Joseph B. Thoburn

Joseph Bradfield Thoburn (August 8, 1866 – March 2, 1941) was an educator, civic leader, writer, and historian.

Education In 1893, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in agriculture from Kansas State University, and was largely self-trained in a variety of other fields, such as archaeology and journalism. In 1896, he moved to Oklahoma City. He did scholarship on the history of Oklahoma, joined the History faculty at the University of Oklahoma, served for 38 years, and was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

Early life Thoburn was born in Bellaire, Ohio, the son of Thomas C. and Mary Eleanor (née Crozier) Thoburn. Thomas and Mary were both natives of Pennsylvania, and had lived near Pittsburgh. Thomas was a farmer and a Civil War veteran, who had been captured by the Confederate army, and spent several months in a prison camp before being paroled to return home. Thomas and Mary were married on September 26, 1865, a few days after Thomas was mustered out of the Union Army. The family moved to Marion County, Kansas in 1871, where Joseph grew up and graduated from the Agricultural College in Manhattan in 1893, with a bachelor's degree in Agriculture. In 1894, he married Caroline Conwell, who had been teaching at an academy in the Choctaw Nation, which was then in Indian Territory.

Move to Oklahoma The Thoburns moved to Oklahoma City in 1896.

After his ouster from the OTBA, Thoburn accepted an offer to become managing editor of the Farmer's Magazine, where he could still employ his agricultural knowledge and his publication schools. He soon found that this job was insufficient challenge for his interests, so he left to become involved in the campaign to gain statehood by uniting the interests of both the Indian and Oklahoma Territories.

In February 1907, he became associated with the Jamestown Exposition Company and became responsible for the work needed to present the two territories' exhibits at a major fair that would be held in St. Louis. It was the kind of promotional worked he had always loved to do. The hardest part seemed to be raising funds. An associate of Thoburn's reportedly said about his experience in Muskogee, "..."jarring them loose from their coin is like pulling teeth without cocaine." Thoburn wrote a small book titled Oklahoma: Its Resources and Attractions and the Activities and Achievements of its People to promote the exposition.

He served as Secretary of Oklahoma's Territorial Board of Agriculture for two years

Thoburn met Muriel Hazel Wright in 1914 while he was a board member of the Oklahoma Historical Society. He helped shape her passion for Choctaw and Native American history and they collaborated on the four-volume Oklahoma: A History of the State and its People published in 1929. She also authored three textbooks about the state's history which were used in public schools: The Story of Oklahoma, Our Oklahoma and The Oklahoma History.

In 1917, Thoburn joined the History Department faculty of Oklahoma University, as the Instructor of research and collection.