William Cary Renfrow (Norman, OK)
William Cary Renfrow (March 15, 1845 – January 31, 1922)
Biography
- Name: William Cary Renfrow
- Birth: March 15, 1845 Smithfield, North Carolina
- Death: January 31, 1922 Bentonville, Arkansas
- Territorial Governor of Oklahoma (1893-97)
William Cary Renfrow, briefly President of the First National Bank of Norman, was better known as the fourth Territorial Governor of Oklahoma (1893-1897). Soon after finishing his term in that office, Renfrow exited the banking field and moved away from Norman, spending the rest of his life in pursuit of a number of business investments, particularly in metals mining, that took him elsewhere in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri.
Early Years
Born in Smithville, North Carolina, in 1845, Renfrow was the son of a planter. After serving in the Confederate States Army, he moved to Russellville, Arkansas where he had a mercantile business. There he married Jennie B. York in 1875. Renfrow participated in the land run of 1889, relocating his family to Oklahoma Territory and settling in what became the town of Norman. At first he ran a livery stable but quickly grew wealthy by speculating in the platted land parcels of his new hometown. Renfrow re-invested his real estate profits in shares of the Norman State Bank, of which he became the majority owner by 1891.
Banking in Norman
The Norman State Bank had been organized quickly in late November 1890, on the heels of the collapse of the Ragsdale-McLain bank chain, which had left Norman without a bank. T. M. Richardson was its first President. George T. Reynolds Vice President, and J. M. Curtice, Cashier. Initially the institution operated as a branch of the First National Bank of Oklahoma City (Reynolds was actually President of the latter institution; Richardson would later become its President in 1893). In April 1891 the bank was reorganized as its own business, now with Renfrow as President, Reynolds continuing as Vice President, and C. H. Bessent as the new Cashier. The bank continued in this form until it acquired a national charter, reopening as the First National Bank of Norman (Charter no. 5248) ) on February 1, 1900.
Service as Territorial Governor
As a Southerner and Confederate war veteran, W. C. Renfrow was committed Democrat. He was a member of the Democratic Territorial Convention of 1890 and attended his party’s national convention in Chicago in 1892. Locally, he served as treasurer of the Cleveland County Democratic Club, as well as on the county central committee of the Democratic Party. An enthusiastic supporter of Grover Cleveland, Renfrow successfully advocated for naming his home county after the nation’s President. President Cleveland reciprocated by naming Renfrow Oklahoma’s third Territorial Governor (and only Democrat to ever serve in that office), a post he assumed in May 1893.
Although firm in his political loyalties, Renfrow was not a professional politician by ambition or temperament and had not sought out the honor Cleveland had bestowed upon him. Accounts of his time in office portray him as generally honest by the standards of the time, although he did contend with accusations from Republican newspapers in Oklahoma City and Guthrie that he had favored his own bank with the deposit of public funds. Renfrow was a strong advocate for Oklahoma statehood which, because of questions concerning the unification of Oklahoma and Indian Territories, did not happen until a decade after he left office. Towards that goal, Renfrow assisted in opening up the Cherokee Outlet (1893), as well as the Kickapoo Indian lands (1895), to white settlement. Other measures taken by his Administration included establishing an insane asylum in Norman and the Northwestern Normal School at Alva (now Northwestern Oklahoma State University). Possessing racial attitudes typical of his background, Renfrow vetoed a civil rights bill but nonetheless approved the establishment of the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now Langston University) in 1897.
Of specific relevance to banking during Renfrow's tenure as Governor was passage of a banking code in 1897 (the "Rose Bill"), which Renfrow signed shortly before finishing his term. This legislation banned private banking and tightened up somewhat banks' minimum capital requirements. It also created a territorial banking board, headed by the Governor, and provided for a bank examiner to conduct periodic inspections. Spurred on by the law, bankers themselves came together in June of that year to form the Oklahoma Territory Bankers Association, the forerunner of the Oklahoma Bankers Association.
Subsequent Business Ventures
During his time as Governor, Renfrow remained head of the Norman State Bank but could not have been actively involved in its operation. With the return of the Republicans to power nationally in 1896, Renfrow soon departed his own office by May the next year. Henceforth, Renfrow threw himself into a variety of business interests that occupied him for the rest of his life.
Although Renfrow remained President of his bank through its conversion to a national charter and was listed in newspaper advertisements as being connected with the institution as late as April 1903, it is doubtful that Renfrow ever returned to living in Norman after his four years of service in Guthrie. Instead, he relocated to Joplin, Missouri sometime later in 1897 where he became involved in a number of extractive ventures, either as founder or director, in the lead and zinc mining district overlapping northwestern Oklahoma, southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri. These included the Wyandotte Mining Co. (1897); the Quapaw Mining and Milling Co. (1898); the Renfrow Mining and Royalty Co. (1899); the Renfrow Zinc Oxide Co. (1901); and the American Zinc Lead and Smelting Co. (1902). Sometime in 1901 Renfrow also became anointed as President of the North American Crude Oil Co. of Kansas City. In an operation that was probably legal for the time, Renfrow’s company used prominent newspaper advertisements, invoking his resume as ex-Governor of Oklahoma and Norman bank president, to pitch the sale to small investors of its one-dollar shares priced at 50 cents each (later raised to 60 cents) in blocks of twenty, shares that were “bound to advance in a very short time” once certain oil explorations in California and Texas bore fruit.
Less sketchy, perhaps, was Renfrow’s scheme for manufacturing “coalettes”, coal briquettes pressed out of a combination of coal slack and paraffin, which proved to be a convenient and popular fuel source. In control of the necessary patents, in 1905 Renfrow became a co-investor in the St. Louis Coalette Fuel Co. For the next couple of years this proved to be a lucrative sideline. During these years Renfrow may have been living in Kansas City.
Later Years and Death
Sometime after 1907 Renfrow returned to Oklahoma, moving back to Miami in Ottawa County, part of the old Indian Territory, where mining opportunities had opened up once Oklahoma had achieved statehood. There he continued doing business through the vehicle of the Renfrow Mining and Royalty Co. By 1920 he had added oil properties to his holdings, becoming a significant shareholder in the Mirindo Oil Company which was active in the Mexia (Texas) field. His wife Jennie passed away in 1914. In late January 1922, on his way to visit his ailing brother in Russellville, Arkansas, William Cary Renfrow died suddenly in a Bentonville hotel lobby at the age of 76.
Bank Officer Summary
During his banking career, W. C. Renfrow was involved with the following bank(s):
- First National Bank, Norman, OK (Charter 5248): President 1900-1901
Sources
- Obit in Daily Oklahoman, Feb. 1 1922.
- Journal-Gazette (West Plains, MO), February 28, 1902.
- Kelly, E. H. "The History of Banking in Oklahoma: The Banks of Norman" The Oklahoma Banker (June 1956): 16.
- Kansas City Star, April 13, 1902; June 15, 1906.
- Morgan, James F. "William Cary Renfro: Governor of Oklahoma Territory 1893-1897." In Oklahoma's Governors 1890-1907: The Territorial Years, edited by Leroy H. Fisher, 46-65. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1975.
- Norman Transcript, April 4, 1891; January 16, 1892; May 5, 1893.
- Pineville (MO) Herald, September 18, 1897.
- West Plains Journal (West Plains, MO), October 26, 1905.
- Other Bio Info: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=RE026
- Findagrave.com: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32285361/william-cary-renfrow
- Banks & Bankers Historical Database (1782-1935), https://spmc.org/bank-note-history-project