I again had the privilege of hosting the Ferguson Home Museum on Saturday as a volunteer. Two professionals from OKC came by during a weekend out of “The City” and enjoyed learning about Oklahoma’s Sixth Territorial Governor/First Lady and early Oklahoma including the 1883 jail and cavalry station. Watonga is the right distance and different enough from our neighbor (OKC) to be a great day trip or weekend destination, especially with Roman Nose State Park and various B and Bs nearby. My dream is that the Ferguson will again be one of the top tourist destinations in the state as it was in 1982. And three people came by to volunteer in the garden and to do some cleaning.
I continue to be amazed at the Ferguson Family. Their son, Walter Scott Ferguson was a famous banker and oil executive, their daughter-in-law Lucia Loomis Ferguson a famous columnist. Their grandchildren also excelled. For example, one grandson, Thomas Bruce Ferguson was a famous cardiovascular surgeon at Washington University in St. Louis and their great-grandson, Dr. Bruce Ferguson another physician. I know there are others I have yet to discover.
However, Elva Ferguson had a brother, John Wilford Shartel, who was an early Oklahoma lawyer in Gurthrie and OKC. According to an article in Wikipedia “He started teaching at seventeen and graduated from Kansas Agricultural College in 1884. After graduation he studied law in Topeka and passed the Kansas Bar in 1886. He married Effie Woods on March 24, 1888, and they had two sons: Burke and Kent.[1] In the 1890s, Shartel settled in Guthrie, the capital of Oklahoma Territory. He was counsel for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and handled land disputes after the Land Run of 1889. In 1898, he moved to Oklahoma City and was hired as counsel for Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad. John Wilford Shartel Wikipedia “John Shartel bought twenty acres, known as the Florence Addition, between Seventh and Tenth streets, bordered on the east and west by Broadway and Harvey streets. The lots quickly sold after he had platted the tract. In 1902 he joined Anton H. Classen to form the Metropolitan Railway Company (later the Oklahoma City Railway Company), which built transit lines from downtown Oklahoma City to outlying areas. His dream of building the best interurban system in the Southwest stimulated the development of Oklahoma City to the north, south, and west of the downtown district and led to the growth of the nearby cities of Edmond, El Reno, Guthrie, Moore, and Norman.” John Wilford Shartel Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. My father had fond memories of riding the interurban to Norman (OU) to date my mother.
Like his famous brother- in-law, T.B. Ferguson, Shartel was an avid history buff and was writing an account of the Civil War at his death. T.B. Ferguson wrote two histories including “The Jayhawkers.”