Please note the below information was compiled, transcribed, and edited by Nathan Vaughan Marks.



Excerpt from the Portrait & Biographical Record of Oklahoma:

"Mr. May was born in Jackson County, IN, June 27, 1835, and is a son of Reuben and Elizabeth [Downing] May. He was reared on a farm and received a good education, at an early day attending the old log schoolhouse of his district. At the age of twenty years he began to teach school, following that work during the winter months and farming in the summer. He was married in Jackson County, IN, September 14, 1854, and lived there until 1881, when he moved to Reno County, Kansas. In that place, he improved a farm of over four hundred acres, which he planted to watermelons. ...He shipped the largest melons ever sent to Emporia, a lot consisting of five hundred and two melons weighing twenty thousand two hundred pounds net.

Mr. May's first marriage was to [Mary Knostman], who was born in Germany, and died in Indiana. Six children were born to them, namely: John B., who died at El Reno, leaving six children; Julia Ann, whose marriage with Bruce Parker resulted in the birth of one child; Alice, who is the wife of A.L. Nelson, of Reno County, Kansas...; James A., who lives at Hutchinson, Kansas; and Roxy, who married Elmer Jay, has one child, and lives west of Guthrie.

His second marriage took place October 9, 1879 in Jackson County, IN, and was with Tabitha M. Cummings, a native of that place, their union resulting in the birth of five children: Myrtle, a graduate of Guthrie High School; Van R., Joseph, Guthrie, and Ruth. He is a democrat in politics
and is an active worker. He served as justice of the peace one term, and never had a decision appealed. For one term he was county commissioner of Jackson County, IN, and succeeded in saving the county $2,000 by his economic administration. He was a delegate to the state convention in 1872, but was not a Greeley man."

Excerpt from "The History of Logan County", entry written by his daughter, Ruth Ellen May Moon:

"Because he had homesteaded in Reno County in 1881, Andrew Lewis May did not make the Run in April 1889. But he came down in Nov. to look the new land over, and moved his family down to Guthrie in January. For a short time he kept a general store in the east half of the Springer Hotel (at the
corner of Oklahoma and Division) and they had living quarters in the back.

There, Feb. 13, 1890, a daughter was born, and promptly named Guthrie. The baby's first visitors were a group if Indians who, while trading in the store, heard the news and made signs that they wanted to see the little white baby. Guthrie, now Mrs. John Bullington of Wichita Falls, Tex., is
believed to be the oldest person living who was born inside the city of Guthrie.

One of the products that is still remembered by those who used it is the horseradish that he raised, ground, bottled, and sold under the label "Red Mule Horseradish". It was said that when May suggested putting the picture of a horse on the label, the printer said that he didn't have a picture of a horse, but he had a mule. So May decided to have the label printed red, and call it "Red Mule".

The Mays sold the homeplace in 1919 and moved to 2017 W. Washington where she [Tabitha] died in 1921, and he in 1923. Both are buried in Summit View Cemetery. The May family were members of the Baptist church and he was a registered Democrat."

The follwing is an excerpt from "Hatten Memories" by Guy Hatten, whose half-brother, Don Moon, would marry Ruth Ellen May, Andrew's youngest child:

"It was Traband's orchard. We were playing ball out by Trabard's southeast of Guthrie when we lost the baseball in the tall grass. Just for a joke I said I would find it. I dropped a match thinking I could tramp it out but the grass was dry. The wind caught the fire and it flared up. I couldn't get it out. I had to quit school to work for Mr. May to pay Traband $50.00 for burning his orchard.

Mr. May had a daughter, Ruth, who was 7 years old when I worked for him. When she grew up she married Don and became my sister-in-law. I worked for Mr. May in the fall of 1905--worked with his son Van mostly, I guess. The finest sweet potatoes were raised on that farm."

The following is a favorite excerpt of mine from the many written memories of Andrew's youngest child, Ruth Ellen May Moon:

"We might start this account of unusual events in my life by reflecting for a moment by what a narrow 'edge' I--and therefore you and all my other descendants--came into existence.

My father was sixty-two years of age and already the grandfather of a dozen children, and my mother lacked just two months of being forty-five when I put in my appearance. Mother had been in hard labor a long time; Dr. A.L. Bless finally told her that she didn't have much chance of saving the child but thought he could save her if she would let him put her to sleep right away and use the forceps. She had refused earlier. She finally agreed if he would wait as
long as he could, and told me once that she never expected to see me alive--but when she woke up, there I was!

Mother's bed was in the larger room in the basement of the old stone house. While Roxie, my sister, was getting dinner the next day in the adjoining kitchen, she was badly frightened. She hurried in and whispered to mother that a strange man had just walked in and was getting himself
a drink of water. Just then he said something, and mother said, "Why, it's your father!" For the only time in all his adult years, he had his full beard cut off that morning, evidently celebrating."