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TOGETHER IN HEART:
SOUTHERN FRONTIER FAMILIES
IN SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA TERRITORY

presented by

Claire Fuller Martin

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TOGETHER IN HEART:
SOUTHERN FRONTIER FAMILIES
IN SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA TERRITORY

BY
Claire Fuller Martin

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1986

Copyright by
CLAIRE FULLER MARTIN
1986

ABSTRACT

TOGETHER IN HEART: SOUTHERN FRONTIER FAMILIES
IN SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA TERRITORY

BY

Claire Fuller Martin

This thesis examines the lifeways of the white
southerners who settled Old Greer and Washita Counties in
southwestern Oklahoma Territory from the mid-18803 until the
early 19003. Written reminiscences and oral history
interviews collected by the WPA and by the author are used
to explore the perceptions, values and ambitions that
brought the southern settlers to southwestern Oklahoma
Territory and the systems of community, kinship and family
that made their survival and success on the frontier
possible. The goals and expectations of the settlers were
limited by poverty, but flexibility of kinship and
friendship networks, and of methods of providing for their

families, was integral to their survival and success.

DEDICATED TO GLADYS HERRIN BOONE

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Terrance J. Martin, Timothy J. Martin, Gladys Herrin
Boone, Margie Boone Fuller, and Paul R. Fuller contributed
patience, insight and skill toward the production of this
thesis.

I am particularly grateful to the informants (listed in
Appendix A) and their families. Mary Katherine Sappington
arranged and participated in two of the interviews. Her aid
and insight have been especially helpful.

Daryl Morrison and Jack Haley, of the Western History
Collections at the University of Oklahoma contributed
valuable advice and discussions. Ms. Morrison and her staff
spent many hours making the Indian-Pioneer Papers available
to me. Also in Oklahoma, Dean Cecil R. Chesser of Western
Oklahoma State College in Altus and Dee Ann Ray of the
Western Plains Library System in Clinton were helpful in
recommending sources and providing their knowledgeable
perspectives on southwestern Oklahoma.

The Illinois State Museum contributed the use of its
word processors and the encouragement and support of its
staff. Craig Colten offered excellent criticism and William

Webb drafted the map presented as Figure 1.

iii

My research in Oklahoma was aided by a grant from
Michigan State University. I benefited from many
discussions with Berle Reiter and Charles E. Cleland of
Michigan State University and Donald Heldman of the Mackinac
Island State Park Commission. Drs. Peter Levine and David
Bailey stepped in at the eleventh hour to act as a thesis
committee.

Dr. Richard White, now at the University of Utah, was my
major adviser and committee chairman throughout the research
and preparation of this thesis.

Any errors are my own.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 1. 'Coming Through' . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 2. Neighbors and Kin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 3. The Nuclear Family . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Division of labor within the family . 36
Roles within the family . . . . . . . nu
Families and the land . . . . . . . . 50
Siblings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter 4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Appendix A. List of Informants . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Appendix B. Information on Regional Origins and
Extended Families, Based on the U. S.

Population Census . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Appendix C. Information on Migration, Based on the
Indian-Pioneer Papers Interviews . . . . . 8O

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

LIST OF TABLES

Places of Birth of Heads of Households and
Their Spouses: Altus Township, Greer County,
Oklahoma Territory, 1900 . . . . . . . . . . 72

Places of Birth of Heads of Households and
Their Spouses: Elk Township, Washita County,
Oklahoma Territory, 1900 . . . . . . . . . . 74

Regional Origins of Heads of Households and
Their Spouses: Altus Township, Greer County

and Elk Township, Washita County, Oklahoma
Territory, 1900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Households with One or More Extended Kin:
Altus Township, Greer County and Elk Township,
Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, 1900 . . 77

Relationships of Extended Kin to Heads of
Households: Altus Township, Greer County and
Elk Township, Washita County, Oklahoma
Territory, 1900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

States from Which Southern Settlers Migrated
to Oklahoma Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Culture Regions in Texas from Which Settlers
Departed for Oklahoma Territory . . . . . . . 81

Motives for Migrating to Oklahoma Terrtory . 62

Indian-Pioneer Papers Informants Who Mention
the Presence of Kin in Their Communities . . 63

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Map of Oklahoma showing the study area .

vii

PREFACE

This is not a history about my family, but it is a
history from my family. For as long as I can remember my
grandmother has told me about her family and her childhood
on the Oklahoma frontier. When I began to read works on the
history of the family and of the frontier, I found that they
did not always sound like my grandmother's family on its
frontier. This study originates in an attempt to understand
these discrepancies.

There are a number of disadvantages to studying anything
related to one's own experience or family. I have tried to
minimize these by not directly using evidence obtained from
my own family members. Twice I have used an example or
quotation from a distant cousin. I did, however, interview
my grandmother, her eldest brother, and three of her first
cousins; their recollections and insights have been
valuable. I hepe by not making direct reference to them I
have avoided the obvious pitfall of self-aggrandizement so
common to family histories and genealogies.

The greatest disadvantage of studying a group of people
whom one knows, or thinks one knows, is that personal

experience or knowledge can lead one astray. Since I know a

great deal now about my own pioneer family, it has been a
constant struggle not to assume that they were either
typical or atypical of the families in their region. I
believe that I have succeeded in not converting my family's
peccadillos into social norms.

The advantage to my family's involvement in this study
is that I was able to personally interview about twenty
people who had been children or young adults on the Oklahoma
frontier. I am indebted my grandparents, their good

reputation and many friends for several of these interviews.

INTRODUCTION

This study examines the lifeways and values of the
southerners who settled southwestern Oklahoma Territory from
the mid-18803 until a few years following statehood in 1907.
Most of these peeple were the descendents of English,
Scotch, and Scotch-Irish immigrants who had come to the
South, in many cases, before the Revolution. They were not
the descendents of the great landowners of the ante-bellum
South, but of the white yeomen and tenant farmers who had
owned, at most, only a few slaves; at worst, not even their
own land. Since before the Civil War they had roamed
Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri,
Arkansas, Texas, and Indian Territory. For some a fourteen-
by-fourteen foot dugout in Oklahoma Territory was only one
more camp in a lifetime of wandering. For others it was,
but for the rattlesnakes and dust storms, the "paradise of
the world."1

This study is confined to these white southerners who
settled a small part of the American frontier. Many of
their attitudes, customs, expectations and limitations will
also apply to other regional and ethnic groups, other times,
and other frontiers; some will not. It is the purpose of
this study to present a single ethnic group in one time and

3

place with as few variables as possible, so that its customs
and values can be easily and accurately compared
with those of other people in other times and places.

This study is confined geographically to the settlers of
Old Greer and Washita Counties (Figure 1). Originally
influenced by the author's access to informants and long-
standing interest in this area, Greer and Washita Counties
were ultimately selected because they are in the heart of
the region of Oklahoma Territory that was dominated by
southern homesteaders.

It is important to distinguish between Oklahoma
Territory and Indian Territory. When Oklahoma became a
state in 1907, two territories were combined. Indian
Territory formed the eastern and south-central portions of
the new state. This was the land to which the Five
Civilized Tribes of the Southeast had been removed. Much of
this land was actually occupied by whites who were agents,
missionaries, outlaws, traders, "squaw men", or the tenants
of Indians and "squaw men". So many of these tenants were
from the South that part of Old Indian Territory is still
referred to as "Little Dixie". Oklahoma Territory formed
the western and north-central portions of the new state.
With the exceptions of the Osage reservation and the smaller
reservations of various eastern and midwestern tribes,
Oklahoma Territory was comprised of land that had been

opened for homesteading from 1889 to 1906 and of Greer

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County, which had belonged to Texas until 1896.2 Many of
the settlers of Oklahoma Territory also came from the South.

Michael Frank Doran, using the Oklahoma Historical
Society's "Indian-Pioneer History", estimates that from
eighty to one hundred percent of the settlers of the regions
south of the Cimarron River were southerners (southerners
accounted for forty-one percent of the native-born
population of the U. S. in 1900).3 From J. D. Tarver's
analysis and maps of the religious and political patterns of
Oklahoma, it can be inferred that the Canadian River would
make a more conservative and reliable northern boundary of
southern dominance.“ The counties studied here are in the
extreme southwestern corner of Old Oklahoma Territory, well
within the regions Doran and Tarver suggest southerners
dominated.

Cattlemen and farmers had begun settling Greer County,
Texas by the 18803, but a U. S. Supreme Court decision in
1896 found that it was in fact a part of Oklahoma Territory.
"Old Greer County" encompassed what are now Jackson, Harmon,
and Greer Counties and a part of Beckham County. Ninety-one
percent of the native-born heads of households and their
spouses listed in the 1900 U. S. Census schedules from Altus
Township, Greer County, were born in southern states
(Appendix B, Tables 1 and 3).

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Lands, including County H, or

Washita County, were opened by run on April 9, 1892. The

run provided a spectacle similar to the opening of the
Unassigned Lands in 1089, but the result was less than
spectacular. By the end of June, four-fifths of the country
was still unclaimed. Oklahoma Territory was in the midst of
an eleven-year drought, and many people believed the western
part 01 the territory was unfit for agriculture. There were
no railroads to bring settlers in or to ship produce out.
Furthermore, the opening was announced one week before the
run so that it was restricted to those who were already
waiting on the borders.5 More-than eighty-two percent of
the native-born heads of households and their spouses listed
in the 1900 0. S. Census schedules from Elk Township,
Washita County, were born in southern states (Appendix B,
Tables 2 and 3).

Nearly eighty per cent of the southern settlers came to
Oklahoma Territory from either Texas or Indian Territory.
Thirty per cent of a fifteen per cent sample of the Indian-

Pioneer Papers informants from Greer and Washita Counties

 

were born in Texas; sixty-four per cent specifically
mentioned that they came to Oklahoma from Texas. Less than
five per cent were born in Indian Territory, but fifteen per
cent lived there immediately prior to coming to southwestern
Oklahoma. Most of these came from the Chickasaw Nation
(Appendix C, Table 6). Of those who came from Texas, most
came from counties that fall within the region dominated by

an upper southern culture (Appendix C, Table 7)6.

It should be remembered that these white southerners
could be found throughout both territories of Oklahoma and
that they were not the only regional or ethnic group even
where they were dominant. Northerners, especially people
from Kansas and the Midwest, dominated the northern part of
Oklahoma Territory and could be found individually and in
groups throughout the southwestern part of the territory.
Several European groups, most notably the Lutheran and
Mennonite Germans from Russia and the Czechs, or Bohemians,
contributed significantly to the settlement and development
of agriculture in southwestern Oklahoma. Almost no blacks
lived in this part of Oklahoma Territory. In 1900 there
were nine black people in Greer County and seven in Washita
County.7 Most white settlers had no individual contact with
Indians other than to be terrified of some lone Native
American asking directions or begging a meal: "The Indians
never really bothered us except to scare our women folks."8

This study is essentially an oral history; it is based
largely on the reminiscences of pioneers of southwestern
Oklahoma Territory. Oral history cannot provide a full
historical account of a region, but how people thought and
how they felt can best be understood from their own words.
There are, however, some dangers inherent in the use of this
kind of source. The most obvious problem is that informants
will describe what should have been rather than what was.

Fortunately, much of the information sought for this study

was best found, not in answers to direct questions, but in
the context of stories that were actually about other
subjects. This indirect approach allows the interviewer,
rather than the informant, to make interpretations. Another
problem is that the interviewer cannot always be certain
that the informant has not strayed into some other time
frame. Elderly informants interviewed in the 19803 tended
to blend the hard times of their childhood with the hard
times of their adulthood. The periods of frontier
settlement, statehood, both world wars, the 19208 and the
Dust Bowl were sometimes indistinguishable. I have tried to
avoid using evidence or examples where there is any
indication that time may have been blurred.

A third problem with using reminiscences is that a long
selection process, over which the researcher has no control,
has already occurred. Most of the informants were people
who came to Oklahoma Territory and stayed through the
settlement period and for many years afterward. They were
individuals who may have been more interested in telling
their life stories than the average person, who were not
ashamed of their families or backgrounds for any reason and,
in the case of written reminiscences, who were more literate
than average. Still, we cannot ignore the testimony of
those who were actually there, and can tell us what official
records and documents cannot: how they perceived themselves

and the world around them. Quotations from interviews and

lO

reminiscences are used frequently throughout this study.
They should be regarded as examples, not as the sole
evidence, of the points they illustrate. It is hoped that
they will also provide a sense of the dialect of the
informants.

