READ THE TEST FIRST
It was just about a week or two ago I received word one of my dearest cousins lost her battle with a long-term illness. Cheryl Benjamin-Hamilton was the granddaughter of :
· Elizabet “Callie Mae” Christian; Choctaw Freedwoman card #107, enrollment #2615
She was the great-great granddaughter of:
· Bettie Ligon nee Love; Choctaw Freedwoman card #106, enrollment #2606
· Martha Christian nee Taylor; Choctaw Freedwoman card #107, enrollment #2613
Cheryl was the great-great-great granddaughter of:
· Margaret Ann Wilson nee Alexander, Choctaw Freedwoman card #122, enrollment #2665
· Viney Jordan/Jordon Choctaw Freedwoman card #109 (deceased)
Cheryl’s great-great-great-great grandmother was:
· Lucy Harris, deceased
The community of Ardmore lost a beloved member of its community and many people came from all over the country to pay their respects as a community of family, former co-workers, church members and friends. I wanted to attend to pay my respects and see family members; some I hadn’t seen in probably twenty years or more.
I had hopes of visiting the area later this summer but those plans had fallen through and when this unfortunate circumstance of my cousin’s passing occurred, I decided to make this a trip that not only paid respects to Cheryl and our family but I wanted to conduct some research because I didn’t know when I would have another opportunity to visit.
The trip also gave me an opportunity to re-visit the “Family Cemetery” known as “Hickory Colored Cemetery” and reshoot photos of the headstones I took over twenty years ago and document the burial sites that were not there in 1995. I also wanted to check on the ten acres of land that my father purchased for me around 1997 to make sure no one was dumping or squatting on the land.
Knowing I wanted to visit with family and conduct research meant I would have to be quiet about my being in Ardmore and Oklahoma City thinking that the more people knew I was there the more unlikely I would be able to conduct research so after I was able to rent a car the day after I arrived I took off towards Ardmore to spend the next four days visiting with my cousins, sister, and nieces before I traveled back to OKC and look for some records that were held in the Oklahoma History Center.
My colleague Angela Walton-Raji told me about some land allotment plat maps held at the Oklahoma History Center by one of their archivists named Larry O’Dell. We discussed that if I had the time, I should make a visit and meet Mr. O’Dell to see if I could have access to these records and make copies of them. I made plans to visit the center and returned to OKC on Sunday so I could be at the center when they opened at 10:00 am Monday.
It was interesting on the way up from Ardmore to OKC I drove the back roads to get to I-35 because there was a lot of construction and google maps had me avoid all of that mess. All along the route from route 77 to 59 to I-35, I passed through towns and communities that resonated with me because of the research I have been doing over the pass 30 plus years and that was rewarding in a certain way. I had a connection to the state and area that I didn't have in 1995 when my father and began researching the records of Chickasaw and Choctaw Freedmen.
It was a very nice warm and pleasant Sunday drive but one of the curious things that stood out to me was the number of signs alerting the traveler to the number of cemeteries that dotted the countryside on those rural roads that took me to I-35. It must have been every five to ten miles along the way, a green and white sign indicate a cemetery was just off the main road but unless you were a local there was nothing to tell the name of the cemetery.
I arrived in OKC, sought out the hotel I would be staying in for the next three nights and quickly realized the weather was beginning to change. The news reports indicated there was the possibility of “severe weather storms” for the next day.
Not to be deterred from my mission I loaded up all of my gear and headed out to the history center and once there I asked the receptionist if she could direct me to Larry O’Dell because MY FRIEND Angela told me she was going to phone him and let him know I would be making a visit to copy the plat maps he held in his office. Well as they say in Cool Hand Luke, “what we had here was a failure to communicate!”
Larry had not made it to work yet, I thought since I’m here I’ll go the research center and look for the 1890 Chickasaw and Choctaw Census that included freedmen only to learn that the research center was not open on Monday (let that be a lesson boys and girls.)
I mulled around the entrance area and suddenly this gentleman appears “stage right” and it is Larry O’Dell! He invites me up to his office and we sit down and have a nice chat before he shows me this box of plat maps and I begin to see something I wanted for many years that could help me tell the story of our ancestors and the communities they lived in; maps showing land allotment they received from the Dawes Commission.
Larry was kind enough to escort me to a quiet little room where I could set up my camera and tripod so I could photograph the collection of plat maps and digitize them. Like they say, “be careful of what you ask for.” There were more than three-hundred pages of plat maps and I was determined to copy them all.
This was something that I would pay for later because I had to set up a system of placing the pages inside the cover of the box on the floor, one at a time while repeatedly standing and kneeling, then positioning the page for the camera. My knees, back and legs took a beating but I was determined to copy them all. Right in the middle of the copy job, guess who calls? Yep! Miss Angela wanted to know where I was and had I made it to the center to see Larry O’Dell. So, I reminded her, “weren’t you supposed to call him and let him know I was coming in today?”
