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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: October 28, 1937
Name: Mr. J. D. Baker
Post Office: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Residence Address:
Date of Birth: September 20, 1858
Place of Birth: Arkansas
Father: F. Baker
Information on Father: killed in the Civil War
Mother: Elmira Burk
Information on Mother:
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Interview #9061

I was born 1858 in Arkansas.

I came from Arkansas to the Indian Territory in 1886 and settled on Sleepy Hollow Creek near a place called Shake Rag, in the Choctaw Nation.  Sleepy Hollow was a large valley surrounded by red oak timber with a running stream of water through it.  When I settled there there were four families in that valley.

My wife, children and myself lived under a wagon sheet until I got a one-room log house built.  With plenty of timber it didn't take but about a week to build a log house with a dirt floor.

There were no large farms then in that part of the country.  If you farmed fifteen to twenty acres you were counted a large farmer.

There was a gin and grist mill at a place called Needmore where I took my corn to mill and after the cotton was ginned I would have to have it hauled to Denison, Texas, to sell it as there was no market at Needmore.

There was plenty of deer, turkey and wild hogs.  At corn gathering time I would pen up three or four of these wild hogs and pile corn into them and they would make enough meat and lard to run my family until next killing time.

Cornbread was our main bread.

There was no church or school anywhere close to Sleepy Hollow so what schooling our children got was what their mother taught them.

Then in that part of the country we used one horse to a six-inch turning plow to break our land and a Georgia stock to lay off the rows with and planted our cotton by hand.

My wife made the clothes for our family.  Every member of the family that was big enough to wear shoes got one pair each year.

There wasn't much money in that time but we didn't need much.  We raised nearly everything we lived on.

When I would take my cotton to Denison, Texas, once a year, I would get a barrel of flour and this would do our family until the next year.  My wife would use the flour to bake with and we would have biscuits every Sunday morning.

The gin at Needmore was run by steam, but I would have to unload my cotton into baskets and then carry it inside the gin where there was a pair of scales and weigh each basket full.  The cotton was then carried back to the gin stands.

After the lint was cut from the seeds it was carried in baskets to the press.  The press was run by hand.  Eight to ten bales was a good days run.

In 1890, I moved to the Cherokee Nation and leased twenty acres of land from Joe HEADRICK, a Cherokee Indian.  He gave me all I made on the land for five years for clearing it up and putting it in cultivation.  There was no house on this piece of ground but in a short while I had a one-room house.  I raised corn and sugar cane and we had plenty of milk and butter.  There was no market for cream and if you got twenty-five cents for a fat hen you would be doing well.  I raised plenty of chickens.

We were happy to be making a living.  We didn't think about getting rich, just thought of making a good living.

I never had a doctor in my house until in later years.   When some of the family were sick we used home remedies and put more trust in God.

After my five years lease was up I moved to Garvin Springs, west of Pauls Valley in the Chickasaw Nation and rented a farm from Sam GARVIN.  This farm had a one-room house on it and the first year my wife, eight children and myself lived in this one-room house and made a crop.  That year I raised five bales of cotton and several hundred bushels of corn.

There was a gin at Pauls Valley and a cotton market, corn was cheap.   I have sold my corn after hauling it to Pauls Valley for fifteen cents a bushel.

The nearest grist mill was east of Pauls Valley on the Washita River, owned by a Chickasaw Indian, Zack GARDNER.

I farmed on the Garvin farm until the branch railroad was built from Pauls Valley to Lindsay in 1902.  At that time I sold out and moved to Maysville and put in a wagon yard and livery stable.  Maysville had just begun to build up.

My wife is eighty years old and I am seventy-nine.  We have reared ten children.  We now live at our home in Maysville in the same house where we have lived since 1902.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Brenda Choate <bcchoate@yahoo.com> November 2000.