Guthrie was the first capital of Oklahoma and it remains a historical place–it is a National Historic Landmark. I always enjoy visiting there–the people are warm and the history is unavoidable. The Society meets in the Oklahoma Territorial Museum.

The museum is attached to the first Carnegie library built in Oklahoma.

The library interior has been beautifully restored, with the tile surrounds on the fireplaces showing my favorite color.

There were displays of modern-day constructions made in the recent workshop held at the Museum.

In addition, there is a display of Nicole Moen‘s wearable ceramic corsets. Fascinating.

This one is called “Autumn Wedding”

. . . I forgot the official name of this one but it looks appropriate for women out here on the frontier, don’t you think?

and “Lily Pond” which is being raffled as a fund raiser for YWCA Battered Womens program. (have I mentioned I like green?) This was beautiful.

There was even information about men who wore corsets, which, according to this display, is the origin of the word “dandy.”

I felt myself breathe a little more deeply when I got to this “Bloomer garment” . . . a welcome relief, no doubt, to women in the early part of the 20th century when looser garments were finally accepted.

And if you want to support the Museum efforts, you can make a donation and perhaps win this wonderful quilted wallhanging made by the volunteers. . .

I hope I get another invitation to talk to this Society again–it’s a wonderful trip.

You can browse or search–all 7885 of them.

Here’s the card for my 2nd great-grandfather

and the reverse–

I got a copy of his pension packet a few years ago at the Oklahoma Historical Society.  And my grandmother, James Anderton’s granddaughter, had told me that he’d gone back to Alabama and died there.  Despite the state of Alabama telling me they couldn’t find his death record, I did find it later and he died in 1918.  And then a few years later, one of my friends found his grave for me.  He’s buried in Cochran Cemetery in Marshall County, Alabama.

The ODL website also includes the index for the Confederate Pensions, but looking through the cards that were typed in the early part of the 20th century shortly after the legislation passed 25 February 1915, gives me a better sense of the process.  Something about seeing the work of those old manual typewriters, with a red ribbon used occasionally, and the other various stamps–

Great-great grandfather James applied for his pension 3 short months after the passage of the legislation.  He lived out in the panhandle of Oklahoma, which, even today, can feel isolated from what goes on in the state capital 200 miles away.  I wonder how he got the word?

His wife of 45 years had died in April.  My grandmother told me that her grandmother Anderton had really wanted to go back home to Alabama in her later years.  They had come out to Oklahoma by 1904 when their son, my great-grandfather, married in Mangum, Greer County, Oklahoma Territory.  A few years later they all moved on out to the panhandle and received homestead land.  Three short months after he applied, his pension application was approved.  He apparently used the money to finance his return home.  His sons who had come west stayed in Oklahoma, with the exception of one whose wife had died.  The cemetery in which he is buried include Kirklands to whom I believe he is related.  His youngest daughter had married a Kirkland, and though I don’t see her name there, she may have buried her father where her husband’s family had property.

So it’s another Oklahoma resource online. It was initially fascinating to me to find that my Alabama grandfather’s military pension was available in Oklahoma. But the soldiers who had served as Confederates received pensions much later than did the Union soldiers, and then from the states in which they were living at the time rather than from the states from which they served.

The first is that early burial records for Fairlawn Cemetery here in Oklahoma City has gone online.  This is one of the oldest burial grounds in Oklahoma City, which if you recall was established overnight by the land run of 1889.  The images are of Fairlawn’s record books and they are not searchable.  However, it is fairly easy to browse them, and the benefit of being able to look at the book is that you actually get more information.  There is no public index for deaths in Oklahoma so this is a wonderful resource for central Oklahoma.

For now, the information begins in 1901.  My source tells me the earlier books have been scanned and will be up within a month or so.  We look forward to having access to these records for so many of Oklahoma City’s early citizens.

Secondly, I have just found marriage records for Oklahoma counties have been put up at FamilySearch.  As with many states, Oklahoma has no statewide index to marriages.  This database has images where available–I found an image of my parents’ 1950 marriage in Beaver County, including images of the index–one for the grooms and one for the brides.  However, I found only an index entry to what I believe is probably a 1909 marriage between my the great-great aunt and uncle in Alfalfa County. (My great-grandfather’s brother (Simon B. Unruh) married my great-grandmother’s sister (Josephine Buller)–I was hoping for the record of my great-grandparents 1904 marriage, but because of the pre-statehood date, I really believe it is only available in the church book.)

