1982 inductee into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame: Frank Hilton Greer, Oklahoma State Capital, Guthrie
Biography
Frank Hilton Greer is a native of Kansas, having been born at Leavenworth on July 21, 1862. He has lived all his life in the West. The parents of Mr. Greer were pioneers in Kansas, and the boy at twelve years of age began making his own living, and has been at it ever since. He is a son of Samuel Wylie and Clotilda Hilton Greer. The father was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1824. He was educated in the Pennsylvania schools and graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio, as a Presbyterian preacher. He came to Kansas in 1854, in the turbulent days preceding the war, and took an active part in all the anti-slavery campaign of which Kansas was the center. He was one of the first state superintendents of public instruction in Kansas and did much in laying the foundation for the splendid public school system of that state. Just prior to Lincoln's inauguration he went with seventy-four other sturdy westerners to Washington City as a personal guard for the President. These organized as the "Frontier Guard," the first organization growing out of the Civil war. These men were the first to enlist in that war. The duty of guarding the President during and some time after the inauguration being over, Mr. Greer returned with the other Kansans and organized Company I, Fifteenth Volunteer Kansas Cavalry, of which company he was elected captain and served with it throughout the war. The mother was born in Xenia, Ohio, and became a schoolteacher, and it was at her knee that the subject of this sketch received most of his education, as his opportunity for other schooling was scant, and then only in the common schools. The printing office has been called the best of universities, and it proved so in this case. Here it was that Mr. Greer got his broad and practical education. The father died in 1882 at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother in 1897, at the age of sixty-four. There were eight children in the family, of whom six are living, Frank Hilton being the fourth in order of birth.
Early in life Mr. Greer went into a newspaper office as a printer's devil and graduated in all the departments of the business, continuing the newspaper profession until four years ago, when he moved to Tulsa. He is now president of the Greer Investment Company, with offices in the Iowa Building.
Mr. Greer is a member of all branches of Masonry-both the Scottish Rite and York Rite, and the Shrine-and is a K. C. C. H. of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He belongs also to the Knights of Pythias A. O. U. W., Elks and Odd Fellows. He is a member of the Episcopal Church. He has held but one public office, that of a member of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1893.
In 1911 Mr. Greer was married to Laura Leigh Hanson, a woman of the fine literary and social attainments, and they reside at 1501 South Baltimore, Tulsa.
Mr. Greer has taken prominent part in all the public affairs of Oklahoma, having located in Guthrie in 1889 on the day of the opening of old Oklahoma to settlement. He is a republican in politics, unswerving in his beliefs, not only in politics but in everything else, and although not seeking public office, has been active in everything that he believed would forward the political welfare of Oklahoma. He has taken a prominent part in the state's material progress.
Mr. Greer is one of the directors of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, and exerts his public spirit constantly for the growth of Tulsa. He is a fluent and popular public speaker. His diversion from business is literature, and his home contains probably the largest and best-selected private library in Oklahoma. (FRANK HILTON GREER: Vol. 3, p. 1111
FRANK H. GREER FUNERAL FRIDAY
Services for State Pioneer at Tulsa Home; Relatives En Route Here
Funeral services for Franklin H. Greer, early-day newspaper editor and political leader of pre statehood days who died here early yesterday will be held Friday morning at 9:30 o'clock from the home, 1225 Hazel boulevard.
Rev. C. C. Grimes, pastor of the Boston Avenue Methodist church will be in charge of services for the 71 years-old pioneer. Burial will be in Rose Hill mausoleum by the Stanley & McCune funeral home. There will be no active or honorary pallbearers, it was announced last night.
Surviving in addition to the widow, Mrs. Laura Hanson Greer, are two sisters, Mrs. Mary Greer Conklin, Long Beach, Cal., and Miss Eleanor Greer, Glendale, Cal. Mrs. Conklin is expected to arrive in Tulsa tomorrow night, as are Mr. Greer's niece, Mrs. Grace Bangs and her two daughters from Winfield, Kan. Other relatives of Mrs. Greer are also en route to Tulsa.
Mourns His Death.
The death of Greer recalled to hundreds his dramatic part in early Oklahoma history, but to Walter Ferguson, vice president of the National Bank o f Tulsa, the passing of Greer means the passing of an Oklahoma institution. To use Ferguson's own words in explaining the relationship between the two:
"My first job was as a reporter on the old Guthrie Capital. Greer took a sort of personal interest in me and gave me more than an office training as a reporter. I handled all the intimate personal relations for him when he was engaged in feuds and old-time newspaper controversies.
"I was working on the 'ship when she sank. When I got married he owed me 15 weeks back salary. I had the checks but they were no good, if I did not get the checks cashed I could not get married. Greer held out some mail receipts from subscriptions and cashed my checks for this worthy purpose and always claimed it was the thought the girl I was to marry would be a great newspaper woman".
