DAVID O. FISHER - Choctaw and Chickasaw

[Information taken from the book "Leaders and Leading Men of the Indian Territory, Choctaw and Chickasaw", by H. F. O’Beirne, vol. 1. Publisher is: American Publishers’ Association, Chicago, IL, printed in the year 1891. Page 36]

Osborn Fisher was born in August, 1850; is the son of Joseph Fisher, a Kentuckian, and Martha Hayes, a Choctaw of the Oka-la-fal-laya clan. He first saw the light on Pearl river, Mississippi, and came to Fort Towsen, Choctaw Nation, in 1832. For three years he went to school at the old Choctaw Academy under the supervision of Richard M. Johnson. In 1837 he moved to Fort Washita and entered the employment of Gooding, who kept a trading post and general supply store. After four years service at that point, he moved to Bok-tuk-kal-lo county, where he was employed in assissting Dan Saffrons, who had a contract to feed a recently arrived emigration of Choctaws. Five years afterward he moved to Panola county, on Red River, and opened a large farm. At the age of twenty-three he married Elizabeth Kemp, sister of Judge Ben Kemp, by whom he had six children all of whom are dead but Joseph, aged twenty-five years. At the youthful age of twenty-one Osborn Fisher was elected County Judge of Bok-tuk-kal-lo county, and soon afterward served as representative of Kiamichi county at the Choctaw Council. During the war he was quartermaster of the Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment under Colonel Tandy Walker; after which, in 1865, he moved to Sebastian county, Arkansas, where he opened a farm, cotton gin, etc. Three years afterward he was burned out and moved to Perryville, and from there to Briar Creek, Pickens county, where he went into the stock business, and then moving from that point to Atoka, Choctaw Nation. Here he represented Atoka county in the legislature, and in 1873 made his debut in Chickasaw politics by representing Pickens county at the National Legislature.

We should have previously stated that Mr. Fisher was a member of both tribes, having been adopted by the Chickasaws through an act of the legislature passed during the war. In the latter part of 1874 he was commissioned, in company with Col. Lem Reynolds, as a delegate to Washington, which office frequently developed upon him during the years which followed. In 1877, while the subject of this sketch was living at Atoka, he was again called to represent Pickins county at the Chickasaw National Council, and two years afterward moved to the capital, at Tishomingo, disposing of his live stock to Commissioner D.N. Robb, of Atoka, and the toll bridge to J.J. McAlester. Having moved to the capital, Mr. Fisher purchased the mercantile business of Byrd & Bro., in which branch he has maintained.

During the administration of Gov. Jonas Wolf he was appointed National Interpreter, and National Treasurer in the Byrd administration of 1888, which office he was forced to resign owing to an overpress of business. Mr.Fisher has six hundred acres under cultivation and gives employment to at least thirteen families. He married Mattie McSweeney in 1868, by whom he has three daughters -- Mary, Agnes and Blanche, the eldest being fourteen years of age.

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