Todd Downing

Todd Downing, Oklahoma’s first successful writer of detective novels, was born at Atoka, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), in 1902. His paternal grandmother, Millissa Armstrong, part of the 1830 Choctaw migration from Mississippi, was George T. Downing’s second wife. Their son, Samuel, Todd’s father, born in the Choctaw Nation in 1872, served in Troop M of the Rough Riders, and married Maude Miller in 1899.