Last week, I wrote about Tom Shartel Ferguson (Trad), the younger son of TB and Elva Ferguson, who served in WW1 and succumbed to the great influenza outbreak of 1919 at age 29. What I have learned since is that before the war, he was editor of the Shattuck Republican in western Oklahoma. He learned the newspaper business from his parents. So far as I know, he never married.
His brother, Walter N. Ferguson, was born in October 1886 and was about 3 years old during the 1889 Land Run in Central Oklahoma in which the Fergusons participated and 5 when the family moved to Watonga. He is apparently pictured sitting next to his mother on the wagon seat in an early photo in the Walter N. Ferguson Collection. Walter, as a young adult, was the editor of the Cherokee Republican newspaper in Cherokee, Alfalfa County. The paper is still in operation today as the Messenger and Republican.
“Walter Ferguson. In the domain of newspaper enterprise in Oklahoma the name of no one family can claim to have more distinctive precedence than that of which Walter Ferguson is a representative, and as a vital force in the field of journalism in this commonwealth his influence has been especially noteworthy, while he has shown the utmost loyalty to and abiding interest in the vigorous young commonwealth within whose borders he has been a resident since his early childhood, his father having been a distinguished figure in Oklahoma history and he himself having well upheld the prestige of the family name. Mr. Ferguson is editor and publisher of the Cherokee Republican, at Cherokee, the judicial center of Alfalfa County, and of this thriving little city he served as postmaster from August 1, 1911, until August 1, 1915. http://genealogytrails. com/oka/bios2.htm l sourced “A Standard History of Oklahoma”, Vol IV; Joseph B. Thoburn; 1916.
Walter met Lucia (Loomis) Ferguson, at the University of Oklahoma where she earned a degree in Fine Arts in 1908 https://www.okhistory.or g/ publications. In Cherokee, she wrote the women’s column of the newspaper.
“Mrs. Ferguson conducts the women's department of the Cherokee Republican and is herself a very able writer and quite prominent in the Oklahoma Federation of Women's Clubs. She was elected second vice president of the Oklahoma Editorial Association at the recent meeting of that organization.” .http://genealogytrails. com/oka/bios2.htm l Note: Elva Ferguson was also very active in this organization in Watonga.
“Woman suffrage provided the couple with an issue that established an identity for themselves in public affairs and promoted interest in their newspaper. Although both privately supported women's political rights, they debated the suffrage question, with Lucia for and Walter against, on the pages of their newsp aper.” https://www.okhistory.o rg/publications.
Walter was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1916.
Walter sold the newspaper in Cherokee in 1919 and moved to Oklahoma City.
Next week, the next chapter of this famous Watonga son raised in the Ferguson home (and more about his talented wife, Lucia).