The entire state is not included–my understanding is that some counties declined to have their records filmed.  I hope you are one of the lucky ones!

But at work I’ve had about 3 genealogical break-throughs this week and I need to write about at least one of them.

I’ve been working on a family in which a youngish widow with 4 children marries a man who was Wyandot and Shawnee.  They marry about 1890, and until reading these documents, I did not have an exact date or place.  This man’s mother married a white man and he is considered to be 1/8 Shawnee.  I know that some of these children attended Haskell Institute, and later, in 1903, that the oldest daughter worked at Haskell and at Winnebago boarding school, probably in Nebraska.  After her marriage about 1905, she and her husband worked at the Sac and Fox sanitarium in Iowa.

I found these children on the census and in the Haskell records using the last name of their stepfather.  I don’t know yet if he “officially” adopted them.

What I did find is that he claimed them when making application to the Dawes Commission for citizenship in the Cherokee Nation.  (The Cherokees “adopted” the Shawnees and there are several Shawnee enrolled into the Cherokee Nation.)

I have always heard that sometimes applicants did not tell the truth when making application to the Dawes Commission.  This was the first time I saw an absolute example of this.  We know that lots of persons who were actually Indian were not granted citizenship because they could not prove their connection to a person on an earlier tribal roll.  And we also know that many persons who were NOT Indian ended up on the rolls through fraud.

Remember that the main purpose of getting the Dawes Rolls done was to distribute the land that had been held in common by the Indian Nations.  Persons had to prove their citizenship in one of the tribes (Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole) in order to receive their land.  So I assume that’s what was on the mind of this man, who WAS actually of Indian descent, when he tried to put his step-children and his wife on the rolls.  If each of those 4 children had been put on the rolls, he would have received more land.

The file is fascinating.  He spins a tale of marrying this woman when she was 15 or 16 and that they married in Colorado.  He claims each of the children as his own.  He says the oldest daughter is in bed with consumption when in reality, my research shows she was probably in Nebraska working at the Winnebago school.  He says his wife cannot travel to testify before the Commission because of a heart condition.  The Commission tells him they have received a complaint that those children belonged to his wife by her first marriage.  He continues to maintain that this was her first marriage and that the children are his.  This goes on for pages.

Eventually, his wife appears and in short shrift, she establishes that she is indeed the mother of those children by a first marriage, and that she was a widow when she married her current husband.

Outcome:  he ends up on the Roll but the Mrs. and her children are denied.  Which is as it should be except she really should have been able to be enrolled as an intermarried white.  Reason for her denial requires more research.

No genealogy research is easy, but American Indian research continues to confound and amaze me.

I’m putting in a plug here for the Western History Collections. If you research western history, or if you had family working or living in this area, you owe it to yourself to learn about this special collection.  This link is just to what’s digitized and available online–wonderful resources.  The Indian Pioneer History Papers are interviews that were done by the WPA with persons who were living in Oklahoma and/or Indian Territory before and during the statehood years.  Browse through some of the photos on this website–cowboys, Indians, civil rights, OU history, football and otherwise–just a sample of what this collection holds.

But the collection I was perusing today was the Melven Cornish Collection.  [Take a look at all the Native American related collections digitized at their site http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/whc/nam/browse.asp?sub=7.]

Why is looking at this particular collection important for my search for information about the Richard Hagar MCR 7334 file?  When the enrollments were being done, in between 1898 and 1906, the tribes hired attorneys to protect their interests.  The persons who were applying often hired attorneys to work their applications through the Commission.

