Napoleon B. Ainsworth

(Leaders and Leading Men of the Indian Territory, By H. F. O’Beirne, 1891)

Napoleon B. Ainsworth (Choctaw)

(Nephew of W. H. Ainsworth, Caddo merchant)

            This leading citizen was born in 1856 at Skullyville in the Choctaw Nation, attended neighborhood school until he was fifteen years of age, when he entered Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, and graduated after four years, in June, 1880, securing in the same year the orator’s medal. He went from there to the University of Virginia, and attended the law school for six months, and returning home that season, was appointed draftsman for the Council by Governor Jack McCurtain. At the termination of the council he was appointed National weigher at McAlester, which office he resigned after three years in order to devote more time to his law practice. On the death of National Auditor La Flore, N. B. Ainsworth was appointed to fill his unexpired term. In 1887 he was elected to fill the same office, which he held for two years.

            Mr. Ainsworth is a member of the bar in the United States Courts of the Indian Territory. He has gained a wide reputation both at home and abroad as an able and fluent advocate. N. B. Ainsworth, with one or two exceptions, (and one of these is his own brother) is considered the most thoroughly educated man in the Choctaw Nation, his knowledge being varied and very thorough in many important branches of learning. Mr. Ainsworth married Miss Emily K. Thompson in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1883, the issue of this marriage being three children:   Ben, Pushmataha, Helena, and Agnes. He is owner of a large farm of four hundred acres, and owns a third interest in the 7X ranch with Green and Edmond McCurtain, also half interest in the X- ranch with John Simpson, also an interest in the mines operated by the Osage Mining Company. The subject of this sketch is a third son of J. G. Ainsworth, deceased, a man highly respected during his life time, who, however, was not a politician, devoting himself to farming and stock raising at his home in Skullyville, Choctaw Nation.