Northwest Oklahoma Genealogical Society - Key Finder
Spring 1997
Vol. 18 No. 2
Early West Oklahoma Rancher Who Knew Quantrell, Is Dead
WOODWARD, Okla., Dec. 18.— (Special.)—The Quantrell raid on Lawrence, Kan., prior to the Civil war, the long treks of cattle driven from Texas northward over the Chisholm trail to the ends of railways in Kansas and the pioneering of both eastern and western Kansas as well as of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma are all recalled by the death of Adelbert Eugene ‘Gene” Pardee, 93, of northern Woods county, following a sudden heart attack.
Gene Pardee was a native of the region near Utica, N. Y., where he was born in 1850. Five years later his father brought the family westward to Paoli, Miami county, in eastern Kansas, part of the trip being made by steamboat down the Ohio river. The following winter a school teacher lived In the Pardee home. He was William Clark Quantrell, later to become the guerrilla leader along the Missouri-Kansas border.
When the Civil war began, Gene Pardee’s father organized a company of local militia to maintain order in that community and became its captain. When news reached the Paoll community of the raid on Lawrence, Gene Pardee accompanied his father and several neighbors to view the stricken town. He remembered that Quantrell claimed to have made the raid in retaliation to one made the previous autumn by Gen. Jim Lane on Osceala, Mo.
Stories of. the long treks of cattle from the south to Kansas points attracted Gene Pardee and his father, and in 1870 they went to Wichita, bought a herd and drove it home to Miami county through the Flint hills. That venture proved profitable and such trips were continued for several years. Gene Pardee’s brother-in-law established a ranch near Eureka, and last spring Pardee made a trip there to attend the funeral of his sister, who had lived to be 98 years of age. Several families, including the Pardees, moved westward again in 1875 to Barber county, and there Capt. Pardee established the Lodi store and postoffice. The log hut that he built for headquarters is still serving as a machine shop on the Holmes ranch. Gene Pardee worked as a cowboy in that community and for 11 years for the Hewins U. I. N. ranch, in nine of which he was foreman.
The opening of the Cherokee Strip to homesteading in the autumn of 1893 attracted Gene Pardee. He made the run and staked a claim in northern Woods county, where he lived as a farmer until the time of his death. He had remained active in all later life and only two months ago led the annual rodeo parade at Freedom. He was one of the few surviving members of the Cherokee Strip Cow Punchers Association. His Wife survives him.
Woodward Chaplain Dead in India Theater
WOOD WARD,
—News of the death somewhere in India of Capt. Arlie G. Hurt, chaplain, presumably following a hernia operation, has been received here. He had served Christian churches at Laverne and other points in northwestern Oklahoma and with his wife conconducted evangelistic services frequently. After training for about a year Captain Hurt was sent to Asia with a U. S. army unit and had since been stationed there.
2 Beaver County Girls Killed by Explosion
WOODWARD, Nov. 22.--(Special.)
—The explosion of a can of kerosene has caused the death of two small girls, Moetta Kupka, 12, and her sister, Eloise, 9, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Kupka, living in the South Flat community of Beaver county.
The can exploded after the girls, who were attempting to start a fire in a stove, threw kerosene on the coals. Their small brother, standing behind the stove, was uninjured. The girls were rushed to the Beaver hospital, where they died soon after arrival. The Kupka house caught on fire but was extinguished by neighbors.
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