US - Request for Identification

[Richard Anderson]

Interesting; not to infer too much, but being an ROTC professor at Georgetown and any of the Ivies was, presumably, a noteworthy posting (as opposed to, say, Wilberforce or UPR or Random Directional State Normal School).

Well, he was born in Kentucky on 4 March 1891, but entered the Army in Oklahoma on 15 August 1917. 2d Lt ORC commission offered, accepted, and on active duty the same day. So he was 26 and probably already graduated from college, if he attended one.

[daveshoup2MD]

Interesting; not to infer too much, but being an ROTC professor at Georgetown and any of the Ivies was, presumably, a noteworthy posting (as opposed to, say, Wilberforce or UPR or Random Directional State Normal School).

Well, he was born in Kentucky on 4 March 1891, but entered the Army in Oklahoma on 15 August 1917. 2d Lt ORC commission offered, accepted, and on active duty the same day. So he was 26 and probably already graduated from college, if he attended one.

Absent some sort of military background, that seems ... aytypical? Even in 1917...

Wonder if he was prior enlisted? There's got to be an interesting story there, as you suggested earlier.

[Richard Anderson]

Absent some sort of military background, that seems ... aytypical? Even in 1917...

Wonder if he was prior enlisted? There's got to be an interesting story there, as you suggested earlier.

Yes, it is definitely odd there is so little background on him available. I was actually able to find quite a bit on Terrell and MacKelvie of the 90th, even though they are not that well known.

If he was prior enlisted that would appear in his Registry entries, it does for others such as MacKelvie, who was prior Cavalry enlisted.

I suspect he was a teacher and possibly a product of one of the Oklahoma State normal schools, but I haven't been able to track down which one. He was not an Oklahoma A&NM graduate that I can find, which was my first thought. The major problem of course is his damned name - too many random search hits from a certain general shot by his own men,

[daveshoup2MD]

Absent some sort of military background, that seems ... aytypical? Even in 1917...

Wonder if he was prior enlisted? There's got to be an interesting story there, as you suggested earlier.

Yes, it is definitely odd there is so little background on him available. I was actually able to find quite a bit on Terrell and MacKelvie of the 90th, even though they are not that well known.

If he was prior enlisted that would appear in his Registry entries, it does for others such as MacKelvie, who was prior Cavalry enlisted.

I suspect he was a teacher and possibly a product of one of the Oklahoma State normal schools, but I haven't been able to track down which one. He was not an Oklahoma A&NM graduate that I can find, which was my first thought. The major problem of course is his damned name - too many random search hits from a certain general shot by his own men,

LOL, at that one.

FWIW, looks like the first formal ROTC program in Oklahoma was at OSU, although 1916 (the date claimed below) seems early...

https://www.okhistory.org/historycenter ... php?id=320

Jackson would have been too young for anything S-A War related, but perhaps the Mexican border crisis of 1916? Oklahoma NG was federalized, according to this:

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/ ... ntry=OK066

Maybe NG service, pre-federalization...