AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
SAMMY LEE BARNETT TANKERSLEY
June 1, 1938
Part 4, Building the Community:
Sammy and Rush reach out to their neighbors.
That was a very hard
year for us. I recall one time when two men stayed all night with us
and slept on the floor. I had to get up at 4:00 a.m. And churn so we
could have butter, and milk a cow to have milk to make pancakes.
That was the year the outlaws were using Oklahoma for a hiding place.
The Doolin Gang were making raids on banks and making trouble all
over the country. Rush was in Jennings when the Doolin Gang robbed
the bank there. One man of the Doolin Gang was killed and one was
wounded, but they loaded him in a wagon and all got away. They got a
lot of money out of that bank. I have been in Jennings many times
when they were there and have met them out on the road, but they
didn't bother people. They would stop at farm houses and get meals
and pay well and go on. No one asked questions and if they stopped
where there was sickness or death they left plenty of money and went
on their way.
I mentioned before
seeing a lady drive the stake over the line on the day of the run. I
didn't find out who she was then but when we went out to our claim
the next February we found she had changed her mind and taken another
claim. It was just across the road from our land. She had a house
built and was living there. She was a widow named Millie Smith
Riggle. She had a little girl six years old and her brother lived
with her. She lived there neighbor to us for eighteen years. She
was from Kentucky and like all southern people, was a very fine
neighbor. After we had lived on our claim for a few months a woman
came and told me that there was a family further down the creek and
we ought to go see them. We started out after dinner and followed a
path a mile down the creek. There was a big two story house. We
introduced ourselves and went in. After visiting for some time the
lady, Mrs. Pearl Hook, got out her family album to show us and I came
to one picture that looked familiar. I looked close and it was my
oldest sister's picture. I asked her where she got that and she told
me that a friend of hers at Carney, Kansas, gave it to her, and her
sister and mine were both in the picture. The other girl was Laura
Williams.
That same afternoon we
hunted another neighbor we heard of who lived another mile south.
She was so pleased to see some women friends. She had just taken
some big loaves of bread out of the oven and while they were still
hot she cut us each a slice and buttered them and gave us a glass of
milk. After our two mile walk nothing could have tasted better. We
really enjoyed ourselves and went home happy, knowing we ahd some
good neighbors. This woman was Hannah Ganz.
The nights were hideous
though. I was afraid to open the door or look out; wolves howling,
owls hooting, and night birds calling. But as time went on we grew
used to such things and didn't notice them. When summer came the
snakes came out and there was always the horror of stepping on a
rattlesnake. Many a time I came upon a big snake in the path, but it
would run one way and I the other, and none of us were ever bitten.
One day I was washing dishes in my kitchen. I moved a little and a
big snake dropped from above and fell just where I had been standing.
I didn't faint but felt very weak and had to sit down for a while.
Such were the many experiences in the early life on the claim. There
were many poisonous snakes - rattlesnakes, copperheads, spreading
vipers (editor's note; this must be the cotton mouth. The only poisonous snakes
native to USA are rattlesnake, copperhead, cotton mouth or water
moccasin, and coral snake) and many others, as well as
centipedes, tarantulas, lizards, scorpions, and all kinds of bugs.
On June 8th,
1895, our second daughter, Lois Lee, came to us. We had very little
money and Rush paid the doctor, Dr. J. E. Newell, in lumber; also a
woman to do the washing, as she lived in town and they were building
a house and needed lumber that summer. That year I had two dresses,
one of gray flannel and one of blue gingham. I would put on the
flannel one till the gingham was washed.
That summer and fall
Rush traded work with neighbors and bought pigs and calves, and sold
lumber and we began to live better. We were invited to a
Thanksgiving dinner and I got a new pair of shoes and a black calico
dress with white dots all over. Rush traded a load of stove wood to
a milliner store for $1.00 and a new hat for me, so I went to the
dinner all dressed up.
