I will begin with the loves of my life. They are: love of family, love of God and country, love of friends, love of clean moral living, and love of peace and justice. These make for a better life with more harmony and less stress and complications. This I have leaned by experience and observation these past 80 years. It is for this reason I have tried to make these also my loyalties.

My life on earth began November 4, 1913. My birthplace was Blackgum Mountain, a community about 10 miles from Vian, Oklahoma. The area near the Illinois River of Eastern Oklahoma, with many vacation facilities. The dam there is now named Tenkiller Dam, named after the Indian man from whom this property was purchased. My brother Jess, who was a teenager near the time I was born, was sent by horseback to get Dr. Bryant in Vian, but I arrived before the doctor did. I was the twelfth child that my mother gave birth to, and the last.

My mother, Ida Frances Wilson, whose maiden name was Bailey, was married to a full blooded Indian named George Whitmire when she was 15 years old. She had two little boys who lived only a few hours, then came little George. When he was three years old his father died. In 1896, mama married Albert Ross Wilson (“papa”). Papa died just before I was two years old, so I don’t remember him or ever living on the Ranch. I have heard a lot about the good times my brothers had while living there. Both my parents worked very hard, my mother raising a large family, plus there was always a lot of “extras” around it seemed.

When their children were too small to work, they had to have hired hands. There were also a couple of aunts and some nephews. Not all at once, I hope, but I have heard there was a bunch! I really don’t understand where they put them all. Mama hired a girl to help whenever it was possible, usually a niece or other family member. She had so much to do with doing the cooking, laundry (by rub board), raising chickens, and what have you. They always had a large orchard and mama canned lots of fruits and vegetables from the garden. They always had a milk cow or two to make milk and butter. This was still true even after we moved to town, because I can remember mama butchering the hogs and always busy with canning and such.

Papa had his hands full too, trying to make a living for so many. But he did a good job and was considered a prominent cattleman in Eastern Oklahoma. There were two others besides papa. His brother Bill Wilson, and Bob Carlile (father of my brother in law Arthur).

I have always heard that my father was a man of great patience. My brother Carl was a child who liked attention. Papa would start out on his horse to go about his work and sometimes he didn’t think to notice Carl. So Carl would bawl after he left, and he would bawl and bawl, getting louder all the time. Finally, although papa was quite a long ways off, he would hear Carl. He’d turn his horse around and come back home. When he got back he would ask the boy what he wanted. Carl would say, “Where are you going papa?” Papa would tell him the location of the piece of land where he would be and Carl was happy. Everyone said papa treated his stepson, George Whitmire, exactly like any of his own sons. There was no partiality what so ever, he loved them all equally.

Even though I don’t remember living on the ranch, I recall a lot about it. After we moved to Vian, we used to go back and can blackberries in the summertime. They grew in abundance all over the place. Mama, her four younger sons and I, would get a few things together. My brother Frank would hitch up “Old Gray”, our horse, to the buggy, and we would take off for the ranch. There was an old shack out there in the middle of the pasture we used for batching and that is where we stayed. We would all pick blackberries and mama would can them in half gallons. Mama could make the most delicious blackberry cobblers and preserves. To this day, it still makes my mouth water to think of those wonderful cobblers. There was also a pond near the shack. Papa would take his bean shooter and kill bullfrogs and we would dine on frog legs for meat.

We were good friends with the family who rented our place. They had a girl about my age and her name was Thelma. We had some good times together. There was a pond real close to the house and we used to go swimming in it. The water was muddy, but we couldn’t have cared less. That part of the country had lots of timber and large rocks. Black Jack, a scrubby tree, grew there a lot. The rocks were ready made for a playhouse, because they were shaped like different kinds of furniture, given a bit of imagination. Some were shaped like tables, one looked to us like a stove, others were chairs, etc. But the most realistic of all was a rock with a smooth top and a deep round hole in the middle. It didn’t take much imagination on that one!

The ranch house had a kitchen, dining room, and four bedrooms with a fireplace in every room. Apparently papa was determined that his family stayed warm. To begin with the house was very simple, just a row of rooms really, with a long porch. Apparently it was added to as the family grew. This was a long porch I rolled off of in a toy wagon when I was small. My sister May said it knocked my jaw out of place and it has always been abnormal. My lower jaw has always protruded farther than it should.

