The full-blood, six-foot-six Cherokee speaker held up a bound document two or three hundred pages deep. “This is the Dawes Roll and it’s gold for anyone looking for their Oklahoma ancestors, or who have questions. I had a lot, and still do, but now all the old people are gone and I can’t ask them. This helped me find a few I didn’t know about.”
I perked up at the session, though I’d been listening carefully to his discussion of the Trail of Tears and his grandmother who loved to tell stories.
“Please feel free to come look at this when I’m finished.” Now in his late seventies, John Grits continued to tell the story of his people and family to the attendees at the Western Writers of America conference, and my mind went back to so many things I wish I’d asked my old people.
They weren’t much storytellers, but I learned to sit quiet in a living room, on the front porch, out in the yard, or at the stores in Chicota, Texas, and listen as the adults talked. From the old men there, who Miss Esther called the Spit and Whittle Club, I learned about farming, the weather, cattle, stock prices (which didn’t register much at the time), hunting, fishing, and “adult” issues which were vastly more interesting.
The family get-togethers I mentioned provided some information, including the story about an old man who stayed with my grandparents when Mama was little. He’d been captured by Indians (they never said what tribe) and somehow escaped one night. Tiring, he crawled into a hollow log. Laying there in the darkness and holding his breath, he counted the steps of each pursuer who placed a foot on the downed tree as they raced after him. I recall it was over twenty.
I know nothing else about the incident she related, and have often wondered about the rest of her tale.
Miss Esther told me her mother burned to death in front of her while making soap when my grandmother was little, I know nothing else other than she’s buried in a cemetery in Grant, OK, (which Miss Esther often said), but I never asked her exactly where or drove her up there to point out the plot.
I do have a fading photo of her and her siblings along with my great-grandfather on the porch after the funeral. It was 1913 and kids are barefoot, though their clothes look somewhat fresh, and the looks on their faces are blank from that great tragedy. I want to know more now, but the opportunity is long gone.
That leads us to the next regret. Family lore says we have some Choctaw blood, but there’s no marriage license between great-grandma Minne and Miss Esther’s daddy, Ed Gentry. With that missing piece of the puzzle, we’re stymied, which leads us back to the beginning of this discussion.
After John Grits finished his presentation, I borrowed his Dawes Roll and looked up Minnie Roberson. A four-year-old was listed, and two lines underneath was my grandmother’s first name, but it was Esther Roberson (maybe someone she’s named after?), but the dates didn’t seem to add up, and those folks were from northeast Oklahoma.
The National Archives explains “The Dawes Rolls, also known as the “Final Rolls,” are the lists of individuals who were accepted as eligible for tribal membership in the “Five Civilized Tribes:” Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminoles. Those found eligible for the Final Rolls were entitled to an allotment of land, usually a homestead. The Rolls contain more than 101,000 names from 1898-1914 (primarily from 1899-1906).”
So…we might be Cherokee, or Choctaw (a tiny, tiny percentage), or not. The names I found might not even be them, but that’s not the point here, either. This discussion isn’t primarily about the rolls, or ancestry, but is a way for me to urge y’all to talk to those who are still around and record their lives, and your family stories.
With today’s technology, it’s as easy as pushing a button on your phone and leading them to tell what the remember. I know, we had tape recorders back in the day and I didn’t use them because the tapes and pushing all those buttons was intrusive. People looked at those devices like I’d put a live snake on the table.
But a deft push on a cell phone screen is so common no one will notice, and if they do, quickly forgotten, and you might be able to hear stories that wouldn’t come out any other way. Be careful, though. My own grandmother didn’t want to talk about some of those old times because, “We all have skeletons in our closets and should leave the doors closed.”
Like so many people through generations back, it never occurred to me that I should have been looking to find out more about those who’re already gone. I also want to know the stories they told, what they lived through, and what they knew about their own grandparents, relatives, and beyond.
