Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian-Pioneer History Project of Oklahoma
Date: July 13 1937
Name: Fidela Jane Eldridge
Post Office: Duke, Oklahoma
Residence Address: West Duke,
Date of birth: September 14, 1870
Place of birth: Buffalo, Dallas County, Missouri.
Name of father: Joseph Cofer
Place of birth: Tennessee
Information about father: Carpenter
Name of mother: Josie Cowden
Place of birth: Missouri
Information about mother: 
Field Worker: Zaidee B. Blaad

I had been married only a few weeks when my mother, father, husband, and myself started out to that far wild and woolly west to obtain free land and make us a home. We were willing to brave the dangers of the trail and meeting up with Indians if only we might have land to call our own. Land had gotten so high in Missouri that we had despaired of ever owning any. We left Buffalo, Missouri, in November, 1887. We had two covered wagons or prairie schooners as they were called and six horses. We had four horses hitched to one wagon and two horses hitched to the other one.

All roads were merely cow trails and some times played out altogether. The grass was high and we hobbled our horses every night and let them graze for it was too hard to bring much corn or oats along for them to eat. One night they grazed farther away than usual and the grass was so high that we could not see them and we became very much frightened. We thought sure we would never see them again for of course the Indians had run them off. We found them in exactly the opposite direction that we had been looking for them. We did not see a great many Indians. We camped near Ft. Sill one night and were told by someone to keep going. We hitched up hurriedly and started away and drove and drove until the road gave out and then had to turn round and drive some more. We were very much frightened for we understood that the Indians were on the war path. In the night we got to Ft. Sill and were safe there and found out someone was only stringing us for the Indians were all peaceful. To prove it we were told to drive by Quanah Parker's home and see how nicely we would be entertained, we never tried it, for we did not want to be friendly with the Indians. We passed near his house but did not stop; we did not even intend to go near his camp, but made a mistake and had taken the wrong road.

We crossed the Arkansas River without knowing it. We drove in thinking it would have a gravel bottom and did not know the difference until one of the teams stuck in the quicksand. We had a time getting them out and lots of excitement and some more folks had to help us out, but all ended well. We had pretty weather all the way and the country looked beautiful in its fall dress of such gorgeous colors. There were lots of fat cattle grazing over the plains, herds of two and three thousand in a bunch. Lots of antelopes, and coyotes, wild turkeys, prairie chickens and quail, we could have to eat any time. The prairie dogs were plentiful, too, after we got west of Ft. Sill.

We settled on Salt Fork of Red River about four or five miles west and two miles south of where Altus is now. We went to Vernon, Texas, and got a house to live in while the men folks hauled lumber back to build us a dugout in which to live. The first place where we lived was only a big square hole in the ground covered with dirt, but we were soon tired of the dark and lifted the top three feet about the ground and put window in the sides and a plank top. These windows were slide windows, and all the lumber was hauled from Vernon thirty-five miles away.

We had to pay a dollar and a quarter per bushel for seed corn the first year but after that we made good crops. Our soil was sandy and we made lots of corn, wheat, and oats. We always raised our own sorghum cane for all the syrup we needed, and I raised a lot of cucumbers and put up such nice pickles that I began to sell to the government at twenty-five cents a gallon. I always put them up in barrels for the government.

I began peddling milk and butter to town. I would take a buggy lead to town, Old Frazier, twice a week ?? ??, cold or hot. I have crossed the river lots of times when the water would run into the buggy and some up almost to my seat, and I enjoyed doing this. I washed for a neighbor to get two pigs. I still have an old dresser I bought with the money I made this way and I bought my children a pony to ride, all for themselves. I have had thirteen children. I could not raise chickens much as the coyotes were so bad. I brought two dozen hens to this country with me and one night we were away from home and the coyotes ate every single one of them. Wolves killed lots of calves for us, too.

We used Prairie coal (cow chips) a lot for fuel and had to get our wood from the Indian reservation. The neighbors liked to bunch up and go together. They always had to camp out and it was safer and jollier for them all to be in a bunch. Once when there were six neighbors along, the United States Marshal ran onto them and arrested them for stealing wood from the Indians. They sent three of the men home to tell us women and took the other three to the Federal Jail at El Reno and kept them ten days. They gave them a trial and fined them the ten days they had already served, and sent them home. This did not break us as we kept going back for wood when we needed it. It just made us a little more careful.

The neighbors all went together and built a one room schoolhouse at Frasier and Mr. J. R. McMahan taught the first school. It was a subscription school. In 1891 there was such a flood that the town was all washed away and people were afraid to go back to the low land to live and moved everything two and one half miles east, and changed the name to Altus. My husband helped to build the new homes on the higher ground.

The wolves, rattlesnakes, and floods, and later storms, were the worst enemies we had to contend with.

Neighbors were all helpful and friendly. I guess I was like all other mothers I did not want my girls to marry too young and would not give my consent for our oldest girl when she asked for it, so she ran away. When we found out that they had run away, the neighbors all tried to comfort me by telling me the river was up and they could not get across. I told them that they did not know my girl, she was not afraid of water. And sure enough when they got to the river they drove right in. The water was so high that they had to get clear up on the back of the buggy seat to keep out of the water, but they went right on through just the same and were married before I ever saw her again. 

[Submitter's Comments: Fidelia and her husband, John Townsend Eldridge, Jr. were married in Polk County MO, on 28 September 1887. Their first child, Nora, was born while the family was living in Vernon, TX. Their other children were born in Greer County and Jackson County OK. Fidelia Eldridge died in 1958. She is buried in the Altus City Cemetery, Altus, OK.]

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Lorna Rust < lorrust@earthlink.net > October 2001.