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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date:  March 30, 1937
Name:  Henry Debose
Post Office: Chickasha, Oklahoma
Residence Address: 
Date of Birth: December 5, 1873
Place of Birth: Bunetka, Mississippi
Father: J. W. Dubose
Place of Birth: Alabama
Information on father:
Mother: Nancy Shaw
Place of birth: Mississippi
Information on mother: 
Field Worker: Thad Smith, Jr.

I came to what is now Oklahoma, the first time in 1878. At that time I was only five years of age. My father and mother lived in Texas. My father and I forded Red River in a wagon and came over into Oklahoma to hunt wild turkeys. We drove as far north as Ft. Sill, where my father made arrangements with a negro soldier to drive our team. There were many flocks of wild turkeys in Oklahoma at that time. When we returned, our wagon was loaded with turkeys.

I was nineteen in 1892 and I made another trip into Oklahoma. I had heard that there was plenty of work for young men. Three other boys and I came to Chickasha in a hack. There was quite a lot of activity there, as the Rock Island Railway Co. was laying rails a mile or two south of Chickasha, on their way to Terral, Oklahoma. The road-bed had been graded and all of the small streams had been bridged with what they called a "ground-hog", just previous to my coming to Oklahoma.

I got a job with the Rock Island Railway Company, a few days after my arrival in Chickasha, working at nights, keeping one of the engines fired. They paid me one dollar .......???......... day and deducted fifty cents a day for my board. This didn't leave much money for me at the end of the month, but that was the wage scale that the company paid all inexperienced hands.

There were lots of men working on this job, and we layed eight or nine miles of rails a day. The rails were carried on cars just behind the engine, and were layed just in front of the engine. A few spikes were driven in the cross-ties and the rails were bolted together just tight enough to make them hold together, while the engine crossed. Following this first crew of men, were several other crews leveling up the track, driving the rest of the spikes, and tightening up the rail bolts with big wrenches.

There are several elements of people that drift along ahead of railroads under construction, who are not very desirable, and this road was no exception. there were gamblers, hi-jackers, and people of all kinds. There was a cut and a big fill made at Terral, Oklahoma and it was rumored (and in my own mind, I know it is so) that there were at least twenty men killed over card games and other disputes, and buried in the big fill, that the track was layed on. After we finished laying the track on this fill, I quit my job and returned to Texas, where I (m?)arried.

In 1900 I came back to Oklahoma and got a job at Minco working in an elevator. There was lots of corn and other grain raised on the large farms in that part of the country.

I have been in Oklahoma ever since 1900.

Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Donald Sullivan, April 200.