Creed Taylor Huddleston. During his twelve years’ residence at Okemah, Mr. Huddleston has taken rank among the ablest and most successful lawyers of Okfuskee County. His position is well deserved. He began his career in old Indian Territory as a teacher, and he accordingly knows not only the law but the people with whom he has had his professional and civic associations. He has been in active practice in the territory and state for more than fifteen years.

He comes of a prominent old family of Tennessee, in which state at Byrdstown in Pickett County he was born March 16, 1875. There is extant a book known as “The Footprints of the Huddleston Family,” a lineage which includes the names of many men of more than ordinary prominence, and a specially noteworthy fact is that the family line is traced directly back to Alfred the Great of England. Mr. Huddleston’s parents were Martin Van Buren and Mary (Richardson) Huddleston. His mother was a third cousin of Hon. James D. Richardson of Memphis, Tennessee, who resigned a position as member of Congress from Tennessee to accept the Masonic honor of grand commander of the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree. Both Mr. Huddleston’s parents were natives of Tennessee, and his mother resides at Byrdstown. Martin Van Buren Huddleston was born in 1832 and died in 1901. In 1895 he came to the Stonewall District of Indian Territory, and lived there until his death. He was a farmer and stockman, but for some time back in Tennessee he conducted a considerable business in the buying of timber and rafting of logs down the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to Nashville. During the war between the states he was for four years a private soldier in General Lee’s army. In the family were two sons and six daughters, and all are still living except two of the daughters.

Creed Taylor Huddleston spent the first nineteen years of his life at the old homestead in Tennessee, being reared as a farmer’s son, and completing his early literary education in Mount Vernon Academy at Burrville, Tennessee. On leaving home to seek his "fortune in the world he first went to Texas, spending one year at McKinney, Collins County, and he both attended and taught school while there. Coming to Indian Territory, he located at Stonewall, and for five years was one of the successful teachers, being in charge of a subscription school for a time and for one term in the Indian school department. In the meantime he continued his education, attending for a term or so the American Temperance University at Harriman, Tennessee. While teaching he also studied law and having familiarized himself with the fundamentals of jurisprudence and with methods of practice in Indian Territory he was admitted to the bar at Ardmore before the United States Court in 1899. His practice began in the same year and also on August 17, 1899, he married Miss Lena Willie Sehon. She was born at Monterey, Tennessee, a daughter of John F. Sehon, and she spent all her early years in her native state until her marriage. She and her husband returned to Indian Territory, but after a short time they went back to Tennessee where Mr. Huddleston entered the law department of the Cumberland University at Lebanon, where he was graduated LL. B. with the class of 1901. He was also admitted to the bars of both Kentucky and Tennessee.

A graduate of one of the best law schools of the Middle West and with some considerable experience as a lawyer and man of affairs in Indian Territory, Mr. Huddleston took part in the opening of the Kiowa and Comanche Reservation in 1901, and was one of the early settlers and first lawyers to locate at Lawton, where he became a partner of Senator Gore and the latter’s father, and they did considerable business as lawyers during the registration period in preparing papers for the nomeseekers. Mr. Huddleston continued to practice in Lawton for two years, and then moved to Okemah where for the past twelve years he has enjoyed not only a large private practice as a lawyer but has made himself a factor in local business and civic affairs. At Okemah Mr. Huddleston owns five store buildings on Broadway, and has also put on the market what is known as the Huddleston Addition to the town. He has also invested much of his capital in farming land, and has altogether about eight hundred acres.

He is an active democrat, though he has not sought prominence in politics or as an office seeker. He is a lay leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, is a Thirty-second Degree Scottish Rite and a Knight Templar Mason, having local affiliations with Okemah Lodge No. 139, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Okemah Chapter No. 61, Royal Arch Masons, and Indian Consistory at McAlester, and is also a member of India Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City. Other fraternities of which he is a member are the Woodmen of the World, the Modern Woodmen of America, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias. Mr. and Mrs. Huddleston are the parents of two children: Lorena, born May 11, 1902, and Maggie Helen, born December 28, 1907.