The U. S. Census of Agriculture schedules for 1900,
which would have provided some documentary reinforcement of
the sources used here, were destroyed by congressional
authorization.

This study will explore the perceptions, values and
ambitions that brought the southern settlers to southwestern
Oklahoma Territory and the systems of community, kinship and
family that made their survival and success on the frontier

possible.

CHAPTER 1

'COMING THROUGH'

"I came through in a covered wagon, and I brought
my family through with me."

James Allen Bannister
Indian-Pioneer Papers
Volume 5, page 137

The Bowie family "landed" in Washita County, Oklahoma
Territory in the spring of 1898. The circumstances of their
decision to move to Oklahoma Territory and their subsequent
arrival were in many ways typical:

We were in Montague County, Texas, a little place
called Nocona. And we were farmers and the land
was just "blackjack land", they called it--rolling
hills, rolling, sandy hills. My daddy was eking

out an existence there growing cotton and raising

a few calves and hogs. I think he had eighty acres.
Grandpa told him to sell the land for what he could
get and come up here to file on good land up here.
He talked to Mother about it. Mother said, "Well,
I've heard a lot about that Cheyenne country, . . .
there's nothing up there but Indians and rattlesnakes
and blue northers and prairie fires." She said, "I
just don't want to go up there." Dad said, "Well,
if you don't want to go, we won't go. I don't know
what's up there. Dad thinks it's a great country,
the Cheyenne country." So he went ahead and made
another crop and my grandfather wrote him again in
the fall. . . . Dad said to Mother, he said, "He
talked like they're givin' it away. I believe I'll
get in the wagon and go up there and see about it."
And do you know he was gone six weeks or two months.
I began to think he never would come home While he
was there he filed on our old home place.9

11

12

The grandfather, Johnson Isaiah Bowie, was born in South
Carolina but had spent many years in Georgia and Texas. His
son Milton E. Bowie, was born in Georgia and had grown up
and married in Texas. Johnson had taught school in Collins
County, Texas and when he filed on a quarter section near
Port, Washita County in 189“, he began teaching school in a
dugout.' In 1898 he finally persuaded his son Milton to buy
a relinquishment in the neighborhood. Whether the Bowies
had literally lost their farm in Texas or were only on the
verge of losing it is unclear, Marvin Bowie states that they
lost their farm but Ross Bowie suggests they were able to
sell it. In either case, it is clear that they felt they
were no longer able to farm successfully in Texas when they
decided to emigrate to Oklahoma.10

Milton Bowie brought with him his wife Ada Gibson Bowie,
a native of Texas, and five children: Ross, Marvin, Joe,
Mary, and Sam. Ross, the eldest, was nine years old and
Marvin six. Two more sons, Jim and Bert, were born in
Washita County. The Rowies brought with them from Texas
enough "boxes and boards" to build a one room sixteen-by-
sixteen foot house. Four mules pulled a single wagon with
the lumber and household goods. Milton rode one of the
mules and two neighbors who came along on horseback helped
drive the two cows. Milton brought a cotton planter with
him and bought a cultivator and other equipment when he

arrived.11

13

It is not clear exactly why the two neighbors made the
trip, but it is possible that they took the opportunity to
look over the territory for themselves. Milton Bowie did
attract another neighbor to the area:

Dad had wanted him to come with him when he came to
file. He said, "No, I just can't get away. I'll
take your word for it. If you think it's alright
pick me out a place and I'll come up and get it."12

Like the Bowies, the settlers of southwestern Oklahoma
Territory most often gave the intertwining reasons of

poverty and the desire to own land, or more and better land,

13

as the reasons for leaving their former homes. They hoped

to "do better" in Oklahoma:

Mr. Atwood came to Greer County with 80 cents, three
children, two cows and a team of gray mules.

We were all very poor, and I think that was the
deciding factor in our coming to Oklahoma. It was
a land of opportunity.

. . . [W]e were just renters and wanted to come up
here and get a free homestead.

My wife and I lived in Wise County, Texas, and
rented land. We realized that we were barely making
a living and saw no possibility of accumulating
anything.

. . . I had bought a piece of land, but found it
difficult to make much headway towards final owner-
ship. . . , the proceeds of a crop were so small
that not much could be applied to the principal of
a loan.

I thought I could do better up here; this was a

new country and there was a better outlook for the
future.

These motives are difficult to measure. The Indian-

Pioneer Papers informants were not asked a standard set of

 

1“

questions and only a few happened to mention their reasons
for coming to southwestern Oklahoma Territory. Nearly half
(forty-nine percent) of these gave motives such as
opportunity for the future and the availability of free
land. Almost as many (forty-three per cent) gave kinship as
a motive (Appendix C, Table 8). This sample is small and
arbitrary, but it provides a general sense of the two most
significant motives for immigration to southwestern Oklahoma
Territory: opportunity, specifically in the form of free
land, and kinship. The latter will be discussed in Chapter
2.

Some intriguing questions arise when the actual behavior
of those seeking opportunity and free land is examined.
Most of the settlers were interested in owning their own
land, but many never did and some passed up opportunities of
ownership in favor of renting. Some of the tenant farmers
seemed to be satisfied with renting as long as they had good
land and a good landlord:

. . . [W]e were just renters and wanted to come up

here and get a free homestead. . . . We located

near Commanche, where my father took up an Indian

lease . . . . [WJhen I was older I came out to the

west [part of the state] to visit my brother and

while here I rented a farm.
Why did this father go to Indian Territory and lease land if
his goal was to own his own land? Some people did not get

to Oklahoma Territory before the best land was taken and

others, once they proved up claims, mortgaged their land

15

and then lost it through foreclosure. If they arrived in
the first few years after the country was opened, they could
buy a relinquishment for about twenty-five dollars. Once
homesteads were proved up, late comers had to pay three
thousand dollars or more to purchase a quarter section.
Carrie Bradshaw declared, "All during my childhood there was
always talk of going to Greer County for free land. . . .",
yet her family continued to wander around Texas and Indian
Territory, renting for a year or two and moving on. Her
father was at first reluctant because of the uncertainty of
Greer County belonging to Texas. After the U. S. Supreme
Court settled the case in 1896, he returned a second time to
Greer County but could find no land with the good water his
wife demanded, so he rented a farm in Indian Territory. He
had been to Greer County at least once before; he must have
known the land was dry.16

Albert Bradley "thought that he could get more land up
here. . . ." The Bradleys went to Rocky, Washita County
because Mrs. Bradley's brother was there. They rented a
hundred and sixty acres. 17

Mrs. R. L. Hamilton's parents went to Oklahoma Territory
because they "wanted more land and better land." They
rented a half section near Altus. Mrs. Hamilton and her
husband "rented the same farm for twenty-seven years."18 W.
T. Kerbo raised one crop on his claim. It "did not amount

to much" so he rented a farm for four years before buying

16

another.19 In 1937 Claude E. Hayes told a WPA interviewer,
"I farmed around that one place for over twenty five years
but I have never owned a farm yet."20

Was this a complaint, an admission of personal failure,
or merely a statement of his legal relationship with the
land? People passed up free homesteads to lease land in
Indian Territory, they relinquished claims because of
homesickness or a single crop failure. Owning one's own
land was a frequently stated goal of the southerners who
went to southwestern Oklahoma Territory, but it does not
seem to have been the driving force in their lives. It did
not override the logical desire to obtain the best land
available so as to be a successful farmer and provider and
it frequently did not override the desire to be near one's
kith and kin. In the case of Mrs. Hamilton's parents, the
half section they rented in Greer County was probably four
to eight times what was available to rent or to own in
Texas.

It is a traditional belief that the homesteaders of the
American West had a strong attachment to the land or a
hunger for land. This has a romantic connotation that is
misleading. The settlers of southwestern Oklahoma Territory
were closely tied to the land; farming was as much or more a
way of life as it was a way to make a living. They did not,
however, have deep emotional attachments to whatever piece

of land they owned and owning and keeping that particular

17

piece of land forever was not of paramount importance.

The farmers of southwestern Oklahoma Territory had
modest expectations of the frontier and of commercial
farming: "I wanted to own something of my own--to
accumulate a reserve, to realize something in exchange for
my efforts", John Matthew Connor told an interviewer in
1937.21 Many of the settlers interviewed in the 19303
looked back with apparent satisfaction on modest
achievements:

The country prospered. . .'. In a few years we moved
up from the break and built a four-room house.

The second year after we were married we bought a cow
and fared very well.

I do not feel like I had a very hard time for there
was always plenty to eat and wear and a nice fire to
keep warm. . . . My children were always healthy and
fine so life has been good.

Well, our pioneer days were frought with danger and
hardships, but we won out and got our start in life.

At this time [1938] I have a nice house, a barn and

a windmill and I have never had a mortgage on my

place but I have worked hard all my life.

I have made a fairly good success in life. I have

always been a dirt farmer and I am not sorry, because

it's a free life and I like it.22

Elmora Messer Matthews has shown that even within the
larger, success-oriented society of the twentieth century
there can exist segments of society that hold a "non-
success" ideal.23 The settlers of southwestern Oklahoma

cannot be compared closely with Matthews' analysis of the

Tennessee Ridge folk who, according to Matthews, scorn work,

18

efficiency, ambition, bragging, education, and economic or
social advancement. However, Matthew's work should help us
to understand that the settlers of Oklahoma Territory might
not have aspired to the same goals or held the same values
as their contemporaries on the prosperous commercial farms
of the Midwest or in the urban, industrial North. The
southwestern Oklahomans worked hard and were proud of it.
They tolerated education, providing as much as their
children wanted and no more. But like the Tennessee Ridge
folk, limits were placed on ambition and individual
advancement. Ambition and advancement were limited as much
by the reality of poverty as by social norms:

Poor folks have poor ways. Of course we had just
about what everybody else had.

It was pretty primitive then, but we didn't think
much about it.

[W]e didn't think they was hard gtimes], really.
Everybody was in the same boat.2

Nearly all of the settlers perceived themselves as poor
people. There was a certain sense of egalitarianism in the
eternal and almost universal poverty. The southern settlers
held, not so much a "non-success" ideal as a "reasonable
success" ideal. They hoped to improve their conditions but
they did not aspire to become the agrarian equivalents of
the robber barons.

Most of the settlers who achieved a reasonable success

continued to class themselves as poor people. In January of

19

1907 A. L. Hammons responded to a request by the editor of

the Rocky Weekly Advance for statements from local citizens

 

detailing their progress in the territory. Hammons stated
that he had been "worth about three thousand dollars" when
he had arrived in December of 1896. His present crop of
wheat, oats and cotton had sold for close to two thousand
dollars and his net worth was currently about thirty-five
thousand dollars. "Which I think spells a right good sum
for a poor farmer", he added.25

Once they arrived in Oklahoma Territory, the settlers
found living conditions that, by today's standards, were not
much better than those left behind. Like the prairie dogs
that preceded them, most of the settlers lived in the
ground. Some, especially women, were horrified by their new
homes. Most would build a two- or four-room frame house as
soon as possible but for many a house above the ground was
several years in the future. A few would regret leaving
their dugouts:

A house with rooms half in the ground that way is a

lot warmer than one all on top of the ground and a

lot safer, too, but I did not know that until years

later when we got everything6we had blown away and

were nearly killed besides.
With little or no wood available, most settlers were forced
to build either a 'full-blooded' dugout--a hole carved out
of the ground with ridgepoles laid across it and sod heaped

over them for a roof--or, more commonly, a half-dugout. The

walls of a half-dugout were partially above and partially

20

below the ground, depending on how much lumber was available
for the top half. Sizes varied from fourteen-by-fourteen
feet to twenty-by-thirty feet. In addition to being
inexpensive, dugouts were cool in the summer, warm in the
winter and safe in the cyclone season. On the other hand,
they were dark, airless, impossible to keep clean, and
inhabited by fleas, bedbugs, rats, prairie dogs, centipedes,
tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and skunks. Range cattle were not
particular about tromping across sod roofs and a good rain
would flood the dugout and often cave in the roof. It was
several years before most of the southern settlers built
barns, sheds or privies. Stock was left outdoors
unprotected and tiny sod houses were built for the chickens.

