This collection contains family correspondence.

Evander McIver Sweet, Jr. was born in Sexton, Sabine County, Texas on June 3, 1870, the son of a pioneering Methodist Minster. Sweet attended Waxahachie College in Waxahachie, Texas, and Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and graduated in 1894, with an A.B. (classical studies). In 1892 he married Blaxie Sanford and in 1893, while Sweet was a junior, their first of five children was born. After graduation Sweet was the private secretary to United States Senator Horace Chilton (TX) in Washington D.C. from 1895-1897. In 1898 Sweet worked for the War Department, and was transferred in 1901 to the Department of Interior, Bureau of Education. In 1903 Sweet started a new career as a minister for the Indian Mission Conference and was appointed to Muskogee, Tulsa, Lawton, and Ada Districts in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Later he was appointed presiding elder of the Vinita District in the Indian Territory. While in the Indian Territory Sweet and his colleagues were concerned about the sale of liquor on the Indian Reservations. The Five-Civilized Tribes were promised by the Federal Government that liquor would be not be sold to the Indians. However, the United States Supreme Court ruled that sale of liquor to Indians is a police regulation and therefore did not apply to Indians who were citizens in the Indian Territory. In 1904, to prohibit the sale of liquor in the Indian Territory, Sweet organized the Indian Territory Church Federation for Prohibition Statehood, which elected him executive secretary, and was instrumental in writing prohibition into the Oklahoma Constitution.

6 linear feet

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Collection open for research.