The bottom line about the Dawes Commission was that it was a way to determine who was going to get land, and, as you can imagine, this attracted lots of folks who were not entitled to an allotment from one of the Indian tribes.  I don’t know if this was Richard Hagar’s motive.  But I do know that the Chickasaw and Choctaws hired a firm from McAlester, Oklahoma, that included Melven Cornish.   Mr. Cornish had begun his involvement with the Dawes Commission as a stenographer for the persons applying for citizenship as Choctaw freedmen back in 1898.  Here’s the description of this collection:

Cornish, Melven (b. ca. 1870)
		Papers 1876-1940 20 feet Attorney. Case files (1903-1904) and letterbooks (1900-1905) relating to Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians citizenship claims; dockets (1903-1904) for the central and southern divisions of the U. S. District Court; an account book (1899); and a record book (1876) entitled Proceedings of the Court of Claims, Choctaw Nation, along with clippings (1896-1907) and published court documents (1900-1940) relating to Chickasaw and Choctaw Indian cases represented by the law firm of Mansfield, McMurray, and Cornish in U.S. courts.

I thought there might be something in his papers related to this Hagar case, but if so, it is not a major part.  Thee name index does not include the Hagar name or any thing that might be an alternate spelling.  I was hoping that the answers, or at least the response, to the 5 page (single spaced!) questionnaire sent to the deponents Richard Hagar has introduced into the record–John D. Layne and Caswell Griffith, both from Arkansas [sic].  No such luck.

April 6, 1904, a letter to is sent to Richard Hagar’s attorney in Sulphur Springs, Texas, J. A. Hurley, informing him that the Commission has rendcered its decision “refusing the application for identification as Mississippi Choctaws of the several persons included in the case of Richard Hagar et al.”  The letter is signed by T. B. Needles, Commissioner in Charge.  A similarly phrased letter is also sent to Richard Hagar whose address is given as Fort Towson, Indian Territory, and a third copy is sent to “Mansfield, McMurray & Cornish, Attorneys for Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, South McAlester, Indian Territory.”

Not everyone thought the law firm was behaving legally nor in the best interest of the Choctaws and Chickasaws.  Here’s a link to an article protesting the actions of this law firm from the 1910 New York Times.

Another view, included in the obituary of partner George A. Mansfield states

He removed to South McAlester, Indian Territory, and became the senior member of the law firm of Mansfield, McMurray & Cornish. This law firm represented the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations of Indians from 1899 to 1908, their most notable achievement being the defeat of the citizenship claimants, known as Court claimants, and the restoration to the Tribes of claims, for lands and property of the value of several million dollars.

Kent Carter’s book on The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1893-1914 is the source to help you understand all the forces at work during this time.  There are no easy answers.

Richard says that he expects to prove by this witness that his (Richard’s) grandfather was Steely Hagah and resided in Mississippi until 1857 and then moved to Arkansaw [sic].  Toten says Steely Hagah was a half-breed Mississippi Choctaw and that his wife was full blood Mississippi Choctaw, that the said Streely [sic] was registered by the US Commissioners in 1837 as a Mississippi Choctaw and was enrolled and recognized as a Mississippi Choctaw by the commissioners.  As such a recognized and enrolled Mississippi Choctaw, he received lands from the government of the U.S., and resided on same for a period of more than five years.  That Steely Hagah was recognized among the Mississippi Choctaw Indians of Mississippi and known and accepted as such in 1830.  That Joe Toten was personally acquainted with the said Steely Hagah and personally knew all the members of his family.  That he personally knew Stirling Hagah to be the son of the said Steely Hagah, and that the “said Stirling Hagah is the father of your applicant R. Hagah.”  That Joe Toten personally knew the said Stirling Hagah and the members of his family.

And then, in closing, the statement says,

That the said Joe Toten is now 97 years of age, and is not unable from age and infirmatives to personally appear before the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes to give his testimony in person.

This sent me straight to the 1900 census for Noxubee County, Mississippi.

I was not surprised to find no one who matched this person.

So I went back to 1880.  For this year, I found, in Noxubee County, a fairly good match.  If Joe was 97 in 1903, that means he was born about 1806.  Here’s a J. H. who was born about 1810, AND who is living in the said county.

J. H. Tatum 70

S. A. Tatum 59

Jane Reed 42

Did Richard use a person his father had known in Mississippi and construct supportive testimony for his 1903 application?  Richard sends this statement from his home in Sulphur Springs, Texas, in April 1903, a month after his personal appearance before the Commission.  How did he get this statement from a man, who, if alive, lived almost 500 miles away?