Mama’s pride and joy in those days was a spring of cold water. The water was soft, good tasting, and cold. It was close to the house and my grandfather, Gilbert Wilson, had built a springhouse around it. The spring flowed over some flat rocks and the stream was shallow, like a cold mountain stream. Mama would set her things, food, milk, butter, etc., down on the rocks and the cold stream would flow under them. It was that spring that caused my grandfather (papa’s father) to pick this place for a home site as the Confederate Army moved through there at one time. All the soldiers took a drink of the good cold water. My grandfather made good on his dream, and after the war, he filed on this piece of land and made it their home.

~~ My First Family ~~

It would be hard to tell much about a person’s own life without giving some information about your parents and other family members because they were much a part of my life and loved dearly by me.

Papa – Albert Ross Wilson b: 17 Feb 1866
Mama – Ida Frances Wilson b: 22 June, 1875
Brothers & Sisters:

George Whitmire b: 2 Feb 1894
Mattie May Wilson b: 20 June 1897
Gilbert Wilson b: 24 June 1899
Jess Wilson b: 14 Sept 1900
Carl Wilson b: 27 June 1902
Frank Wilson b: 22 May 1904
Floyd Wilson b: 4 May 1906
Elmer B. Wilson (E.B.) b: 13 Jan 1908
Sequoyah Paul Wilson b: 4 June 1910

I had my father and mother such a short time so there is not as much about them that I remember as I would like to. Papa died when I was two, at the age of 48 from a kidney ailment. Mama died when I was ten, at the age of 50. Much of the information I have about my early life came to me from my brothers and one sister.

I might mention here something about the Dawes Act as my brother E.B. referred to often. It seems that this law was passed to compensate the Indians for taking their land and making them move farther West. Our family had 1/32% Indian Blood. Papa had the foresight to register us on the Indian Roll. As a result, all of papa’s oldest children (all but the last four of us) were given some land by the government. The last four of us were born too late to get any land and were known as “too laters”.

~~ Life in Vian ~~

Papa had a maiden sister and aunt living with us. After he died, mama rented out the ranch and the family moved to Vian where my aunts owned a house. Aunt Fannie and Aunt Cilla had already willed the house to my parents because they made their home with us for so long.

George was in World War I about this time. He joined the Calvary because he loved to ride horses, but said the nearest he got to any horses was cleaning the stables. Gilbert joined the Army too, but he ran away and came home so many times that by the time they kept adding to his time he like to have never gotten out.

Life for me in Vian was pleasant, so I suppose you would say I had a very happy childhood, up until the time my mother died. Our family didn’t have much money, only enough to get by, but we always, due to mama’s hard work, had plenty of good food and other necessities. Being the “baby” of the family, I guess I was pretty spoiled. Carl was working in a drug store and he was generous about buying candy and ice cream for me. I well remember when he brought home the first “Eskimo Pie” we had ever seen or heard of. We all thought they were really something.

I am sure mama knew we were poor but I doubt if any of us kids knew it. She was well known for her wonderful biscuits, which she made three times a day, hot in the oven of a small wood stove. They had a lovely golden crust on the outside and were fluffy white and tender on the inside. Mama raised hogs and helped to butcher them in the winter. She cured hams and bacon in her smoke house where she smoked the meat over a fire of hickory wood. Besides the fabulous amounts of canned goods she put up for the winter, we always had plenty of milk and butter. I don’t recall the time we were ever without a milk cow, and of course there was always plenty of chicken and eggs to eat. As for store bought light bread and cold cuts, we didn’t even know there was such a thing.

Being a small town, everyone in town knew everyone else. That was nice too. Living near us was a little boy I played with a lot. He’d had a terrible accident by getting himself burned badly. I don’t recall his name but I always called him the “little burnt boy”. Because of the accident, I think his folks must have given him more than the average child. I remember he had a tricycle and he let me ride it a lot. So of course, I wanted a tricycle, too. Well, I never did get one but my brother Gilbert said he was going to get me a bicycle some day. He said I was getting too big for a tricycle. He did get me the bicycle. He and Carl came rolling it down the sidewalk one day. I got on it while they rolled it and told them to turn it loose, but they wouldn’t, not then anyway. I finally did learn to ride it and had lots of fun riding it all over town.

