STATES & CITIES: Oklahoma’s Twenty-Fifth

Oklahoma’s Twenty-Fifth

At 9:16 a. m. on Nov. 16, 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt picked up an eagle’s quill from his White House desk and squiggled his name to a proclamation which put Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory together and admitted the forty-sixth State to the Union. Last week Oklahoma celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. Item:

As “Mr. Oklahoma,” General Richard Alexander Sneed. 86-year-old Confederate veteran, was boosted up into a truck in front of the State historical building in the capital to “marry” Mrs. Warren Butz as “Miss Indian Territory.” Mrs. Butz played the same role at Guthrie a quarter-century ago. The temperature was 32°. Bridegroom Sneed refused to take off his overcoat, did remove his black felt hat. Joked shivering Bride Butz: “I c-could get m-married a h-h-heap quicker than this.”