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Enoch Needham
From "A History of the State of Oklahoma" by Luther B. Hill
Published by the Lewis Publishing Company in 1909 

ENOCH NEEDHAM, postmaster of Hugo, Choctaw county, and one of the pioneers of this prosperous and promising city, was born at Kenton, Obion county, Tennessee, on the 27th of May, 1876. His father, Enoch A. Needham, was a merchant, born in the same county, where he died in 1880, at the age of thirty-eight. The widow Mary J. (Tucker) Needham, is the daughter of Stephen Tucker*, who died while engaged in farming near Hackett City, Arkansas. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Enoch Needham were as follows: John, who died at Cordell, Georgia, and left a family; Nellie, wife of John J. Thomas, of Talihina, Oklahoma; Nannie, Mrs. W. D. Ayres, residing in Fort Smith, Arkansas; Emma, who is Mrs. W. R.. Burns, of Van Buren, Arkansas; Jessie, who became Mrs. A. M. Chambers, of Poteau, Oklahoma ; Jennie, wife of R. L. Cook, of Hugo; Enoch, of this sketch, and Collin(s), a resident of Van Buren. Enoch Needham, the son, left Tennessee with his mother in 1881 (the year after his father's death) and the family settled in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The boy was then but five years of age, and it was at Fort Smith, Van Buren and Greenwood that he obtained his common school education and his initial experience as a clerk in a mercantile establishment of the first named city. He was still a youth when the home of the family was transferred to Talihina, Indian Territory, where he was employed by Thomas Brothers and by the King-Rider Lumber Company, of Thomasville, Oklahoma. In 1901 he removed to the new station of Hugo, on the Frisco Railroad, in November of that year assuming the management of the S. B. Spring interests in the old town site on the "west side." Mr. Needham remained thus employed until the west and the east sides were consolidated, when he was appointed postmaster, being the second to hold the office. He was appointed nine months after the establishment of the office and soon after the two "sides" were consolidated the office was located on the east side of Broadway, where it remained until June, 1905, when it was removed to its present site in the First National Bank building. His training and experience admirably fit him for his official duties, and his administration has been characterized from the first by prompt executive methods and businesslike management. His first appointment was in 1902 and his second in 1904, when the office became a presidential one, and in January, 1909, he received his third appointment, and he has therefore been responsible for the conduct of the rapidly expanding postal service at Hugo for the past seven years. The postmaster has always been a firm Republican and sees no reason 'why he should change his politics at this or any other time'. He is a thirty-second degree Mason and an earnest member of the fraternity. On June 11, 1902, Mr. Needham was united in marriage with Miss Nettie McMurtrey, daughter of Thomas H. McMurtrey, a native of Missouri, and for some time a farmer and merchant at Hackett City, Arkansas, who died at Hartshorne, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Needham's children are Helen, Herbert and Frank Frantz Needham. 

*This is probably incorrect. She was the daughter of Bailey Tucker and Mariah Moore. (FSN)

contributed by Frank Needham