President Teddy Roosevelt Signing
Statehood Proclamation

	Artist: Mike Wimmer
	Sponsor: Walt & Peggy Helmerich
	Dedication: 2003
	Size: 6' x 4'
	Type: Oil on Canvas
	4th floor, Outside Senate Chamber Lobby

“Oklahoma is now a state,” declared Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, as he signed the statehood proclamation at 10:16 o’clock on the morning of November 16, 1907. The birth of the new state of Oklahoma was attended with little ceremony. Only a delegation of government clerks from Oklahoma and newspaper men were in the cabinet room as witnesses.

The delegation formed around the cabinet table and fifteen minutes after 10 o’clock, the door leading to the executive private office was thrown open and the President entered, taking a seat at the head of the cabinet table. An eagle quill pen was arranged for the signature and became property of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

The President picked up one of the new blotters which lay on the cabinet table to dry his signature, but he had not completed the operation before an alert person with gray hair, white tie and nervous smile, cried out, “Mr. President, give me the blotter.” The blotter was presented with a smile to Albert Hammer of Enid, Oklahoma, who had made the request, a clerk in the general land office.

The White House telegraph rooms were directly connected both with Guthrie and Oklahoma City and the second the President attached his signature to the proclamation, the information was flashed to the new state.