Rutus Sarlls facts for kids

Rutus Sarlls (1848-1913) was a late 19th Century European settler of South McAlester, Indian Territory and was a prominent attorney, businessman, inventor, and political candidate. He led the path to provide for non Native American property ownership in the Indian Territory (which later became part of the new State of Oklahoma).

Early life

Sarlls was born in Ghent, Carroll County, Kentucky on November 13, 1848 to James Brooks Sarlls and Mary Adeline Evertson.

Professional life

Sarlls received his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1874. In 1878 he and Alexander Kelman were granted a patent for a combined planter, cultivator, and cotton-chopper. In 1883 he and Virgil Holland secured a patent for a permutation lock.

Sarlls practiced law briefly in Gainesville, Texas before settling in South McAlester in 1890, becoming its first attorney. He tried the first case in the new Federal Court in the town.

In 1901 he first ran for Mayor of South McAlester, losing to Fielding Lewis. He ran again in 1903, losing resoundingly to H.H. Keller. In 1907 Sarlls ran for the newly created Oklahoma's 4th congressional district, losing to Charles D. Carter, a Native American; He ran again for Mayor in 1914.

Sarlls operated, with a cousin, the main hotel in South McAlester on Choctaw Ave.

Advocacy for non Native American property ownership rights

Sarlls became a real estate investor in South McAlester, securing the right of non-Native Americans to own land in the town through legal actions involving the Choctaw One of the earliest challenges was when the Choctaw Sheriff of Tobucksy County, citing tribal law, tried to sell a three-story brick building Sarlls erected in town; he secured a Federal injunction preventing the sale on the basis that this taking violated his Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Sarlls was a proponent for of the Atoka Agreement (about which he conferred with Choctaw Chief Green McCurtain and lobbied in Washington, D.C.), and later the Curtis Act, which disbanded communal lands and provided for the ability of non-Native Americans to own property, both of which set the stage for Oklahoma statehood.

Family and Death

Sarlls married Grace Whistler in 1894 in Chicago, Illinois. He later married Alice Abigail Sprague in 1901.

Sarlls died in May 1915 in South McAlester, survived by his spouse Alice.