Ferguson, himself a pioneer Oklahoma newspaper man, said the following in regard to Greer's death:
Shifting Interests
"To me the death of Frank Greer is more than the passing of an individual - it is the passing of an age. When we say a long final farewell to Frank Greer we bid an eternal good-bye to an epoch. So long has Greer typified the spirit of old Oklahoma that his death seems to mark the borderline between this age and yesterday.
"History is filled with praises of men who have taken a city, but there is too little said of those who have built one. Greer not only built the typical, representative, outstanding city of young Oklahoma, but also exercised and emphasized a leadership in creating the structure of an American state, more than any other man connected with the enterprise.
"In the tremendous shifting of interests following statehood, the intervening World War and the confusions of the past four years of economic disorder, we are perhaps too prone to forget the primitive beginnings, the pioneer efforts of those who fought the initial battle.
Found Confusion
"Frank Greer arrived in Guthrie April 22, 1889, to found his home in a city of tents and confusion - but hopes and dreams. The most cosmopolitan crowd with the most varied interests ever assembled on an American town site were in Guthrie, with no semblance of order, outline or program. There was no law, save that the weak should perish and only the strong survive. New leaders were to win their places, and their dominion over men, and the foundation was laid for a future American state. Law and order had to be established, property rights had to be made secure, homes erected - and only those with faith and vision were to last.
"Greer, a determined, resolute, intrepid character, filled with the fiery zeal of a crusader, imbued with the spirit of the Kansas pioneer, determined to be one of the leading actors in this rapidly unfolding drama, and setting about to bring order out of chaos, distributed a newspaper that he had caused to be printed in a border Kansas town a few days before. It was merely an announcement that Frank Greer would edit the dominant newspaper of the new territorial capital, and that the paper proposed to be the leading force in the development and building of the new territory. His arrival had such unmistakable signs of determination and resolution, that by the time the sun set on this never-again-to-be-witnessed scene, the thousands of strangers camped on the primitive town site on the banks of the Cottonwood, knew that one of their future leaders was a tall, young editor by the name of Frank Greer. The type on this paper was set by Omer Benedict, another great Oklahoman, who passed away only a few weeks ago.
Paper Forged Ahead
Rapidly shaping his plans, Greer organized an office force, gathered together the scattered material, and created a plant for the production of a newspaper. In a short time he was printing "The Guthrie State Capital." Every issue was a challenge to the innumerable rivals that were bidding for public attention. Under Greer's dominant and forceful leadership, it survived the early stages of indiscriminate composition and when law came to the "last American frontier" and the forms and functions of government were secured by co-operative effort, Greer's paper forged to the front as the voice of Oklahoma Territory.
"Setting about to make Guthrie the dominant city of Oklahoma Territory, Greer faced every form of town site rivalry and railroad promotion, and built the most colorful, glamorous and picturesque city the pioneer west ever knew - went down the long, long trail until statehood, when the political changes that in those days meant so much to the existence of a newspaper, brought about the end of his effort. His paper died in a hopeless fight with its back up against the wall, trying to save the city that he had almost built with his own hands, and which was the child of his brilliant mind. He refused to see that Guthrie - the Republican city was doomed as the capital of the future Democratic state of Oklahoma, to which the Oklahoma Territory had been added, and he went down with his colors flying and his face toward the enemy.
"So violent was the terrific struggle between Oklahoma City and Guthrie for the supremacy that it resembled the county seat wars of western Kansas. The railroads, which held the potential influence were doing everything to make Oklahoma City the metropolis - only the Guthrie Capital flew the flag of Guthrie's defiance, and putting his tremendous personality, his wonderful brain and his magnificent courage into every page and every line of each issue of the morning paper, Greer held for Guthrie the power which the leading paper of a state or territory can give a city.
Plant Burned
"Several years before statehood his entire plant burned, and before the fire was extinguished a delegation of business men from Oklahoma City, realizing that without his general Guthrie's army was completely routed, offered to build him a new plant and give him a substantial bonus to move his brain child - the newspaper - to Oklahoma City. Loyal and faithful to the traditions he had inspired and the legends he had built, he declined this flattering offer and passed over the greatest opportunity of his lifetime. Had he compromised with his conscience and taken his plant to Oklahoma City - in all probability when he died yesterday, he would have passed on as the editor of the foremost newspaper in all Oklahoma.
"Frank Greer was a striking personality of the early days, perhaps and certainly to me the most outstanding. He was a vigorous, aggressive and courageous editor. Every issue of the newspaper reflected his remarkable individuality and brilliance. The files of the old Guthrie Capital comprise a history of early Oklahoma and the proud lines penned so fearlessly by Frank Greer, the saga of a people.
