Dixon Hill was mayor of Poteau 1911-1912.
Submitted by Lola
19 Aug 2009
"HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA," Vol 1, 1909.
"History of the State of Oklahoma," Lewis Pub. Co.,
pg 597-598, Col 1, Volume 1, 1909; and pg 478,
By LUTHER B. HILL.
C. DIXON HILL.
For more than a quarter of a century C. Dixon Hill has been a
developing force in Le Flore county, and for many years past has
been a permanent resident of Poteau, where he is still engaged
in the promotion of his large business and financial interests;
looking after the education of his younger children and, as a
tenant landlord, superintending his property near Sugar Loaf
Mountain. The latter locality was the scene of his first coming
to the Indian country, when as a sturdy youth of eighteen years,
he ventured into the land of uncertain but bright promise as an
emigrant from his native state of Mississippi.
Mr. Hill was born in Lee county, Mississippi, September 21,
1863, his father being Augustus Hill, a farmer and Baptist
minister of Tennessee birth. The latter was born in 1821 and
married in the state of his nativity. He acquired only a common
school education and became an adherent of the Primitive Baptist
faith, his father (Allen G. Hill) being a clergyman of that
denomination. The grandfather of C. Dixon finally settled in
Arkansas and died at Little Rock about 1874, at eighty years of
age. His father, in turn, was the founder of the family in
Tennessee and was of Irish birth. Among the children of Allen G.
Hill were Horace, who died in Ardmore, Oklahoma; C. S., who
passed away near Little Rock, Arkansas; Augustus, who died in
Lee county, Mississippi; Mrs. A. G. Nelson, who died in
Mississippi; Mrs. Adalaide and Mrs. Adaline Williams, both of
whom reside at Meridian, Mississippi.
Augustus Hill, the father, married Miss Naomi Beavers, a lady
of Tennessee birth, who passed away in Lee County, Mississippi,
the mother of the following: Martha, who first married a Mr.
Ryan and whose second husband was John Cummingham, of Paris,
Texas, where she also passed away; Elsie, who became the wife of
William Bonds and died near Paris, Texas; Erastus, who was
killed in the Confederate army; Lucy, wife of Jesse Wilson, of
Bonneville, Arkansas; Albert, of Fort Smith, that state; Erastus
II, who died near McCloud, Oklahoma, and left a son; Fannie,
wife of Jo Eaves, of Bertram, Texas; Adaline, who married James
McCarty, of Sherman, Mississippi; Augustus, of Nettleton that
state; C. Dixon, of this sketch, and Ruth, who is Mrs. Thomas
Gray, of Tom Green county. Texas.
The country schools were all that C. Dixon Hill had at his
command while getting his education, and when at the age of
eighteen he cast about for a more promising field for the
exercise of his maturing abilities his mind turned to the Indian
Territory, since in the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain he had
acquaintances in the family of Enoches and it was with them that
he first found a home in the Indian country. In this locality he
commenced to work on shares, next rented a farm and in 1886 was
in financial position to take upon himself the responsibilities
of a wife and family. His wife, before marriage, was Miss Izora
James, daughter of Martin James, a Chickasaw Indian and a
Missionary Baptist preacher. The latter married a Choctaw woman,
a Miss Merriman, whose father was a white man from Kentucky and
whose mother was also a Choctaw. The children born to Mr. And
Mrs. C. Dixon Hill have been: Horace C., Orval Q., Elba N.,
Louis A., Esther J. and C. Dixon, Jr.
By this marriage, under the Choctaw laws, Mr. Hill became an
independent landowner: selected his allotments near Sugar Loaf
Mountain and became a successful raiser of cotton, corn and
grain. In 1889 he removed to Poteau and clerked for several
years in the stores of Forbes and Donaghe and Captain McKenna,
also associating with C. T. Wilburn for about a year then sold
to S. P. Humphrey and clerked for him a time in general
merchandise. He then returned to farming occupations near Sugar
Loaf Mountain, but with the growth of his Poteau interests and
his desire to give his children the advantages of the superior
schools at the county seat, he rented his lands and became a
fixture in the city. Since then he has been identified with its
most substantial enterprises. He was one of the organizers of
the Le Flore County Bank and its first president, and is a
stockholder in the Miller Hardware and Furniture Company. In
politics he is a Democrat.
The family residence is a pretty cottage which caps a
picturesque hill overlooking Poteau. Both Mr. And Mrs. Hill, as
well as the members of the family, are faithful and active
Presbyterians.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=43114824
Choctaw Indian : January 17, 1903, Roll #6479, Census Card #
2236. She is
34, 1/32 CDIB.
Page 87 - 91 (Izora James Hill)
Izora James
Poteau, Oklahoma
My name is Izora James, born 1868, about one mile east of what
is now
called Oak Lodge,
Oklahoma. It used to be called Skullyville, I.T. I started to
school in
1876 at a schoolhouse called Union School, located about one
mile due east of Rock Island, Oklahoma, my teacher being Miss
Vec Pratt, a white woman. This was an Indian school for the
Choctaw children. The teacher was paid out of the Indian fund
the sum of two dollars for each child. The school house was made
out of square hewed logs, the ends of the logs notched and
fitted together. There were cracks about one and one half inches
wide between the logs and these were "chinked and daubed" with
mud or clay. We sat on heavy plank benches without any backs for
them. We used slates for our figuring of numbers. We were not
taught to write in this school. We studied the Blue-Back Speller
and the school was not subdivided into different grades like it
is now. Some white children went to this school, and they paid
the teacher but I don't remember just how much. We
moved close to Kully chaha next and I went to school at what was
then known
as the Hall, about two and one half miles from Kullychaha, I.T.
