Mrs. Nanie Burkett Glenn grew up in
Louisiana, later moving to Arkansas and later coming to the Indian Territory
with her parents where they settled in the Chickasaw Nation near Ardmore,
Indian Territory. There were only two stores at Ardmore then. Mrs. Glenn’s
father took a lease on some land near there from some Indians and began
farming. The crops which were raised were cotton, corn, oats and sometimes
wheat.
Cattle and hogs were plentiful as the
range was fine. Both hogs and cattle could be killed right on the range and
would be as fat as most corn-fed stock is today.
They farmed with oxen. After the land was
broken out the crops were planted and cultivated with Georgia stocks and
double shovels and the oxen would be worked singly. Crops grew in abundance. A
good work steer could be bought for $25.00: corn sold at from 10 cents to 25
cents per bushel and cotton sold from 4 cents to 8 cents per pound.
Products bought in exchange could be
purchased cheap; flour could be bought at from $2.50 to $3.50 per barrel of
two hundred pounds. Sugar sold twenty-five or thirty pounds to the dollar and
we never knew what it was to buy meat or lard as we always raised plenty of
beeves and hogs at home. We had plenty of beef and bacon and anytime we wanted
to we could kill a deer or turkey.
Clothing in the early days was made of
calico, cotton flannel, linsey and jeans and the garments were almost always
hand made. The women wore very long dresses with long sleeves and high necks
and they wore high topped shoes.
Ardmore grew slowly at first, though with
the coming of the railroad it built rapidly and there was a Seminary
established there; a school for Indian girls.
Nanie BURKETT was married to S. R. GLENN
and began life with him as a farmer’s wife. Mr. Glenn was also a machinist
and as the country began to develop, Mrs. Glenn learned the machinist trade,
too, and they both took up blacksmithing and machine work in general.
Mrs. Glenn has helped her husband install
steam engines, cotton gins, grist mills and has worked side by side with him
in a blacksmith shop.
Submitted to OKGenWeb by Lola Crane