Oklahoma Family Tree Stories
Drummond Family
Drummond, Ford & Vanessa
Osage County
Family information provided by the donor
Posted February 2019
Drummond ranching in Osage County, Oklahoma, traces its roots to Frederick Drummond (1864–1913) who came to the former Osage Nation, Indian Territory, at age twenty-two in 1886. Drummond emigrated from Scotland in 1882. He lived one year in New York and then headed to Texas to try his hand at ranching. Having little success, he went to St. Louis and found work with a wholesale dry-goods house. One of their customers, John R. Skinner, owner of the Osage Mercantile Company in Pawhuska, hired Drummond as a clerk. Shortly after arriving in the Osage Nation, Drummond met Addie Gentner of Coffeyville, Kansas, and they married in 1890.
The Drummonds were a popular couple in Pawhuska. Fred was one of the best-known traders. In 1903 they moved to Hominy, and he helped organize the Hominy Trading Company. At one time Hominy Trading Company was the nation's largest dealer of Pendleton blankets, a product favored by the Osage. The Drummonds's Hominy home was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 (NR 81000466). All of their sons, Roy Cecil, Frederick Gentner, and Alfred Alexander "Jack," attended college and each helped write ranching history in Osage County. Roy (1892–1981) began ranching in 1913, and Jack (1896–1989) established ranches in Osage and Marshall Counties. By the 1980s the brothers and their descendants managed more than two hundred thousand acres in Oklahoma and southern Kansas.
Frederick Gentner Drummond (1895–1958) graduated from Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) in 1914 and attended Harvard Business School. He returned to assist running Hominy Trading Company after his father's death. In 1927 he married Grace Ford, and they became parents of three daughters and a son. During the Great Depression, he established two Hereford cattle ranches in Osage County. Located south of Hominy and west of Pawhuska, the ranches totaled twenty-five thousand acres at the time of his death in 1958.
Operation of these ranches fell to his son, Frederick Ford Drummond (1931– ), who had earned degrees from Oklahoma State and Stanford Universities. After graduating from Stanford, he joined United Missouri Bank of Kansas City as an inspector and counter of cattle used as loan security. He returned home to manage the family ranch when his father fell ill, and he expanded and improved the ranch over the next forty years. Frederick also served as chairman and principal owner of The Cleveland Bank, in addition to being an independent oil producer in Osage County. He and his wife, Janet, raised four children in Pawhuska: Diana, Ann, Ford, and Jane.
The fourth generation Drummond rancher, F. Ford Drummond (1962– ), graduated from Pawhuska High School and went on to earn a B.A. in economics from Stanford University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Prior to returning to Oklahoma in 1998, he was in private practice in San Francisco, served as legislative assistant to a member of Congress, and was legislative counsel to the American Medical Association in Washington, DC. He lives in Bartlesville with his wife, Vanessa, where they raised their three children: Virginia, Frederick, and Margaret. In addition to running the family ranch, Ford serves on several boards, including the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, Frank Phillips Foundation, and as of 2019 is chairman of the Oklahoma Nature Conservancy. He is also a director of BancFirst Corporation in Oklahoma City and an independent trustee for Allianz Funds in New York City.
This beautiful sculpture of three redbud trees is located just outside the Eleanor and John Kirkpatrick Research Center in the Oklahoma History Center. Each leaf of the Oklahoma Family Tree memorializes an Oklahoma family with the family surname, first name(s), and the town or county where they lived. In addition, a short family history is preserved in the digital family history book at the base of the tree.
Sponsoring a leaf is a special way to recognize your family history and benefit future generations at the same time. To find out how to honor your own family with a leaf visit the Oklahoma Family Tree Project page.
