Grandmother's Education

 

 

           Grandmother, Victoria Rosser, and Sister Ada (standing)   

          This is the oldest picture I have of Grandmother, at age 16 or 17?

Grandmother didn’t have much in the way of formal education. She mentioned in a letter that her older sisters Kittie and Lillie got to go to school in Hyde Park,  Arkansas. They stayed with their oldest sister Cora who was married and living there, but Grandmother and her younger sister Ada were too young, so they were home schooled by their mother. 

In 1889 the family moved to Indian Territory. They settled on an acreage north of Pauls Valley, in an area that would later be known as Klondike. At first, Grandpa sent the girls to school in Pauls Valley, where they had the teacher with the big ears, described in the following paragraphs that Grandmother wrote many years later – I guess kids will always make fun of their teachers. 

The first public funeral home must have been built in 1890. It was the first public school in the Territory. The first superintendant was J W Wilkerson a small stoop shouldered man and wore a derby hat pulled down so that it made his ears stick out. The building was a square building with an upstairs & the advanced pupils was upstairs. The low grades down stairs. & we drew the water that we drank from a well. Waded mud shoe top deep. There were no sidewalks in town. It was at first a pay school. In 1896 the principal was D W McKee. He was a Quaker. Was a great educator. His wife taught us music. Miss McDaniels taught elocution & was also a primary teacher. & a Miss Ramsy from Virginia primary grade teacher. D W McKee also taught short hand & typing, was great on giving lectures to the students.

At that time there were no pavements or sidewalks. We had a Methodist Church a wood building & an old Presbyterian Church that had been moved here from Cherokee town. That is about 2 miles from our depo. We had one store C J Grants & Snede later on & then Kendal. Blacksmith shop. An opra house. One Hotel. Across the railroad known as the McClure House. & one known as the Commercial House owned by a widdow campbell. We hada no shows only what the school put on. & some time troops would come here. Our first carnival was in 1903. Our first Mayor was in 1899. Pauls Valley was incorporated in 1899. We had a beautiful park. All pecan down below the depo free Bar bque and free bakers bread. Large loaves 4 times the size that we have now. Purk Bruce had a drug store & in his drugstore a lending library that was a boon to everyone. 

According to the interview from 1937 cited in my Nov. 7 post, Grandpa and some others hired a teacher and had a building moved from Pauls Valley to Klondike so the girls would have a school closer to home. 

During the next couple of years Grandpa and Grandmother’s older brother Tom worked to try and make their acreage profitable. They grew cotton and probably other crops and the railroad went through Pauls Valley so they didn’t have far to go to sell their crops. The country was still pretty wild, and having the railroad near didn’t help. It was during this time that grandmother swore Grandpa had a visit from members of the Dalton gang. Here’s what she wrote: 

1894 J T Rosser planted 125 acres of cotton Hands were hard to get. day labor was cheap but scarce. one evening late two young men rode up into the yard. they had opened wire gates & rode thru the field. & said How Dad do you want two bad boys to chop cotton. papa hired those two young men. & they worked 10 days or 2 weeks. they were quiet had excellent manners. good choppers for cotton seemed to know good farming. Rode good horses had a pair of pistols strapted to their sadles were short shot guns. they did their work well ask for their wages & took their departure. late one eve. shook hands with papa. thanked him for giving them work they were evidently members of the Dalton gang that had just raided Coffeville Kan. 

In 1890, Grandmother’s mother, Emily Bass Rosser, died, of a tumor growing in her abdomen. At that point, Grandpa sent the girls to live with their older sister Cora again. Cora and her husband had divorced or separated – I don’t know any details of when or why. At that point, she was living in Wynnewood, about 7 miles south of Pauls Valley, and was the proprietor of a millinery shop. She made hats. There’s conflicting information about the time of Emily’s death. It might have been as late as 1894. 