Also enclosed is the testimony of a man named John D. Layne, whose residence is given as Rockey Comfort in Little River, State of Arkansaw.  Mr. Layne’s age is given a 82, and I did find a good match for this witness.

1900  Jackson, Little River County, Arkansas

John D Layne 79

Elizabeth Layne 76

William Smith 17

Margaret Smith 16

Robert Smith 12

Willis Smith 9

Wayne Jackson 7

Layne professes to have know Mary Hagah, the wife of Steely Hagah, that she was the mother of Stirling Hagah who was the father of the applicant, that she was a Mississippi Choctaw Indian, that Stirling Hagah and Dan Hagah his brother always claimed to be Choctaw Indians and that they looked like they had Indian blood in them, and that they claimed kin to Robert Jones of the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory.

He, too, is unable from advanced age to appear before the Commission.

A third deponent, Caswell Griffith, also from Little River County, Arkansas, provides about the same information, though he does provide Mary’s maiden name as Huckbee and that Steely and son Stirling both spoke the Choctaw language.  He notes that Mary’s father’s name was John Jones and that Mary had the appearance of a full blood Choctaw, and that all the Hagahs claimed to be Choctaw.  He says he was about 18 at the time of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which was signed in 1830, making him born about 1812.

The closest I can get to a person with this name is in 1880 in Little River County, Arkansas

Caswill Griffith 52

Allice Griffith 30

Cisero Griffith 22

Rocksiana Griffith 20

Nancy Griffith 18

Edward Griffith 14

There are Griffiths still living in the area in 1900, but I did not find Caswell.

All three of these oaths are submitted with a notary from Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, Texas, where Richard Hagar is living, saying that R. Hagar is known to him and that after being duly sworn, says the facts set out in the foregoing documents are true and correct to the best of his information knowledge and belief.

If I’m reading the packet correctly, these depositions are added to the application packet, but the Commissioners also sent a 3 page questionnaire to Richard’s attorney in Sulphur Springs, to be administered to each of the witnesses.

I did not find any responses among the 60+ pages.

There is another letter that states it encloses a certified copy of the marriage license and certificate between T. R. Hagar and Mary Fowler.  Unfortunately, no copy of the marriage record is in the packet, nor is the date or place of the marriage provided. [Other records indicate Richard Hagar is also knows as Thomas Richard Hagar.]

So what to make of these statements?  What parts of the depositions are true and what parts are not?  I would very much like to believe that the maiden names for the women are correct–I find other documents online that have these names for the wives, but what are the sources?  I believe that the information about the westward movement from Mississippi to Arkansas to Texas (in Richard’s case) is accurate.

I’ll post more about this case later.

I’ve been working in the census records and have found data on Richard’s family in Texas and Arkansas.  I’ll continue that search.

In addition, at the OHS Library, we have copies of the Melvyn Cornish papers.

So who is Melvyn Cornish, you ask?

Melvyn Cornish was one of the attorneys for the Choctaw Nation during this time period.

I can hardly wait to see what’s there.

My mother in law, now 94 and youngest of the 12 children born to Arthur Lee Hagar and Samantha Hawkins, always said that Pappy (Arthur) had “gone up to try to get on the rolls” from their home in Eastland County, Texas.  Their family has a story of Native American heritage, and like many of the persons I work with at the Oklahoma Historical Society Library, “look” like they might have Indian heritage.

Early in my genealogical searching, I looked for a connection and did not find one.  But this week another family researcher shared one sheet from the rejected application to the Mississippi Choctaw New Born rolls made by Arthur Hagar.  In 1906, he applied for membership for 5 of his and Samanthan’s children–Clarence, Cecil, Vera, Velma, and Vernon.  All of these children were under the age of 8–Clarence was 7, wins Vera and Velma were age 5, Cecil was 2 and Vernon was just a year old.

Here’s where it pays to look for the records.  I’d always thought that the Hagar family thought their Indian heritage came through Samantha Hawkins’ line, but I was wrong.  In some of these applications, it is Arthur who is claiming to be Choctaw.  I say on some.  On others, it appears that they both claim Choctaw tribal membership and on others neither claims to be Choctaw.  I don’t necessarily believe these people were trying to be deceptive–their statements are on forms typed by a clerk and I’m not sure the clerk’s typing is accurate in every case–not to mention that copies appear to be re-typed on another form rather than using carbon on these particular documents.