Shelter was uncomfortable for humans, but water was the
bane of the settlers' existence. Most of the water in
southwestern Oklahoma is heavily tainted with gypsum.
Eventually most people would build cisterns, but in the
early years water was hauled from creeks and hand-dug wells.
"Gyp" water had a "bitter, disagreeable taste, and also a
purgative effect. Many ribald stories were current of
transients and their first acquaintance with gyp water."27
It made the back-breaking task of washing clothes and dishes
nearly futile: ". . . the more soap one used the thicker
and stickier the water seemed."28

Yet this was an improvement over what many had left

behind. When the Socialist organizer Oscar Ameringer

21

arrived in Oklahoma just after statehood was achieved in
1907, he toured old Indian Territory and then old Oklahoma
Territory. He found Oklahoma Territory a welcome relief
after the appalling poverty he had witnessed among the white
tenants of Indian Territory:

When I arrived in the free homestead land, . . .
many of the original settlers still lived in their
dugouts, or sod houses, or the regulation fourteen-
by-fourteen homesteader shacks. Even the worst of
these dwellings were often preferable to the share-
cropper shacks and cotton-picker breeding pens I had
found in Indian Territory. . . .

And the food, oh, so much better! Poor as these
people were, they had at least a quarter section of
dirt under their feet. Virtually all of them had
cows, chickens, hogs, sheep, a vegetable garden, and
had planted some fruit trees. All this meant a
better balanced diet, explaining the greater energy
and higher degree of health and education of the
population as compared with that of the tenant popu-

lation of Indian Territory and those who lived east
and south to the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.29

It is difficult to define the pioneer farmers of
southwestern Oklahoma Territory as either subsistence or
commercial farmers. In their reminiscences they frequently
claim that they grew nearly everything they ate, but there
were several important foodstuffs that they did not grow,
including coffee, sugar and flour. Later, wheat growers
would "swap" grain for flour at the mill, but even in the
early years wheat growers did not consume their own flour.
It was bought in one hundred pound sacks and used to make
enormous quantities of biscuits, breads, cobblers, pies and
gravy. Some families grew their own sorghum, but most found

it as economical to buy the ever-present syrup. Before the

22

orchards began to produce, fresh fruit was a luxury but
dried fruits were cheap and popular. A number of seldom-
mentioned minor necessities like baking powder, cream of
tartar, spices and salt were also purchased.

In addition to food, the goods for clothing had to be
bought. Like wheat, cotton was not actually used by its
growers. Some ready-made clothes, including shoes, were
purchased but most were made at home of inexpensive
yardgoods. If a family could afford it, they bought a
sewing machine; poorer women used a neighbor's machine.

Because wood was scarce in Oklahoma, fuel for lamps and
lye for soap and for "breaking" gyp water also were bought.
Most could not yet afford to buy coal, so cow chips, corn,
cottonseed, twisted hay, and coal that had been picked up
along the railroad fueled the settlers' stoves.

Any farm machinery not brought to the Territory had to
be purchased. Many brought one-row Georgia stock plows and
made planters by punching holes in washpans. They were
eager to try more sophisticated machinery whenever possible,
but little credit was available in the early years, and
farms that had not been proved up could not be mortgaged.
The homesteaders of Washita County received a windfall in
1900. They were originally required to pay $1.50 per acre
upon proving their claims, but the Free Homes Bill waived
this fee. It was generally believed that most families

would have failed to produce the full amount necessary to

23

obtain the deeds to their quarter sections, but those who
had been saving for the final purchase of their farms now
had up to $2uo.oo to spend on new machinery and livestock.30

Most of the supplies and equipment that were not
produced at home or bartered between neighbors were
purchased with money obtained from the sale of farm produce.
What cash a family had on hand between crops was likely to
be "butter and egg money" made from the sale of dairy and
poultry products and used to buy whatever groceries were not
grown at home. When cotton was harvested, some farmers sold
it to the ginner or a buyer at the gin, but many took their
bales home, where they would be either bought by travelling
buyers or hauled, one by one, into town whenever the family
needed school clothes or other supplies.

Steven Hahn has found that nearly all of the antebellum
yeomen of upcountry Georgia, who still manufactured their
own cloth, raised cotton but only half raised "a bale or two
or three" for sale.31 Like the upcountry Georgians of the
18503, the homesteaders of southwestern Oklahoma Territory
did not fit into the "neat categories of subsistence and
commercial agriculture".32 On one hand they produced many
of the necessities of survival but on the other hand they
were dependent upon the commercial system for some
necessities and any improvements of their condition.
Occasional references to families completely running out of

food cast doubt on whether they could have survived as

2U

purely subsistence farmers had they tried.

The settlers were not fully involved in commercial
agriculture, but they were not lacking in the spirit of
enterprise. In spite of poverty and scarcity, southwestern
Oklahoma Territory bristled with entrepreneurial activity.
People picked up bones on the prairie and hauled them to
market centers; they hunted wild ducks and rabbits and
shipped them East; they gathered buffalo horns and sold them
to "people going to the World's Fair in Chicago."33 Some
settlers peddled garden surplus, chickens and pigs from
carts and wagons or set up stores in their dugouts. Others
operated sorghum mills or were blacksmiths. A family who
did well on its own one hundred and sixty acres might rent
or buy more land:

We proved up on this place and got more land by

renting from neighbors who had more than they could

handle.

Mr. Boyd sold out his holdings two or three times,

"improving mygfiondition a little along by degrees,"

he explained.-

Women seemed to be especially adept at making the proverbial
silk purse out of a sow's ear. The child of a blacksmith
showed a cowboy how to make stake pins: "He paid her 50
cents and [she] used the money to buy a calf, and later
started a small herd from the investment."35

I would raise chickens and get five cents a piece

for fryers. My husband wouldn't sell them for that

much [i.e., that little] so I would sell the chick-
ens.

25

My mother sent me 200 in a letter to buy stamps to
write her. We did not live over twenty-five or
thirty miles apart but did not get to see each other
very often. I took that 200 and bought calico and
made a pretty sunbonnet which I sold to a neighbor
for uOc. I got pretty speckeled [gig] calico and
kept making bonnets and selling them until I had
enough money to get one dozen hens. I paid twelve
and one half cents apiece for the hens and the woman
I bought them from threw in a rooster.

I had lived in this dugout and made down beds
for four years and began to wish for a house on the
top of the ground. I now had plenty of chickens so
I sold them for $1.00 apiece, netting me $75.00. My
husband went to Ouanah and bought lumber to build
two rooms [above] the ground which he built just in
front of the dugout and I took my $Zg.00 and got me
some furniture. Did I feel proud! -

These were poor people striving simultaneously to
survive, to maintain their modest role in the commercial
system, and to "accumulate a reserve", a buffer that would
give them some protection in bad times. An important tool
in this struggle was the loosely woven network of kith, kin
and family that made up the rural frontier community.

James A. Henretta, in his discussion of families and
farms in pre-industrial America, points to six features of
the rural community and family of the pre-industrial
Northeast:

. . . [TJhe community was distinguished by age- and

wealth-stratification and (usually) by ethnic or

religious homogeneity, while on the family level

there was freehold property ownership, a household

mode of production, limited economic possibilities

and aspirations, and a safety-first subsistence

agriculture within a commercial capitalist market
structure.

Five of these features apply to the communities of southern

settlers of southwestern Oklahoma. As we have seen, they

26

were ethnically homogeneous, they were freeholders, they had
limited aspirations and a "safety-first" subsistence
agriculture within a commercial structure. In the following
chapters it will be seen that they also had a household mode
of production but that they did not have communities that
were highly stratified by age and wealth, or families in
which children remained economically bound to their parents
well into adulthood. Rather, it was the flexibility of
familial and kinship ties that was integral to their

existence on the frontier.

CHAPTER 2

NEIGHBORS AND KIN

"Everybody was your friend and your neighbor."

Viola Sumrall Clark

"Pioneer women lived nearer together in heart
if they were not so close together [as] in cities
and loved more and shared what they had more."

Mary Jane Wright
Indian-Pioneer Papers
Volume 100, page ASA

 

If poverty was the major reason for leaving a former
home, the choice of new home was usually influenced by the
presence of kith or kin on the frontier. Forty-three per

cent of the Indian-Pioneer Papers informants who mentioned

 

their motives for migrating to Oklahoma Territory gave
kinship as at least one of their reasons for choosing
Oklahoma (Appendix C, Table 8). Half of those interviewed
mentioned, often fortuitously, kin in the neighborhood
(Appendix C, Table 9). The actual incidence of kin was
probably far higher than these figures indicate. All of the
informants interviewed for this study either followed or

were followed by kin to Oklahoma.

27

28

Like the Bowie family, most people either were attracted
to Oklahoma by friends or family or in turn attracted more
settlers to the Territory. P. B. Woodruff, for example,
left Virginia for Washita County when he was fifteen years
old. He travelled by covered wagon with a family of
prospective homesteaders. Once he arrived he stayed with,
and worked for, his aunt and uncle for several years.38
Meanwhile, his parents in Virginia "became dissatisfied."
His mother's health was poor and their crops failed: "This
gave my husband an excuse to sell out and come to Oklahoma
Territory," reported his mother.39

When Price Francis' parents came to Greer County, his
maternal grandparents came along as part of the household.
His paternal grandparents and uncles were already there:

In other words, my father's brother filed on a place

and his wife died and he was fixin' to take off

somewhere and called Dad to come up and take it

over. . . [Dad's] parents were already there. This

place was adjoining.

Couples and single men and women followed their parents,
siblings, children, aunts and uncles, as well as former
neighbors, to new communities.

The nuclear family was the principal familial and
economic unit, but a loose network of kin and kith continued
to play an important role in the settlement of the frontier
and the personal lives of the settlers. Friends and

relatives were constantly being divided and reunited. Old

neighbors, grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, and

23

married children were left behind; some would follow later,
others would not. Ties to these "back home" remained
important. Ross and Marvin Bowie's mother left all of her
kin behind, but was still dependent upon them for emotional
support:

My mother. . . was raised in east Texas and we had
been in north central Texas. It was so much differ-
ent Lin Oklahoma], that she'd get awful discouraged
the first few years she was here. . . . As soon as
Dad got able, he put her on the train and sent her
back home and told her to stay until she got her
visit out. She stayed a month, I guess. . . . When
she eggs back she was more contented and more satis-
fied.

Viola Sumrall Clark still treasured her ties with her
grandparents back in Texas after more than eighty years:

Now, my grandparents brought us a little dog from
Texas. See, there wasn't any railroad. This Rock
Island Railroad was here after we come here. I
remember as soon as it was passable, my grand-
parents on my mother's side came out here on a
visit and they brought us a little white dog. . . .
I remember so well that one morning the livery man
drove up in front of our dugout and there it was
my grandparents. And I can remember that so well.
Then another thing that I remember was that one
morning he stopped and he said, "I've got a parcel
package for you." It was a jar of peach preserves
from my grandmother that she had shipped to us.
I've got the jar in.there, a little figock jar. . .
come from Texas in nineteen hundred.

Some of the settlers who gave up and went home cited
emotional ties as the reason for deserting the frontier:

I recall one old fellow, a sort of ne'er-do'well,
with a large family, wno, though he had never owned
a bit of land before, sold his choice claim for five
hundred dollars. He told me that he just wanted to
get bafik to Jack County, Texas, to be near his rela-
tives. 5

80

-

Although individuals and nuclear families depended on
the extended kin for information about new land, a place to
stay when they first arrived, and for emotional support, the
extended family was not particularly important for economic
support. Most people came to southwestern Oklahoma
Territory in conjunction with some kin, but they did not
necessarily stay together. Homesteads might be claimed
thirty miles apart; some family members might move on in
search of newer frontiers or return to a former home.