It was a
two story frame building. The Moshulatubbee Masonic Lodge No. 13
built the
building. They held Lodge, upstairs and school downstairs.
Church for the
whites was held downstairs also. This school was not graded
either. I went
here in 1878 and 1879. I still have one of the old copies of the
old
Blue-Black Speller yet. They did not teach penmanship in this
school either.
We learned to write whenever someone would come around and
solicit
subscriptions for a ten or twelve day writing school. This cost
one dollar
per student. We learned to write with pen and ink. About 1881 we
left Kullychaha I.T., and moved close to the place where the
Fairview school now stands, about three miles northeast of
Poteau, Oklahoma, and I went to the Wapanucka school in the
Choctaw Nation, which was called also Rock Academy. If a person
went to school here long enough they could go to school in the
States. This was a mixed school for boys and girls both. I
attended in 1884 and 1885. Nance Rivers and his wife were
teachers here. This school was not graded and we had old books
that were clear out of date. They would be worth a fortune if
they were still there. I remember one time the Music Teacher
asked me, where do peanuts grow and when I told her they grew on
trees, she did not know any different, because she had never
seen any growing. Nance Rivers and wife were from Georgia. This
school was supported out of the Indian funds and by the
Methodist Church.
My father was Martin James. He was a Methodist Circuit Rider
and District Attorney of the Moshulatubee District. This was
composed of five counties, Skullyville, Sugar Loaf, Gains, San
Bois, and Tobucksy. He used to ride a buckskin pony from the
Skullyville County Courthouse on down to the Sugar Loaf County
Courthouse. It caused his death from exposure, resulting in
pneumonia. He was the District Attorney in the following years I
think, 1878 and 1879. He was about one sixteenth white, the rest
was a mixture of Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian. Martin James was
a charter member in the Moshulatubee Masonic Lodge No. 13 at
Kullychaha, I.T. He died September 22, 1881, and was buried at
the Hall cemetery at the location of the lodge building. My
mother was Julia Merriman and she was born at the old Merriman
Homestead. This was the same place I was born. It was an old
double house with an open hallway through it, it was made of
square hewed logs and was "chinked and daubed." The roof was
covered with "clapboards." These were made of straight-grain
post oak. The boards were two feet long and four or five inches
wide, made with a "froe and maul". This house is still standing:
it is weather boarded now though. My father spoke both the
Choctaw and Chickasaw languages. I do not speak very much of
either as my father said, the time will come when the whites
will be plentiful and I want my children raised as whites are
raised so it will not be so hard for them to mix up with them.
It would be a blessing if more of the old time Indians would
have seen this coming in and not know anything about the white
man's ways.
I married Dixon Hill April, 1886, a Scot-Irishman. We married
by tribal custom, at a Presbyterian Church for whites close to
Hill, Oklahoma, a place called Bethlehem. The license cost
twenty five dollars. My husband shared in the allotment the same
as I did. The license was issued by Noel Holson, a full blood
Choctaw Indian, out in the country close to Summerfield, I.T.,
at his home. He was the Sugar Loaf County Clerk, Indian Court.
Sugar Loaf County Courthouse was between Howe and Wister,
Oklahoma, on the road to Glendale, Oklahoma. It has since been
torn down. I never did see it. The Skullyville County Courthouse
was on Bush Creek Prairie, about four miles northwest of Panama,
Oklahoma. It burned down several years ago and burned all the
records that were in the Courthouse. When we registered before
allotment, we registered in our mother's name. It was customary
on the account of unlawful children in some of the Indian
families as they would be maybe one half Indian and the rest of
the children full-blood Indian, so the policy of registering
under the mother's amount of Indian Blood came into effect. I am
registered as one-thirty second while I am better than one-half
Indian.
My brother and sisters were as follows: Izora Ann James, born
Jan 23,
1868; Wiliam Wesley, born
Jan 30, 1870; John Bunyan, born March 10, 1873; Hiram L., born
May 20,
1876; Izadora, born July 7,
1878; and Bellemont, born July 1, 1880.
Additional information supplied by the Author:
Martin VanBuren James was Sr. Warden of the Moshulatubbee Lodge
Number 13,
when it was organized 5 November 1879. Other charter members
were: Orin Frank Ross, Master; Joe Barnes, Alfonza Patterson,
etc.
Julia Ann Merryman James Beard was the daughter of William and
Anna Merryman. After Martin Van Buren James died, Julia married
John G Beard. John was born in 1825 and was the son Littleton
and Elizabeth Beard. Julia and John's children were: Ada Mae
born 1884 and married James E. Stalcup in 1905, Buchanan born
1885 and married Stella, in 1908, Amos Sanford born 1887 and
Matthew born 1890 and married Pauline Park in 1912. Julia
Buchanan and Sanford all died with Tuberculosis. John died in
1900, Julia died in 1912, Buchanan died in 1911 and Amos Sanford
died in 1912. They are all buried in the
Oakland Cemetery in Poteau, LeFlore County, Oklahoma.
Izora's husband, Cornelius Dixon Hill was born in Mississippi in
1863. He was the son of A.T. and Neoma Jane Beaver Hill. Dixon
served as mayor of Poteau 1911-1912. Izora and Dixon's children
were: Horace C. born 1888, Orvel I. born 1890, Elba N. born
1892, Lewis A. born 1898, Esther born 1904 and Cornelius born
1908. Dixon died in 1919 and Izora died in 1958. They are both
buried in the Oakland Cemetery. |