I doubt if Grandmother had much schooling after her mother’s death. She started dating my grandfather shortly after that, and Grandpa sent her to Georgia to stay with his mother for a while in hopes that her feelings would cool off. Actually it did the opposite. Grandmother and her grandmother, Susan Whitehead Rosser Lumpkin, really hit it off. They shared a passion for gardening, and Grandma Lumpkin was fascinated by Grandmother’s stories of Indian Territory and of her Chickasaw beau. 

To be continued.

Gunga Din

 

Sam Jaffe, as Gunga Din

Just saw last part of the 1939 movie, “Gunga Din.” I looked it up and it was an adaptation of a poem by the same name by Rudyard Kipling written in 1890.  The setting is 19^th century India, then a colonial possession of Britain.  Gunga Din is a water carrier for the army who is abused and humiliated as an inferior. Kipling’s poem tells the story of how during a battle, Gunga Din saves the life of the narrator, and after carrying him to safety is shot and killed. It concludes with the lines:

 

Tho I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,

By the livin’ Gawd that made you,

You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

 

I remember growing up, when someone would do something generous or brave, my mother would repeat that last line: “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” I never knew where it came from.

 

The movie version softens the abuse shown to Gunga Din and portrays the British army as honorable defenders of the realm, although blind to the suffering of the Indian people, but I suppose that was the best Hollywood could do in 1939. It’s instructive to read Kipling’s poem though, because he doesn’t pull any punches. 

How Mamma Came to Indian Territory

 

Cora, Tom and Ada Rosser

I just have just a few pieces of information about how Mamma’s[i] family came from Arkansas to Indian Territory.

When the Rossers started west from Georgia after the Civil War, they had intended to join Grandpa’s brother Ed in Texas, but circumstances changed. Their oldest daughter Cora married a man in Marvell, Arkansas, near Palmer Station, where they were living, and Grandpa was elected magistrate, so they stayed for a while, 7 years, but something else happened that caused them to change their plans.

Mamma’s mother, Emily Bass Rosser, was expecting a large inheritance from her father in Alabama, but when word of Emily’s father’s death finally came, the inheritance turned out to be only a few gold coins, the equivalent of about $50, so they realized they were on their own.

I have no proof of it, and no one is left for me to ask, but I think Grandpa might have been influenced by my mother’s other grandfather, Sam Paul, a Chickasaw Indian. Sam Paul, was a “Progressive” among the Chickasaws, favoring the influx of white settlers, and according to some notes made by my uncle Haskell, he made trips to Arkansas and also to Texas to invite settlers to come to Indian Territory. Of course this scared the be-Jesus out of the more traditional full-bloods, or “Pull Backs.” They were used to living in a communal style, sharing land and other resources among themselves, and just wanted to be left alone.

Sam Paul, probably influenced more by his more ambitious father, Smith Paul, a Scotsman, thought the Indians could make money by renting their land to settlers, and could also benefit from the businesses and “civilization” the white men brought. He was also a politician, popular among the intermarried white citizens, and leader of the Chickasaw “Progressive” party.

Anyway, I wonder if Grandpa Rosser was persuaded to come to Indian Territory by one of Sam Paul’s talks. If the farm land in the Washita River valley was as good as Sam Paul claimed, maybe Grandpa could to provide for his four remaining daughters until they were married and independent. Ada, their youngest was only 9 (est.) Mamma was 11.

Mamma told about coming to Indian Territory with her family in an interview in 1937: [ii]

I came to the Indian Territory with my father and mother. We were moving from Mississippi to the Indian Territory in wagons, working horses and oxen in 1889. I was eleven years old. I remember people telling my father that he would have to be on the lookout for horse thieves. We had some trouble while crossing Arkansas, but after we crossed into the Indian Territory we never were bothered by anyone. My father would buy feed from the Indians and they were the most accommodating people I ever met. We came through Muskogee but there wasn't much of a town there then. At that time there were but few roads and at times it looked as if it would be impossible to go any farther. After several months of traveling over rough country we located at Pauls Valley. My Father traded the ox team, a tent and a few horses to Mr John Burks for a lease that had a two room log house on it. This lease had never been worked but there was a plowed furrow around it. My father and brother began putting this prairie land in cultivation. There was open range at that time, and you could have all the hogs and cattle you wanted to own, but you had to have your brand and mark on them. 

