Coming to Oklahoma in territorial days, Frank Labadie has witnessed the marvelous growth of the state as its vast resources have been exploited, and in the work of development and improvement he has borne his full share through his operations as a farmer and lumberman and also in the oil fields. He was born in Miami County, Kansas, September 3, 1860, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Labadie, the former of whom was of French Canadian descent and spoke the French language fluently. In 1871 the family came to Indian Territory, establishing their home in the northeastern part of Osage County, where the father devoted his attention to farming, conducting his operations on an extensive scale. He was a native of Detroit, Michigan, and in 1851 crossed the plains to California, where he successfully followed mining, later returning to Kansas, in which state he devoted his attention to agricultural pursuits. During the Civil war he engaged in the bakery and confectionery business, in which he also won a large measure of success, and his demise occurred in 1892. He was a man of marked business ability and executive force, in whose vocabulary there was no such word as fail, while the methods which he employed were such as would at all times bear the closest investigation and scrutiny.
His son, Frank Labadie, was educated at the Osage Mission and on starting out in life independently he took up the occupation of farming, devoting his attention to the further cultivation and improvement of the home place of fifteen hundred acres, situated in Osage County. This he continued to operate until 1891 but is now concentrating his attention largely upon the lumber business, dealing in hardwood timber, although he still owns the original homestead, receiving large royalties from oil wells located on the property, while he also owns a twenty-acre truck farm near Big-heart, in Osage County. He has inherited much of his father’s business ability and his interests are most capably conducted.
In 1884 Mr. Labadie was united in marriage to Miss Samantha Ellen Miller, a native of Illinois, and they have become the parents of four children: Lola, the eldest, is now the wife of A. M. Thurman and they have a daughter, Geneva; John P., who is thirty-four years of age, married Mary Margaret Lunney of Ohio, by whom he has three children: John Frank, Helen Vivian and George Sherman; George V. is a graduate of the law department of the State University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, having the distinction of being the only member of the Osage tribe to graduate in law with all of the degrees, and he is now following his profession at Pawhuska, in Osage County. He married Bessie Bruce and they have two children, G. V. and Cora Jean; Paul F., who completes the family, is also married and is now residing in California. All of the sons have attained the thirty-second degree in Masonry and are exemplary representatives of the craft, while the father is identified with the Elks lodge.
For fifty years Mr. Labadie has resided in Oklahoma and personal experience has made him familiar with the hardships and privations of life on the frontier. While living in Kansas in 1867 all goods were freighted in from Kansas City, and he often relates many interesting experiences of the early days, his memory forming a connecting link between the primitive past and the progressive present. The spirit of the father has descended to the son and the vital and forceful personality which energized his nature is kept alive in the subject of this review, who has lived up to worthy standards and carried on his activities along progressive lines.
