• General Notes

  Kenneth got his degree at Oklahoma A&M. He worked for Ralston Purina at Liberal and Garden City.
  
  WEBSTER CHAPEL
  
  When the Cherokee Strip opened in 1893, Elijah Franklin and Mary Elizabeth (Ridings) Webster staked a claim southwest of the current town of Deer Creek, Oklahoma. In the spring of 1894 they moved their family from Kansas to their new farm on the Oklahoma prairie.
  
  At that time, one of the first Methodist churches in the Cherokee Strip was organized around the Webster family's dining table. They offered their newly constructed two-room house as a meeting place for the community's Sunday morning "services." For two years "Webster Chapel" met weekly in the Websters' home.
  
  In 1896 a new church house was dedicated for use in that little farming community. It was a sod building on a one-acre lot a half-mile east of the Webster homestead. This rustic pioneer structure (total cost $100) was the meeting place for the expanding congregation until a better church house was built.
  
  A new and nicer church building was built a few years thereafter. On Christmas night 1900, the first service was held in a fine new "Webster Chapel" built of lumber and set on the same lot; adjacent to the original sod church.
  
  My dad used to enjoy telling how he attended the "Class Meetings" conducted by his grandfather (E. F. Webster) on those Sunday mornings when the assigned minister was serving other churches on the circuit. He also remembers attending his grandmother's (Mary E. Webster) weekly Sunday School classes in that new church building.
  
  Mary Elizabeth (Ridings) Webster was the granddaughter of Rev. William Ambrose who's wife was a daughter of Rev. Christian Crum. Both of those men, her grandfather and great-grandfather, were early day ministers "back east" who were instrumental in the development of the United Brethren Church in this country. Christian Cairn, an associate of Bishop Otterbein of the early-day German-speaking United Brethren Church, served as a chaplain in George Washington's army and was reportedly with him at Yorktown.
  
  With the completion of a railroad through that part of Oklahoma, on March 14, 1898 (one day before our dad was born) some of the first lots were sold to start a new town and Deer Creek, Oklahoma Territory was born. Shortly after the establishment of Deer Creek, Rev. Charles N. Bottorf ; the pioneer Methodist minister who helped organize Webster Chapel, also started a Methodist Church in the new town. The two churches, the Deer Creek Methodist and Webster Chapel, were operated as "charges" on the Webster Chapel circuit; later called the Deer Creek circuit. For 23 years the two congregations shared a minister.
  
  As travel became easier with the introduction of the automobile, it was decided the two congregations should unite. Thus, in 1921, Webster Chapel was moved into town and attached to that church and Webster Chapel memberships were transferred. That merger created one larger, stronger Deer Creek Methodist Church... with a full-time minister.
  
  About 70 years later, in 1990, the Deer Creek United Methodist Church was abandoned by the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference and closed. We now own the property.
  
  -- Kenneth L. Webster
  

Details of Kenneth's family with Nancy Beth Smart