JOSEPH A. INNIS. The present efficient incumbent of the office of county surveyor of Woodward County has served consecutively in this position since 1900, and is one of the sterling pioneers and honored and influential citizens of the country where he established his residence at the time when this section was thrown open to white settlement, as a part of the historic Cherokee Strip, or Outlet.

Mr. Innis is the owner of valuable farm property in the county and has been one of the valient and resourceful men who have been foremost in the development of Woodward County along both civic and industrial lines.

On the homestead farm of his parents in Ripley County, Indiana, Joseph A. Innis was born on 8 May 1861, and he there came into the world about the time when his native land was plunged into the vortex of fractercidal war. He is the son of James and Sarah (Runner) Innis, both natives of the Hoosier state, and representatives of sterling pioneering families of that commonwealth. James Innis was born in Ripley County, Indiana, in 1832. At the time of his death in 1901, he was a resident of the Village of May, Woodward County, Oklahoma.

The marriage of James Innis and Miss Sarah Runner was solemnized in 1853. Mrs. Innis died in what is now Beaver County, Oklahoma in 1889, the year that the new territory was thrown open to settlement. She was born in 1833 and was the daughter of David Runner who immigrated from Germany and became a pioneer settler in Indiana.

The eldest of the chidlren of James and Sarah (Runner) Innis is Milford Taylor Innis who was born in 1859. Joseph A. of this sketch was the second child. John Newton was born in 1863; Edward was born in 1867 and died in 1869; James D. was born in 1870; William Isaac in 1873; Robert E. in 1878; and Archibald D. in 1882. All save one of the children are living (in 1916, that is).

Joseph A. Innis was reared under the sturdy discipline of the home farm in Indiana and was educated in the public schools in that locality and period. He came west in 1884 as a young man of 23 years, and established his redsidence in Barber County, Kansas, as a pioneer. In 1886, he came to No Man's Land and became a pioneer in Oklahoma. When the Cherokee Strip was thrown open in 1893, he participated in the rush to the new country, and entered claim to a homestead in what is now Woodward county.

Mr. Innis was married at Butler, Missouri, on 2 August 1881 to Miss Mary Maple (born Bates County, Missouri in 1864), a daughter of John and Harriet (Fuller) Maple. Mary (Maple) Innis died on 23 April 1888 about one month after the birth of her only daughter, soon after the family home had been established in what is now Beaver County, Oklahoma. Three children who survived her were: Harry B., born 1883; Asa J. born 1885; and Mary Prudence, born 11 March 1888.

On 23 June 1904, Mr. Innis married Miss Etta C. Strong (born in Parke County, Indiana, 21 August 1877, daughter of John and Mary (Jones) Strong, natives of Parke County, Indiana). By this marriage there were five children: Joseph T. born 9 March 1905; Eva May born 13 December 1907; Charles T. Bruce born 29 November 1909; Lester Gail born 6 February 1913; and Crystal Elnora born 14 February 1915.