In any case, the reason for refusal is based on “Section 2 of the Act of Congress approved April 26, 1905 (Public No. 129), provides:

That for ninety days after the approval hereof applications shall be received for enrollment of children who were minors living March fourth, nineteen hundred and six, whose parents have been enrolled as members of the Choctaw, Chickawaw, Cherokee, or Creek tribes, or have applications for enrollment pending at the approval hereof.”

So the children were denied because their parents were not enrolled  on any of the tribal rolls nor was an application pending.  These papers are in packet 291 on the Mississippi Choctaw packets.  I found them through my subscription to Footnote.com–they are also available on microfilm in the OHS Library.

This Hagar family did not meet another criteria for enrolling onto the Final Rolls through the Dawes Commission–they did not live in Indian Territory.  I will have to investigate if there were exceptions for those who were attempting to enroll as Mississippi Choctaw.  From Kent Carter’s The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribe, 1893-1914, I do know that some of the Commission traveled to Mississippi to locate Choctaws who had remained there when most of the tribe had been moved on west into what is now southern Oklahoma.  But so far I’ve found nothing that provides an exception for persons living in Texas.

So despite the failed attempt to enroll, these documents do support the family story.  It is also, perhaps,  a lesson to re-create and confirm some of those early findings.

Tomorrow (or so) I’ll post about another Hagar who appealed the decision to not be admitted and talk about some of the records generated by that process.

Officially known as The Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, the Dawes Rolls list individuals who chose to enroll and were approved for membership in the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.) Enrollment for the Dawes Rolls began in 1898 and ended in 1906.

If you look closely, you can see that the first person on each of these cards appears to be the same person–he is John Larney on one card and Johnson Larney on the other.  You can tell this by looking across the line and seeing that the names of his mother and father match as well as the bands of all him and his parents.  Mr. Larney’s age, however, is different on the cards.

One of the important things about these census cards (as with most documents) is that you must read the entire record.  The temptation is to look only for the enrollment numbers and the family information.    But if you look down toward the bottom of the card you will see that “No. 1 is dead” on both cards.  Further, the document notes that his death is recorded in the land office.

Strange place to record a death?

Not really if you understand that the whole purpose behind the Dawes Rolls was to finalize the tribal rolls so land could be allotted to each member.   This process asked the Indian people to do away with their tribal governments and to recognize the Federal government.

Previously I wrote about the scarcity of packets that would provide additional information on these families applying for citizenship.  When I went to the packets for each of these cards, I found very similar contents–one sheet of paper that was a letter to the surviving wife asking her to supply a notarized death affidavit and return it in the “inclosed” envelope.  The date on both of the letters is the same.

So is this the same person on each card, despite the age differences?  What do you think?

It’s advice I’ve given lots of beginning researchers and I’ve recently encountered a situation that requires me to take my own advice.

Last year the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division was fortunate enough to receive a grant to participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).  You may know this program as “Chronicling America.”  It is a wonderful, free site that provides digital images of newspapers published before 1923.  Newspapers from several states have been made available, and only recently, the first newspaper from Oklahoma was included.  These newspapers are keyword searchable, and I thought I should give it a spin.

My maternal grandmother’s family homesteaded in Beaver County.  I grew up in adjacent Ochiltree County, Texas.  So it is a part of the world I know fairly well.  I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about searching the Beaver County newspaper for an obit for my great-grandmother and instead finding a news story about her suicide.  My family did not “trade” in Beaver–they instead went across the state line to Perryton, Texas.

So while I didn’t think I’d find much, I thought I’d give it a whirl.  This time I found information about my grandmother’s grandfather.

James Anderton and his wife Sarah Davis Anderton came to Oklahoma Territory, probably about  1904.  There’s a record of a homestead filed 20 April 1905 in Beaver County and the subsequent “proving up” in 1910.  James and Sarah were in their early 60s when they came to Oklahoma from Marshall County, Alabama.  One of their sons homesteaded in Roger Mills County, but others, including my great-grandfather Robert, came on west to the panhandle.  My grandmother told me that her grandmother Anderton used to want to go back to Alabama, but she died in Beaver County, Oklahoma, 11  April 1915.  She is buried in Blue Mound Cemetery, a small country cemetery atop a slight rising in the western part of the county.

