Rolla Henson "We Came West With the Indians"

 Rolla Henson aka Rollen Roach-Centenarian

Eliza Whitmire-Cherokee Freedwoman#902, Indian Pioneer Papers Interview #12963

 

  “My name is Eliza Whitmire. I live on a farm, near Estella, where I settled shortly after the Civil War and where I have lived ever since. I was born in slavery in the state of Georgia, my parents having belonged to a Cherokee Indian of the name of George SANDERS, who owned a large plantation in the old Cherokee Nation, in Georgia. He also owned a large number of slaves but I was too young to remember how many he owned.”

   Rolla Henson as he was listed on Cherokee Freedman card #91 was one-hundred years of age when he applied for a land allotment in the Cherokee Nation April 4, 1901. Initially he received his Citizenship Certificate on April 28, 1905 according to a stamp on his Dawes card. Rolla’s Dawes card had him living in the Illinois District, with a post office located in or near the Cherokee Capitol of Tahlequah, Indian Territory.

 

   Apparently, Rolla was dismissed and the application for a land allotment and citizenship was dismissed because he supposedly died on 11^th of August 1903. It was later shown through some testimony on the 10^th of August, 1905 that Rolla Henson aka Rollen Roach died prior to September 1^st, 1902. The confusion for the name of Rolla Henson is probably because he was listed on the 1880 Roll as Rollen Roach. 

 

   What is known about Henson-Roach’s parents comes from the rear of his land allotment card. Both were deceased by 1901, both were enslaved by John McIntosh, a recognized Cherokee citizen and both were listed as “freedmen.” Without any additional information we can’t definitively say that his parents came west with the Cherokee, but it may be presumed they were based on the way they are described on the card, as “freedmen?”

   In August of 1905 an inquiry was conducted to determine if Rolla Henson-Roach was alive and able to receive his land allotment. During the hearing several facts about “Uncle Rolla” as he was known, were discovered. He lived just outside of a community called Melvin where a mercantile store owned and run by a woman named Jennie Taylor, a Cherokee by blood, provided details about “Uncle Rolla’s death.”

 

   Jennie Taylor was able to provide the year Rolla died from drowning in Fourteen Mile Creek, which was just below the town of Melvin. Jennie was no longer in the mercantile business at the time of the hearing three years after she closed her business. However, she managed to save her books from the business in which she wrote that a man named Bass Harlin purchased burial clothes for “Uncle Rolla” in the month of April 1901. Taylor also indicated the final payment for clothing took place in October of 1901.

 

   Interviews of people in the community about Uncle Rolla’s death, revealed a familiar name into the conversation. Tom Beamer, a fifty-three-year-old Cherokee citizen, also living in the Melvin community, was asked a series of questions by a man named K.S. Murchison. Demonstrating the racial atmosphere in the area or with the people from that area, Murchison freely referred to Uncle Rolla as “old darkie” or “the oldest darkie in the country.”

 

   It was later in the questioning that Murchison attempted to determine the year in which Roll Henson died from drowning. Tom Beamer, probably like the former slaves had difficulty with the concept of time because they were illiterate. However, it seems people developed methods of overcoming their lack of an education.

 

   The exchange is insightful on a few levels,

The name of Dorcas Buffington is important because she too, was someone who came west with the Cherokees, but her story goes further, her being a nurse will be discussed in another chapter. 

 

   Rolla Henson applied and was enrolled as a Cherokee Freedman, on the 4^th of April 1901. He was sure of his age, but he thought he was about one-hundred years of age. At the beginning of the “war between the confederacy and the United States,” Rolla told the interviewer, he was “right here” in the Cherokee Nation.

 

   He was asked about his whereabouts “during the war.” It was then Rolla said he “went with the army.” Which army was not asked or answered but he added that he was not a soldier, but “I went with the command as a cook;...Down south.”

 

   If all things being true, Rolla would have been in his early sixties as a cook for somebody’s army and survived that ordeal just as he survived coming to Indian Territory, probably as a man in his late thirties? It is unfortunate we don’t have diaries of people like Rolla Henson aka Roach to tell us what his experiences were and how he came to be in the Cherokee Nation and Indian Territory. One thing we do know, he was not born there. 

 

   He may have died a very said and painful death after surviving the Trail of Tears and cooking for an army during battle, but his name will be remembered and he too, should be included in the commemoration of those that came west with the Indians.