I had many friends in Vian and had planned to name some of them in this but decided their names would mean nothing to you so I will pass on that. But I did have one friend who was especially close I want to tell you about. Nina was an only child. Her father, Lester Hughes, was a pharmacist at the drug store where Carl worked. Her mother worked in town at a dry goods store, as we called it then. Working mothers were quite unusual in those days but Nina had an abundance of the “things of life” that most children didn’t have. They lived in a rent house mama owned and it was located next door to where we lived. Nina and I were good friends and were together constantly, especially in the summer. The family left Vian and it was 60 years before I ever got to see Nina again.

The Methodist parsonage was angled across the street from our house. That was a good part of my life, Bible schools, Sunday school, Church, and socials on the large lawn between the church and parsonage are things I still remember with pleasure.

The Johnson family lived just across the street from us. Mrs. Johnson had two grown daughters, Fleedie and Crude. Lots of time mama, myself, and many kids my age, would go to their house at night because we knew we were welcome. They would have games planned for us to play and often would pop popcorn for us. I remember they had a black walnut tree and it had lots of nuts. In the daytime I would sit and crack and eat the nuts. I was welcome to eat all I wanted, but Mrs. Johnson would not allow any to be wasted. One day she came out to where I was and saw that I was leaving some of the “goodies” that I was not able to get out of the shells. So she made me go back and crack the shells again so as not to waste any. We had a Hickory nut tree at our house and they sure were hard to get out. My brother, Jess, was the only one I ever heard of who could crack a hickory nut with his teeth.

Every Friday night in Vian was movie night and we usually went. It cost only a dime for us kids and mama usually supplied the dime. The movie house was in the City Hall, which was a little over a block from our house. Mary Nell Culver’s mother played the piano during the show. Mary Nell, in later years, married my brother Paul. I really enjoyed Mrs. Culver’s music. All the Culver family had a lot of talent with music. They had one serial that I especially liked and it was named “Tarzan of the Apes”. A certain piece of music that Mrs. Culver had composed was played with it. Just to hear her play that certain piece sent chills up my spine.

I am probably going into too much detail about little things from my childhood, but talking about the nut trees reminded me of a friend of mine, Marie Earnest. We used to dare each other by climbing trees and seeing who could drop from the highest limb. It finally became so jarring and painful, that I gave in and had to be out dared. Another thing that she and I did was to fish for crawdads in a small lake not far from where we lived. We would make us a pole and tie a string to it. We’d then bend a pin, as we had no fishhooks, and put meat on the bent pin. I don’t seem to remember if we ever caught anything or not but it was fun trying.

We had an apple tree in our yard. It had one limb that stuck out parallel that I could wrap my legs around and swing back and forth on. It was a lot of fun for me but my mother took a dim view of this practice. We girls didn’t wear slacks in those days, so this was done in dresses. And after all, I must have been close to six or seven years old. I am afraid I will have to confess I was not too obedient, because no sooner would she make me get down from that tree, I was back up in it again as soon as mama’s back was turned.

One day I took a straw hat that had been hanging in a closet all winter and put it on my head. I didn’t notice that a spider had made a nest in it. It happened to be a Black Widow spider. I felt a sharp prick and pulled my hat off. Nina was with me and she saw it and said it had a red spot on it’s back. I went home and told mama about it and very soon I began having pains in my legs, then all over the rest of my body. I had convulsions all night and the doctor was with me the whole time. He finally had to resort to Morphine and they had to hold me in bed. But, near morning I was all right again.

Another little incident was the time I fell from the swing. One of my brothers had put up a tire swing on the limb of a tree in our front yard. I was sitting in it and Paul came by and started twisting it. Dumb like, I just sat there, ready to see what was going to happen. When the tire was pretty far off the ground, Paul gave it a flip, and if you don’t think I wasn’t in for a dizzy ride! Paul walked off and after a while, E.B. came along and found me lying unconscious on the ground. The worst part of it was that mama was beginning to have health problems. She was so shocked it caused her to have a set back.