Many members of the community who were not related by
blood or marriage were nevertheless referred to and
addressed by kinship terms. Adults were often called "aunt"
or "uncle", or "grandma" or "grandpa" by children and by
adults younger than themselves. These titles were not
always consistently applied. For example, a middle-aged man
might be called "uncle" and his wife called "grandma". This
may actually have denoted more respect for the wife, since
"aunt" or "uncle" usually preceded the given name and
"grandma" or "grandpa" preceded the surname. Within the
church community preachers and those who were "saved" called
each other "brother" or "sister"; a middle-aged or elderly
woman was frequently addressed as "mother". These titles
tended to be used with the surname. People who were only
vaguely related by marriage might be addressed in the same
way as their mutual relatives would. When Carroll Burson

was interviewed in 1982, he spoke of "Grandpa Herrin" and

21

..

"Uncle Frank Herrin". These men were actually the
grandfather and uncle of Carroll's cousins who lived on the
next duarter section.uu Thus, virtually everyone in a
community became kin, real or fictive, to one another.

The reminiscences of old pioneers make frequent
reference to neighborly aid. Some of these neighbors were
relatives or old friends, others were strangers:

If some of the neighbors had not helped us, I don't

know what we would have done. They helped us in

many ways, even to loaning us cows to milk.

My father frequently took his turning plow and ran

a furrow around a new-comer's claim. This served as

a sort of fence to determine the boundary.

We had drouths those first years even as we do now

and we neighbors had to go on each other's notes and

tie HE everything we had to get supplies from Ver-

non.

The ways in which neighbors helped each other varied and
whether a particular kind of help was given, traded or sold
also varied. Well-digging, carpentry and freighting
provided extra income for many men. Some traded help in
well-digging or house-building with their neighbors, while
others received aid in moving, building and even harvesting
from friends and relatives who came from a former home to
help out while looking over the country themselves. Farm
tools and machinery circulated frequently, but truly
communal work was rare. For example, women made quilts but

apparently did not take up the practice of quilting bees

until later. Neighbors gathered to butcher their hogs

32

together or else came to help a friend or relative butcher
and process the meat and lard, carrying home some of the
meat in thanks. Other neighbors, who were in need or were
owed favors, were sent portions. Several families formed
"beef clubs" to more efficiently distribute beef which could
not be preserved as well as pork. None of these activities
was a spontaneous turn-out of the entire community.
Individual families chose whom they would offer to help or
ask to help. Their choices were based on a combination of
factors including friendship, kinship, availability,
charity, skill, and favors owed.

The neighborly aid so celebrated in pioneer
reminiscences, while real, was always in some sense
reciprocal. Everyone was expected to help his neighbors and
sooner or later the person who had been helped was expected
to return the favor in labor, gifts, or money. A fine
distinction was made between charging money and receiving
pay. Women without sewing machines went to the home of a
woman with a machine to do their sewing. The owner of the
machine might even cook dinner for them while they sewed.”6
She did not charge or receive pay for this act of neighborly
kindness, but she was no doubt remembered at canning or
butchering time. On the other hand, Lissie Bailey sewed for
other women:

I brought a sewing machine with me to this country

. . . . I have always sewed for the public. I
never charged until after the World War--people

33

just paid me what they wanted to.)47
Some women who acted as nurses or midwives refused any
payment, others accepted whatever was offered:

She delivered hundreds of babies and never charged

a cent. Of course she was offign given handsome

presents and sometimes money.

This system of reciprocal aid and favors, combined with
previously established ties of kinship and friendship,
reinforced the rapid develOpment of a sense of community.
Evidence of this is the power exerted by the community over
the individual. Scandalous behavior frequently resulted in
the offender and his family leaving the community:

Now, they had a man and his wife out at Port before

I went out there. The man run the route and the

woman was the postmistress. He got into trouble out

there, lost his route and liked to have to go to the

pen. And when he lost his route, why his wife re-
signed and they left. He got in trouble with a woman

out tngre. They should have sent him to the pen for
life.

In a society made up almost entirely of people who perceived
themselves as poor and where poverty verged on being a
virtue, the individual was judged on his moral reputation.

A fall from grace was a fall from community respect and
favor. It proved intolerable for some.

Religion reinforced community standards of morality.
Allie B. Wallace remembered that the sermons of the time
tended to be "a multiplicity of 'don'ts' or 'thou shalt
nots'. Christian virtues such as faith, knowledge,

temperance, brotherly kindness, and charity were not

3H

emphasized."50 Nearly every settler aligned himself with
one of the common southern Protestant denominations, usually
Southern Baptist, Methodist, or "Campbellite", Church of
Christ. In the early years, the same congregation gathered
at the schoolhouse each Sunday and for every revival; only
the preachers changed. By the 19203 and 19303,
denominational differences would become bitterly divisive,
but in the settlement period religion was a cohesive force
in the community.

The settlers apparently found no contradiction between
Christianity and their adherence to ancient folk beliefs.
There was a division of opinion regarding whether crops
should be planted in the preper sign of the moon or, as the
local wit would put it, "in the ground". This division was
not based on any feeling that these beliefs were un-
Christian. In one community the strongest proponent of
astrological planting was the Baptist preacher.51 Those who
planted their creps by the moon also made soap and weaned
babies and colts by "signs".52 What today are called
superstitions, they considered to be the laws of nature:

There were many signs that we pioneers observed that

made crops surer and things better, I think. For

instance, you never killed hogs except in the dark

of the moon for sweet meat and so the lard would

render out good. Otherwise your cracklings would

be soggy and full of grease and your yield of lard

would not be half so much. Another rule we observed

was, Never begin a thing on Friday that you cannot
finish on the same day or you might never live to

finish it. Corn must be planted after the full of
the moon for big ears and little stalks. All root

35

vegetables that "make" under ground in the dark of

the moon and all things like tomatoes, cabbage, or

collard in the light of the moon. Now I have tried

all of these things and they work. And if one would

watch Nature and abide by her laws there would not

be so much failure to make good. We always had

plenty to eat and wear so long as we went by rule

in our planting and harvesting.

Some farmers and many elderly gardeners in the area still
plant by the moon. Today the opposing faction takes a
tolerant view:' "It might work, I don't know."5u

These traditional folk beliefs, like the religious
denominations, were potentially divisive elements in the
community. Yet in the pioneer years they were more cohesive
than divisive.

The pioneer communities of southwestern Oklahoma
Territory were made up of a loose collection of relatives,
old friends, neighbors and the relatives and friends of old
neighbors. They shared similar religious and regional
backgrounds, the same moral and ethical standards and,
roughly, the same economic level. Neighbors, regardless of
kinship, were expected to help those in need and kindnesses
were returned. While the emotional attachment of family and
friends should not be underestimated, they did not move or
stay in closely knit or stagnant groups. For the settlers

of southwestern Oklahoma Territory, as in most societies,

the heart of their community was the nuclear family.

CHAPTER 3

THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

Division pf labor within the family

 

In 1979 Julie Roy Jeffrey and John Mack Faragher
published books on frontier women and men.55_ Both relied
heavily on the diaries and reminiscences of Overland Trail
emigrants of the mid-nineteenth century, although Jeffrey
discussed a broader frontier, the trans-Mississippi West
from 18A0 to 1880. Both found that women did not achieve
greater equality with men through their frontier experience.
Both attributed this to the fact that the westering families
brought with them deeply entrenched ideals of male and
female roles. The origin of these ideals causes
considerable confusion in both books. Jeffrey contends that
the role of women was prescribed by the Cult of Domesticity
(also called the Cult of True Womanhood), itself a confusing
and contradictory concept. As urbanization and industriali-
zation grew in the early nineteenth century, the middle
class men and women of eastern industrial centers were
increasingly segregated into separate spheres. Men were
eXpected to be ambitious, aggressive, self-disciplined,
self-reliant, and self-made.56 Women, no longer a part of
the economic support of the family, were expected to provide

36

37

a haven for these men and a balance to their potentially
destructive attributes. Women were supposed to be pious,
pure, submissive and domestic. This "cult" was prescribed
and propagated by sermons and ladies' periodicals, rising
and flourishing in the period from 1820 to 1860.57 What was
it doing among the midwestern farmers about whom Jeffrey and
Faragher write? Neither is clear on this point. Jeffrey
has a disconcerting tendency to refer to the attributes of
the cult as "traditional", when in fact it was very new,
less than a generation old, when her frontier women were on
the Overland Trail.58 Faragher also is contradictory on
this point:

Feminine farm roles had little to do with the

fetishized domesticity that was a part of the

womanly cult flowering in the East. . . .

Eastern ideologies of femininity certainly filtered
into the West, but they simg$y reinforced the
existing traditional roles.

In his latter remark Faragher has hinted at a realistic
explanation of the contradictions inherent in our
understanding of the Cult of True Womanhood: many of the
attributes expected of men and women in the nineteenth
century were traditional, carried over from the past and
adapted to fit changing conditions by the rising eastern
urban, industrial middle class, by the midwestern and
southern commercial farmers, and by the frontiersmen.

By the time southwestern Oklahoma was opened for

settlement, these eastern ideals and ideologies had

38

certainly had time to filter into the West. However, as
Faragher suggests, if they were present, it was as
reinforcement of traditional roles. The women of
southwestern Oklahoma were expected to be pious and pure,
but the prevailing southern fundamentalist religions
demanded the same of men. Feminine submission to men would
be better described as a display of deference. The pioneer
women of southwestern Oklahoma Territory were domestic in
the sense that their share of the division of labor included
the home and childcare but, as will be seen, this was not
rigid. In this section we will see that although they had a
division of labor, the husbands and wives of southwestern
Oklahoma Territory did not spend their lives in the physical
or emotional isolation of segregated spheres. They worked
side by side with each other and with their children in the
daily economic and survival activities of their families.

The nuclear family of the settlers of southwestern
Oklahoma Territory was moderately patriarchal in structure.
Single and widowed women could, and did, file on homesteads.
In the event of a husband's death or absence, his wife, not
a grandfather, uncle or son, became the sole owner of the
farm and head of the family. Otherwise the husband and
father held the ultimate authority within the nuclear family
and he was universally credited with its economic support.
In reality all family members worked hard to support the

family. Geneva Harvey Reaves reflected the typical attitude

39

when she stated that "Dad was a good provider" and then
later mentioned "we all worked and we all had jobs when we
was growin' up."60

Generally, the husband was responsible for the fields
and stock and the wife was responsible for the house and
children. These distinctions are vague, however, and become
easily blurred. Fathers frequently took tiny children with
them to the fields:

I wore dresses until I was five years old. I

picked cotton to get my first pair of pants. I'd

been pickin' cotton for a year or two and when I was

five years old I was getting about seventy-five

pounds. My dad and mother told me if I'd pick a

hundred pounds of cotton, she'd make me a pair of

pants. So along about the middle of the afternoon,

she seen I was going to get it and she went to the

house and made me a pair of pants and brought them

to the cotton patch and I put them on out in tge

cotton patch, first pair of pants I ever were.

A child of three could be of help in a cotton field, but
this activity must also be recognized as childcare on the
part of the father whose harvest crew could include as many
as four children under school age. Children could also be
found in the fields during plowing, planting and
cultivation.

In addition to producing cash crops, adult married men
made extra money by hauling freight, peddling surplus garden
truck, or working on special jobs for their neighbors. It
was rare for them to leavetheir families for long periods

of time to go great distances in search of work, although a

whole family might pack up and go to Indian Territory to

A0

harvest cotton. Some men, however, were "ramblers" and
would occasionally depart in search of new lands to settle
or would return to their old homes to visit. As the child
of an itinerant preacher put it, "Father squatted on a claim
and mother lived there. . . ."62

Adult women worked in the fields with their husbands and
children when they had time, but a woman with a garden,
several children, half a dozen cows and a couple of hundred
chickens had all she could do at the house. Women and
children were not quite as common in the wheat field as they
were in the cotton patch, where they planted, chopped and
picked cotton. At the wheat harvest they helped bind and
shock and later, when the wheat was harvested by threshing
crews with steam threshers, young women were often hired to
work in the cook shack. In extreme cases, women were forced
to perform what were usually male tasks. Relatives and
other neighbors helped out Allen Harper's widowed mother,
but it was not enough:

The schoolhouse where I got my education, which

wasn't much, was just a half a mile south. . . at

recess I looked down there and she was plowing. She

had a young horse in there and he was the kickin'est

son-of-a-gun there ever was. And then, my lord, a

woman wouldn't put on a pair of pants for nothing in

the world, or overalls or anything. And I just

gathereg my hooks up and that was my last day of

school. 3

Many families sold chickens, turkeys, eggs, cream or

butter if they could find a local market. This was often

the only income they had between crops. It was used to buy

41

groceries and was frequently controlled by the wife who
usually owned the chickens and supervised the butter
churning. A woman without a husband, like the widowed Mrs.
Harper, might concentrate more on raising livestock or
keeping orchards than growing cotton and wheat.6u Men and
children worked in the garden, but it was generally the
wife's domain. Since most of what the family ate was grown
in the garden and the rest bought with butter and egg money,
the economic role of the woman in the family must not be
underestimated.

