BENJAMIN F. McKINNEY [Choctaw and Chickasaw]

This gentleman was born near Atoka, Choctaw Nation, in September, 1867, and is the son of the late Alexander McKinney (a Cherokee adopted by the Choctaws on his immigration from Mississippi with that tribe). Ben was sent to the Aiken Institute, Paris, and afterward to the Osage Mission, which he left in November, 1883, and in the following month married Margaret Pursley, daughter of Joshua Pursley, of McAlester. The bride and bridegroom were aged respectively sixteen and thirteen years of age when united in wedlock, being about the youngest couple ever married in the Choctaw Nation. Immediately afterward Ben went to work in dead earnest and opened a farm on Twelve Mile Prairie, three miles from Blue, and which now contains nine hundred acres of land in a condition for planting next year. Besides this he has a pasture of six hundred and forty acres and some three hundred head of stock, all of which he has acquired through energy and enterprise and the richness of the lands, which have yielded a large rental at the hands of a thrifty tenantry. His children, Clara Louisa and Ben Alexander, are two and a half and one year old, respectively. Mr. McKinney has never run for an office of any kind, nor is he likely to sacrifice his peaceful and prosperous career by embarking in politics. He is, however, a member of the Progressive Party and will continue to vote the straight ticket.

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