He was the poet and the prophet of that vast romance and to those in the years to come who read the chronicles he will ever be the embodiment of the spirit of pioneer Oklahoma. (The Tulsa Daily World, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wednesday, August 9, 1933, page 1)
Biography
Frank Hilton Greer is a native of Kansas, having been born at Leavenworth on July 21, 1862. He has lived all his life in the West. The parents of Mr. Greer were pioneers in Kansas, and the boy at twelve years of age began making his own living, and has been at it ever since. He is a son of Samuel Wylie and Clotilda Hilton Greer. The father was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1824. He was educated in the Pennsylvania schools and graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio, as a Presbyterian preacher. He came to Kansas in 1854, in the turbulent days preceding the war, and took an active part in all the anti-slavery campaign of which Kansas was the center. He was one of the first state superintendents of public instruction in Kansas and did much in laying the foundation for the splendid public school system of that state. Just prior to Lincoln's inauguration he went with seventy-four other sturdy westerners to Washington City as a personal guard for the President. These organized as the "Frontier Guard," the first organization growing out of the Civil war. These men were the first to enlist in that war. The duty of guarding the President during and some time after the inauguration being over, Mr. Greer returned with the other Kansans and organized Company I, Fifteenth Volunteer Kansas Cavalry, of which company he was elected captain and served with it throughout the war. The mother was born in Xenia, Ohio, and became a schoolteacher, and it was at her knee that the subject of this sketch received most of his education, as his opportunity for other schooling was scant, and then only in the common schools. The printing office has been called the best of universities, and it proved so in this case. Here it was that Mr. Greer got his broad and practical education. The father died in 1882 at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother in 1897, at the age of sixty-four. There were eight children in the family, of whom six are living, Frank Hilton being the fourth in order of birth.
Early in life Mr. Greer went into a newspaper office as a printer's devil and graduated in all the departments of the business, continuing the newspaper profession until four years ago, when he moved to Tulsa. He is now president of the Greer Investment Company, with offices in the Iowa Building.
Mr. Greer is a member of all branches of Masonry-both the Scottish Rite and York Rite, and the Shrine-and is a K. C. C. H. of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He belongs also to the Knights of Pythias A. O. U. W., Elks and Odd Fellows. He is a member of the Episcopal Church. He has held but one public office, that of a member of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1893.
In 1911 Mr. Greer was married to Laura Leigh Hanson, a woman of the fine literary and social attainments, and they reside at 1501 South Baltimore, Tulsa.
Mr. Greer has taken prominent part in all the public affairs of Oklahoma, having located in Guthrie in 1889 on the day of the opening of old Oklahoma to settlement. He is a republican in politics, unswerving in his beliefs, not only in politics but in everything else, and although not seeking public office, has been active in everything that he believed would forward the political welfare of Oklahoma. He has taken a prominent part in the state's material progress.
Mr. Greer is one of the directors of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, and exerts his public spirit constantly for the growth of Tulsa. He is a fluent and popular public speaker. His diversion from business is literature, and his home contains probably the largest and best-selected private library in Oklahoma. (FRANK HILTON GREER: Vol. 3, p. 1111
FRANK H. GREER FUNERAL FRIDAY
Services for State Pioneer at Tulsa Home; Relatives En Route Here
Funeral services for Franklin H. Greer, early-day newspaper editor and political leader of pre statehood days who died here early yesterday will be held Friday morning at 9:30 o'clock from the home, 1225 Hazel boulevard.
Rev. C. C. Grimes, pastor of the Boston Avenue Methodist church will be in charge of services for the 71 years-old pioneer. Burial will be in Rose Hill mausoleum by the Stanley & McCune funeral home. There will be no active or honorary pallbearers, it was announced last night.
Surviving in addition to the widow, Mrs. Laura Hanson Greer, are two sisters, Mrs. Mary Greer Conklin, Long Beach, Cal., and Miss Eleanor Greer, Glendale, Cal. Mrs. Conklin is expected to arrive in Tulsa tomorrow night, as are Mr. Greer's niece, Mrs. Grace Bangs and her two daughters from Winfield, Kan. Other relatives of Mrs. Greer are also en route to Tulsa.
Mourns His Death.
The death of Greer recalled to hundreds his dramatic part in early Oklahoma history, but to Walter Ferguson, vice president of the National Bank o f Tulsa, the passing of Greer means the passing of an Oklahoma institution. To use Ferguson's own words in explaining the relationship between the two:
"My first job was as a reporter on the old Guthrie Capital. Greer took a sort of personal interest in me and gave me more than an office training as a reporter. I handled all the intimate personal relations for him when he was engaged in feuds and old-time newspaper controversies.
"I was working on the 'ship when she sank. When I got married he owed me 15 weeks back salary. I had the checks but they were no good, if I did not get the checks cashed I could not get married. Greer held out some mail receipts from subscriptions and cashed my checks for this worthy purpose and always claimed it was the thought the girl I was to marry would be a great newspaper woman".