The people in the
neighborhood got together and built a schoolhouse the spring and
summer of 1895. Then we had community meetings and a church service
occasionally when some minister could come and hold services. It was
two of three years before school districts were made. As soon as
Oklahoma was settled, schools were started. A Territorial
Superintendent was appointed by the government, a County
Superintendent for each county, and an educational system was
outlined. (editor's note; that this was near the time that Ben, Rush's
brother, was serving on the territorial legislator and had a major
hand in the development of Oklahoma's education system.) The
first Territorial Legislature provided for a University of
Agriculture College (editor's note; See memories of an Oklahoma Teacher and Ben's involvement here. Also, Ben's wife, Rachel Catherine "Kate", later taught there after Ben's death.), a Normal School (editor's note; this was in Edmond and was where my brother, Jon Garrett Tankersley, my sister, Marylynne Catherine Tankersley Smith, and I attended college. When we went there is was called Central State College and is now
Central Oklahoma University.), a Preparatory School, and a Colored People's School. No colored children could go to school with white children (editor's note; while I was attending Central State College on the GI bill in the late 50's, I worked as the college's student sports editor and witnessed the first "colored" recruited scholarship athlete, a J. W. Lockett, to attend any of the so called "White" colleges and Universities in Oklahoma. More on this in MY memories). So, soon the school question was settled.
We then hired our first
teacher, Miss Elsie Parker, from Audobon, Iowa. She was a college
graduate and was helping her family by teaching for $25.00 per month.
She boarded and roomed with us for $1.50 per week. How much that
little bit helped! Each year after that, for two or three years, we
added a room to our house, and I boarded the teacher for eleven years
straight through. The wages raised and also the board, from $1.50 to
$6.50. We were getting well on our feet and our house was being
improved.
Those were days when
cattle and horse thieves did a thriving business in Oklahoma as it
was yet a Territory and a hiding place for outlaws of every sort.
Two of our best neighbors, men who had fine farms and who had helped
build up the community, we found were members of horse and cattle
gangs. They had large pastures and lots of strange cattle and horses
would be in them for a few days and they would very suddenly
disappear. Everyone kept their mouths shut and didn't say anything.
Many times men were found shot, but no one asked questions for they
were men who knew too much. The outlaw, Al Jennings, lived across
the road and to the east of our farm. Ed Hook was one of his riders,
a good neighbor, and was hanged.
Oklahoma was under
Territorial Government from May 22, 1890 until November 16, 1907
(editor's note; when it became a state. The word OKLAHOMA is a Choctaw word,
OKLA means people, homma means red, thus, OKLAHOMA means red people,
or INDIANS.). Wm. C. Renfrow was Governor at the time, from May
7, 1893 to May 24, 1897, serving a full term. Governors of
Territories are appointed by the President, and during this period,
the Cherokee Strip was settled. Then Casseus M. Barns was appointed
governor and served until April 15, 1901. President McKinley was in
power at that time. Dennis Flynn was elected to Congress in 1898 and
again in 1900.
He had declared himself
in favor of a law giving the settlers their free homes. This applied
particularly to the Cherokee Outlet, and it was about time for the
settlers to prove up on their lands. The Free Homes Bill
became law June 17, 1900. There was great rejoicing when we got the
news, and there was much celebrating. The deed to our home was
signed by President McKinley the day he was shot, September 6, 1901.
The State of Oklahoma is
a part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and was set apart for the
Indians by Act of Congress, June 30, 1834. On April 22, 1888, a
Proclamation was issued by the President opening up 1,900,000 acres
of land for settlement. There was a great rush of settlers and the
city of Guthrie came into existence in one day with a population of
10,000. Other lands were opened later and Guthrie was the Capitol
for several years. It was Then moved to Oklahoma City. The
principal rivers of Oklahoma are the Arkansas, the Cimmaron, and the
(editor's note; South) Canadian. Our home was twelve miles from the Arkansas river and four miles from the Cimarron.
The crops mostly raised
in our section were corn, cotton, caster beans, brown corn, peanuts,
and wheat further west. After the Free Homes Bill was passed and
everything settled people began to have more life and had much to
work for. By that time we had made many improvements, fenced the
farm, forty acres hog tight, bought a bunch of young cattle
yearlings, and in two years we were milking thirteen cows and had a
nice bunch of hogs to feed. We fed the pigs milk and they had a nice
alfalfa field to run in. Taking care of that much milk and butter,
raising chickens, and drawing water out of a well seventy feet deep
was no easy job.