Before people started writing these things down, information was passed down in the form of tales and recollections around the campfire, and in front of the fireplace and stoves. They also spun them under the stars, and I got some of that in the evenings beneath the dripping mimosa tree, or the sweet-smelling sycamores while lightning bugs flashed around us.
Now we have air conditioning, cell phones, and computers, and don’t go visiting like they did. People are more interested in television programs, movies, inaccurately titled Reality TV, or those damned devices in our hands.
It became easier to watch television and no talk, and soon there was no need to entertain each other with recall about what happened when my ancestors crossed the red River from Oklahoma and Arkansas, or on Dad’s side, through the southern states and up from Houston to Lamar County.
Folks, it’s a crying shame that most kids know a quarter of their family history that should have been passed down through the years, mine included. My grandparents all married right after the turn of the twentieth century, survived scratch farms, this country’s involvement in WWI, the Great Depression (which made them who they were), WWII, and even Korea, before I came along, but I don’t know enough about what they went through, what they liked and disliked, or what they knew of the Armstrong/Wortham/Vanderberg/Gentry stories.
John Grits admitted he only knows a small piece of what his own family experienced in those horrible times for his people, and laughed when he said his grandmother always knew there was a foot trail on their Missouri property, but not the story behind it.
Only a few years ago this man who’s closing in on 80 found out that trail down behind the house where he was born and delivered by his own grandmother was the Trail of Tears his people survived. His great-grandmother had walked that trail herself, but apparently assumed her daughter and family knew.
The stories that are getting away from us will be lost forever unless you, and I, record them in some way. Gather those stories and cherish them, and for your writers, it’s a fountain of ideas for future works.
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Funny that you bring this topic up today. Just this week it has been on my mind and heart–the regret of not gathering more info about earlier family members. In particular, I’ve always wanted to know about my paternal grandmother, who died when my father was around four years old. And now neither of my parents are alive.
I never knew my grandparents. Technically, my maternal grandparents were alive when I was a child but I only met them once on a visit across country when I was really young so I don’t remember. And of course never knew my paternal grandparents.
It’s like a missing part of yourself you can never fill. So I wholeheartedly agree–if you still have the opportunity, learn those stories and tales of people you care about before the opportunity is gone.
I wanted to know even when I was younger, but there was always something else I needed, or wanted, to do. I often hung out in the kitchen, listening to my mom and her mother talk about past history, but never wrote it down. Those stories were filed away for later use and appear in altered form in my books.
And my family didn’t talk much about such things to me and part of that, I believe, was because they thought I somehow knew. I was twenty-one when I learned Dad was a twin. He and my aunt looked nothing alike. When I showed surprise, Dad said he just always figured I knew. And in my thirties I learned a couple of my old great aunts were half and step sisters.The assumptions on their part always worked against me.
When a relative died, among her papers we found three different birth certificates in three different names with three different birthdates, ranging from 1889 to 1902. According to the oldest certificate, the father was a Dalton brother but apparently not part of the Dalton Gang. The mother was “an Indian squaw or breed thereof.” She wasn’t even given the dignity of a name.
The relative had reinvented herself, changing her name and birthdate to hide her real identity. Not only that, a younger woman she always claimed was her sister actually turned out to be her daughter, a product of incest with her father.
The stories behind the stories.
Rev, thanks for the reminder that history is important yet fleeting and elusive.
So many skeletons and skullduggery! I heard just this weekend that my Uncle Willie had the “family bible” in his possession when he passed. So many questions would be answered, but no one knows where it wound up after he passed in either the seventies.
Maybe it’ll turn up somewhere…
Thanks for the great story!
I had the good fortune of being old enough to remember both sets of grandparents, and of having met one great-grandfather rather fleetingly. However, it was in what passed for urban in the 1960’s (Miami), and while we did spend a lot of time together, these were relatively small gatherings, since the extended family was widely scattered across the country, the result of WWII and the job market in general.