Ferguson, himself a pioneer Oklahoma newspaper man, said the following in regard to Greer's death:
Shifting Interests
"To me the death of Frank Greer is more than the passing of an individual - it is the passing of an age. When we say a long final farewell to Frank Greer we bid an eternal good-bye to an epoch. So long has Greer typified the spirit of old Oklahoma that his death seems to mark the borderline between this age and yesterday.
"History is filled with praises of men who have taken a city, but there is too little said of those who have built one. Greer not only built the typical, representative, outstanding city of young Oklahoma, but also exercised and emphasized a leadership in creating the structure of an American state, more than any other man connected with the enterprise.
"In the tremendous shifting of interests following statehood, the intervening World War and the confusions of the past four years of economic disorder, we are perhaps too prone to forget the primitive beginnings, the pioneer efforts of those who fought the initial battle.
Found Confusion
"Frank Greer arrived in Guthrie April 22, 1889, to found his home in a city of tents and confusion - but hopes and dreams. The most cosmopolitan crowd with the most varied interests ever assembled on an American town site were in Guthrie, with no semblance of order, outline or program. There was no law, save that the weak should perish and only the strong survive. New leaders were to win their places, and their dominion over men, and the foundation was laid for a future American state. Law and order had to be established, property rights had to be made secure, homes erected - and only those with faith and vision were to last.
"Greer, a determined, resolute, intrepid character, filled with the fiery zeal of a crusader, imbued with the spirit of the Kansas pioneer, determined to be one of the leading actors in this rapidly unfolding drama, and setting about to bring order out of chaos, distributed a newspaper that he had caused to be printed in a border Kansas town a few days before. It was merely an announcement that Frank Greer would edit the dominant newspaper of the new territorial capital, and that the paper proposed to be the leading force in the development and building of the new territory. His arrival had such unmistakable signs of determination and resolution, that by the time the sun set on this never-again-to-be-witnessed scene, the thousands of strangers camped on the primitive town site on the banks of the Cottonwood, knew that one of their future leaders was a tall, young editor by the name of Frank Greer. The type on this paper was set by Omer Benedict, another great Oklahoman, who passed away only a few weeks ago.
Paper Forged Ahead
Rapidly shaping his plans, Greer organized an office force, gathered together the scattered material, and created a plant for the production of a newspaper. In a short time he was printing "The Guthrie State Capital." Every issue was a challenge to the innumerable rivals that were bidding for public attention. Under Greer's dominant and forceful leadership, it survived the early stages of indiscriminate composition and when law came to the "last American frontier" and the forms and functions of government were secured by co-operative effort, Greer's paper forged to the front as the voice of Oklahoma Territory.
"Setting about to make Guthrie the dominant city of Oklahoma Territory, Greer faced every form of town site rivalry and railroad promotion, and built the most colorful, glamorous and picturesque city the pioneer west ever knew - went down the long, long trail until statehood, when the political changes that in those days meant so much to the existence of a newspaper, brought about the end of his effort. His paper died in a hopeless fight with its back up against the wall, trying to save the city that he had almost built with his own hands, and which was the child of his brilliant mind. He refused to see that Guthrie - the Republican city was doomed as the capital of the future Democratic state of Oklahoma, to which the Oklahoma Territory had been added, and he went down with his colors flying and his face toward the enemy.
"So violent was the terrific struggle between Oklahoma City and Guthrie for the supremacy that it resembled the county seat wars of western Kansas. The railroads, which held the potential influence were doing everything to make Oklahoma City the metropolis - only the Guthrie Capital flew the flag of Guthrie's defiance, and putting his tremendous personality, his wonderful brain and his magnificent courage into every page and every line of each issue of the morning paper, Greer held for Guthrie the power which the leading paper of a state or territory can give a city.
Plant Burned
"Several years before statehood his entire plant burned, and before the fire was extinguished a delegation of business men from Oklahoma City, realizing that without his general Guthrie's army was completely routed, offered to build him a new plant and give him a substantial bonus to move his brain child - the newspaper - to Oklahoma City. Loyal and faithful to the traditions he had inspired and the legends he had built, he declined this flattering offer and passed over the greatest opportunity of his lifetime. Had he compromised with his conscience and taken his plant to Oklahoma City - in all probability when he died yesterday, he would have passed on as the editor of the foremost newspaper in all Oklahoma.
"Frank Greer was a striking personality of the early days, perhaps and certainly to me the most outstanding. He was a vigorous, aggressive and courageous editor. Every issue of the newspaper reflected his remarkable individuality and brilliance. The files of the old Guthrie Capital comprise a history of early Oklahoma and the proud lines penned so fearlessly by Frank Greer, the saga of a people.