Although married women contributed directly to the
family income by selling poultry and dairy products, they
almost never worked outside the home. The postmistress was
one exception. Sometimes granted to a married or widowed
woman, the job required a spotless reputation of all
concerned, as was seen in the story of the Port postmistress
and her errant husband.

At home, cooking and sewing were distinctly female
chores and they could be enormous. Several whole families
might come for Sunday dinner or, if they lived fifteen or
twenty miles away, a family would stay for two or three
days. Viola Sumrall Clark's family was so large that it
took one person to cook the ham or sausage for breakfast,
one to cook the eggs, one to make gravy, and a fourth--

twelve-year-old Viola--to make biscuits:

A2

Girls now would die if they had to do what I had

to do. My job was to make the bread. . . . I made

[1%

Occasionally clothing was ordered ready-made through
mail-order catalogs. However, most clothes were made and
washed at home by the mother. The days of spinning and
weaving were gone, except in the memories of the
grandmothers whose families had revived it of necessity
during Reconstruction. Cheap yard goods were available in
the country stores and small towns that sprang up as soon as
the territory was opened. One or two bales of cotton were
taken to town each fall to purchase goods for new school
clothes. Most men seemed to be capable of cooking, but not
sewing, if they were reduced to "batching it".

Children were put to work at any chore they were able to
do. All girls were taught to cook and sew. By the time
they reached adolescence they made and washed their own
clothes and were accumulating hope chests of "linens";
cotton bedsheets edged with crochet, pillowcases embroidered
with pious slogans, floursack dishtowels, and quilts. Yet
even in a family with several sons, the daughters also
worked in the fields.

Boys and girls rounded up the range cows for milking,
held the calves during milking, and drove the cattle to
water. Who did the actual milking varied from family to

family. Geneva Harvey Reaves was the eldest child in her

”3

family: "My daddy and I milked the cows. . . . My brother
wasn't as old as I was and his job was to rope the
calves."66 Price Francis inherited the job:

My sisters, older sisters,. . . did the milking and

the boys did the feeding (horses). And I come along,

I thought I was smart. I learned to milk, they

taught me to milk. We 1, directly they married off

and I did the milking.

Girls and boys also helped separate cream and churn butter.

A family with several school-aged children could harvest
its cotton and wheat quickly and cheaply, hiring few, if
any, extra hands. After their own crop was in, older
children hired themselves out to pick cotton for neighbors
who were not as well blessed. They made fifty cents per
hundredweight and usually that money was theirs to spend as
they chose, although some were expected to buy the goods for
their school clothes.

Some teenaged boys left home to become more or less
permanent hired hands or, in Greer County, cowboys, before
they settled down with a farm and family of their own.
Frequently they would stay with an older sibling or aunt and
uncle, helping with the farm work until they struck out
entirely on their own.

Young men and women also taught school. Teaching was
increasingly dominated by women, but many of the early
teachers in the country schools were men. In a two-room

school in which the "upper" and "lower" grades were

separated, a man was sometimes hired to teach the older

UM

children. These men were addressed as "Professor".

Ironically, education was considered to be more important
for girls than for boys: "I sent my girls to school more
than I did my boys as I thought that all a boy needed to
know was how to be a farmer", recalled one old pioneer.68

As a whole, a family might add to its cash income by
operating a fruit orchard, a sorghum mill, a tiny store in
their house or dugout, or, if they lived on a road, by
taking in travellers. Most strangers, however, were
welcomed as guests into any home they happened upon.

In summary, the pioneer family of southwestern Oklahoma
Territory had a division of labor that, while not unusual,
was flexible.» Some tasks, such as childcare and fieldwork,
were the ascribed responsibility of one family member, but
were frequently performed by other members. Other tasks,
like milking, had no clear association with either sex or
age. A few, like cooking, sewing, and maintenance of
machinery, were ascribed to one sex and performed by the

other only in instances of dire need.

Roles within the family

 

As we have seen, the husband was called the provider
though in actual fact all family members were providers. As
provider and patriarch he received deference from his wife

and children. Allie B. Wallace remembered:

A5

I was taught never to be in his way but ever ready

to serve him. . . . Not even mother ever argued

with him, for she seemed to respect him more than

Lena and I did, and I never knew her to call him

anythinggbut Mr. Stewart, in speaking either to or

of him. 9
This is probably an extreme case, as Mrs. Stewart was twenty
years younger than her husband.70 Also, Mrs. Stewart may
not have always been quite as reverential as this sounds.
Elsewhere, her daughter says that she ". . . harangued
father until he dug a cistern. . . ."71

Most men discussed important matters with their wives,
although final decisions rested with the husband, as was
seen in the case of the Bowie family's decision to go to
Oklahoma. Women did influence decisions and when decisions
were made with which they did not agree or in which they had
not been consulted, they did not necessarily submit quietly.
The simple alternative of refusing to cooperate was a real
option:

In 1888 I found a man north of old Dean's Crossing

who would relinquish to me for $100.00. So I bought

his dugout and right to prove up for a homestead. I

went back to Ellis County [Texas] to get my family

to come but my wife did not want to come. I leased

out my dugout to a man and continued to go back and

forth. I did not persuade my wife to come with the

children until 1897.72
A woman might even stand up against a community decision
with which she disagreed:

There was a long neighborhOOd discussion over the

moving of this schoolhouse. . . . Mrs. Caver had

been instrumental in building it and she refused to

allow it to be moved. She had gone out among the
cowboys and solicited money from them with the promise

A6

that they should have dances in the schoolhouse

when it was built and she was determined to keep her

promise so she went down and locked the door and

would not let anybody in or allow the house to be

moved. This lasted for several years. . . .73

Important family decisions were sometimes discussed with
older children whose cooperation and labor might be integral
to any new plans:

After a few years, why a neighbor had eighty acres

south of [Dad] and wanted to sell it for two thou-

sand dollars. . . . He asked Mother, "What do you

and the boys think about that?" He said, "I'd have

to borrow the money, six percent interest." I said,

"Well, I believe it's worth that, I believe I'd buy

it if I was youh" Mother said the same, so he went

and bought it.7
Ideally, the husband was the ultimate authority in the
nuclear family, but he did not make decisions in isolation
and, having made a decision, was not always able to enforce
it.

Contrary to the opinion expressed by Bernard Wishy and
reiterated by Carl Degler that farm fathers "were not likely
to be around the house enough to take an active part in the
rearing of very young children", fathers in southwestern
Oklahoma Territory were in constant contact with their
offspring.75 Children worked with their fathers in the
fields and slept in trundle beds next to their parents' bed
at night. Consequently, relationships between fathers and
children were potentially very different from, for example,

those of an urban middle class family of the industrial

Northeast. Fathers and daughters had significantly greater

1:7

opportunities to form close relationships than in a world
dominated by the Cult of True Womanhood and the Self-Made
Man. "Now my mother was a wonderful mother to us children,
but my daddy was my favorite because he made me his
favorite," said Geneva Harvey Reaves, who always milked the
cows with her father.76 Mothers in southwestern Oklahoma
Territory were the primary caretakers but, by virtue of the
fathers' presence and cooperation, they did not bear this
burden to the same extent as eastern middle class women.

Children were clearly subordinate to adults. An illus-
tration of this is the etiquette for mealtime. A family
dining alone had space at the table for all of its members
to eat at the same time. The parents sat at either end of
the table, the father saying grace before the meal. The
children, sometimes seated on benches or standing, were
along the sides. When company came the adults were served
first while the children entertained themselves:

We always got the wings and the backs and the honey

pieces. Never, never did the kids eat first. . . .

We'd go out in the garden and play or, if someone

had a piano, they'd play the piano until the folks

got ready for us.
If all of the adults could not be served at once, the men
ate first.

The universal principle of childrearing among the
settlers of southwestern Oklahoma Territory was "'spare the

rod and spoil the child', so they didn't spare the rod" and

it is mentioned in nearly every reminiscence of children of

U8

that frontier.78 Physical punishment was regularly used by
parents; they considered it a Christian duty and necessary
insurance against turning out immoral and ill-behaved
adults. Mrs. Stewart's remark as she switched her
daughter's legs for losing her temper and sloshing milk from
the butter churn is revealing: "'I'll teach you not to have
temper tantrums like your Grandmother Bird.'"79

However, while this was the only stated principle of
childrearing, it was not the only one commonly used. Some
other methods revealed in pioneer reminiscences add another
dimension to parent-child relationships. Allie E. Wallace,
whose mother switched her for displaying her temper,
compared her mother's style of infant care to that of their
German neighbors:

I used to wonder at my own mother's efforts to cater

to her babies' every whim, sometimes carrying one

around on her hip while she cooked a meal or per-

formed some other task, so that the baby could watch.

But those babies of the German women lay quietly in

their cradles, often cooing happily as they looked

mostly upward. . . . I decided then and there, at

the age of ten or eleven, that I would employ the

German way of training my babies and not let them

become little tyrants like mother's infants.8o
Allie's baby sister, of whom she seemed to be extremely
jealous, "was father's prize package, and he saw to it that
no possible whim was denied her. . . . [Tlhe whole family
became slaves. . . . "81

Viola Sumrall Clark remembered her mother saying, when

she was about nine, "'Well, the churning's got to be done.

49

I believe Viola's a little more particular with the churning
than the rest of you. I'm going to let her churn. . . .'
Oh boy, did I feel up in the air," remembered Mrs. Clark,
"That was really something."82

Geneva Harvey Reaves also remarked on the encouragement
she received from her parents' obvious confidence in her:

My daddy always made me feel so important in life

and I always tried to do everything, you know, to

make him happy. [If he'd] ask me to do something, ,

I'd a did it, if it was sometimes almost impossible.63

It could be argued that this coexistent use of
indulgence, physical coercion and positive reinforcement
reflects the transition, common in nineteenth-century
America, away from the goal of breaking the child's will in
order to make him receptive to moral, social and academic
teaching. Americans were turning away from physical
punishment and becoming more interested in the internal-
ization of rules than in breaking the will. Parents were
more permissive and displayed greater affection for their

children.84

Yet in southwestern Oklahoma Territory,
physical coercion was still closely associated with
religion, as the frequent use of the biblically inspired
expression "spare the rod and spoil the child" exemplifies.
It was not used only as a last resort, as Degler has
described its use by the modern parents of the nineteenth

century. Furthermore, the frontier society of southwestern

Oklahoma Territory was by no means child-centered. Its

50

childrearing philosophy and techniques were closer to those
found in the older, traditional, pre-industrial, pre-modern
family. What makes them appear less rigid, more humane and
loving here is that at last we have evidence, not from
theoreticians or religious fanatics (as were several of
Degler's sources), but from very ordinary people.85 .The use
of both positive and negative reinforcement by parents may
reflect, not a general change taking place in American
society, but the reality of living closely together day in
and day out: parents discovered and used a variety of
strategies in the daily care and management of their

children.

Families and the land

The parents and children of southwestern Oklahoma
Territory were unlike their rural eastern counterparts of
earlier times in one significant way. Although nuclear
families and families of origin helped each other, parents
were not responsible for giving their children a financial
start in life. Fathers did not move to Oklahoma Territory
because they had the responsibility of supplying farms or
dowries to their children nor did grown children stay at or
near home waiting to come into the family farm. Unlike the
early residents of New England or Georgia, youth was not

synonymous with landlessness.86

51

Parents and their grown children often came to Oklahoma
Territory together; the possibility of filing on claims near
each other was one of the attractions, but this was an
individual decision on the part of each child and frequently
some of the children or the parents stayed behind. Some,
once they got to Oklahoma, settled in different communities.
A large number of children was seen as making it possible,
rather than necessary, to obtain more land and to grow more
cash crops, especially cotton:

. . . my father thought that he could get more land

up here and with six boys to help him farm could

provide better for his family.

