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.