He was the poet and the prophet of that vast romance and to those in the years to come who read the chronicles he will ever be the embodiment of the spirit of pioneer Oklahoma. (The Tulsa Daily World, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wednesday, August 9, 1933, page 1)
1982 inductee into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame: Frank Hilton Greer, Oklahoma State Capital, Guthrie
Biography
Frank Hilton Greer is a native of Kansas, having been born at Leavenworth on July 21, 1862. He has lived all his life in the West. The parents of Mr. Greer were pioneers in Kansas, and the boy at twelve years of age began making his own living, and has been at it ever since. He is a son of Samuel Wylie and Clotilda Hilton Greer. The father was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1824. He was educated in the Pennsylvania schools and graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio, as a Presbyterian preacher. He came to Kansas in 1854, in the turbulent days preceding the war, and took an active part in all the anti-slavery campaign of which Kansas was the center. He was one of the first state superintendents of public instruction in Kansas and did much in laying the foundation for the splendid public school system of that state. Just prior to Lincoln's inauguration he went with seventy-four other sturdy westerners to Washington City as a personal guard for the President. These organized as the "Frontier Guard," the first organization growing out of the Civil war. These men were the first to enlist in that war. The duty of guarding the President during and some time after the inauguration being over, Mr. Greer returned with the other Kansans and organized Company I, Fifteenth Volunteer Kansas Cavalry, of which company he was elected captain and served with it throughout the war. The mother was born in Xenia, Ohio, and became a schoolteacher, and it was at her knee that the subject of this sketch received most of his education, as his opportunity for other schooling was scant, and then only in the common schools. The printing office has been called the best of universities, and it proved so in this case. Here it was that Mr. Greer got his broad and practical education. The father died in 1882 at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother in 1897, at the age of sixty-four. There were eight children in the family, of whom six are living, Frank Hilton being the fourth in order of birth.
Early in life Mr. Greer went into a newspaper office as a printer's devil and graduated in all the departments of the business, continuing the newspaper profession until four years ago, when he moved to Tulsa. He is now president of the Greer Investment Company, with offices in the Iowa Building.
Mr. Greer is a member of all branches of Masonry-both the Scottish Rite and York Rite, and the Shrine-and is a K. C. C. H. of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He belongs also to the Knights of Pythias A. O. U. W., Elks and Odd Fellows. He is a member of the Episcopal Church. He has held but one public office, that of a member of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1893.
In 1911 Mr. Greer was married to Laura Leigh Hanson, a woman of the fine literary and social attainments, and they reside at 1501 South Baltimore, Tulsa.
Mr. Greer has taken prominent part in all the public affairs of Oklahoma, having located in Guthrie in 1889 on the day of the opening of old Oklahoma to settlement. He is a republican in politics, unswerving in his beliefs, not only in politics but in everything else, and although not seeking public office, has been active in everything that he believed would forward the political welfare of Oklahoma. He has taken a prominent part in the state's material progress.
Mr. Greer is one of the directors of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, and exerts his public spirit constantly for the growth of Tulsa. He is a fluent and popular public speaker. His diversion from business is literature, and his home contains probably the largest and best-selected private library in Oklahoma. (FRANK HILTON GREER: Vol. 3, p. 1111
FRANK H. GREER FUNERAL FRIDAY
Services for State Pioneer at Tulsa Home; Relatives En Route Here
Funeral services for Franklin H. Greer, early-day newspaper editor and political leader of pre statehood days who died here early yesterday will be held Friday morning at 9:30 o'clock from the home, 1225 Hazel boulevard.
Rev. C. C. Grimes, pastor of the Boston Avenue Methodist church will be in charge of services for the 71 years-old pioneer. Burial will be in Rose Hill mausoleum by the Stanley & McCune funeral home. There will be no active or honorary pallbearers, it was announced last night.
Surviving in addition to the widow, Mrs. Laura Hanson Greer, are two sisters, Mrs. Mary Greer Conklin, Long Beach, Cal., and Miss Eleanor Greer, Glendale, Cal. Mrs. Conklin is expected to arrive in Tulsa tomorrow night, as are Mr. Greer's niece, Mrs. Grace Bangs and her two daughters from Winfield, Kan. Other relatives of Mrs. Greer are also en route to Tulsa.
Mourns His Death.
The death of Greer recalled to hundreds his dramatic part in early Oklahoma history, but to Walter Ferguson, vice president of the National Bank o f Tulsa, the passing of Greer means the passing of an Oklahoma institution. To use Ferguson's own words in explaining the relationship between the two:
"My first job was as a reporter on the old Guthrie Capital. Greer took a sort of personal interest in me and gave me more than an office training as a reporter. I handled all the intimate personal relations for him when he was engaged in feuds and old-time newspaper controversies.
"I was working on the 'ship when she sank. When I got married he owed me 15 weeks back salary. I had the checks but they were no good, if I did not get the checks cashed I could not get married. Greer held out some mail receipts from subscriptions and cashed my checks for this worthy purpose and always claimed it was the thought the girl I was to marry would be a great newspaper woman".