He had a big family, he could raise cotton.87

Sometimes aged parents, especially widows or widowers
(or bachelor uncles), would either give, sell, or turn over
management of their farms to a child. If no children were
left in the area, they would sell their holdings, distribute
the proceeds among their children and then move around,
living with one child and then another until old age or
infirmity forced them to settle with one child's family.

Occasionally an inheritance from a deceased parent made
it possible to buy some luxury for the family or to add
acreage to the farm. Most parents, however, did not have a
great deal to leave their children and there were frequently
a large number of children to divide an estate. Ross Bowie
remembered that some people were interested in accumulating

"a fortune" to pass on to their children, but not his

52

father:

My father used to say, "I don't want to leave a

fortune to my children." He said, "I've watched

these people where they'd save everything. They'd

leave it to their children. The children don't

have to make it, don't know how to keep it, so it

gets away from them." He said, "I don't want to

lay up no fortgge for them." And he didn't. He

left his farm.

It should be remembered that "a fortune" may have been
three hundred and twenty acres and a frame house to be
divided among eight children: "Anybody [who] had two farms
was rich."89 It was the custom, once both parents were
dead, to divide the estate, but not the farm, equally among
the children. The farm was sold or leased and the proceeds
divided up, or some arrangement made between brothers and
sisters for one of them to continue farming the land or to
buy out the others.

Some children did not want help from their families:

One day Austin made the casual remark to his wife

that if he could save enough capital, he would

start a drug business. Upon hearing that three

hundred dollars was the amount needed, Mrs. Austin

informed him that was the exact amount her mother

had wanted to give them when they were married.

She had refused to take the money because they
wanted to be entirely independent.9O

While some gift of money or livestock might be given to a
couple when they married, the accumulation and acquisition
of dowries was not a family goal.

Dowries and inheritances were not counted upon and young
couples did not expect their parents to start them out

financially. Their own nuclear family would be economically

53

self-sufficient. They would continue, throughout their
lives, to look to their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles,
cousins and in-laws for information, companionship and
emotional support, but the family they created would be the

center of their lives.

Siblings

It was very common for adult siblings or their offspring
to go together or to follow each other to Oklahoma
Territory. A survey of households in which extended kin
were present in 1900 shows that in Altus Township, Greer
County fifty percent of the kin had a sibling-related tie to
the head of the household. That is, they were siblings,
siblings-in-law, nephews, nieces or grand-nephews and
nieces. In Elk Township, Washita County, the sibling—
related kin accounted for nearly sixty percent of extended
kin within the household (Appendix B, Table 5). Obviously
the bond between siblings was a significant one, continuing
throughout adulthood, but it is seldom dealt with in the
study of the history of the family. Just as fathers were
less segregated from their children on the rural frontier
than in the industrial East, so were siblings more
continuously in each other's presence. They worked
together, played together (sometimes lacking any other

playmates), and attended one-room schools together.

5”

Brothers and sisters began their relationships with a
great deal of jealousy. New additions to the family
invariably arrived unannounced. Older children were
suddenly sent to stay with neighbors. Young children, while
possibly wondering at the presence of a neighbor woman in
their home, knew nothing until they heard the baby's cry.
Many women wore "Mother Hubbards" all of the time and most
young children seemed to be unaware of their mothers'
pregnancies. The sudden and unexpected displacement as the
indulged baby of the family was experienced in turn by all
but the last child in every pioneer family.

As we have seen, siblings worked together in the house,
garden, barnyard, dairy and field. They walked or rode to
school together where they were taught in the same room by
the same teacher. They slept together in the same bed or
the same small room for most, if not all, of their
childhood.

Siblings exercised a great deal of control over each
other. Esther Alford Gibson was the eldest, and only
daughter, of nine children:

Papa'd tell Mama,. . . "If you don't need Esther

here at the house let her go out there [to the

field] with them boys. They won't do nothin' if

they're out there by theirselves, you know." He

said, "I don't care whether she does anything or

not, as long as she keeps them boys busy" . .

They' r81 old men now and they still pay attention
to me.

55

Groups of siblings attended social activities together,
brothers escorting, advising, and spying on their sisters:
In them days, a boy that had a sister or two 313—
ters, whatever, he seen after them. And his sisters

would ask him, if a boy would ask for a date, if

[he] knowed anything about what kind of a boy was

he. They taken care of each other, seen after each

other. I had three sisters, they'd come to me lots

of times to know what I thought of some boy. Wher-

ever they went I went with 'em.

A girl who had no brothers might be chaparoned by her
sister, even if the sister was younger.93

Because siblings had so much control over each other's
social behavior and choice of friends, they ultimately
influenced each other's choice of marriage partner by
eliminating friendships of which they did not approve. This
indirect participation in the selection of one's siblings-
in-law must nave contributed to the general compatability
necessary for pioneering together.

We have seen that the southern families of southwestern
Oklahoma Territory had a division of labor that was
relatively flexible. Husbands and wives, parents and
children, and brothers and sisters lived in close
association with each other. Thus, the roles within the
family of male and female, of parent and child, and of

siblings, were well defined, but not without some degree of

flexibility also.

CHAPTER 4

CONCLUSION

If a nuclear family could produce enough good crops to
offset the bad ones, if it could produce enough that Dad
could be recognized as a good provider, it was successful.
If, in addition, the family could "accumulate a reserve"
against hard times, it was very successful. In the course
of their lives families and individuals had some choices
available to them. They could choose which relatives they
wanted to live near and with which ones they wanted to
maintain affective ties. They could choose to be as
closely, or more closely, allied with neighbors as with kin.
If not desperately needed at home, their children were free
to pursue any amount of education they desired and could
acquire. Land ownership was possible through the homestead
system, but if that did not work out they could claim, rent
or buy another farm or move on to another land of
opportunity. Their goals and expectations were limited by
poverty but a flexibility of kinship and friendship networks
and of methods of providing for their families and
accumulating a reserve was integral to their survival and

81100688 .

56

57

This flexibility of kinship and friendship was not so
much an adaptation to the frontier as it was to the constant
mobility that had occurred even in settled areas. It was a
system that allowed wandering peeple to retain the emotional
support of their friends and family without being burdened
with any more obligations than they as individuals chose to
assume or inflict.

When they arrived in Oklahoma Territory, the southerners
had a long history of migration for people engaged in a
sedentary form of subsistence. Some tenant farmers found
new homes as often as every year or two, others moved only
five or six times in their lives. Leaving home to go to
Oklahoma Territory was not in itself a unique experience.
Those who did so brought with them a tradition, indeed a
habit, of moving from home to home as well as a social
system that was compatable with this constant shifting
around.

Mobility was so deeply ingrained in the southern
settlers that it was frequently reflected in popular
religious imagery, especially in hymns, which for many were
the only songs acceptable for social singing. "Roaming" and
"wandering" could mean moving about from place to place;
they also meant living away from God, without salvation.
Heaven was often referred to as home: "heavenly home",
"immortal home", "home beyond the skies", "home on God's

celestial shore." Coming home could also mean receiving

58

salvation and living a Godly life on earth. The heavenly
home was where the believer would at last be reunited, not
only with God and Jesus (with whom the southern
fundamentalist enjoyed very personal relationships), but
also with all of his friends and relations.

It was always painful to leave loved ones to find yet
another home, but many loved ones went ahead or followed.
Those who remained would write, visit and be visited. If
they were not met beyond the Red River they would surely be
met beyond the Jordan. Moving on had become a common
alternative used when crops were poor, land was scarce or
worn out, landlords oppressive, mortgages inescapable,
families too restrictive, or communities too censorial.
Geographic mobility was as much a custom as were the social
systems that evolved out of it and supported it.

While pioneering in southwestern Oklahoma Territory may
have been personally traumatic to many people, it was in no
way culturally traumatic. The culture of the southern
settlers did not undergo any fundamental change because of
their frontier experience in Oklahoma, although many were
able to substantially improve their standard of living as a
result of homesteading. Rather, the social system which the
settlers brought with them to Oklahoma was already adapted
to absorb a remarkable degree of environmental change and
even a certain amount of escalation of their aspirations.

Their social system continued to function when friends and

59

relatives were separated, when farmers found themselves
tilling different soils in a different climate, when they
met the opportunity to expand their role in the commercial
system, and when, in many cases, they achieved a far greater
material status than they could ever have hOped for if they
had not come to Oklahoma Territory.

It has not been the intent of this study to suggest that
the southern settlers were unique in or to American society.
Rather, it has attempted to concentrate on the farmers of
one regional and ethnic group in one frontier situation with
the hepe that, having eliminated as many variables as
possible, this group may be easily and accurately compared
to other segments of American society through time. We must
realize that poor southern homesteaders on the Oklahoma
frontier in the 18903 probably had different values, customs
and ambitions from their contemporaries on midwestern farms
and in northern factory towns, or from their fellow farmers
of colonial New England. At the same time, their
flexibility of kinship and community; their division of
labor and sex roles; and their attitudes toward marriage and
childrearing may have been shared partially or entirely by
their neighbors to the north and by pioneers from other
ethnic groups and on other frontiers. It has been the
purpose of this study to show, in part, how this group
functioned in its frontier environment. It is hoped that

this study will contribute to future research and further

60

further understanding of our history and our society.

NOTES

NOTES

1. U. S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census.
Twelfth Census. Census schedules from Altus Township, Greer
County and Elk Township, Washita County, 1900; Lissie
Bailey Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. A, p. 7A.

 

2. Except for the Unassigned Lands (opened in 1889) and
Greer County, the land homesteaded in Oklahoma Territory was
what was left over after Indian lands had been divided into
individual allotments under the Dawes Act of 1887.

3. Michael Frank Doran, The Origins of Culture Areas in
Oklahoma 1830-1900. PhD dissertation, University of Oregon,
197A, p. 17A; Twelfth U. S. Census. Population. Part I,
Table 25, pp. 686- 689. The "Indian-Pioneer History" at the
Oklahoma Historical Society is the same collection of WPA
History Project interviews as the University of Oklahoma's
Indian Pioneer Papers, used extensively in this study.

 

 

 

A. J. D. Tarver, "The Regional Background of Oklahoma's
People", Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science,
V01 37 (1956), PD- 95- 99

 

 

5. Michael H. Reggie, "Troubled Times: Homesteading in
Short-Grass Country, 1892-1900." Chronicles 2: Oklahoma,
Vol. 57 (1979-80), pp. 196-211.

 

6. Terry G. Jordan, Texas Log Buildings: A Folk
Architecture.
University of Texas Press, Austin, 1978, pp. 10-13; 181-185.

 

 

7. Twelfth U. S. Census. Pepulation. Part I, Table 22, p.
597. Most of these were female servants (see Appendix B,
Table In )

8. John D. Bailey Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. A,
p. 63.

9. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982.

 

10. Marvin Bowie, August 2A, 1982; Ross Bowie, August 26,
1982. There is a discrepency over J. I. Bowie's place of
birth. It is listed in the 1900 U. S. Census schedules from
Elk Township as South Carolina, as are his parents'
birthplaces (Family Number 7A8). Milton lists his father's
birthplace as Georgia (Family Number A39), as do all of the
other Bowie sources (see the following note).

61

62

11. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982; Marvin D. Bowie, August 2A,
1982; Washita County Heritage Volume 1: Wagon Tracks,
Washita County History Committee, Inc., Cordell, Oklahoma,

1976. pp. 37-38.
12. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982.

13. Elva Page Lewis believes that most of the farmers who
first

settled in Oklahoma Territory were poor and that they were
followed later by "more prosperous farmers". Elva Page
Lewis, "Social Life in the Territory of Oklahoma 1890-1906",
M.A. thesis, University of Oklahoma, 19A5, p. 36.

1A. R. W. Atwood Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 3,
p. 290; Mrs. D. S. Austin Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 3, p. 3A6; Sam Penley Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 70, p. 328; J. H. Fitzgerald Interview, Indian-Pioneer
Pa ers, Vol. 30, p. 136; John Matthew Connor Interview,
Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.20, p. 99; Lee Adams Interview,
Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 1, p. 209.

 

 

 

15é Sam Penley Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 70, p.
32 -330.