My Uncle Will Bailey and his family lived in Vian too, and his youngest daughter Jessie was about my age. We were together a lot. I don’t remember the boys very well, but Dorothy was the next to the youngest, and there was Lena (Lucille) who was like a big sister to me, even though I didn’t see her that often. Their father, Uncle Will, was mama’s brother. He died at the time of the terrible flu epidemic of 1918. I had not been around Uncle Will very much so I hardly knew him. I remember mama was very grieved at his illness and death.

The Vian School was quite large because it took in not only the town kids, but a lot of farmer’s children came in from the country by bus. One thing I really enjoyed about the school was there was a music department. We were fortunate to have an extra talented woman for a music teacher. I understand her husband’s parents sent the two of them to Vienna (years earlier) to study music. Her husband had a lot of talent too, and she was the best teacher I ever knew. Their marriage ended in divorce and she ended up in Vian. They had tow children, Albert and Marie. In later years when I went to Dwight School, Marie was there too and we were somewhat together for a couple of more years.

Vian School’s music department really flourished under Mrs. Earnest. The kids loved her and her music. She would often sit and play a complicated piece of music on the piano and engage in an earnest conversation at the same time. Very often, under her supervision, we would have an operetta, which I dearly loved to take part in. I still remember and sometimes sing to myself some of the songs from the operetta.

~~ Mama’s Illness ~~

I went about in my carefree way, riding my bicycle, having fun, and never dreaming that it would not always be so. Mama was not as well as she seemed. Although I never knew it, she’d had T.B. since before Paul was born and was gradually loosing strength. I must have been about nine years old when she told me about her illness, but at the same time she said she was going to Albuquerque, New Mexico to get well. I thought that was just the way it would be. Nothing else ever entered my mind. I never realized that mama was trying to soften the shock for me of her having to leave.

The time came soon after our talk that Carl quit his job as a pharmacist in Vian, Gilbert sold his land, and they took mama to Albuquerque. They were acting on doctors orders and hoping that the change in climate and extra care would cure her.

Carl got a job in a drug store. Soon after they were settled in Albuquerque, one of the Thompson boys, whom we had always known, came to see them. He was working in a bank there in Albuquerque. He talked the boys into taking their money out of the bank where they had it and putting it into the bank where he worked. Wanting to help out a long time friends, they did. The bank promptly went broke. It made things pretty rough on the boys, but they some how managed, and never said a word to mama about it.

Before the three of them left home, it was arranged for me to go to Muskogee and stay with my sister May and her family. Arthur was a cotton broker there, and they had a nice, large, two story house which was only a half block from school.

May and Arthur had three children, Dorothy the oldest was 6, Kathryn was 4, and Tom was 2. I still appreciate the fact that May opened her home to me, but I was very unhappy there. Everything was different for me, having been the youngest in the family. I was now the oldest, and I guess, I suddenly realized I ‘d enjoyed being the “baby of the family”. I missed my mother so very much, but I also missed my brothers, the school, and my friends. I’d never had reason to be homesick before in my life. I thought mama had gone away to get well. It never occurred to me that she would not and that I would never again return to my home to live.

Things went bad for Arthur’s business and the following summer he and his family moved to a farm he had near Gore. There was not much of a house on the place, so they had a new house built. After it was finished, Arthur learned the he was unable to get water for a well. There was a real good spring of water about a half mile from the house where we used to go to take our baths. There was a lot of brush and trees for privacy.

They didn’t have much of a school out there and Dorothy was ready to begin school. It was decided that Dorothy and I would go to school in Sallisaw and stay with Arthur’s folks. There was Mrs. Carlile, Arthur’s unmarried sister Myrtle, another sister Noland, and her husband Finus Cox. It was a large two-story house and not crowded. Mrs. Carlile was quite a lovely lady and she couldn’t have been better to me.

