Miram K. Shepherd, born in Thayer, Neosho County, Kansas, September 19, 1868, he moved with his family to Winfield, Kansas, in the early 1880s. In 1885, he hired on as a range hand for the Pryor brothers’ cattle outfit. James C. and Tarlton F. Pryor were eadquartered in Anthony, Kansas, and leased Outlet rangeland in partnership with Caldwell, Kansas, cattleman Ben S. Miller.
They pastured herds north of the Salt Fork River along Sand Creek in present-day Grant and Alfalfa County, Oklahoma. James Pryor primarily used the “P Diamond” brand on his stock, and his brother, Tarlton, branded with a “C Slash.” When the Cherokee Outlet opened to settlement in 1893, Shepherd claimed a homestead near the village of Sumner, a few miles east of Perry, Noble County.
His future wife, Elizabeth Poole of Illinois, attempted to claim a town lot in Perry, but was only seventeen years old, thus unable to legally hold the land. Miss Poole then lived with her father near the Sumner area where she later met M. K. Shepherd whom she married in June 1899. They were parents of three children, two of whom survived to adulthood.
During his early years in Oklahoma, Shepherd established one of the largest farming and cattle operations in Noble County. In 1904, he purchased shares of land of the Blalock Colony of Mexico, founded by Oklahoman George E. Blalock and consisting primarily of families from Greer County, Oklahoma. The company was incorporated in Oklahoma Territory, but was registered with the Mexican government for the purpose of purchasing and developing 80,000 (sic 176,515 acres) acres of land in a fertile valley in the central Mexican State of Tamaulipas.
In late 1905, the Shepherds established a rancho near Chamal (City) where they lived for about a year. Because of the instability of the Mexican government during the first several years of the Twentieth Century, the Shepherds could not return to their land in Mexico until the late 1920s, then only for brief visits.
After moving back to Oklahoma in 1906, the Shepherds briefly lived at Pawnee before resuming residency at their place near Sumner. Shepherd added to his ranch with the purchase of land from the Otoe Indians, and also bought property along the railroad between Perry and Pawnee, where he built his own cattle shipping pens. By 1910, the family lived in Norman, Cleveland County, where Shepherd was briefly employed as a livestock inspector but they later returned to live in Noble County.
Shepherd joined the CSCPA during its annual reunion at the 101 Ranch in September 1925, attending several reunions through 1937. He died March 19, 1946, and was buried in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Sumner, Oklahoma
Source: Authors’ interview with Mildred Rodriquez,
granddaughter of M. K. Shepherd, September 13, 2010; Book
S, CSCPA Collection; Perry Journal, March 19, 1946;
Secretary’s Book, CSCPA Collection; U.S. Census, 1910-1930
