The two sons of T.B. and Elva Ferguson grew up as young boys in Watonga, Blaine County, OK. Walter Scott and his brother Tom Jr. (Trad) arrived on the wagon Elva Ferguson was driving in 1892. In her book “ They Carried the Torch: The story of Oklahoma’s Pioneer Newspapers”, Elva writes: “Riding the sturdy Indian ponies over the prairies, fishing and swimming in the Canadian River, were about the only amusements there were for Walter and Trad as small boys.
They both learned to love the great outdoors and spent all the time they had from school in that manner, in fact, I have known them to play hooky from school on certain spring days when it was good fishing weather.
As they grew older, they learned to set type and were given assignments for gathering and writing news items, but their story belongs to an after statehood period, how each of them later developed a wholly different style of writing.
Walter could see the humorous side of people and events and had a genius for writing in that style, and many years later, when publishing a newspaper of his own, won for him a statewide reputation for his humorous feature articles” This paper was the Cherokee Republican in Cherokee, OK that Walter and his wife Lucia Loomis Ferguson owned. It is still in publication today.
“Trad developed a more serious style, the Indians were always of great interest to him, and young though he was when the World War (I) came, he was looking forward to the publication of a volume of Indian stories and legends. He had much of the material ready, but it was never finished because of the tragic chapter in his life, the war.”
Trad was editor of a newspaper and worked for several newspapers in Oklahoma before being commissioned as a pilot in the new Army Air Corp in 1918 at Ft. Sill. He was one of the many unfortunate soldiers who were infected with the new 1918 pandemic influenza.
He had only been married about six months when pneumonia developed in his influenza-damaged lungs in January 1919, resulting in his death. It is a great loss that Trad never finished his writings on native Americans in the area.
Walter, on the other hand, had a comprehensive collection of books about the west, and an impressive collection of Texas cattle brands and images of various native Americans (Western History Collections of the Univ. of OK Library.)
Walter’s wife, Lucia, was also a writer, having a syndicated column in the Hearst newspaper chain. And T.B. Ferguson published “The Jayhawkers”.
It seems the whole Ferguson family contributed greatly with their literary and cultural collections.