I had little contact with any of my brothers except Carl. I wrote to him and he to me, but the others were so scattered, I usually didn’t know where they were. It was while I was there with the Carliles, I got word that mama had died. Mrs. Carlile broke the news to me as gently as she could but it was still quite a shock. I was so convinced that mama was going to get well and we would all move back to Vian one day, but it was not to be.

When mama and the two boys went to Albuquerque, it was arranged for George to live in our house in Vian with Frank, E.B. and Paul. Paul was 13 when mama died, E.B. 16, and Frank 19. George was married to Kitty Kyles. They had not been married long. After a short while our young brothers could see that George’s wife was not happy with the arrangement, so they talked it over and decided they were going to have to leave. They knew about a Presbyterian Indian Mission School about 25 miles from Vian. May had gone there to school, as had Gilbert many years earlier. The boys contacted the school and the school agreed to take them in where they would work for their room and board. The younger boys were alright as long as they were in school. When summer vacation came they really had a hard time finding a place to stay and get enough food, as finding work was most difficult. Things were a lot harder for these younger boys than for me.

~~ School At The Indian Missions ~~

After spending one summer with May and Arthur in Lenepah, when I was 14, I was sent to Dwight Mission School when school started in the fall. E.B., having graduated from Dwight the year before, went on to Bacone. Paul was still at Dwight and I was glad of that. Dwight was a small school, and we worked four hours a day, besides our school and room care, for our board. My work was mainly laundry and kitchen work. The school had a farm there and all the boys worked that as well as keeping the school maintained in whatever way that was needed. This called for lots of trips to town for supplies. We girls were so envious of this because the girls never got to get off the school grounds. We were not allowed to wear any kind of makeup and our dresses had to be considerably longer than the fashion of the day. Our basketball suits were old full pleated black bloomers, instead of the new-fashioned shorts the kids of other teams were wearing. Dwight was a very strict school and we girls felt very confined, unfairly treated, and a bit resentful.

Dwight had devotionals morning and evenings in the dormitory. Also we had something of a sermon every day in school assembly. There were a few nearly all white kids, like Paul and I, but we were definitely in the minority. The Indian and the white kids blended together pretty well, although I guess you’d say the white kids had a way of kind of “hanging together”. Whatever friction there was, it seemed to be between the kids and the faculty members, mainly because they were so strict. My school years at Dwight were when I was in the 9th and 10th grades.

The following year, I went to school at Bacone with E.B. and Paul. Bacone was another Indian Mission School with two years of college included. Bacone was pretty different from Dwight. It was much larger, and the kids there seemed to be of a higher class, and very much like white people. They didn’t talk their native language around ones who could not understand them. They spoke English and made good grades in school. Some of them were wealthy, having been allotted land just as my brothers were. Some of them going to school there had parents who struck oil on the land they had been allotted. Others were poor, just like we were. This was a Baptist School, and it was not nearly as strict as Dwight. At least it was not enough to cause friction between the students and the faculty. Of course, the college students had more privileges than the others. They could go to Muskogee most any time they wanted to. They were not allowed to have cars but the school was located only three miles from the city and was on a streetcar line.

I made lots of friends at Dwight and Bacone, both boys and girls, Indian and white. While at Bacone, I had a boyfriend who was a Greek Indian. He was the son of a Baptist preacher, but not at all like the usual preacher’s sons you hear so much about . Being prominent in scouting, he had attended a Boy Scout convention in England the year before. While there, they asked the Indian boys to do an Indian dance for them. He said he didn’t know a thing about any Indian dance, but they insisted so the boys tried. Someone made a movie of it and it was sent to Bacone and shown there in the local movie house. They were really embarrassed.

Paul was valedictorian that year, as he graduated from High School. He was also editor of the school paper, “The Bacone Indian”. Although he had the highest grades, allowing Paul to be Valedictorian was a bit “nip and tuck” because he didn’t have enough Indian blood. Being that Bacone was an Indian school, they seemed to be favoring the full bloods when something such as this came up. But Paul got to do it. I was always so proud of my smart brother.

