Charles Page

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)
For other persons named Charles Page, see Charles Page (disambiguation).

Charles Page (June 2, 1860-1926) was an important philanthropist in the early history of Oklahoma and Tulsa. His enduring act was the creation of the Sand Springs Home for orphans and widows and otherwise unwanted and unloved children.

Page was born in Arnott, Wisconsin, outside of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. His father died when he was eleven years old. Thereafter, he took care of his mother, Mary, and younger brother. He married twice, his first wife died. He met his second wife, Lucile Rayburn, when he moved to Tulsa. They never had children, but they had one adoptive daughter, Mary Ann.

He worked around the country and in Canada in mining, real estate and oil drilling. He eventually settled in Tulsa and became wealthy buying and selling leases to oil companies.

In 1908, he purchased a quarter section of land to the west of Tulsa. On this land, he eventually founded Sand Springs. He also used part of the land for the Sand Springs Home and helped establish various schools in West Tulsa, including Berryhill. He was also very generous with various charities in Tulsa including the Salvation Army, although he was not known to be affiliated with any particular church.

Contents

[edit] Sand Springs Home and Widow's Colony

The Sand Springs Home is actually two different things. It is the name of the organization Charles Page founded to care for orphans and widows after he died. It is also the name of the building he built to house his orphans. The main dormitory was built in 1918. In it the children had matrons assigned to them to watch after them. In the dinning area each family of children had their own table so they could eat together. When Charles Page was still alive he often preferred to eat with his kids at there tables, rather than sit at the main table with the rest of the adults. In recent years the few children who still live at the home were moved into cottages that surround the old home dormitory, which was demolished in 2006 to make way for a new recreation center for the home.

In 1912 Page began the construction of a widows colony for widowed and divorced women with children to support. The colony consisted of forty, three room shotgun houses. As years passed and the old colony homes began to fall into disrepair they were replaced with new two bedroom brick cottages. The colony grounds came complete with a chapel and a nursery. Each house was complete with free water, free gas, free electricity, free rent, and a quart of milk per child per day. In order for a women and her family to live in the colony she had to have at least one child still in school, including college, her children had to maintain a "C" average in school and they had to observe all the colony rules of behavior.

[edit] Industry

For years Sand Springs was called the Industrial Capital of the South West. This is because Charles Page continually campaigned to attract companies to move to Sand Springs to provide jobs for his "kids". Of the many industries of early day Sand Springs some examples include: Sheffield Steel, Kerr Glass Company, Southwestern porcelain, and Commander Mills cotton mill.

[edit] Death and Afterward

Charles Page died in 1926, but is still remembered in his community. The main street of Sand Springs is named "Charles Page Boulevard". In the towns center there is a statue of him next to a library that is also named for him. The Sand Springs Home continues to help families and children today. Sand Springs' high school is named Charles Page High School in his honor. There is also a park named for him in Sand Springs.

[edit] References

Clark, Opal. A Fool's Enterprise. Dexter Publishing Company: Sand Springs Ok, 1992.

[edit] External links