John McClain Young
John McClain Young
“We met in the old Brooks Theater in Guthrie, so the citizens could come in and watch what was going on. The convention began its work on November 20, 1906, and ended on April 27, 1907. Those [convention delegates] were very dedicated and didn’t pay any attention to the late hours they had to work. The committees worked after hours and nearly every Sunday.”
Biography
John McClain Young settled in Kingfisher in 1891 before coming to the Cherokee Strip area near Enid to stake his claim in 1893. He practiced law there until 1901 and moved to Lawton. While in Lawton he became a member of the Democratic Territorial Committee and was appointed to organize the Democratic Party in this new area of Oklahoma. He was asked to run for the Territorial Senate at the time, but chose instead to back his lifelong friend Thomas Gore.
When the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention was formed to bring the Indian and Oklahoma Territories together, Mr. Young was the youngest delegate at the convention and was elected Secretary. In 1933 Young was called to Washington, D.C. to direct the reopening of hundreds of banks that had been closed during the Depression. He remained with the Banking Department until 1941. He later moved to Florida and died there at the age of 101.
Fun fact
Before his death in 1973, John Young was the last living architect of the Oklahoma state constitution. He had served as secretary of the constitutional convention and penned in longhand the official copy of the document that was submitted to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.
Oklahoma connections
Young came to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in 1891.