Judge William B. Morton.
There are many points of more than
ordinary interest in connection with the career of Hon. William B.
Morton, especially as touching the pioneer history of the great
western division of our national domain, and relative to his personal
prestige as a lawyer, legislator and progressive and influential
citizen. He is now known and honored as one of the representative
older members of the bar of Creek County and is engaged in the
practice of his profession in the Town of Kiefer, of which he is a
pioneer and with the civic and material development and upbuilding of
which he has been closely identified.
Mr. Morton is a
native of the Hawkeye State and a scion of one of its earliest
pioneer families. He was born at Muscatine, Iowa, the judicial center
of the county of the same name, on the 2d of May, 1848, when that now
important and metropolitan city was a mere hamlet, his parents having
been numbered among the first settlers in the wilds of Muscatine
County. He is a son of William B. and Permelia (Bell) Morton, the
former a native of Pennsylvania and the latter of Ohio, in which
state their marriage was solemnized, the names of both families
having been worthily linked with American history for many
generations. William B. Morton, Sr., and his wife removed from the
old Buckeye State to Iowa in 1839 and established their home in
Muscatine County, where Mr. Morton entered claim to Government land
and essayed the onerous task of reclaiming a farm from the frontier
wilderness. He and his devoted wife lived up to the full tension of
the early pioneer era and contributed their quota to the civic and
industrial development and progress of Muscatine County, upon the
enduring roster of whose sterling pioneers their names merit high
place. Mr. Morton died in 1854, when about fifty-five years of age,
and his wife survived him by nearly forty years, she having been
summoned to the life eternal in 1892, at the venerable age of eighty
years. They became the parents of five sons and three daughters.
He whose name
initiates this review was reared under the conditions and influences
in the pioneer era of the history of Iowa, and he continued to reside
on the old homestead farm until the death of his father, when his
widowed mother and her children removed into the City of Muscatine,
which was then an ambitious little city that was giving excellent
auguries for its future importance as one of the populous and opulent
municipalities of the Hawkeye State. From an early period in its
history to the present time Iowa has maintained an advanced position
in the domain of educational advantages, and even gained prestige as
having the smallest percentage of
illiteracy of all states in the Union. This it was the privilege of
Mr. Morton in his youth to avail himself of the excellent
opportunities afforded in the schools of his native county, and after
the removal of the family to Muscatine he there attended the public
schools until he had completed the curriculum of the high school, in
which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1868. Thereafter
he gave close attention to the study of law in the office and under
the preceptorship of one of the leading members of the bar of
Muscatine, and such was his ready absorption and assimilation of the
involved science of jurisprudence that in 1871 he proved himself
eligible for and was admitted to the bar of his native state.
Thereafter he continued in the active general practice of his
profession at Muscatine until 1879, when he removed to Boone County,
Arkansas, and turned his attention to agricultural pursuits and the
conducting of a general store in the rural community. He continued to
reside on his farm for a number of years, and in the meanwhile found
frequent requisition for his professional services, besides which he
became a prominent and influential factor in political affairs in his
county. In 1894 he was elected representative of his district in the
upper house of the Arkansas Legislature, in which he had the
distinction of being the only republican member of the Senate.
Senator Morton proved a loyal, zealous and efficient legislator, and
though he was emphatically in the minority side of the Senate in a
political sense, he proved an influential and popular member of that
body during his regular term, which comprised four years. He did not
appear as a candidate for re-election. After his retirement from the
Legislature Mr. Morton established his residence at Harrison, the
judicial center of Boone County, and in the first administration of
President McKinley he was appointed postmaster of that place, an
office of which he continued the incumbent until 1906, when he came
to Indian Territory and soon established his residence in the
embryonic Town of Kiefer, now one of the thriving and important
villages of Creek County, Oklahoma. He was numbered among the first
settlers of the village and from the beginning has lent his energies
and effective influence in the furthering of measures and enterprises
that have tended to advance the social and material wellbeing of the
town and the county. He has served as city attorney since the time of
the incorporation of the village and is recognized as one of the able
and representative members of the bar of Creek County, virtually his
entire time and attention being now given to the practice of his
profession and his law business being of substantial order, as based
upon unqualified popular confidence and esteem. He is an appreciative
and valued member of the Creek County Bar Association and in a
fraternal way is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. He has never wavered in his allegiance to the republican
party and is one of its prominent and influential representatives in
Creek County.
In the year 1883 was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Morton to Miss Sarah R. Franklin, who
was born in the State of Tennessee, on the 10th of June, 1854, and
who was eleven years of age at the time of her parents’ removal to
Arkansas. She is a daughter of David D. Franklin, who continued his
residence in Boone County, Arkansas, until the time of his death and
whose wife preceded him to eternal rest. Mr. and Mrs. Morton have two
sons,–Oscar, who remains at the parental home, and Edgar, who
resides in Kiefer. Edgar Morton married Miss Edith Chapman and they
have one son, Byron E.