Mrs. Della Thompson of 221 East Boston is Okemah's eldest Pioneer. She came
to Okemah in 1908 and celebrated her 98th birthday on Feb. 2 of this year.
Mrs. Thompson was born in Carlyle, Ill. In 1861, about two months before the
Civil War began. She came to Indian Territory via Arkansas in 1903. She and her
husband, Charlie, lived for the most part in Lincoln County, moving to Weleetka
in 1906.
They opened a cafe in Weleetka but lived there only a short time
before moving back to their farm six miles north of Prague. They resided on the
farm until Mr. Thompson died on July 27, 1907. The widow then moved to Okemah in
1908 and has lived here for the most part since that time.
For several years
Mrs. Thompson resided in the old Solberger house. The house, located on Division
Street next to the present Ponder Rooms, was built in 1903 by her
brother-in-law, John Solberger, the Pioneer relates.
Solberger was an "old
German who talked broken." He was in the restaurant business here about 1903 and
later drove a dray wagon.
Mrs. Thompson waatched Okemah grow up. She recalls
that there were four or five cotton gins in Okemah back in that early day, the
streets were all dirt, and the old posst office was in a frame building near Tom
Coale's present filling station.
The Dexter House was then located behind
the building now occupied by Theo Hill's furniture store, Mrs. Thompson said.
The building which housed the old Dexter House then is that now designated as
the Kentucky Rooms.
The Broadway Hotel was doing a landoffice business in
those days catering to the drummers who traveled the Fort Smith and Western.
Much of Mrs. Thompson's rememberances of Okemah's pioneer days are prompted now
by her oldest son, Jesse, 70, with whom she resides.
Prompting his mother's
memory, they recall a lynching in Henryetta in 1908 and another attempt at
lynching in Weleetka in 1906.
Jesse Thompson ran a livery dray in Okemah
back in 1908. He was married in 1910 to the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jess A.
Parrish, well known farmer of the earlier days at Mason. The couple was married
in the old courthouse located where the water office and fire department are
now.
Mrs. Thompson has three children living at the present time, 14
grandchildren, 53 great-grandchildren, and 16 great-great grandchildren.
Her
own grandmother lived in three centuries. She was born in 1799, lived through
the 19th century, then died at the age of 105 in 1904. Mrs. Thompson says she
just may duplicate her grandmother's lengthy sojourn on this earth.