Dr. Archie Earle Carder, a successful physician and surgeon of Coweta, with offices in the First State Bank building, has been a representative of the medical profession here for the past two decades and is the oldest practitioner of Wagoner County. He was born at Marshall, Texas, on the 29th of May, 1864, a son of George W. and Ellen M. (McDaniel) Carder, who were natives of Beverly, Virginia, and of North Carolina respectively. The father made his way to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, in 1849 and became a merchant there. At the outbreak of the Civil war he enlisted for service in the Confederate army and was in the commissary department most of the time but served as a courier on the staff of General Fagen for a short period. When the war was over he returned to Arkadelphia, where he continued to reside throughout the remainder of his life, his death occurring in March, 1904, when he had reached the age of seventy-four years. For sixteen consecutive years he served as mayor of Arkadelphia, giving to the city a most progressive and businesslike administration that resulted in many needed reforms and improvements. For about six years he survived his wife, who departed this life in April, 1898, at the age of fifty-six.
Though a native of Texas, Archie E. Carder was reared and educated in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, for his mother was a resident of the Lone Star state only during the period of the father’s service in the army. His early training in the public schools was supplemented by a course of study in the Baptist high school and he also studied for two years under a private tutor. After putting aside his textbooks he spent three years in the employ of the Pacific Express Company and then entered the internal revenue service under President Cleveland at Little Rock, Arkansas, where he remained for four years. On the expiration of that period he removed to Texarkana, where he held the position of cashier in the office of the Pacific Express Company until 1891. He assisted in building the water and light plant at Arkadelphia and for three years served as superintendent thereof.
It was in June, 1895, that he came to Wagoner, Indian Territory, and embarked in the lumber business. He had always been interested in medicine, however, having begun the study of the science as a boy, and in 1897 he disposed of his lumber interests at Wagoner and entered the Beaumont Hospital Medical College of St. Louis, from which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1901. During vacation periods he practiced at Gibson Station, Wagoner and Coweta, Oklahoma, but in the year of his graduation he located permanently at Coweta, where he has remained continuously throughout the intervening period of two decades. He is today the oldest representative of the profession in Wagoner County and his practice has steadily increased in volume and importance as he has demonstrated his ability to cope with the intricate problems that continually confront the physician in his efforts to restore health and prolong life. As a member of the Wagoner County Medical Society and the Oklahoma State Medical Society he keeps in close touch with the advanced thought and progress of the profession. His holdings here include gas producing property and he has drilled a number of wells.
On the 10th of February, 1892, Dr. Carder was united in marriage to Miss Nettie Rowley, a daughter of John C. and Elizabeth (Shaw) Rowley, both of whom were natives of Ohio. The father, who for a number of years engaged in the milling business at Arkadelphia, Arkansas, came to Wagoner, Oklahoma, in 1896 and eight years later took up his abode in Coweta, here making his home with Dr. Carder until called to his final rest in March, 1905, when seventy-four years of age. Mrs. Rowley died on the 13th of November, 1914, when eighty-two years of age.
Dr. Carder has always given his political allegiance to the Democratic Party and from 1910 until 1919 served as County superintendent of public health on the state board. He was likewise a member of the board of aldermen in the old town of Coweta during the years 1902 and 1903 and during the period of the World war served on the medical exemption board for Wagoner County. Fraternally he is identified with the Masons and the Modern Woodmen of America, while his religious faith is indicated by his membership in the Christian Church. His life has been upright and honorable in every relation and he enjoys in unusual degree the respect and confidence of his professional colleagues and contemporaries.