Ferguson, himself a pioneer Oklahoma newspaper man, said the following in regard to Greer's death:
Shifting Interests
"To me the death of Frank Greer is more than the passing of an individual - it is the passing of an age. When we say a long final farewell to Frank Greer we bid an eternal good-bye to an epoch. So long has Greer typified the spirit of old Oklahoma that his death seems to mark the borderline between this age and yesterday.
"History is filled with praises of men who have taken a city, but there is too little said of those who have built one. Greer not only built the typical, representative, outstanding city of young Oklahoma, but also exercised and emphasized a leadership in creating the structure of an American state, more than any other man connected with the enterprise.
"In the tremendous shifting of interests following statehood, the intervening World War and the confusions of the past four years of economic disorder, we are perhaps too prone to forget the primitive beginnings, the pioneer efforts of those who fought the initial battle.
Found Confusion
"Frank Greer arrived in Guthrie April 22, 1889, to found his home in a city of tents and confusion - but hopes and dreams. The most cosmopolitan crowd with the most varied interests ever assembled on an American town site were in Guthrie, with no semblance of order, outline or program. There was no law, save that the weak should perish and only the strong survive. New leaders were to win their places, and their dominion over men, and the foundation was laid for a future American state. Law and order had to be established, property rights had to be made secure, homes erected - and only those with faith and vision were to last.
"Greer, a determined, resolute, intrepid character, filled with the fiery zeal of a crusader, imbued with the spirit of the Kansas pioneer, determined to be one of the leading actors in this rapidly unfolding drama, and setting about to bring order out of chaos, distributed a newspaper that he had caused to be printed in a border Kansas town a few days before. It was merely an announcement that Frank Greer would edit the dominant newspaper of the new territorial capital, and that the paper proposed to be the leading force in the development and building of the new territory. His arrival had such unmistakable signs of determination and resolution, that by the time the sun set on this never-again-to-be-witnessed scene, the thousands of strangers camped on the primitive town site on the banks of the Cottonwood, knew that one of their future leaders was a tall, young editor by the name of Frank Greer. The type on this paper was set by Omer Benedict, another great Oklahoman, who passed away only a few weeks ago.
Paper Forged Ahead
Rapidly shaping his plans, Greer organized an office force, gathered together the scattered material, and created a plant for the production of a newspaper. In a short time he was printing "The Guthrie State Capital." Every issue was a challenge to the innumerable rivals that were bidding for public attention. Under Greer's dominant and forceful leadership, it survived the early stages of indiscriminate composition and when law came to the "last American frontier" and the forms and functions of government were secured by co-operative effort, Greer's paper forged to the front as the voice of Oklahoma Territory.
"Setting about to make Guthrie the dominant city of Oklahoma Territory, Greer faced every form of town site rivalry and railroad promotion, and built the most colorful, glamorous and picturesque city the pioneer west ever knew - went down the long, long trail until statehood, when the political changes that in those days meant so much to the existence of a newspaper, brought about the end of his effort. His paper died in a hopeless fight with its back up against the wall, trying to save the city that he had almost built with his own hands, and which was the child of his brilliant mind. He refused to see that Guthrie - the Republican city was doomed as the capital of the future Democratic state of Oklahoma, to which the Oklahoma Territory had been added, and he went down with his colors flying and his face toward the enemy.
"So violent was the terrific struggle between Oklahoma City and Guthrie for the supremacy that it resembled the county seat wars of western Kansas. The railroads, which held the potential influence were doing everything to make Oklahoma City the metropolis - only the Guthrie Capital flew the flag of Guthrie's defiance, and putting his tremendous personality, his wonderful brain and his magnificent courage into every page and every line of each issue of the morning paper, Greer held for Guthrie the power which the leading paper of a state or territory can give a city.
Plant Burned
"Several years before statehood his entire plant burned, and before the fire was extinguished a delegation of business men from Oklahoma City, realizing that without his general Guthrie's army was completely routed, offered to build him a new plant and give him a substantial bonus to move his brain child - the newspaper - to Oklahoma City. Loyal and faithful to the traditions he had inspired and the legends he had built, he declined this flattering offer and passed over the greatest opportunity of his lifetime. Had he compromised with his conscience and taken his plant to Oklahoma City - in all probability when he died yesterday, he would have passed on as the editor of the foremost newspaper in all Oklahoma.
"Frank Greer was a striking personality of the early days, perhaps and certainly to me the most outstanding. He was a vigorous, aggressive and courageous editor. Every issue of the newspaper reflected his remarkable individuality and brilliance. The files of the old Guthrie Capital comprise a history of early Oklahoma and the proud lines penned so fearlessly by Frank Greer, the saga of a people.
