Biographical Details
Date of Birth: December 22, 1826
Birth Location: Oldham County, KY, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1848
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: February 28, 1915
Death Location: El Reno, OK, USA
Robert Mitchel Overstreet
Life Experience
Robert Mitchel Overstreet was born in Kentucky. He was the younger brother of Gabriel Monroe Overstreet. He was one of fourteen children (seven brothers and seven sisters). When he was seven, his parents moved to Johnson County, Indiana. He worked on his family’s farm nine months out of the year, and was educated in the common schools of Franklin, Indiana, the remaining three months of the year (winter). He went back and forth, on horseback or on foot, to Bloomington, forty miles from his home, “and worked every minute of his vacations to earn his college money” according to his obituary. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from IU in 1848. After that, he went to Princeton Seminary and obtained his degree there in 1851. In addition, he was awarded his IU master’s degree “in course” (an honorary distinction not requiring further work at the university) the same year.
Overstreet’s main occupation was minister in the Presbyterian church. In 1854, he and his family moved to Georgetown, Texas, where they resided for twelve years, including during the Civil War. After the war, they moved to Baxter Springs, Kansas, where he drove a herd of a cattle until he could return to church work.
In 1871, Overstreet was elected to the Kansas State House of Representatives. He was pastor of a church in Emporia, Kansas, and filled in for many new churches in Osage City, Burlington, Florence, Marion, Dodge City, and Council Grove until they could afford to hire a regular pastor. He also helped found the College of Emporia. He told the story, “I presented the matter of college making to one of our small churches in Burrton and took its offering. A little girl came to me and handed me ten cents, saying it was her own money and all she had. She wanted to give it to the college, where she could go when she got big.”
In 1897, Overstreet moved his family again to what his eulogist called “No Man’s Land,” and was stationed by the Presbyterian board in Beaver, in the Indian Territory, serving as stated supply (a traveling minister). He wrote a letter on this “new and interesting field for Home Missions” (now Oklahoma) that was published in The Church at Home and Abroad.
Marriage and Family
In August 1852, he married Martha Maxwell Baugh in Bloomington. During their time in Texas, they had two daughters. They later had another daughter and three sons; the last was born when Overstreet was fifty-two.
After Overstreet’s wife’s death in 1905, he wrote a series of articles for The Emporia Gazette, on “The Old Texas and the New,” about their years living in Texas. He was also a regular contributor to Sturm’s Oklahoma Magazine. He died in 1915 at age eighty-eight. Besides his name and dates of birth and death, Overstreet’s gravestone read simply, “FATHER.”
Interesting Anecdote
Overstreet’s eulogist wrote, “In his experience of rough frontier life, he always stood for the best things and truest in morals and religion, for temperance, for education, for good citizenship, and with all his powers promoted them."
References
- Wylie
- Findagrave.com
- The Emporia Gazette 02/27/1915