John H. Royster, M. D. By reason of more than fifteen years of practice as a physician and surgeon in the Wanette community, Doctor Royster is entitled to such distinction as belongs to a pioneer. He has been devoted to his calling in season and out, and attended his patients in days when the difficulties of medical practice required extraordinary energy and endurance. Perhaps few professional men have prospered and have exercised better business judgment in connection with their vocation than Doctor Royster. He has been one of the real builders of his home town and has extensive possessions both there and in other parts of the state. This is the more creditable for the fact that when he began practice he was possessed of hardly enough money to pay a month’s expenses, and he paid his own way through medical school.

Though Doctor Royster came into Oklahoma from Southern Kansas, he was born in Henderson County, Kentucky, December 14, 1872. His great-grandfather Royster was the first American ancestor, having come from England with two of his brothers and settled in Virginia shortly after the Revolutionary war. His son, William E. Royster, became the grandfather of Doctor Royster. William E. was born in 1816 in Virginia and became a pioneer in Henderson County, Kentucky, where he died in 1903. He was a farmer and stock raiser by calling.

The oldest child of William E. Royster, W. W. Royster, was born in Henderson County, Kentucky, in 1835. In 1873 he moved out to Chanute, Kansas, and lived there until his death in 1911. He was reared and married in Henderson County, Kentucky, and in that state was a farmer and stockman, but in Kansas his principal business was as a grain buyer and he conducted an elevator at Chanute. In politics he was a democrat. W. W. Royster married Sally E. Locke, who died in Chanute, Kansas, at the age of fifty-five. Their children were: Anna, who married W. H. Cady, who is editor and proprietor of a newspaper at Augusta, Kansas; W. E. Royster, who graduated from the Louisville Medical College and is now a physician and surgeon at Chanute, Kansas; Eliza F., who married Dr. J. B. Edwards, a physician and surgeon at Chanute; and Dr. John H. Thus there are three physicians in the family.

Dr. John H. Royster attended public school at Chanute, graduating from high school with the class of 1890. He then became dependent upon his own earning capacity and paid his way through three courses in the Louisville Medical College. In the meantime he came to Nebo, Indian Territory, practiced medicine a year there, and since 1898 his home has been at Wanette. In that year he passed the state board examination as an undergraduate, and in 1905 he interrupted his practice to re-enter the Louisville Medical College for his fourth course, and during the same year received his degree of M. D. from that institution. Doctor Royster is a close student of his profession, and in the past ten years has twice left Wanette to pursue post-graduate work, taking a course in Tulane University at New Orleans in 1907 and another in the New York Postgraduate School in 1909. His offices are in the Paris and Royster Building on Main Street in Wanette.

In the meantime he has judiciously invested his resources as a prosperous physician. He owns 160 acres of farm land half a mile west of Wanette; eighty acres two miles east of Wanette, and two tracts of eighty acres each seven miles northwest of the town. He and his partner, W. G. Paris, own jointly 415 acres in the Washita Valley, six miles northwest of Pauls Valley. They also own the 2-story building on Main Street in which their offices are located, and they have half interest in a cotton gin in Wanette and own another cotton gin at Asher, Oklahoma. Thus Doctor Royster has made himself a valuable factor in the commercial and industrial development of his section of Oklahoma, in addition to the service rendered through his profession.

He is a member of the County and State Medical societies, the American Medical Association, is a stockholder in the Southwestern Surety Company, and at one time was vice president of the State Bank of Wanette. Fraternally he is identified with Wanette Lodge No. 171, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Wanette Lodge No. 166, Independent Order of Odd Fellows; Wanette Lodge of the Woodmen of the World. In the community known as Old Wanette in 1901 Doctor Royster married Miss Mary J. Lareau. She was born in Kansas in 1879. To their union have been born six children: Florence, born in July 1903, and now in the seventh grade of the public schools; Ralph, born in December, 1905, and Cordelia, born in March, 1907, both attending public school; Lila Rene, born in January, 1910; Inez, born in January, 1913; and Roma Lee, born in March, 1915.