When school was out that year, I went back to the home of my sister May, who then lived in Clovis, New Mexico. I fully expected to be sent back to Bacone, but she had other plans for me. Changing schools was always hard for me, and so it was this time especially. In my senior year, it seemed to me that all the kids here had years earlier formed their own little cliques and felt no need for any more. So I guess you might say I was a “too later” again.

~~ My Brother Paul ~~

I would like to take this space to tell you something about my brothers. Paul was just barely three years older than I. He was a big tease and used to aggravate me to pieces. Now I look back fondly on those times. He used to take my doll and hang her with a rope to the bedstead. I would cry and yell for mama. He used to mock me as I practiced my little school songs and dances. There was a neighborhood boy who kept tearing down the playhouse I had out under the shade tree in the front yard. Early one morning Paul caught him and there was a fight. Paul said he beat him up.

As I said, Paul and I were in school at Dwight at the same time. Paul was extra smart in both book and athletics. He was very popular with both students and teachers. He made nearly all A’s in school. After two years of college he started teaching school, and of all places, the Old Wilson School out by our ranch where most of the Wilson kids attended school. Papa donated the land for the school. About this time Paul and Mary Nell Culver got married and they lived in our old ranch house. He later taught in Claremore, Oklahoma and in California. The kids in California were so out of control that Paul was afraid he was going to loose his temper and get himself in trouble, so he quit teaching and never went back to it. Paul worked different jobs the rest of his life. He died April 10, 1994 after a long illness caused by a stroke.


E. B. happened to have his birthday on the 13th of January, and he always considered himself to be very unlucky. In view of the kind of life he had, one can hardly blame him for feeling that way.

E.B. was not born with special talents like Paul, but he worked hard at whatever he was trying to do. He gave it everything he had and he was determined. If he had not been, he would never have gotten and education. Teaching was the only thing ever considered for his profession and he earned it the hard way, with very little help. Fortunately, he had a remarkable memory, which helped him in his studying. He obtained his masters degree in Education and taught for 35 years. He married Frances Gosset from Vian. They were together until her death some 40 years later. Early in life, Frances developed severe arthritis. It was so bad she soon became an invalid and was in constant pain for the rest of her life. E. B. took care of her and taught school too. It was very hard for both of them. They tried various women to come in to help but none of them were able to lift and care for her as gently as E.B. did. E.B. died of a heart ailment he’d had for a number of years. He and Frances are buried in the Vian Cemetery.

My brother Gilbert was quite a character, generous to a fault, and yes, a bit wild too. But he loved everybody.

Soon after he left home and was on his own, he started drinking, much to mama’s worry. He came home to visit when he could, many times flat broke, having had to hitch a ride on a freight car. Other times he would be “loaded” comparatively speaking, and when he was, he was busy as could be sharing his money as long as it lasted. In those days he often came home drunk and it seemed that as soon as he got into town the Sheriff would know it. Gilbert would be in Vian’s little jail before any of the family knew he was anywhere near. The jail was about two blocks from our house, and once he was “installed” he would burst forth with a loud and resounding “whoopee!”, that would echo all over town. When I hear him I was glad to know that soon I would get to see one of my favorite brothers.

I was never proud of the fact that he did drink, but he had other good qualities that more than made up for his faults. He had the reputation of being one of those persons who would give you the “last shirt off his back”, and it was true. When mama became ill and needed help, it was Gilbert and Carl who took over. Gilbert sold his land, which was part of his Indian inheritance, and Carl quit his job and they took her to Albuquerque. It was Gilbert who looked after my two brother who needed help so much of the time. Although in far away California, Gilbert kept in close contact with all the family members and assumed the responsibility of helping each of us financially.

Gilbert married Lula (“Lou”) who lived in Riverbank, California for many years. They were in the café business for a while but it didn’t work out. They lived in a small house adjoining the café building. When they quit the café there was this rather large building left there empty. Different people, unemployed, without a place to live, would go to Gilbert’s empty building and take up residence from time to time. The word got around, so after a while there would be various numbers of men living in the building. Lots of times they were out of food too. There was no food stamps or social security in those days, so Gilbert and Lou took the responsibility for that too. Often, there was Frank, Jess, and George there plus seven other men. Lou was just as free hearted as Gilbert to help anyone in need.