The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Thoburn, Joseph Bradfield

THOBURN, Joseph Bradfield, American writer: b. Bellaire, Ohio, 8 Aug. 1866. In 1871 his parents removed to Marion County, Kan., where he was reared on a farm and attended the public schools. He learned the printer's trade and did some newspaper work, after which he entered the Kansas Agricultural College from which he was graduated in 1893. In 1899 he removed to Oklahoma City, where he engaged in newspaper work. He served as secretary of the Oklahoma Territorial Board of Agriculture from December 1902 until July 1905. Since 1907 he has devoted himself largely to the work of research and writing along the lines of local and western history.

From 1913 to 1917 he was connected with the University of Oklahoma as a specialist in research, field-work and collections in local history and anthropology. During this time he did considerable work in the way of excavating prehistoric earth-works, cave dwellines, tumuli, etc., in Oklahoma. In the course of these investigations he secured positive evidence that the natural mounds, so called, which are so abundant in the region immediately west of the lower half of the valley of the Mississippi, the origin of which had long been a subject of dispute among scientists, are of human origin, each tumulus, so far as examined, proving to be the ruin of a timber-framed, dome-shaped, earth-covered human habitation. He has been in the service of the Oklahoma Historical Society since July 1917, being engaged in research, field collections and editorial work. He is the author of a comprehensive history of Oklahoma, published in 1916.