Indian Pioneer Papers - Index
Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: October 15,
1937
Name: Sophia Hibben
Payne
Post Office: Hugo, Oklahoma
Residence
Address:
Date of Birth: 1887
Place of Birth: Goodwater
Father: Thomas
D. Hibben
Information on Father: born
in Boone County, Arkansas
Mother: Mary
Cake
Information on Mother: born near Goodwater Church, Kiamichi County,
Choctaw Nation.
Field Worker: Hazel B. Greene
My father, Thomas D. HIBBEN was born in Boone County, Arkansas, and
my mother, Mary CAKES - Hibben, was born near Goodwater Church in what was then
Kiamichi County, Choctaw nation. I was born at a place about a mile from
Goodwater in 1887.
My grandfather Hibben was a Confederate soldier and his company was
encamped in Boone County, Arkansas, just about a day's drive from his home
when he was taken sick with measles then with pneumonia and died. When his
young wife heard of his death she took her team and wagon and went and brought
his body home for burial. It was a good long day's drive from her home; the
weather was cold and she contacted a cold, while on this trip, from which she
never recovered. The doctor said she died from a broken heart as much as
anything else. She lived just six months after her husband's
death.
Their son, Thomas Hibben, was just three years old at the time his
parents died and he was shifted from one relative to another the balance of
his boyhood. Nobody wanted him and nobody cared where he went. He was never
sent to school a day in his life. Thomas D. Hibben was just tolerated by his
relatives. They didn't care what he did, though he never did anybody a wrong.
He was deeply religious and religiously kept the Sabbath Day
Holy.
In his wonderings he came to the Indian Territory, Choctaw Nation,
and worked as a "snipe" on the new railroad that was being built through here.
Later he went to work for and lived at my uncle's Thomas Cakes, who was then
County Judge of Kiamichi County, Indian Territory, Choctaw Nation. They lived
down near Frogville not very far from the house of my grandfather, Thomas W.
Cakes who was the father of Lem W., Joel E. and George Cakes. My mother was
teaching school when she fell in love with and married my father, Thomas D.
Hibben. Uncle Thomas, in the capacity of County Judge, performed the ceremony.
Father was twenty three years old then and could not write his name or read a
word. Mother taught him after they were married. Each night she carefully and
faithfully taught him his lessons. Then when we children came along and were
going to school we brought our books home with us to study and Father could
work problems for us that we could not work and that Mother could not
work.
Father was just naturally above the average man in intelligence. I
can remember when he was Clerk of the Supreme Court of the Choctaw Nation and
stayed at Tuskahoma a lot of the time. After Statehood he became one of the
first county commissioners of Choctaw County. My uncle, Thomas Cakes, and Lee
W. RATLIFFE were the other two commissioners. R. M. CONNELL was Sheriff, W. J.
MILLAM was County Clerk and John WILLIS was County Attorney.
We lived right close to the old Goodwater church site for a number
of years. Then we built a home about a mile away, of course, I do not remember
when it was a mission school. There are plenty of histories to tell when it
was founded and discontinued as a mission school. But there was a frame
building on the old site, and we went to school there until I was fifteen. I
started to school at five. Then I went to Tuskahoma a year and started back
another year but they were so crowded up there that my sister and I and a lot
of others had to go home in order to make room for less fortunate children for
there were some who had no school at all within a reasonable distance of their
homes.
I believe the Goodwater Mission School and church was established
before 1848 because two tombstones there were erected over graves that were
made in 1848. They were all moss grown but I scratched the moss off and copied
the inscription in a little notebook and have carried it in my purse for
years. One read, "L. C. DOWNER, Missionary, died October 1st, 1848." The other
was "C. M. BELDEN, November 5, 1848, Missionary". There were a lot of old
sandstone tombstones from which the inscriptions were worn off by the weather
and were very likely older than the two which were inscribed, because they
looked older, but the inscriptions on them were indecipherable.