Mom’s folks were first generation Irish Americans, but beyond their having a good Catholic number of brothers and sisters, few, if any stories about their late 1800’s arrival (let alone days in and coming from), Ireland exist.
On the other hand, Dad’s folks have been here for beaucoups generations, but those stories, even up through his folks’ stories, were shared pretty much “historically” – basic facts with no flourishes.
I got lucky (in more ways than one), when I married into a family from the then rural south-side of Atlanta, and the family always got together and told stories and tales, some of them true, and my boys were lucky to hear them from the original participants. Plus, my late father-in-law spent a few weeks jotting many of these yarns in his highly legible hand into a small notebook for his grandsons. And, I borrowed a couple as the lead-in verses in a song that took their style in telling to tell a fabricated story about an escaped circus bear (and my boys say it pretty much captured the spirit and telling from those back porch afternoons and evenings out in Fairburn and Villa Rica and High Falls).
All to say, gathering and cherishing, and sharing, those stories do indeed give ideas, and also bind our far-flung family closer together.
Thanks for allowing me to ramble…
Great recollections. No one in our family ever wrote those stories down, and I wish they had.
And the word, recollections, brings to mind a fine book by Fred Gipson (Old Yeller). One of my favorite books is Recollection Creek, a fictional account of stories he heard growing up and woven into the story.
Now I have to go read it again.
Beautiful, and important post, Rev.
I know almost nothing about either set of grandparents, beyond that my mom’s mom (Ida Mae) was mostly Cherokee, my mom’s dad full-blooded Irish; and my dad’s parents Scot/Irish.
I heard a few stories, mostly about Ida Mae, who was a roustabout of a lady. Once clocked some guy on the beezer with a whiskey bottle in a local bar.
You’re right…the stories will die if we don’t tell them.
Have a good Saturday.
Thanks, Deb!
And those old names! They’re stories in themselves. Ida Mae, Norma Belle, Lolabel, Rufus Delight, Bobby Jack and a million more.
I’m the de facto archivist and memoirist for my family. I have several photo albums my parents kept, chock full of pictures of relatives and neighbors and little Jimmy and his friends. I have been going through them putting in sticky notes to identify them for my children and grandchildren. The oldest picture I have is a daguerreotype of my great-great grandfather as a young man and for whom I am named: James Winfield Scott, a Civil War veteran who fought under Sherman. Priceless!
Similarly here, Sir… of my great-great grandfather for whom I am likewise named – George Clinton Clisby – and who served under Lee until capture at Gettysburg 161 years ago this week past – an antebellum daguerrotype and one from the fiftieth anniversary, in uniform with his empty left sleeve pinned at the waist. (His brother perhaps faced your namesake here in Atlanta that same summer a few weeks later…)
I do as well! Boxes of old black and white photos, and most without names. I’ve started noting the ones I remember, but there are so many more.
As a former photographer, I had thousands of slides, and an entire falling-apart photo album full of daguerrotypes and ambrotypes. I have no idea who they were, but more than a few are likely kinfolk.
I really need to label my own shots, but there is so much writing to do…
Sometimes if you are really lucky all it takes is simply to ask.
While we were living in the NE US, my daughter’s class was asked to write a short history of their family. My daughter was unhappy because, compared to her classmates, she knew very little of our family history. I was traveling a lot and told her I would make a stop to visit an aunt living in the Dallas, Texas area. She was into genealogy and had spent years pulling together our family history on my mother’s side.
Another stop took me by my own parents’ home in NE Oklahoma and when asked, my father added to the story, filling in his side of the history. With it pulled together, I had about 250 pages of data and family tree info. I got 4 copies made at a print shop and mailed 3 copies to my brothers and their families, taking the other copy home for my children. The original I left with my parents.
One ancestor from Scotland was banished to Ireland along with other troublemakers from his clan for reiving (cattle rustling or carrying out raids in order to plunder other goods, basically pirates without a boat.) After sneaking back he met an English girl and fell in love. They sought a better life and emigrated to the US.
