farmers & Merchants Bank in Coweta, Oklahoma, and he became its first cashier and held that post eight years. Selling his interests in the Coweta bank, he next organized the Security Abstract Company of Wagoner County. About that time his first and only important excursion was made into the field of practical politics. In 1910 he was elected on the democratic ticket to the office of county treasurer of Wagoner County. Soon after taking office he sold his interests in the abstract company, and for two and a half years devoted himself with characteristic fidelity and energy to his official work. On retiring from office, associated with other prominent citizens of the county, he bought the Central State Bank of Muskogee, the First State Bank of Webbers Falls and the Porter State Bank of Porter. In this chain of banks Mr. Trumbo became president of all of them. The next change in his financial relations came in January, 1915, when he sold his stock in the Central State Bank, removed from the City of Muskogee to Wagoner, and is now giving his principal attention to his work as cashier of the Citizens State Bank of that city. He is also vice president of the National Bank of Commerce of Coweta, near which town he owns one of the best improved farms of Wagoner County.

His career, as these facts indicate, has been essentially that of a banker, and he has won an enviable reputation and enjoys a large acquaintance among banking men both in this state and elsewhere. Fraternally he is a Master Mason, a Knight of Pythias and also a member of Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. In June, 1898, Mr. Trumbo was married at Columbia, Missouri, to Miss Nellie Newman.