He was the poet and the prophet of that vast romance and to those in the years to come who read the chronicles he will ever be the embodiment of the spirit of pioneer Oklahoma. (The Tulsa Daily World, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wednesday, August 9, 1933, page 1)
Biography
Frank Hilton Greer is a native of Kansas, having been born at Leavenworth on July 21, 1862. He has lived all his life in the West. The parents of Mr. Greer were pioneers in Kansas, and the boy at twelve years of age began making his own living, and has been at it ever since. He is a son of Samuel Wylie and Clotilda Hilton Greer. The father was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1824. He was educated in the Pennsylvania schools and graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio, as a Presbyterian preacher. He came to Kansas in 1854, in the turbulent days preceding the war, and took an active part in all the anti-slavery campaign of which Kansas was the center. He was one of the first state superintendents of public instruction in Kansas and did much in laying the foundation for the splendid public school system of that state. Just prior to Lincoln's inauguration he went with seventy-four other sturdy westerners to Washington City as a personal guard for the President. These organized as the "Frontier Guard," the first organization growing out of the Civil war. These men were the first to enlist in that war. The duty of guarding the President during and some time after the inauguration being over, Mr. Greer returned with the other Kansans and organized Company I, Fifteenth Volunteer Kansas Cavalry, of which company he was elected captain and served with it throughout the war. The mother was born in Xenia, Ohio, and became a schoolteacher, and it was at her knee that the subject of this sketch received most of his education, as his opportunity for other schooling was scant, and then only in the common schools. The printing office has been called the best of universities, and it proved so in this case. Here it was that Mr. Greer got his broad and practical education. The father died in 1882 at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother in 1897, at the age of sixty-four. There were eight children in the family, of whom six are living, Frank Hilton being the fourth in order of birth.
Early in life Mr. Greer went into a newspaper office as a printer's devil and graduated in all the departments of the business, continuing the newspaper profession until four years ago, when he moved to Tulsa. He is now president of the Greer Investment Company, with offices in the Iowa Building.
Mr. Greer is a member of all branches of Masonry-both the Scottish Rite and York Rite, and the Shrine-and is a K. C. C. H. of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He belongs also to the Knights of Pythias A. O. U. W., Elks and Odd Fellows. He is a member of the Episcopal Church. He has held but one public office, that of a member of the Oklahoma Legislature in 1893.
In 1911 Mr. Greer was married to Laura Leigh Hanson, a woman of the fine literary and social attainments, and they reside at 1501 South Baltimore, Tulsa.
Mr. Greer has taken prominent part in all the public affairs of Oklahoma, having located in Guthrie in 1889 on the day of the opening of old Oklahoma to settlement. He is a republican in politics, unswerving in his beliefs, not only in politics but in everything else, and although not seeking public office, has been active in everything that he believed would forward the political welfare of Oklahoma. He has taken a prominent part in the state's material progress.
Mr. Greer is one of the directors of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, and exerts his public spirit constantly for the growth of Tulsa. He is a fluent and popular public speaker. His diversion from business is literature, and his home contains probably the largest and best-selected private library in Oklahoma. (FRANK HILTON GREER: Vol. 3, p. 1111
FRANK H. GREER FUNERAL FRIDAY
Services for State Pioneer at Tulsa Home; Relatives En Route Here
Funeral services for Franklin H. Greer, early-day newspaper editor and political leader of pre statehood days who died here early yesterday will be held Friday morning at 9:30 o'clock from the home, 1225 Hazel boulevard.
Rev. C. C. Grimes, pastor of the Boston Avenue Methodist church will be in charge of services for the 71 years-old pioneer. Burial will be in Rose Hill mausoleum by the Stanley & McCune funeral home. There will be no active or honorary pallbearers, it was announced last night.
Surviving in addition to the widow, Mrs. Laura Hanson Greer, are two sisters, Mrs. Mary Greer Conklin, Long Beach, Cal., and Miss Eleanor Greer, Glendale, Cal. Mrs. Conklin is expected to arrive in Tulsa tomorrow night, as are Mr. Greer's niece, Mrs. Grace Bangs and her two daughters from Winfield, Kan. Other relatives of Mrs. Greer are also en route to Tulsa.
Mourns His Death.
The death of Greer recalled to hundreds his dramatic part in early Oklahoma history, but to Walter Ferguson, vice president of the National Bank o f Tulsa, the passing of Greer means the passing of an Oklahoma institution. To use Ferguson's own words in explaining the relationship between the two:
"My first job was as a reporter on the old Guthrie Capital. Greer took a sort of personal interest in me and gave me more than an office training as a reporter. I handled all the intimate personal relations for him when he was engaged in feuds and old-time newspaper controversies.
"I was working on the 'ship when she sank. When I got married he owed me 15 weeks back salary. I had the checks but they were no good, if I did not get the checks cashed I could not get married. Greer held out some mail receipts from subscriptions and cashed my checks for this worthy purpose and always claimed it was the thought the girl I was to marry would be a great newspaper woman".
