Charles C. CHILDERS
"As a public official Hon. Charles C. CHILDERS has given most loyal and effective service both in Arkansas and Oklahoma, in which latter state he represented Garfield County in both the Fourth and Fifth General Assemblies of the Legislature. He is one of the broad-minded, appreciative, and progressive citizens of Oklahoma, is here the owner of valuable farm property and has identified himself most worthily with the industrial and civic affairs of the state. In addition to giving a general supervision to his own farm properties he has for several years past had charge of the farm connected with the Oklahoma State Home for the Feeble Minded, at Enid, in which thriving little city, the judicial center of Garfield County, he maintains his residence.
Charles Clarence CHILDERS was born in Lawrence County, Arkansas, on the 1st of September, 1872, and is a son of William and Clara (WELLS) CHILDERS, the latter of whom died at the age of forty-two years. William Childers likewise was born and reared in Lawrence County, Arkansas, a representative of a sterling pioneer family of that state, and he was long one of the honored and influential citizens of Lawrence County, where he served as county treasurer and for two years in the dual office of sheriff and tax collector. In the Civil war he was a valiant soldier of the Confederacy, and in the command of Gen. Sterling PRICE he took part in numerous engagements, including the battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi. He continued to reside in Lawrence County until his death, at the age of sixty-one years, and he passed away in 1907. His first wife, mother of the subject of this review, passed her entire life in Lawrence County, her parents having removed from their native State of Louisiana and become pioneer settlers in Arkansas. William Childers contracted a second marriage and of the children of the first union five are now living, five children of the second marriage likewise surviving the honored father. Of the first marriage the surviving children other than he whose name initiates this article are: William S., who was foreman of concrete construction in the erection of the fine Oklahoma State Capitol; John C. is clerk of Lawrence County, Arkansas; Grover C. is a farmer at Plant City, Florida, and there also resides the one sister, Mrs. Mollie COFFMAN. Of the children of the second marriage it may be recorded that Thurman M., Carlisle and App T. reside in Grant County, Oklahoma; Nelson remains in Lawrence County, Arkansas; and Clara Lee maintains her home in Oklahoma City.
In the public schools of his native county Charles C. CHILDERS gained his early education, which was supplemented by a course of study in the high school in the City of Memphis, Tennessee. Thereafter he was a student in the University of Arkansas until the close of his junior year, in 1893, when he returned to his native county and assumed a clerical position in the office of his father, who was then sheriff and tax collector of the county. He was elected as his father's successor in this dual office, of which he continued the incumbent for two terms of two years each, and had the distinction of being the youngest sheriff in Arkansas. He was then elected district clerk and ex-officio register of deeds of Lawrence County, and he held this position likewise for four consecutive years, his long and effective service in public office in his native county showing the estimate placed upon him and that in his case there could be no application of scriptural aphorism that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country."
In 1908 Mr. Childers came to the new State of Oklahoma and settled on a farm near Billings, Noble County. Two years later he removed to a farm near Covington, Garfield County, and after there remaining one year he established his residence in Enid, where he has since given much of his time and attention to the active supervision of the farm of the State Home for the Feeble Minded. He is the owner of a well improved farm in Grant County and also of a valuable farm property in Roger Mills County, and city property in Enid.
In 1912 Mr. Childers was made democratic nominee for representative of Garfield County; in the State Legislature to which he was elected without opposition. During the session of the Fourth Legislature he was chairman of the Committee on Levees, Ditches, Drains and Irrigation; was the author of the law that substituted electrocution for hanging in this state, and of the bill that was enacted and provides for and authorizes the organization of farmers' mutual insurance companies. It was primarily due to his earnest efforts, also, that an appropriation was secured for the erection of an additional building at the Home for Feeble Minded, an institution in which he has taken the deepest interest. In the Fifth Legislature Mr. Childers was chairman of the Committee on Insurance, and was associated with Senator William A. CHASE, of Nowata, in the authorship of a bill providing for free textbooks in the public schools, besides which he was especially active in the promotion of measures designed to establish a minimum wage scale for women employed, to place the school land income in the direct jurisdiction of the state treasurer, to enable county attorneys to adjust probate matters, to establish hospitals for railroad workers, and to pension the widows of men who were killed in a fight between officers and prisoners in the State Penitentiary at McAlester, in <sic> 1814. (This must mean 1914?) Loyalty and progressiveness dominated the course of Mr. Childers as one of the efficient legislators of the state, and his record in the Legislature is one that will reflect enduring honor on his name.
At Enid, Mr. Childers is affiliated with the Blue Lodge and Chapter of the Masonic Fraternity, and with Camp No. 35 of the Woodmen of the World. At Covington, another of the flourishing towns of Garfield County, he holds membership in the lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Both he and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
In Lawrence County, Arkansas, November 3rd, 1895, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Childers to Miss Elizabeth WELLS, a native of Kentucky, born December 17, 1876, daughter of Ira and Emily (MORGAN) WELLS, both natives of Kentucky. The father died in 1903 at Powhatan, Arkansas; the mother is still living aged seventy-two years (1916). They were parents of six sons and four daughters, all living but the youngest child, Bell, who died at the age of six years; the eldest of the family, Fred, of Oklahoma; William of Kansas; E. Jesse, of Nebraska; Nancy, of Kansas; Joseph of Kansas; (Elizabeth) Leah, of Arkansas; John of Kansas; Madison of Arkansas, and Bell, deceased.
Their only child, Ruth, born October 20, 1897, is now a student in Phillips University, at Enid, from which she graduates in June, 1917, besides being one of the popular young women in the social circles of her home city, she is a fine musician."