Ira Nathan Terrill (abt. 1853 - 1921)

Born about 17 Apr 1853 in Clark County, Illinois, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Elizabeth Jane (Parsons) Terrill — married 22 Mar 1873 in Decatur, Macon County, Illinois, United States

Descendants

Died 14 Oct 1921 at about age 68 in Wichita Falls, Wichita, Texas, United States

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Biography

Ira was born in 1853. He was the son of Ira Terrill and Martha Maria Bingham. He passed away in 1921.

Terrill elected to be one of the 26 members of the first Oklahoma territorial legislature. He ran as a Populist. He was described as outspoken, impetuous and intensely temperamental, once drawing a gun during a legislative session, because he'd been ignored by the speaker during the session. He was best known for sponsoring a law providing for capital punishment for first degree murder, treason, etc. Ironically, just days after the bill passed, he shot a man in a gunfight over a land claim and was convicted of 2nd degree murder and sentenced under that very law.

His plea of self-defense was unheeded on September 26, 1892, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor, under the prison bill he’d supported. Because Oklahoma didn't have a penitentiary at the time, Terrill was escorted to Kansas Penitentiary to work in the coal mines, but secured temporary freedom on a technicality.

He was free for more than a year until he was tried again. The jury there was more lenient; they reduced the life sentence to 12 years. The former legislator developed into a good “jailhouse lawyer,” and initiated a never-ending fight for freedom. He also became a constant troublemaker to prison officials and refused to work, calling prison labor “slavery.”

He became a favorite subject for newspaper stories. In 1901 a Wichita newspaper reported he’d been placed in solitary confinement on bread and water and looked like a skeleton. Finally, in 1905, prison authorities managed to get the controversial and incorrigible Terrill off their hands by having him declared mentally ill. The jubilant prison officials lost no time in sending him back to Oklahoma and the Noble County jail. After losing many court battles, in and over 15 years after he killed Embrey at the Guthrie land office—he was paroled by Gov. Frank Frantz.

The governor must not have been impressed by reports that, if released, the fanatical Terrill “would kill all the people of Oklahoma and half of Kansas.” The man who’d suffered the ironic justice of a prison law he’d helped pass now had a hand in its repeal. He obtained pictures of Kansas prison life, converted them into “magic lantern” slides, and traveled through Oklahoma and Texas lecturing on the horrible conditions he’d encountered in the Kansas penitentiary. His insistent criticism was instrumental in inducing Kate Barnard, commissioner of charities and corrections for the state of Oklahoma, to go to Kansas to inspect conditions at the penitentiary. Her findings corroborated much of Terrill’s shocking account of prison labor in the coal mines.

Reinforced by public indignation. Gov. Charles N. Haskell sent guards to Kansas to bring all Oklahoma prisoners back to Oklahoma. The 1909 legislature had provided funds to build a new penitentiary at McAlester, and the prisoners themselves now furnished the labor to build it.

Terrill also authored several plays and poems, many written while in prison. He later called himself a “geologist” and was well known as an oil operator in Oklahoma and Texas. Before his death in 1921 at the age of 69, he was in the midst of organizing a corporation to exploit his own invention—a rainmaking machine.

" Ira N. Terrill, lawmaker, lawbreaker, prison reformer, poet, “geologist,” was one of the busiest and most controversial of Oklahoma’s minor historical figures. And no doubt he holds the unenviable record of being the only legislator ever to be convicted and serve a prison sentence under provisions of two separate laws he worked so hard to place on the statute books. "^[1]

He died on Oct 14, 1921.

Obit: Wichita Falls, TX Oct 16, 1921 (on findagrave) right sign cut off) Ira N. Terrill, geologist, surveyor, free lance writer, poet and inventor was found dead in his bed Friday morning at his home here. The coroner returned a verdict of death from Heart failure. Terrill, who was born in Illinois in 1853, had been in Wichita Falls for two years, being interest in certain phases of the oil .... He had lately gained ... little attention locally through experiments with a rain-making machine, which he called the ...clorain" He had registered the machine with the United States patent office, and claimed to ...produced moisture in a closed... which had been artificially ... with his small working mo....

His body was taken to ... home in Columbus, Kan., by his son CC Terrill of this city, ...he will be buried by the side of his wife, who died here a year (ago)." See also The Perkins Journal, Thursday, September 6, 2001, page 14, “The History Page,” and Thursday, September 13, 2001, page 8, “The History Page.” Originals here: http://pkj.stparchive.com/Archive/PKJ/PKJ09062001P14.php http://pkj.stparchive.com/Archive/PKJ/PKJ09132001P08.php IRA N. TERRILL, LAWMAKER- LAWBREAKER By Orben Casey I

This profile is a collaborative work-in-progress. Can you contribute information or sources?

Sources

1. ↑ Above is abstract of "Convicted Undeer His Own Law. When Kansas Was Young. pp265-270

See also:

• "United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXH1-1B4 : 30 December 2015), Ira N Terrill in entry for Ira C Terrill, 1860.