There were many "lost graves" in that old cemetery. As far back as
I can remember, graves were occasionally dug into when new ones were being
dug. There would be no sign of one until the spades would turn out some bones
or jewelry or buttons and a few coffin nails, the coffins having rotted
away.
Grandmother Cakes was Harriet EVERIDGE, daughter of Thomas William
Everidge and his wife, Sophia. She and my grandfather, Thomas Cakes, built
their home right close to the Goodwater Church in Choctaw County about
eighteen miles southeast of Hugo and when my parents married they lived there
with Grandfather Cakes for a number of years then they built a home about a
mile from the church and that was where I was born.
Even though they were near the Goodwater cemetery they never buried
any of their folks there. They buried them right there a few steps from the
house, their children, grandchildren and the slaves who died. Grandmother said
that a lot of Confederate Soldiers were also buried in family cemetery and that
many of the soldiers were buried in the Goodwater Cemetery and also many full
blood Choctaw Indians. Some of those inscriptions showed that graves were made
there forty years before I was born in 1887, and it is reasonable to suppose
that in view of the fact that tombstones were not very common in those days,
over the first graves in this cemetery there might not have been any
tombstone. Hence, the large number of "lost" graves that would be dug into and
not a sign of a coffin left, only nails. The coffins would be entirely rotted
away. The Confederate Soldiers were stationed in camp about the mouth of the
Kiamichi River between grandfather's place and Fort Towson, but on the west
side of the river I believe, hence the burial of those who died in camp at the
Cakes Cemetery and at Goodwater; and every grave in their cemetery was marked
by a stone but there were no inscriptions on these stones.
One corner of this cemetery was set aside for the slaves to be
buried in. The bodies of the soldiers were buried at another place and the
bodies of those belonging to the Cakes family at another in the Cakes
Cemetery. My mother was the last one to be buried there in 1931. We laid her
beside my father who died in 1915.
My grandmother, Harriet Cakes, was about eight years old when she
came over the "Trail of Tears", in about 1833, and they settled at a place
about two miles north of Goodwater Church and school. She attended church and
school there all her long life and she lived to be nearly ninety. I have an
old pewter wine pot that they used in taking communion. There were two of
those quart size pewter pots.
Grandfather Cakes was a carpenter, cabinet and furniture maker and
his house was full of those old treasures but they are all gone or scattered.
One of the old hickory, split bottomed rocking chairs that Grandfather made is
being exhibited at the Pan-American Exposition in Dallas now. The reason
grandfather did not go into service in the Civil War was because he was needed
at home to make looms, spinning wheels and furniture for his people. The
Government had sent him out here to do work like that and to build homes for
the Indians and to build their Council House when they were first coming out
here in the 1830's. Grandfather came along with some of the first
immigrants.
In our home were home-made corded bedsteads, trundle beds, bureaus,
candle stands, tables, chairs wardrobes and desks. Grandfather was also a
shoemaker. He tanned hides and made shoes for his own family and for half the
people for miles around.
People freighted their cotton by ox-wagons to Shreveport and
returned with such supplies as they could not produce at home such as salt,
sugar, coffee, yarn and lumber. However, they made some salt, not very much.
They decided it was not worth the effort it took. It took two months to make
the trip to Shreveport and to return loaded with supplies. Grandfather brought
back the first jars for the canning of fruit that most of the settlers had
ever seen. The jar I have is a half-gallon size and is of crockery ware. A lid
fits into a groove all around the top and this groove is filled with hot
sealing wax. But very little food was canned then. Much fruit was preserved
when we could get the sugar and a big lot of it was dried. Preserves were put
up in crocks and some of them would hold five gallons. But where there were
large families it took lots of "sweetening". I can remember the water buckets,
tubs and churns of cedar with brass hoops. I know that Grandmother Cakes' old
cedar churn held ten gallons. A woman could hardly handle a churn with milk in
it. Our smoke house was a sight. I say our, because we lived with my
grandparents for many years after Grandfather went blind.