Another was married and traveling on a stern-wheeler up the Mississippi when his wife gave birth. The baby died and, possibly from a combination of grief and trauma, his wife died soon thereafter. The boat stopped at a small town where a local church held a service and buried them both in their cemetery. No time to grieve, the father and his two young boys had to move on with the boat. They had to meet their wagon train and make their journey before the winter snows set in. A hard life.
One story had two explanations. An ancestor was either a horse thief who got hanged or a more powerful rival falsely accused him in order to get him out of the way.
As far as American Indian heritage, the Dawes Rolls, would not show my family as part of the Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminoles. I guess I come by it naturally when others accuse me of acting uncivilized. My best guess is my ancestors were Caddos of the Hasinai confederacy (called Cenis by the French and Teyas by the Spanish.) They settled into about a dozen communities in the Neches and Angelina river valley region of East Texas. As for NE Oklahoma, that’s where I grew up. Lots of lakes, rivers and streams, far different than out west in the dry panhandle regions of Texas and Oklahoma.
Some of my favorite country is eastern Oklahoma, and I’ve fished and canoed it for years.
Those of us who grew up together are trying to pull everything together, but so many are now aging out that our resources are few. We’re calling in reinforcements, but as I said above, I have deadlines and family who occupy my time. Genealogy takes up so much time you have to be dedicated to the cause. As much as I want to know, I’ll have to wait a little longer before I dive into those waters.
One branch of my family has an online group for sharing information about past and present events.
We’ve talked about doing the same. However, once again, they want me to head the group and I’m about maxed out at this time.
While I’m more of a classic country girl (i.e. the Merle, Hank, Charley years), this post reminded me of lyrics of a song sung by a Cody Johnson which powerfully say:
“Till You Can’t”
Lyrics (Cody Johnson)
You can tell your old man
You’ll do some largemouth fishing another time
You just got too much on your plate to bait and cast a line
You can always put a rain check in his hand
‘Til you can’t
You can keep putting off forever with that girl who’s heart you hold
Swearing that you’ll ask some day further down the road
You can always put a diamond on her hand
‘Til you can’t
If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
‘Til you can’t
There’s a box of greasy parts sitting in the trunk of that ’65
Still waiting on you and your granddad to bring it back to life
You can always get around to fixing up that Pontiac
‘Til you can’t
If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
‘Til you can’t
So take that phone call from your momma and just talk away
‘Cause you’ll never know how bad you wanna ’til you can’t someday
Don’t wait on tomorrow ’cause tomorrow may not show
Say your sorries, your I-love-yous, ’cause man you never know
If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
‘Til you can’t
Yeah, if you got a chance, take it (take it), take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
Until you can’t
‘Til you can’t
Yeah, take it
Agree wholeheartedly. Some of those old one-way doors have already closed behind me. I was fortunate to wake up the reality of life that many things have an expiration date even if it is not plainly visible.
I took an impossible job that no one wanted in Wichita, Kansas to be closer to my parents when they were in their 70’s. Along with my wife and 3 children, I took every opportunity to travel to NE Oklahoma and be with them. The kids remember those times as some of the happiest they’ve ever had, even an ice storm that knocked out the power. Out came the mandolin and my father entertained his grandchildren by candle light. We fished together at other times.
After my mother passed away, my father didn’t like to drive very far alone. At that time you could buy a booklet of 5 airline trips at a very low cost. I bought several booklets for my father, telling him they weren’t just to come visit my family but instead to travel to see all his relatives. We overcame his reluctance to travel by air when I took several trips with him, showing him how to navigate the airports. He soon felt up to the challenge and took to the air. When he returned to his home and took a meal at the senior citizen center, he never ate alone. He was like the traveling story tellers of a hundred years ago. Everyone wanted to sit at his table.
After he passed away, there was nothing that I hadn’t said or done to regret. Such times are hard enough without having to carry that sort of baggage forward on our own continuing journeys.
Amen.