Thomas P. Howell
Thomas P. Howell
“Dr. Howell was a man to inspire confidence, and his genuine interest in the welfare of his friends and neighbors was one of the beautiful characteristics of his life…his life was inspiration to all.”
Biography
Dr. Thomas Pitchlyn Howell was born in Eagletown, Oklahoma, in the Choctaw Nation. He attended Cumberland University in Tennessee and graduated from the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine in 1872. He returned by train and then steamboat to Oklahoma to open his medical practice in Atoka. He moved to Davis in 1875 and lived there until his death in 1943.
Dr. Howell raised outstanding stock animals and held farmland on a large scale in the Territory. He established the First National Bank at Wynnewood and at Davis. Dr. Howell was also held in high regard in the Councils of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, where he often served as a special delegate to the Indian Department in Washington, D.C.
Fun fact
Dr. Howell was on a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River when he saved the life of his first real patient, a small child stricken with pneumonia. He was returning to Oklahoma after completing medical school in the East when a frantic parent noticed his truck with the words “Dr. Howell” stenciled on the side and requested his help.
Oklahoma connections
Howell was born at Eagletown in the Choctaw Nation in southeastern Oklahoma.