Of course, Angela’s excited about the job I was doing and I’m trying to be quiet because just around the corner there was someone working and this is a “library” but my sister doesn’t care, she just wants to know what I found and tell her all about it. We talk for a bit but I let her know I was not even half-way through and my intentions were to finish this job before I get something to eat and head back to the hotel to begin analyzing the material as well as label the images so I can use them later in some organized manner.
Meanwhile while I’m shooting these images “the weather outside was frightful!” The flags on the poles were standing straight out from the force of the wind. The sky was a dark grey and Dorothy, it was nothing like the nice warm, sunshiny afternoon I spent driving up from Ardmore. However, this was not about to stop me from doing what I came to do.
It was probably about 2:30 pm when I shot the last image, I neatly put the maps back in the box and called Larry to let him know I was finished and if he came down to this room we could go back to his office talk a bit and I could get the material back into his hands before I left the center.
Evidently Larry went to lunch so I found another employee sitting in her office that said she would see to it that Larry got the box and after she assured me, I could trust her (I was joking of course but couldn’t resist saying it) I left the area and looked around for the large tapestry of the Cherokee Removal to get an updated shot (for Angela of course.) It was nowhere to be found!
I drove back to the hotel and looked for a place to eat. All along the road where I was staying there were little restaurants and fast-food joints so I decided to get me a sandwich at the Subway shop and as I got in the middle turn lane to enter the driveway a car switches lanes at about 60 MPH from the other direction and almost hits me head on! The sumbitch kept going and after being grateful the fool didn’t hit me, I got a sandwich and got my butt out of the weather and the traffic to call home and settle in for some research analysis.
I survived the head-on collision scare and the severe thunderstorms and returned home and finally completed labeling all of the maps, putting them into folders that corresponded with the township and range descriptions. On Friday of that week I shared my work with some people who took part in one of the weekly Zoom brick wall meetings held by Angela.
A few of the folks there requested that I look for a map that depicted their ancestor’s land allotment and this confirmed for me the thought I had that despite everything I copied, the collection was not complete. It also demonstrated just how important this collection of maps can be for researchers.
The following Monday, I received a call from my DNA cousin Carlotta Kemp-Wheeler and she was seeking some information about an ancestor that was buried in the Hollow Springs Cemetery who was also a litigant in Equity Case 7071. We discussed it for a bit and I mentioned or asked her did she know about her ancestor’s land allotment and the plat map for it?
Carlotta told me that a cousin of hers (Angie Kemp) had taken some class on cemetery preservation or something and Angie shared a plat map with her, which in turn, Carlotta shared it with me. After looking at the map that indicated that the Hollow Springs Cemetery appeared to be on the land allotment of her ancestor Harriet Speer/Spears, the wheels in head began to turn. I asked Carlotta where did her cousin get the map and where could I find it?
Carlotta wasn’t sure but she assured me she would ask Angie and get back to me. Sorry, curious minds need to know what curious minds don’t know and I went on the hunt for what appeared to be a digitize copy of a plat map. What got me excited was the fact that the map was in color and I could easily read the information on it. This was far from what I spent almost three hours on my knees copying less than a week ago. I have this mantra for moments like this; “information comes to you when you need it!”
It took me about an hour or so, it seems longer but I began searching everywhere and everything I could think of because I believed these maps had been digitized and I was determined to locate them. I just spent more than three-hundred dollars on a hotel room and more than five hundred dollars renting a car for a week to find out I could have gotten these records, better quality records (to some extent) from my home, in my jammies and some left-over Chinese food without risking my life. It doesn’t matter, I wanted these records because they will help tell the story of our ancestors, the same ancestors that my cousin Cheryl descends from. It is my obligation and responsibility and honor to tell their story with all the records and tools I have.
After reading this you may ask why am I telling this story? There have been numerous requests for me to share the source of these records and I will but I think it is also important that people understand what we as researchers go through sometimes to bring you these records and tell these stories.
The tragedy of losing my cousin months before her grandson and his wife will be new parents of twins that will not know the embrace of their great grandmother reminds me that I never knew the embrace of the grandmother Cheryl and I share; Elizabeth “Callie Mae” Christian; Choctaw Freedwoman #2615
It is for those twins and the family I visited that I do what I do and share with you this story of discovery. Let me leave you with this. When I was a freshman in Junior High School, my homeroom teacher gave us a test on the very first day we sat down in his classroom.
The test was simple with simple instructions. It asked us to READ the entire test BEFORE answering any questions. Soon people in the classroom began getting up and leaving the room. In the excitement you could see others furiously writing answers to the questions on the test. However, if they had done what the instructor asked in the beginning, they would have found out the last question on the test stated that if you READ the entire test you didn’t have to answer any of the questions. I have remembered this lesson for more than fifty years and I thought it was apropos for those seeking the source of these maps.
Thank you reading this story and below you find the link to the Indian Territory Plat Maps.
https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.parentNaId=652
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