Wallace Buell Butz, whose activities since coming to Muskogee have brought him in close connection with educational interests and with the abstract, real estate and insurance business, is now at the head of the Butz Agency, handling general insurance, and his clientage is extensive.
A native of Illinois, he was born August 1, 1872, his parents being Jeremiah King and Rebecca (Tillotson) Butz. The father devoted many years to the occupation of farming and is now living retired at the advanced age of eighty-six.
Wallace B. Butz pursued his early education in the public schools of Illinois and afterward attended the Union Christian College of Indiana. Still later he was a student at the University of Illinois, after which he began traveling as representative of newspapers and was thus engaged until 1898.
It was in that year that he came to the Indian Territory, settling at Muskogee, and here took up the profession of teaching, which he followed in the Indian schools among the Choctaw tribe. For five years he occupied the responsible position of superintendent of a Choctaw male academy. In 1904 he became associated with the Muskogee Title & Trust Company, with which he continued for three years, and in 1908 and 1909 he was engaged in the real estate business. He then established the Butz Agency to handle general insurance and through the intervening period has gained many clients, developing his business to extensive proportions, so that substantial results accrue.
On the 16th of July, 1902, Mr. Butz was married to Miss Helen Severs of Muskogee, and they are the parents of four children: Helen Rebecca, Emily Elizabeth, Robert Severs and Mary Florence. The parents are members of Grace Episcopal Church, in which Mr. Butz is serving as a vestryman.
He is also a Mason of high rank, having attained the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite, while with the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine he has crossed the sands of the desert. He is also a past exalted ruler of the local lodge of Elks and was president of the State Elks Association. He is a trustee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, was active in war work and was at one time president of the Sequoyah Club.
He has ever been closely associated with those activities and interests which make for intellectual, cultural and moral advancement in the community and his influence along these lines has been far-reaching and effective. In business circles, too, he is ever most alert and energetic and is today one of the well known insurance men of this part of the state.