Wirt Franklin papers

Wirt Franklin was born in Richmond, Missouri on March 22, 1883 to Irene Hudgins Franklin and John H. Franklin. He grew up in Kansas, Washington D.C., and Illinois, graduating from high school in Lacon, Illinois, in 1900. He moved to Muskogee, Indian Territory, to work for the Dawes Commission from 1902-1905, enrolling tribal members in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. He attended law school at Columbian University (now George Washington University). He passed the bar examination in 1906 and was admitted to practice before the U.S. Court for the Southern District in 1907. He formed a law partnership with Samuel A. Apple (known as Apple & Franklin) which lasted until 1913. The same year he began development in the Healdton oil field along with Samuel A. Apple, Roy M. Johnson, Edward Galt, and A.T. McGhee, and founded Crystal Oil Company. He left Crystal Oil Company in 1916 to work as an independent oilman, eventually founding Wirt Franklin Petroleum Company in 1927. He helped to organize the Independent Petroleum Association of America and was its first president from 1929-1935. In 1930 he lobbied Congress and testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee for passage of a tariff protecting independent oil producers from global suppliers. In 1932 he ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. During World War II, he served as a special field assistant for the U.S. Petroleum Administration for War. Franklin was married three times. His first marriage, to Mary Cecile Collyer in 1902, produced two children, Chester and Priscilla, but ended in divorce in 1922. He wed a widow, Virginia B. Douthitt (née Doss), in 1923. She brought her daughter, Louise Douthitt, and a niece, Jewell Doss, to the marriage, and they were adopted by Wirt Franklin. They also adopted another child, Betty Jean, in 1928. Virginia died in 1937. His third wife was Anna Witherspoon, whom he married in 1939. Wirt Franklin died at age 79 in Dallas, Texas, on September 24, 1962.