Guy F. Nelson has built up an excellent general practice as one of the able and representative members of the bar of the City of Muskogee, where he has been thus engaged in practice since the spring of 1909, prior to which time he had given efficient service in both Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory as a representative of the legal department of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway.

Mr. Nelson was born at Nevada, the judicial center of Vernon County, Missouri, the 16th of August, 1873, and that he may have entered his present vocation through hereditary predilection is possible when consideration is taken of the fact that his paternal grandfather was one of the able pioneer lawyers of that section of Missouri. Mr. Nelson is a son of I. Founty S. Nelson and Alice (Pottorf) Nelson, the former of whom was born and reared in Missouri and the latter of whom was born in the State of Illinois, though she was reared at Mexico, Missouri, her father having been a native of Pennsylvania and having lived for a number of years in Illinois prior to his removal to Missouri, his lineage tracing back to sterling Swiss-French origin. The parents of Mr. Nelson still reside at Nevada, Missouri, and the father has long been employed as a traveling commercial salesman, Harry F., the younger of the two children, likewise following that vocation and being still a resident of his native town of Nevada. Albert F. Nelson, grandfather of him whose name initiates this article, was born in the historic old town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and as a young man he removed from that state to become a pioneer of Missouri, where he achieved local prominence and success in the practice of law and where he served with marked ability in judicial capacity. Judge Nelson was an influential citizen of his community in Missouri until the close of his long and useful life.

In the public schools of his native city Guy F. Nelson continued his studies until he had completed the curriculum of the high school, and after his graduation he pursued for two years higher academic studies in Christian College, a well ordered institution established likewise at Nevada, the place of his birth. Soon afterward he began the study of law in the office of Horace H. Blanton, who was then engaged in practice at Nevada but who is now one of the prominent members of the bar of Kansas City, Missouri. Mr. Nelson made excellent progress in his absorption and assimilation of the involved science of jurisprudence and in 1892 he was admitted to the bar of his native state. He initiated his professional career at Nevada, and during his first year of practice served also as assistant county attorney of Vernon County. After leaving his home city he practiced one year at Greenfield, Missouri, and one year at Harrison, Arkansas, after which he returned to Nevada, Missouri, where he continued in the successful work of his profession four years. He then assumed a position in the law department of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company, in the interests of which he was in active service in Kansas and Indian Territory until April, 1909, when he resigned his position to engage in the active general practice of his profession in the City of Muskogee, where he now controls a substantial and representative law business and has established a reputation as a resourceful trial lawyer and well fortified counselor.

Mr. Nelson has from the time of attaining to his legal majority been a staunch and effective advocate of the principles of the democratic party and he is still active in his service in behalf of its cause. He is an appreciative and popular member of the Muskogee lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, is identified with the Muskogee County Bar Association and the Oklahoma State Bar Association, and both he and his wife attend the Christian Church.

At Nevada, Missouri, in the year 1898, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Nelson to Miss Maybelle Ayres, daughter of A. J. Ayres, a well-known citizen of that place. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson have two children: Lorraine and Ayres.