Business enterprise finds expression in the career of Everett L. Woodford, who is the secretary and treasurer of the Woodford Clothing Company of Laramie. He is imbued in all that he undertakes with the spirit of progress and his well defined plans and purposes have carried him steadily forward to success.
    He was born in Agency, Iowa, April 2. 1880. and is a son of the late N. A. Woodford, who was a native of that state and belonged to one of the old families of Iowa of English descent. He devoted his life to merchandising and became a pioneer merchant of Wapello county, Iowa, where he resided to the time of his death, which occurred in the spring of 1898, when he was sixty-nine years of age. His wife, who bore the maiden name of Eliza Day, was a native of Ohio and represented one of the pioneer families of that state of English and Scotch lineage. Mrs. Woodford is still living, residing upon the old homestead in Iowa. By her marriage she became the mother of five children.
    Everett L. Woodford, the youngest of the family, was educated in the public and high schools of Iowa and in the Spaulding Business College of Kansas City, Missouri. At the age of eighteen years he made his initial step in the business world and was first employed in his father's store. After his father's death he continued to conduct the business for a time and then closed it out and removed to Kansas City, Missouri. Following his graduation from business college he followed bookkeeping in Kansas City for a year and subsequently returned to Iowa, settling in Ottumwa, where he engaged in clerking in a clothing store for two years, thus gaining initial experience along the line in which he is now engaged. He afterward went to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was employed by Wyman, Partridge & Company, wholesale dealers in dry goods. He remained with the firm for four years in the house and then went upon the road as a traveling salesman, representing the company in that capacity for six years, during four years of which time he traveled over Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado. He became impressed with the west and its opportunities and particularly with Laramie and in 1909 he established his present business in Laramie under the firm name of the Drew Clothing Company. H. A. Drew being his partner in the undertaking. In 1912 Mr. Woodford took over Mr. Drew's interests, at which time he severed his connection with Wyman, Partridge & Company, for whom he had continued to travel up to that date. He then reorganized his business under the name of the Woodford Clothing Company, of which he is the secretary and treasurer, with Mrs. J. J. Woodford as the president and E. D. Woodford as the vice president. He has since been active in the control and management of the business, the firm carrying a large stock of clothing and haberdashery. In fact this is the leading store of the kind in this section of Wyoming, if not in the entire state. The business has been a pronounced success from the start, due in large measure to the efforts and attention of Everett L. Woodford, who is a representative young merchant, alert, energetic and wide awake to every possibility opened in the natural ramifications of trade.
    On the 28^th of July, 1908, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mr. Woodford was united in marriage to Miss June Johnson, native of Minnesota, and a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Johnson, who were of Norwegian birth. Mr. and Mrs. Woodford have become the parents of two sons: Charles Day, who was born in Laramie, May 21, 1910; and John Sheridan, born September 25, 1913.
    The parents are members of the First Presbyterian church and they occupy an enviable social position in Laramie. Mr. Woodford is a progressive republican and fraternally he is connected with the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. He belongs to the Chamber of Commerce and stands for all those projects put forth by the organization for the benefit and upbuilding of his adopted city. He is a man of keen discrimination and sound judgment, and his executive ability his excellent management and his long experience have brought to the concern with which he is connected a large degree of success. The safe, conservative policy which he inaugurated commends itself to the judgment of all and has secured to the company a patronage which makes the volume of trade transacted of great importance and magnitude.