Ferguson, himself a pioneer Oklahoma newspaper man, said the following in regard to Greer's death:
Shifting Interests
"To me the death of Frank Greer is more than the passing of an individual - it is the passing of an age. When we say a long final farewell to Frank Greer we bid an eternal good-bye to an epoch. So long has Greer typified the spirit of old Oklahoma that his death seems to mark the borderline between this age and yesterday.
"History is filled with praises of men who have taken a city, but there is too little said of those who have built one. Greer not only built the typical, representative, outstanding city of young Oklahoma, but also exercised and emphasized a leadership in creating the structure of an American state, more than any other man connected with the enterprise.
"In the tremendous shifting of interests following statehood, the intervening World War and the confusions of the past four years of economic disorder, we are perhaps too prone to forget the primitive beginnings, the pioneer efforts of those who fought the initial battle.
Found Confusion
"Frank Greer arrived in Guthrie April 22, 1889, to found his home in a city of tents and confusion - but hopes and dreams. The most cosmopolitan crowd with the most varied interests ever assembled on an American town site were in Guthrie, with no semblance of order, outline or program. There was no law, save that the weak should perish and only the strong survive. New leaders were to win their places, and their dominion over men, and the foundation was laid for a future American state. Law and order had to be established, property rights had to be made secure, homes erected - and only those with faith and vision were to last.
"Greer, a determined, resolute, intrepid character, filled with the fiery zeal of a crusader, imbued with the spirit of the Kansas pioneer, determined to be one of the leading actors in this rapidly unfolding drama, and setting about to bring order out of chaos, distributed a newspaper that he had caused to be printed in a border Kansas town a few days before. It was merely an announcement that Frank Greer would edit the dominant newspaper of the new territorial capital, and that the paper proposed to be the leading force in the development and building of the new territory. His arrival had such unmistakable signs of determination and resolution, that by the time the sun set on this never-again-to-be-witnessed scene, the thousands of strangers camped on the primitive town site on the banks of the Cottonwood, knew that one of their future leaders was a tall, young editor by the name of Frank Greer. The type on this paper was set by Omer Benedict, another great Oklahoman, who passed away only a few weeks ago.
Paper Forged Ahead
Rapidly shaping his plans, Greer organized an office force, gathered together the scattered material, and created a plant for the production of a newspaper. In a short time he was printing "The Guthrie State Capital." Every issue was a challenge to the innumerable rivals that were bidding for public attention. Under Greer's dominant and forceful leadership, it survived the early stages of indiscriminate composition and when law came to the "last American frontier" and the forms and functions of government were secured by co-operative effort, Greer's paper forged to the front as the voice of Oklahoma Territory.
"Setting about to make Guthrie the dominant city of Oklahoma Territory, Greer faced every form of town site rivalry and railroad promotion, and built the most colorful, glamorous and picturesque city the pioneer west ever knew - went down the long, long trail until statehood, when the political changes that in those days meant so much to the existence of a newspaper, brought about the end of his effort. His paper died in a hopeless fight with its back up against the wall, trying to save the city that he had almost built with his own hands, and which was the child of his brilliant mind. He refused to see that Guthrie - the Republican city was doomed as the capital of the future Democratic state of Oklahoma, to which the Oklahoma Territory had been added, and he went down with his colors flying and his face toward the enemy.
"So violent was the terrific struggle between Oklahoma City and Guthrie for the supremacy that it resembled the county seat wars of western Kansas. The railroads, which held the potential influence were doing everything to make Oklahoma City the metropolis - only the Guthrie Capital flew the flag of Guthrie's defiance, and putting his tremendous personality, his wonderful brain and his magnificent courage into every page and every line of each issue of the morning paper, Greer held for Guthrie the power which the leading paper of a state or territory can give a city.
Plant Burned
"Several years before statehood his entire plant burned, and before the fire was extinguished a delegation of business men from Oklahoma City, realizing that without his general Guthrie's army was completely routed, offered to build him a new plant and give him a substantial bonus to move his brain child - the newspaper - to Oklahoma City. Loyal and faithful to the traditions he had inspired and the legends he had built, he declined this flattering offer and passed over the greatest opportunity of his lifetime. Had he compromised with his conscience and taken his plant to Oklahoma City - in all probability when he died yesterday, he would have passed on as the editor of the foremost newspaper in all Oklahoma.
"Frank Greer was a striking personality of the early days, perhaps and certainly to me the most outstanding. He was a vigorous, aggressive and courageous editor. Every issue of the newspaper reflected his remarkable individuality and brilliance. The files of the old Guthrie Capital comprise a history of early Oklahoma and the proud lines penned so fearlessly by Frank Greer, the saga of a people.
He was the poet and the prophet of that vast romance and to those in the years to come who read the chronicles he will ever be the embodiment of the spirit of pioneer Oklahoma. (The Tulsa Daily World, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wednesday, August 9, 1933, page 1)
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