16. Carrie Bradshaw Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
10’ DP. 237-2u3.

17. Gertrude Bradley Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
10, p. 223.

 

18. Mrs. R. L. Hamilton Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 379 PP. AA7-8.

19. W. T. Kerbo Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 50,
p. 35A.

20. Claude E. Hayes Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
A0, p. 239.

21. John Matthew Connor Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 20, p. 99.

22. Mrs. J. D. Cone Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
20, p. 29; Lue Ann Corcoran Interview, Indian-Pioneer

Pa ers, Vol. 20, p. A13; Mary Ann Box Interview, Indian-
Pioneer Papers, Vol. 10, p. 65-6; Mrs. D. S. Austin
Interview, Indian-ngneer Papers, Vol. 3, p. 3A9; Daniel
Corcoran Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 20, p. A07;
Thomas Guston Sappington Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 80, p. 223.

 

 

63

23. Elmora Messer Matthews, Neighbor, and Kin: Life in a
Tennessee Ridge Community. Vanderbilt University Press,
Nashville, 1966.

 

 

 

2A. Neva Hand Cowles, February 8, 1980; Ross Bowie, August
26, 1982; Alcyone Parks King, August 19, 1982.

25. Rocky Weekly Advance, Vol. 1, No. 38, January 10, 1907,
p. 1. Mr. Hammons also notes that this was a "one hand
crop"; plowed, cultivated and harvested soley by himself and
his family.

26. Lissie Bailey Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. A,
p. 67.

27. Thomas A. Edwards, Early Days in the C & A", Chronicles
2: Oklahoma, Vol. 27 (19A9), p. 15A.

 

28. Mrs. C. E. Keener Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
50, p. 81.

 

29. Oscar Ameringer, If You Don't Weaken. Henry Holt and
Company, New York, 19AO,_ pp. N61 2.

30. Allie B. Wallace, Frontier Life in Oklahoma. Public
Affairs Press, Washington, D. 0., 196A, p. 110.

 

31. Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeomen
Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry,
1850- 1890. Oxford University Press, New York, 1983, p. 29.

 

 

 

 

32. Hahn, p. 29.

33. Rosabel De Berry in Annie Laurie Steele, "Old Greer
County", Chronicles pf Oklahoma, Vol. A2 (196A), p. 32.

3A. Edward G. Barbee Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
5, p. 159; George Washington Boyd Interview, Indian-Pioneer
Papers, Vol. 10, p. 117.

 

 

 

35. Mrs. Charlie Sands Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 80, p. 195.

36. Lue Ann Corcoran Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
20,p. A13; Mary R. Austin Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
VoL 3, p. 361- 2.

 

 

 

37. James A. Henretta, "Families and Farms: Mentalite in
Pre-Industrial America", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd
Ser., Vol. 35 (1978), p. 20.

 

 

38. P. B. Woodruff Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.

 

6A

100, p. 122.

39. Mrs. H. N. Woodruff Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 100, p. 122.

A0. Price Francis, August 19, 1982. The maternal
grandparents do not appear in the 1900 Census schedules as
part of the household. (Family Number A91, Mangum Township,
Greer County). They may have arrived a short time later--
Price's parents did not arrive until 1900--or they may have
been staying temporarily with other family or friends.

A1. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982.
A2. Viola Sumrall Clark, June 30, 1981.

A3. Thomas A. Edwards, "Early Days in the C & A", Chronicles
23 Oklahoma, Vol. 27 (19A9), p. 153.

 

AA. Carroll Burson, August 26, 1982.

A5. Mrs. D. S. Austin Interview, Indian-Pionegg Papers, Vol.
3, p. 3A7; Cora Fitzgerald Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 30, p. 130; Thomas Arthur Banks Interview, Indian-
Pioneer Papers, Vol. 5, p. 12A.

 

 

 

A6. Wallace, p. AA.

A7. Lissie Bailey Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. A,
P. 70.

 

A8.8Lucy E. Boyce Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 10,
p. 0.

 

A9. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982.

50. Wallace, p. 35.

51. Allen Harper, August 26, 1982.

52. Neva Hand Cowles, February 8, 1980.

53. Josie Pendergrass Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
70, pp. 292-3.

5A. Marvin D. Bowie, August 2A, 1982.

 

55. Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women: The Trans-
Mississippi West 18A0-1880, Hill and Wang, New York, 1979;
John Mack Faragher, Women and Men pp the Overland Trail,
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979.

 

 

 

 

65

56. Ronald Preston Byars, The Making of the Self— Made Man:
The Development of Masculine Roles and Images Ln Ante-bellum
America. PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1979.

 

 

57. Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-
1860", American Quarterly, Vol. 18 (Summer 1966), pp. 151-
17A.

 

58. Jeffrey, p. 73, 106, 198.

59. Faragher p. 171; 182.

60. Geneva Harvey Reaves, June 27, 1981.
61. Marvin D. Bowie, August 2A, 1982.

62. Albert Banks Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 5,
p. 3.

63. Allen Harper, August 26, 1982.

6A. Allen Harper, August 26, 1982.

65. Viola Sumrall Clark, June 30, 1981.
66. Geneva Harvey Reaves, June 27, 1981.
67. Price Francis, August 19, 1982.

68. Sam Brandon Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol. 10,
D. 315.

69. Wallace, p. 9A.

 

70. U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,
Twelfth Census, 1900. Census of population schedules, Union
Township, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, Family Number
29.

71. Wallace, p. 12.

72. Thomas Arthur Banks Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers,
Vol. 5, p. 121.

 

73. Robert W. Attwood Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
3, p. 287.

7A. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982.

 

 

75. Carl Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family Ln America
from the Revolution to the Present, Oxford University Press,
New York, 1980, p. 77. Wishy acknowledges the physical

 

 

 

66

proximity of farm fathers and children but he assumes that
young children did not work near their fathers and may have
seen them only at mealtimes (Bernard Wishy, The Child and
the Republic. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadel-
phia, 1968, p. 26.)

 

 

76. Geneva Harvey Reaves, June 21, 1981.

77. Alcyone Parks King, August 19, 1982.

78. Neva Hand Cowles, February 8, 1980.

79. Wallace, p. 73.

80. Wallace, p. 22.

81. Wallace, p. 78.

82. Viola Sumrall Clark, June 30, 1981.

83. Geneva Harvey Reaves, June 21, 1981.

8A. Degler, p. 101.

85. Degler, pp. 86-110.

86. Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations:‘ Population,
Eagd, and Family 13 Colonial Andover, Massachusetts. Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, 1970; Steven Hahn, The Roots 2;
Southern Populism: Yeomen Farmers and the Transformation of

the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890. Oxford University Press:
New York, 1983.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

87. Gertrude Bradley Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, Vol.
10, p. 223; Viola Sumrall Clark, June 30, 1981.

88. Ross Bowie, August 26, 1982. When Ross and Marvin's
father died, their mother inherited the farm. She rented
it, but in the 19303 the tenant could not make enough from
it to support her, so she gave the farm to her second son
Magvin and went on welfare. (Marvin D. Bowie, August 2A,
19 2 .

89. Alcyone Parks King, August 19, 1982.

90. Monroe Billington, "W. C. Austin: Pioneer and Public
Servant", Chronicles pf Oklahoma, Vol. 31 (1953), p. 67.

 

91. Esther Alford Gibson, June 25, 1981.

92. Oscar Lee Presley, June 30, 1981.

93. Wallace,

D.

120.

67

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

List of Informants

Boone, Gladys Herrin
Born: 1899, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: February A, 1980

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses relationship between her father and maternal
grandmother, her courtship in the early 1920s, her aunt's
wedding in 1907, children at work and school, describes
furnishings and sleeping arrangements in the family's first
house. First cousin of Carroll Burson, Isaac Burson, and
Esther Alford Gibson; sister of Pinkney Herrin. Grandmother
of Claire Fuller Martin.

Bowie, Marvin Dwight
Born: 1891, Montague County, Texas
Interviewed: August 2A, 1982

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses trip from Texas to Oklahoma in 1898, work and
division of labor, cr0ps, fuel, mail order catalogs.
Brother of Ross Bowie.

Bowie, Ross (Roswell)
Born: 1889, Montague County, Texas
Interviewed: August 26, 1982

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses conditions in Texas, early churches, debates, post
office, crops, saloons, murders, people who left,
inheritance. Brother of Marvin Bowie.

Burson, Carroll
Born: 1896, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: August 20, 1982

Rocky, Oklahoma
Discusses dugout, widows and widowers, inheritance, stock,
crops, farm tools, division of labor, wild animal pets,
stock theives, midwives, World War I experiences in France,
Depression. First cousin of Gladys Boone, Isaac Burson,
Esther Gibson, and Pinkney Herrin.

Burson, Isaac
Born: 1900, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: August 25, 1982
Rocky, Oklahoma
Discusses women who filed claims, gardens, orchards, wild

68

69

game, chickens, mercantile business. First cousin of Gladys
Boone, Carroll Burson, Esther Gibson, and Pinkney Herrin.

Clark, Viola Sumrall (Bobo)
Born: 1893, Parker County, Texas
Interviewed: June 30, 1981

Mangum, Oklahoma
Discusses trip from Texas, dugout, wild animals, food
preservation, work, crops, home remedies, midwives, death,
schools, contacts with grandparents in Texas, egg money.

Cowles, Neva Hand
Born: 1897, Cooke County, Texas
Interviewed: February 8, 1980

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses mother's blindness due to measles; morals, stock,
groceries, division of labor, fuel, clothing, children
playing, death, parties, signs of the moon.

Fields, Verna Freeman
Born: 1896, Sugar Grove, Arkansas
Interviewed: March 22, 1982

Lawton, Oklahoma
Discusses childhood in Arkansas: marriage, divorce and
widowhood, nursing, hospitality to strangers, impressions of
Oklahoma Territory (came to O.T. in the 1910s).

Francis, Price
Born: 1906, Greer County, Oklahoma
Interviewed: August 19, 1982

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses division of labor, cr0ps, extended kin,
butchering, credit, thieves, horses traders, murder,
gypsies, parties. Son of Gumell Francis.

Francis, Gumell (Jumell) Johnson

Born: 1876, Mississippi

Interviewed: 1971 by Price Francis

Discusses moving from Mississippi to Texas, living in a
dugout in Greer County, O.T., kin, wild animals, nursing
babies. Mother of Price Francis. Price Francis allowed me
to make a copy of this tape and use it in this study.

Gibson, Esther Alford
Born: 1895, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: June 25, 1981

August 18, 1982

Hobart, Oklahoma
Discusses father's "rambling" through Texas, Oklahoma,
Mexico and California, division of labor, sibling
relationships, practical jokes, extended kin, cooking.
First cousin of Gladys Boone, Carroll Burson, Isaac Burson,

7O

Pinkney Herrin.

Harper, Allen
Born: 190A, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: August 26, 1982

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses mixed northern and southern background, widowhood
of his mother, saloons and murders, credit, doctors, home
remedies, extended families, butchering, planting by the
moon, fuel, Socialists, Dust Bowl.

Herrin, Pinkney Allen
Born: 189A, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: June 25, 1981

Hobart, Oklahoma
Discusses in detail the half-dugout in which he was born,
also prairie dogs as pets, refuge disposal, crops, early
steam threshers, child labor. Brother of Gladys Boone,
first cousin of Carroll Burson, Isaac Burson and Esther
Gibson.

King, Alcyone Parks
Born: 190A, Custer County, Oklahoma Territory
Interviewed: August 19, 1982

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses midwives, death, disease, extended kin, neighbors,
visiting, crops, wild game and fish, division of labor, home
remedies, signs of the moon, cooking, Indians, stock
thieves.

Presley, Oscar Lee
Born: 1883, Marshall County, Mississippi
Interviewed: June 30, 1981

Mangum, Oklahoma
Discusses extended kin, crOps, farm implements, wildlife,
outlaws, social activities, life in Texas, sibling
relationships.

Reaves, Geneva Harvey
Born: ca. 1900, Montague County, Texas
Interviewed: June 27, 1981

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses kin networks, moving from farm to farm, parent
child relationships, father's role, the Depression and
farming in the 19AOs.