There was an Indian law at that time between the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians that if anyone's cattle grazed over on the other's territory the person owning the cattle would be tried by the Indian laws and given the death sentence. They would carry out this sentence too but when anyone was given the death penalty for some crime under the Indian law he would be given an honor parole for a certain time in order to visit his family and straighten up his affairs. Then on the day set for him to die, this person would be at the place set and right on time. 

It cost five dollars a year permit for a family to live in the Indian Territory and two dollars and fifty cents for a single man. There would be collectors come around and collect this fee and if the collectors did not turn in all that he had collected then he would be tried under the Indian law and given so many lashes across the back. They had a whipping post at the place where the court was held. 

The Choctaws held court at Eagle Town and the Chickasaws held court at Tishomingo. 

I have heard my husband say he went to school at Cherokee town[iii] and at that time there was a church there. It was called a community church. My husband was Bill Paul, Sr., a grandson of Smith Paul, the man for whom Pauls Valley was named. 

Amos Waite built the first schoolhouse in Pauls Valley and it was a subscription school.[iv] A Mr Mackey taught this school. My father lived southwest of Pauls Valley about six miles, and my sister and I had to come to Pauls Valley to school. There were several children who lived in this community who had to come to Pauls Valley to school, so my father and several other men bought a frame building at Pauls Valley and moved it to this community. They made a school building out of it and this school was called Red Branch school. Today it is called Klondike. 

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[i] I’ll refer to my ancestors the way my mother did, since she’s my main source of information.

[ii] Indian Pioneer papers: Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma. 9/14/37. Mrs Victoria Paul, Pauls Valley Okla, Date of birth 1878. Mississippi, Father JT Rosser, born in Va, Mother Emily Bass, born in Alabama, Interview 8492 by Maurice R Anderson. OKGenWeb @ rootsweb.com

[iii] It’s interesting how Cherokee Town got its name. After Texas won its independence from Mexico, they attackedand destroyed a large settlement of Cherokees. Sam Houston, incidentally, who had been adopted by the Cherokees, tried unsuccessfully to intervene. The Cherokee families, driven from their homes, made the long journey to join their kin in the northern part of Indian Territory. On their way, they camped for a while just north of the future site of Pauls Valley. Later a small town sprung up there and it was called Cherokee Town, in their honor.

[iv] The Waites are our cousins and a quite remarkable family. My mother’s paternal g-grandmother, Ela-teecha, a full blood Chickasaw Indian, was born back in the Chickasaw homeland, near what is now Tupelo, Mississippi. Her first husband was a Scottish missionary, Jason McClure, with whom she had two children, Tecumseh and Catherine. McClure died in Indian Territory after the trail of tears, and Ela-teecha remarried, the second time to my mother’s g-grandfather, Smith Paul. Anyway, Tecumseh was quite prominent, serving for a time as Chickasaw Governor. Unlike his half brother Sam Paul, he was in the Pull Back political party and opposed white settlement. He also favored setting aside tribal land as a wildlife preserve. Catherine, Ela-teecha’s other child by McClure, married a white man, Tom Waite, who like many others, had come to Indian Territory seeking land. They had eight children together, two boys and six girls, and all were college educated. I think that is remarkable, not just that they were able to do it, but that they valued education that much. Tom Waite died in 1874 and Catherine actually moved to Ohio so that her daughters would have access to an education. Amos, as noted above, started the first school in Pauls Valley, and his brother Fred was Speaker of the Chickasaw House of Representatives, and Attorney General for the tribe.