People

Walter Davis Humphrey was born in 1876 to parents George Franklin Humphrey and Marenda Anne (Thomas) Humphrey in Richlands, North Carolina.

Humphrey was an attorney by profession and came to Indian Territory Nowata from North Carolina in 1901, reading law in the Vinita office of Wade H. Kornegay. He was admitted to the bar the same year.

Humphrey came to Nowata a year later, occupying an office in the Keys building.

He was elected mayor of Nowata in April 1903 and served four times as the city's leader, resigning his mayorship in 1906 to take part in Oklahoma's Constitutional Convention for District 58, serving on important committees.

It was also during this time that he married Eva Sudderth, the pair marrying on June 20, 1906, the evening that Oklahoma was celebrating the news that it would become the 46th state.

In 1915, he was appointed by Governor Robert L. Williams to the corporation commission. Williams and Humphrey had served together in the constitutional convention. He was then elected to the position in 1916, resigning in 1919.

In 1921, he opened a law practice in Tulsa, but returned to government in 1931, being appointed to the tax commission that was created by incoming Governor William H. Murray. Davis served the state during the Great Depression, returning to his practice after E.W. Marland was elected Governor in 1935.

He wasn't out of government long. Just a month after his term in the Oklahoma Tax Commission was over, Humphrey was named a principal examiner at the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, DC and later a principal attorney.

Humphrey passed away in Tulsa on August 1, 1942 and was buried in Tulsa's Memorial Park Cemetery.