Wilbur C. Madison. Now successfully engaged in the practice of law at Purcell, Wilbur C. Madison is perhaps best known over Oklahoma as a business man, and prior to coming to this state ten years ago spent twenty years as a prominent leader of the Methodist Episcopal church in the State of Colorado.

It is a matter of interest to note that Mr. Madison is a direct descendant from a member of the prominent Virginia family of Madisons, and one of his direct ancestors was a brother of President James Madison. Wilbur C. Madison was born at Edgewood, Iowa, January 9, 1858. His father, Francis Conway Madison, was born in Virginia in 1820, but when young was taken to Kentucky, moved on to Illinois, and in the pioneer period of that state located in Iowa, where he followed farming and stock raising until his death at Edgewood in 1905. He was always an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for many years served on its official board. In politics he was a republican. Francis C. Madison was three times married. The only child of bis first wife is Irvin, who is a retired farmer at Edgewood, Iowa. There were no children by the second wife. For his third wife he married Miss Julia A. Crawford, who was born in New York State in 1830 and died at Edgewood, Iowa, in 1907. Her children were: Wilbur C.; Motier, who is an electrician living at Los Angeles, California; Curtis B., who has been successful in the handling of general business and property affairs and still lives at Edgewood, Iowa; Eliza B., of Edgewood; and Harriet, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, where her husband is manager of a military outfitting concern for the United States Government.

Wilbur C. Madison spent the early years of his life on his father’s farm at Edgewood, where he attended the public schools. He was liberally educated, largely as a result of his own determination and efforts. For three years he pursued a preparatory course in the Upper Iowa University and then followed that with the full university course of four years, until graduating in 1883 with the degree A. B. Two years later the same university bestowed upon him the degree A. M. During the years 1884-85 he was a regular member of the Iowa Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Kev. Mr. Madison in 1885 moved out to Colorado and for twenty years was pastor and presiding elder in that state, and one mark of his service in the ministry is the honorary degree of D. D. For about six years Doctor Madison took post-graduate studies in the University of Denver, by which he was awarded the degree Ph. D.

After a number of years of service as presiding elder in Colorado Doctor Madison in 1905 came to Oklahoma City to become manager for the loan department of the Burton Loan and Mortgage Company. While engaged in post-graduate studies in Denver he had acquired a substantial legal education, and in 1913 he gained admission to the Oklahoma bar and has since looked after a rapidly growing civil and criminal practice in Purcell with offices in the Union National Bank Building. Since coming to Purcell he has acted as justice of the peace.

He is a member of the Purcell Methodist Episcopal Church, is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Mason, his local affiliation being with Purcell Lodge No. 27, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.

At Manchester, Iowa, in 1883, Mr. Madison married Miss Adaline Holmes, whose father, the late W. H. Holmes, was at one time a brick manufacturer in New York City and subsequently moved out to Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Madison became the parents of two children: Francis, who died at the age of fourteen; and Agnes Adaline, who is the wife of Glen D. Boardman, manager of a farm loan company at Clinton, Oklahoma.