That smoke house was built of logs and was about 20 x 22 feet and
high enough for a double row of joists running each way with wooden pegs
eighteen inches apart on them to hang meat upon. When their family was growing
up and they had slaves, Granny said, "They never killed less than twenty hogs
each Winter". They rendered lard in immense wash pots and put it up in two
hogsheads and used the cracklings to make soap which they made by the barrel.
This soap was made of lye dripped from ashes that were saved and put up is a
ash-hopper out behind the smoke house.
Some of the soap would be firm enough to cut out in blocks that
were carefully dried and put away in a container and saved for the washing of
the nicer clothes. The soap that was in the bottom of the pot was soft soap,
jelly-like. I imagine it was soft because of the lean meat. There were usually
three barrels of soap made in the Springtime, "when the moon was right" to do
the washing for the whole family and for the slaves.
Along each side and along the back of the smoke house were
box-shaped troughs hewn out of big trees which were used to salt the meat down
in until it was ready to be hung and smoked with hickory chips to give it the
right flavor. An immense meat block stood just outside of the door. It was a
section a giant oak tree. A ladder stood against the clapboard roof which we
climbed wearily several times daily in summer spread and turn over the fruit
that was put there to dry for winter consumption. Jars were too scarce to can
much fruit. A few were brought from Shreveport along with nails, wire, little
brass lamps, lumber, yar, etc.
My grandparents were staunch Presbyterians. My father was a
Methodist so Mother became one too. We went to Sunday school every Sunday if
we were not sick abed, then home to dinner which was always cooked the day
before. There was never any cooking or churning on Sunday. Granny cooked on
the fireplace and my mother did too for years and in the winter time things
were sometimes placed close around the fire in that big old fireplace where
they kept warm until ready to be eaten. After dinner Father and Mother took
turns reading in the Bible all afternoon; then come our supper of bread and
milk and more Bible reading and prayers until bedtime and we kids didn't dare
go to bed before prayers were said.
We used to have the grandest camp-meetings, Union meetings,
Methodist, Presbyterians, and sometimes Baptist would come and camp for two
and three weeks. We lived so close to the camp meeting ground that we stayed at
home and attended services regularly and we had as good a time as those who
were camping. Relatives met there yearly who seldom ever saw each other any
other time. Distance and slow and poor transportations prevented.
New dresses and new hats were always in evidence at those camp
meetings. It didn't matter so much about new clothes the balance of the year
just so they had new ones for the camp meetings. Our mothers began in the
Winter tucking our voluminous underskirts, chemises and drawers. They all had
yards and yards of lace, tucks and embroidery, and we had to have lots of
underclothing for the summer. We wore two, three and four petticoats at the
time depending up the thinness of our dresses. Those girls who lived ten or
fifteen miles away brought trunks full of clothes, with negroes to the camp
meetings to do the cooking and take care of their clothes, but a girl would
wear a new summer dress all Summer without washing it. We prided ourselves on
keeping our dresses clean and nice. My grandmother had clothes packed in her
trunk that she had had for thirty years, that "had never been wet in water".
Some of them she had even thirty-five and forty years and when we did get new
dresses, pieces of them were sent to relatives and friends in letters for them
to admire and put in their quilts and pincushions. Granny Cakes said that when
she was young they made pretty buttons by covering acorns with material like
the garment they wanted to put them on or covered with contrasting colors for
trimmings.
I remember one Spring when a shipment of hats for girls and women
came to Joel SPRING's store from some commission house. They were very pretty
too, even if sometimes a half dozen were alike, except as to color. They were
all just $1.50 apiece. The girls and women knew for weeks ahead that these
hats were expected and saved their money for them. Some of them chopped cotton
for their $1.50 and some dug snakeroot for theirs and some had picked cotton
the Fall before and some had sold hickory nuts in Paris, Texas, the Fall
before and had saved they money in anticipation of the Spring hats being
bought in.
A lot of the mothers made the boys' shirts too. I recall one mother
who made her boys' shirts with straight bands for collars and buttoned all the
way down the back until the boys got the courage to protest when they were
nearly grown; even then she gave up pretty hard. She was the kind of woman who
never even changed the style of dressing their hair.