Stowers, Wallace
Born: 1890, Marshall County, Chickasaw Nation, Indian
Territory
Interviewed: August 25, 1982
Washita County, Oklahoma
Discusses father's practice as a self-trained country

71

doctor, conditions in the Chickasaw Nation, stock, crops,
farm implements, credit, kin network, wildlife, prairie
fires.

Wolfenbarger, Katy Ella Redmond
Born: 1883, Cooke County, Texas
Interviewed: August 30, 1982

Sentinel, Oklahoma
Discusses childhood as orphan in Texas and Indian Territory,
kin network. Her daughter Ruby, who was present, was an
interviewer for the WPA History Project. She conducted and
wrote many of the interviews from Washita County that were
used in this study.

Zuma Walker Robinson of Carter, Oklahoma was also
interviewed, but did not wish to have her voice recorded.
Zela Banks Roberson did not wish to be interviewed, but
carried on a long telephone conversation with me. Both of
these interviews were productive and provided insights which
aided me in subsequent interviews. Mary Katherine
Sappington allowed me to borrow and take notes from a tape
recording she had made of her father Hudson Powell
discussing his early years in Greer County. This also was
very helpful.

APPENDIX B

Information on Regional Origins and Extended Families,
Based on the U. S. Population Census

The following tables are based on the U. S. Population
Census schedules from 1900. At that time Washita County was
comprised of only three townships and Greer of four. Elk
Township, Washita County was selected for study here because
most of the people from Washita County interviewed by the
WPA and by this author lived in this township. Its 6,096
residents accounted for more than forty per cent of the
county's population. Altus Township, Greer County was
selected largely because of its comparable size to Elk
Township. 6,803 people lived there in 1900, thirty-eight
per cent of the county's population.

Because this study is concerned primarily with families,
Tables 1, 2, and 3 use only the birthplaces of heads of
households and spouses of heads of households in order to
determine the regionality of the families of southwestern
Oklahoma Territory. Children, extended kin, servants, and

lodgers are omitted.1

 

1 Servants or lodgers were present in nine per cent of the
Altus households and four per cent of the Elk households.

72

73

Table 1. Places of Birth of Heads of Households and Their
Spouses: Altus Township, Greer County, Oklahoma Territory,
1900

Native-Born Residents

 

% Native-Born

 

 

 

 

 

State pf Birth No. Heads/Spouses Heads/Spouses
Texas ' 679 28.6
Tennessee 305 12.8
Alabama 225 9.5
Missouri 192 8.1
Arkansas 18A. 7.7
Kentucky 1A2 6.0
Mississippi 135 5.7
Georgia 130 5.5
Illinois 80 3.A
North Carolina 66 2.8
Virginia 562 2.u
Indiana 3A 1.A
Ohio 26 1.1
Iowa 22 0.9
South Carolina 21 0.9
Louisiana 20 0.8
Kansas 12 0.5
New York 8 0.3
Wisconsin 8 0.3
Indian Territory 5 0.2
Michigan A 0.2
Minnesota A 0.2
Pennsylvania A 0.2
California 3 0.1
Florida 3 0.1
Maryland 2 0.1
Massachusetts 2 0.1
Nebraska 1 <.1%
New Jersey 1 <.1%
South Dakota 1 <.1%
ngnown 1 (.11
TOTAL 2376'? 100%

7A

Table 1, continued
Foreign-Born Residents

 

% Foreign-Born
Country 33 Birth No. Heads/Spouses Heads/Spouses

 

 

 

19.A
12.9

Germany/Prussia
England
Ireland
Canada
France
Sweden
Denmark
Norway
Bohemia
Scotland
Switzerland
1221(9)?
TOTAL

NNNNU'IU'INNNO

100.1%

d—s—I—a—INNWWUO-tzm
u—I
wwwwmouoxoxom

U)

Foreign-born heads and spouses make up 1.3% of all heads and
spouses in Altus Township.

 

lU.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth
Census, 1900. Census schedules from Altus Township, Greer
County, Oklahoma Territory.

2Included in this number is the only black head of a
household in Altus Township, a ninety-year-old single man
living in a rented house. There were four other black
people in Altus Township in 1900, all women or young girls
who were servants.

75

Table 2. Places of Birth of Heads of Households and Their
Spouses: Elk Township, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory,
1900

Native-Born Residents

1 Native-Born

 

 

 

State pf Birth No. Heads/Spouses Heads/Spouses
Texas 590 25.1
Missouri 25A 10.8
Arkansas 230 9.8
Tennessee 22A 9.5
Alabama 1A2 6.1
Kentucky 135 5.8
Georgia 117 5.0
Mississippi 115 5.0
Illinois 91 3.9
Iowa 71 3.0
Indiana 66 2.8
Ohio A3 1.8
North Carolina 38 1.6
Kansas 35 1.5
Virginia 3A 1.5
Pennsylvania 29 1.2
Louisiana 20 0.9
Nebraska 20 0.9
South Carolina 1A 0.6
Wisconsin 12 0.5
Michigan 9 0.A
West Virginia 9 0.A
New Jersey 8 0.3
Maryland 7 0.3
California 6 0.3
New York 6 0.3
Indian Territory A 0.2
Maine 2 0.1
Massachusetts 2 0.1
Colorado 1 <.1%
Connecticut 1 <.1%
Florida 1 <.1$
Minnesota 1 <.1%
Nevada 1 <.1%
New Mexico 1 <.1%
Oklahoma 1 <.1%
Oregon 1 <.1%
Vermont 1 <.1%
Unknown 6 0.3
TOTAL 23A8 100.1

76

Table 2, continued
Foreigp-Born Residents

 

% Foreign-Born

 

 

 

 

Country _f Birth No. Heads/Spouses Heads/Spouses
Russia 19 33.9
Germany/Prussia 15 26.8
Bohemia 6 10.7
England 6 10.7
Canada 3 5.A
France 2 3.6
Ireland 2 3.6
Norway 2 3.6
Scotland 1 1.8
TOTAL 56 100.1%

Foreign-born heads and spouses make up 2.3% of all heads and
spouses in Elk Township. '

 

1U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth
Census, 1900. Census schedules from Elk Township, Washita
County, Oklahoma Territory.

77

Table 3. Regional Origins of Heads of Households and Their
Spouses: Altus Township, Greer County and Elk Township,
Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, 1900

% Native-Born

 

 

 

 

 

No. (%) Heads/Spouses Heads/Spouses
Altus Elk Altus Elk
REGION
South2 2166 (90) 193A (80.5) 91.2 82.6
North3 210 < 8.7) nos (17) 8.8 17.A
Foreign-born 31 ( 1.3) 56 ( 2.3) 4--- ----
Unknown 1 (<1%) 6 (<1%)
TOTAE 2508 2u04 100.0 100.0

 

1U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth
Census. Census schedules from Altus Township, Greer County
and Elk Township, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, 1900.

2Former Confederate and border states and Indian Terri-
tory.

3Former Union states and western states, including Okla-
homa Territory.

78

Table A. Households with One or More Extended Kin: Altus
Township, Greer County and Elk Township, Washita County,
Oklahoma Territory, 1900

 

Altus Elk
Number of households 1301 1339
Number (%) of households
with one or more kin 2AA (18.8) 126 (9.A)
Number of kin A25 179

 

1U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth
Census, Census schedules for Altus Township, Greer County,
and Elk Township, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, 1900.

79

Table 5. Relationships of Extended Kin to Heads of
Households: Altus Township, Greer County and Elk Township,
Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, 1900

Number (%) of Kin

 

Altus Elk
SIBLING-RELATED
Brother 73 (17.2) A0 (22.A)
Brother-in-law 21 ( A.9) 15 ( 8.A)
Sister 39 ( 9.2) 20 (11.2)
Sister-in-law 1A ( 3.3) 12 ( 6.7)
Nephew A2 ( 9.9) 9 ( 5.0)
Niece/niece-in-law 19 ( A.5) 9 ( 5.0)
Grandnephew/niece 5 ( 1.2) 1 ( 0.6)
Sub-total: 213 (50.1) 106 (59.2)
PARENT-CHILD
Grandparent 2 ( 0.5) - -
Mother A5 (10.6) 2A (13.A)
Mother-in-law 18 ( A.2) 10 ( 5.6)
Father 11 ( 2.6) 1 ( 0.6)
Father-in-law 5 ( 1.2) 7 ( 3.9)
Widowed/divorced
child with children 7 ( 1.6) 3 ( 1.7)
Daughter-in-law 20 ( A.7) A ( 2.2)
Son-in-law 15 ( 3.5) 3 ( 1.7)
Grandchild 78 (18.A) 1A ( 7.8)
Great-grandchild 1 ( 0.2) - -
Sub-total: 202 (A7.5) 66 (36.9)
AVUNCULAR
Uncle 2 ( 0.5) 3 ( 1.7)
Aunt 2 ( 0.5) 2 ( 1.1)
Cousin 6 ( 1.A) 2 ( 1.1)
Sub-total: 1O ( 2.A) 7 ( 3.9)
TOTAL: A25 (100%) 179 (100%)

 

1U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth
Census, Census schedules from Altus Township, Greer County
and Elk Township, Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, 1900.

APPENDIX C

Information on Migration,

Based on the Indian-Pioneer Papers Interviews

 

Fifteen per cent of the volumes of the Indian-Pioneer

 

Papers interviews of the Western History Collections at the

University
took place
people who
as well as

Four other

of Oklahoma were sampled. Of the interviews that
in Old Greer and Washita Counties, those of

had come after statehood (1907) were eliminated,
the interview of one northerner from Michigan.

northern-born informants were included because

they were the children of southerners and were raised in

southern states before coming to Oklahoma. The final sample

numbered sixty—seven.

80

81

Table 6. States from Which Southern Settlers Migrated to
Oklahoma Territory1

 

 

State or Born in Left this state
Territory this state for Oklahoma Terr.
# (1) # (1)
Alabama 2 ( 3.0) - -
Arkansas 5 ( 7.5) - -
Georgia 3 ( A.5) - -
Illinois 3 ( A.5) - -
Indian Territory 3 ( A.5) 10 (1A.9)
Kansas 1 ( 1.5) - -
Kentucky 3 ( A.5) - -
Mississippi 2 ( 3.0) - -
Missouri 7 (10.A) 2 ( 3.0)
Oklahoma Territory - - 1 ( 1.5)
Tennessee 10 (1A.9) 3 ( A.5)
Texas 20 (29.9) A3 (6A.2)
Virginia 3 ( A.5) 1 ( 1.5)
Not Given 5 ( 7.5) 7 (10.A)
TOTAL 67 (100.2) 67 (100.0)

 

1Based on a fifteen per cent sample of the volumes of
Indian-Pioneer Papers interviews.

 

82

Table 7. Culture Regions in Texas from Which Settlers
Departed for Oklahoma Territory

 

Culture Region # Informants % Informants
Upper Southern 25 58
Lower Southern 1 2

Hill Country/
Medina County German - -

 

Anglo-Western 3 7
Unidentifiable county 2 5
County/town not given 12 28
TOTAL 7*A3 . 100

 

1Based on a fifteen per cent sample of the Indian-Pionegg
Papers interviews. These settlers indicated they left Texas
for Oklahoma. The culture regions are those described by
Terry C. Jordan, Texas Log Buildings: ,A Folk Architecture,
University of Texas Press, Austin: pp. 10-13; 181-18A.

83

Table 8. Motives for Migrating to Oklahoma Territory1

 

# %
Opportunity/free land 10 A8
Kin 92 A3
Health 2 10
Drifted in 2 10
Confederate veteran 1 (5%

 

TOTAL

 

1Based on a fifteen per cent sample of the Indian-Pioneer
Papers interviews. Only 21 (31%) of the sample of 67
mentioned their motives for coming to Oklahoma Territory.

2Three of the informants who gave kinship as a motive also
gave other reasons.

8A

Table 9. Indian-Pioneer Papers Informants Who Mention
the Presence of Kin in Their Communities

 

 

# %
Kin other than nuclear family mentioned: 33 A9
No kin other than nuclear family mentioned: 3A2 51
TOTAL 67 100

 

1Based on a fifteen per cent sample of the Indian-Pioneer
Papers interviews.

2This includes an informant who, because he was a distant
cousin, the author knows came with nearly all of his
mother's kin. This indicates the discrepancy between the
number of informants who mentioned kin and the number who
actually had kin in the neighborhood.