A few months later, in June, James applied for his Confederate Pension in Oklahoma.  He had served in Ward’s Battery Light Artillery from Alabama.  Oklahoma was the last state to offer pensions to Confederate vets, and James was awarded about $315 in September, 1915.  He evidently took his pension money and returned to Alabama.  He died in 1918 and is buried at Cochran Cemetery in Madison County, Alabama.

When I decided to try to search the Beaver Herald using the name “Anderton,” I expected to find several false hits on the name “Anderson.”  Instead what I found in the 15 Jan 1915 edition was an account of a the County Commissioners’ reimbursement to James Hood, for “helping arrest Jas Anderton and guarding him.”    In the same record, T. B. Jones is listed as being reimbursed for  ”car hire for Jas Anderton to Beaver.”  And then there’s the listing of B. W. Webber’s reimbursements: one entry for “board for Jas Anderton” and  one for  ”arrest of Jas Anderton, insane, guarding him and bringing him to Beaver.”

Insane?

Despite hearing lots about her family from my grandmother, I heard nothing of this incident.  Perhaps since she was 9, she wasn’t aware of it.  But my main question has to do with the nature of what precipitated this arrest.  The community where the Andertons lived was about 30 miles from Beaver, the county seat.  How did word travel to Beaver that an arrest out in the southwestern part of the county was warranted?  And what was great-great grandfather James doing to make this necessary?  Was it a case of dementia?  Was alcohol involved?  Seems like the record would indicate drunkeness if this was the case.

So many questions.  My next step for this incident is to look at court records in Beaver County courthouse.

Another example of being willing to take what is found and then needing to dig a little deeper.  As Michael John Neill said at the workshop I attended yesterday, we genealogists act like 3 year olds because we constantly ask “why?”

I was searching the Lawton newspapers for obituaries and I was struck by the scarcity of them.  Marriages were regularly listed–Fort Sill was nearby so there was a plethora of young men.  Births appear less frequently, and usually in the “about town” column that records visits from out of town relatives or the amount of rain received south of town.

There were two newspapers at this time period–the Lawton Constitution and The Daily News and Star. On the front page of the 10 Jul 1913 edition, there was an interesting mix of stories. Mrs. Mattie Payne calls for a meeting of all the ladies who settled in Lawton any time during 1901 to phone or write her. She is organizing a club of such “as an auxilary [sic] to the men’s club just organized.”  This reminded me of the story about the establishment of the Daughters of the American Revolution–the men wouldn’t allow the women to join their organization, so the ladies started their own.  And we all know how that turned out.

There’s also a list of the visitors to nearby Medicine Park–the holiday weekend, no doubt.   This resort was apparently established shortly after statehood and is still in operation.  I’d love to know how some of my relatives spent their July 4 holiday.

Then there was the story about John Tremont, who, together with Mrs. Ada Woodward and Emma Rivers, was charged with having killed Mrs. Woodward’s husband Sherman by administering “rat biscuits placed in sardines.”  The jury in neighboring Chickasha evidently could not reach as verdict so the jury was discharged.

Here’s the one obituary I found among these stories on the front page.  Interesting that 62 was considered aged.  William, one of  ”the Hogg boys” was 30 if the 1910 census is accurate–

Aged Lawton Lady is Death’s Victim

Mothes [sic] of Mrs. G. F. Japp and Hogg Boys Succumbs to Reaper

Mrs. Mary Hogg, 62 years of age, died at her home, 207 Park avenue, at 6 o’clock last night, after an illness of the past several weeks.  The body will be buried tomorrow morning, 10 o’clock, from the residence, the Rev. T. J. Irwin to preach the fueneral [sic] sermon.

Mrs. Hogg was the mother of William and Percy Hogg of this city and Mrs. G. F. Japp, residing southeast of town.  She also has a daughter, Mrs. Emma Rupert, residing in Lincoln, Nebraska.