William H. Sloat. Judge Sloat is another of the efficient and thoroughly experienced men who was led to establish a residence in Oklahoma by reason of the development of the oil-producing industry in this section of the Union, and he first came to Indian Territory about 1903. His long connection with the oil business had made his life so largely one of itinerant order that he finally severed his connection with the industry as an active executive, and he has become one of the representative citizens and business men of Kiefer, Creek County, where he has been influential in public affairs and has been liberal and loyal in supporting those undertakings that have fostered social and material progress and prosperity. He served as police judge in Kiefer from the year of the admission of Oklahoma to statehood, in 1907, until May, 1915, when he retired from this office, which he had signally honored by his able administration. He is still serving, however, as a member of the board of education of this thriving little city, and is a director and the vice president of the Exchange State Bank of Kiefer, besides being the owner of a well equipped livery and automobile garage and being interested in oil-producing in Kansas.

Judge Sloat was born in Rock Island County, Illinois, on the 21st of July, 1856, and is a son of James and Isabelle (Lairi) Sloat, the former of whom likewise was a native of Illinois, in which state his parents were pioneer settlers, and the latter of whom was born in the State of New Jersey. Judge Sloat was but two years old at the time of his father’s death, and was the youngest of the four children with whom the devoted and widowed mother soon afterward returned to her former home in New Jersey, where she passed the remainder of her life and where she was summoned to eternal rest in 1903, at the age of seventy-two years. Of the four children the subject of this review is the youngest; Augusta is the wife of John Bush, of Whitehouse, Hunderton County, New Jersey; Josephine is the widow of William Hall and she likewise maintains her home at Whitehouse; and Joseph is a resident of the City of Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey.

Judge Sloat gained his early education in the public schools of the City of Newark, New Jersey, where he was graduated in the high school and where he continued to reside until he had attained to the age of twenty-five years. In New Jersey he entered the employ of the Standard Oil Company, and from a very subordinate position he soon won advancement and was finally made superintendent of tankage department for this great corporation, in the service of which he continued ten years. He then entered the employ of Reeves Brothers, representative oil producers in the field about Alliance, Ohio, and after remaining with this firm for some time, in the capacity of tank man, he went to Warren, Trumbull County, Ohio, and assumed the position of superintendent of construction for the Warren Boiler & Tank Company, with which concern he remained about seventeen years, his specific executive service being in connection with the installation of oil tanks in the various oil fields of the country, so that no home life was possible for him. As a representative of this company he first came to what is now the State of Oklahoma in 1903 and he finally decided to provide for himself a “local habitation and a name,” with the result that he cast in his lot with the present vigorous young commonwealth of-Oklahoma and established his. residence at Kiefer, Creek County. Here he opened, in 1907, a feed store, and after conducting the same one year he engaged in the livery business, with which line of enterprise he has here been successfully identified, besides which he has kept pace with modern progress and has amplified the scope of his operations by establishing a garage and providing excellent automobile service for his patrons. He holds 8,000 shares in the Chanute Refining Company, at Chanute, Kansas, and thus has not severed entirely his association with the important line of industrial enterprise with which he was long identified in an active way.

Judge Sloat has exemplified in thought, word and deed his abiding faith in the principles and policies for which the democratic party has ever stood sponsor in a basic way, and he is one of its influential representatives in Creek County. As previously noted in this context, he served efficiently as judge of the police court of Kiefer from 1907 until his retirement from the office, in May, 1915. The judge is a well known and popular factor in the business and social activities of his home town, and is affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Tribe of Ben Hur, and the Order of Owls.

After years of detachment from domestic privileges, Judge Sloat, in 1900, made provision for an ideal home life, when he wedded Miss Bertha M. Pittman, who presides most graciously over their attractive home. They have no children.