We had lived there ten
years and I had never been to the County Seat, Pawnee, a city twenty
miles away. Pawnee Bill's show was to be there so we, and some of
our neighbors, decided to go. We had a surrey (with a fringe on
top?) and some fast horses, and we had a wonderful day. Then the
next year we took another vacation. Our family and two other
families decided to go to Perry to a circus, Barnum and Baileys. We
were gone five days and took our provisions and camped out and cooked
on a camp fire and slept on the ground. While in Perry we slept in a
corn crib on night. There were thousands of people there from all
parts of the state. That was a fine vacation for us.
In 1897 our third
daughter was born and was a very welcome little girl. We named her
Maurene Ruth. We didn't have money for a doctor that time, and I was
attended by our neighbor, Hannah Ganz.
When Ruth was five weeks
old and Vesta and Lois were just recovering from the whooping caugh,
we went to Paradise, Oklahoma, to brother Ben's home and Uncle Henry
Kimball's home. We stayed a week and canned peaches and dried all we
could. That was the first fruit we had in four years, except a
little dried fruit we bought. The next year we had an abundance of
all kinds of fruit from the trees we had set out the second year.
The trees, especially the peach and plums, began bearing fruit very
young.
In 1903 the railroads
came through. Two roads were built one summer, the Frisco from Tulsa
to Perry, and it went across our farm. The other, the MKT. (editor's note; I
don't know if our maternal grandfather was working for the Katy RR at
that time or not) from Kansas City to points south, went through
our little town of Jennings. The graders building the Frisco across
our land camped on our farm three months which was fine for us as
they bought all we had to sell of fruit, vegetables, butter, eggs,
and chickens. We had a very busy summer.
In August that year our
first great trouble and sorrow came. Vesta, our eldest daughter,
took typhoid fever, and while we did everything that could be done
she passed away on August 24, 1903. She was thirteen years of age.
There seemed to be an emptiness in our home for many years. Helen
Ada, our fourth daughter, had arrived on January 17th,
1903, and was a ray of sunshine all that fall and winter to brighten
our home. We had three daughters left to us, and as those are the
ties that bind, we laid aside or grief and went on.
Our little town of
Jennings had grown to be quite a village. There were two churches,
the Congregational and the Methodist, and nice school building, and
banks and stores. Our country was well improved and a nice place to
live. Rush and Lois, our second daughter, joined the Methodist
Church in Jennings and were baptized in the creek just north of our
house. I was a member of the Christian Church at Auburn, Nebraska
and was baptized There in January, 1890. We attended Sunday School
and Church regularly in Jennings and had church services at our
little school house once a month. A very fine minister came from a
small town named Yale. He had come from Binghampton, New York, and
we greatly enjoyed his sermons. We would bring one of his daughters
with him and stay over Sunday with us. He had another daughter, a
missionary in India, and would bring her letters for us to read. We
enjoyed these things as we knew very little of the outside world.
Rush was a member of our
school board for several years. Then, because of lack of time, he
couldn't serve again, and they appointed me to fill his place which I
did for a number of years. We built a very fine school building
while I was on the school board and it was the finest school house
outside of the County Seat. I was very proud that I was able to help
get that school house.
There was a new church
building at Hallett, a town three miles north of us. A committee was
appointed to buy a stove for the church, and we had a very large
heating stove that Rush brought from Auburn in the wagon, so we sold
it to them for $3.00. We had a new stove for our home from Sears and
Roebuck. We went to the new church the Sunday it was dedicated, a
cold windy day, and hardly knew our old stove. It was shinning and
kept the church plenty warm.
When Ruth, our third
daughter, was one year old I drove the team to town to get supplies
for the week. When ready to start home one of the lines came
unsnapped and the horses almost turned the buggy over. A man
standing near caught them, but not before I had jumped to save
myself, and broke my ankle. So I was laid up for several months and
walked with a crutch for almost a year.
That winter Rush's
brother Charlie and family from Auburn came to visit us. Their
daughter Grace and a young man named Mathis came with them, and they
were married at our house. Mr. Mathis had to go to Pawnee on
Saturday to get the marriage license and had to go on horseback as
there were no trains then. It was twenty miles from us. The weather
turned cold and he froze his ears on the way home. They were married
on Sunday by the Congregational minister from Jennings, and all
started home on Monday morning. That was the only wedding we ever
had on the farm.
this ends PART IV
Next is PART V Doctor in the House: neighbor helps
neighbor.
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