Home |  PublicationsEncyclopedia |  Creager, Charles Edward

The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

Charles Creager
(image courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives).

CREAGER, CHARLES EDWARD (1873–1964).

U.S. Rep. Charles Edward Creager was born near Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, on April 28, 1873, the son of William Otterbein and Belle Basore Creager. After attending Ohio public schools and Northern Indiana University, Charles Creager worked in journalism on several Ohio newspapers. During the Spanish-American War he served in the Fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He married Elizabeth Fleenor, and they had a son, Baron, and a daughter, Margaret. In 1904 the family moved to Muskogee, Indian Territory (I.T.), where Creager again engaged in the newspaper business. Prior to his appointment as special oil inspector for I.T. in April 1907, he was a clerk in the Indian agent office.

Elected as representative from Oklahoma's Third District to the Sixty-first U.S. Congress from 1909 to 1911, he was one of the first Republicans to represent the new state and the first representative from Muskogee. While in Congress, he served on the Committee on Mines and Mining and introduced the Creager Bill. Had it passed, it would have provided for the final disposition of the Five Tribes' tribal affairs. Unsuccessful in his second bid to serve in Congress, he was employed by the U.S. Indian Service and engaged in the oil business until 1934.

Active in civic affairs, Creager was a life member of Muskogee Masonic Lodge no. 28 and wrote A History of the Cryptic Rite Freemasonry in Oklahoma (1925). He died at the Muskogee Veterans Administration Hospital on January 11, 1964, and was buried in Greenhill Cemetery, Muskogee.

Linda D. Wilson

Learn More

Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1996 (Alexandria, Va.: CQ Staff Directories, 1997).

Muskogee (Oklahoma) Phoenix and Times-Democrat, 12 January 1964.

Citation

The following (as per The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the preferred citation for articles:
Linda D. Wilson, “Creager, Charles Edward,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=CR005.

Published January 15, 2010

Copyright and Terms of Use

No part of this site may be construed as in the public domain.

Copyright to all articles and other content in the online and print versions of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History is held by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS). This includes individual articles (copyright to OHS by author assignment) and corporately (as a complete body of work), including web design, graphics, searching functions, and listing/browsing methods. Copyright to all of these materials is protected under United States and International law.

Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society. Individual users must determine if their use of the Materials falls under United States copyright law's "Fair Use" guidelines and does not infringe on the proprietary rights of the Oklahoma Historical Society as the legal copyright holder of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and part or in whole.