[Letter from W. Franklin Bourland to Hill Turner]

April 3, 1946
Vanderbilt University Archives

William Franklin Bourland attended Vanderbilt for three years, finished his undergraduate education at Stanford, and then attended Stanford Law School. Returning to Indian Territory, he served on the Chickasaw school board and started a law partnership with George W. Burris, his classmate at Vanderbilt and in Chickasaw schools from age nine onward. They practiced in in tribal courts and represented the Chickasaw Nation in various matters, dissolving their partnership when Congress dissolved the Nation’s judicial system at the time of Oklahoma statehood. Bourland was active in Vanderbilt alumni affairs up to his death in 1947, attending alumni meetings in Oklahoma City and Dallas and maintaining over many years a voluminous correspondence with Hill Turner, the longtime secretary of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association, that includes detailed reminiscences and memorials of Bourland’s Chickasaw classmates.