GARVIN COUNTY INDIAN PIONEER PAPERS

OKGenWeb Indian Pioneer Papers Collection

Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers

C.C. Cobble

Interview # 9883
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date:  January 27, 1938
Name:   Mr. C.C. Cobble
Residence:  Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Date of Birth:  1860
Place of Birth:  Missouri
Father: Isaac Cobble, born in Illinois
Mother:  Emiline Lee, born in Illinois, Cousin to General Robert E. Lee

 

I was born in 1860 in Missouri and came to the Oklahoma Territory in 1889 and settled at Norman, in old Oklahoma.

There were only a few buildings in Norman.  The town was just starting to build.  As I was a carpenter and a painter, I built my home on East Main Street, it being the first one to be built on that street.  I lived at Norman until 1906 and I built a number of homes there.

When Sulphur started to built up I moved there and helped built the town.   Sulphur used to sit on top of a big hill south of where it is now located and in 1906 was when the town began to build.

I worked there a few months and came to Pauls Valley and went to work helping build homes.  At that time Pauls Valley wasn't much of a town although there was quite a bit of building going on at that time.  I was living in Pauls Valley when the Washita River overflowed and water was deep enough in town that people rode around town in boats.  I was building a home on the west side of town and I had to go to and from work in a boat.  That was in 1908 and Pauls Valley, Wynnewood, and Elmore City were in an election fight, each one trying to get the county seat.  Elmore City didn't have much of a chance as there was no railroad in that part of the country, but it looked like Wynnewood was going to get it, with Pauls Valley surrounded by water.   That was the largest flood that ever happened here.

In 1911 this part of the country was hit with the hardest drought since I have lived in this country.  Corn burned down tot he ground and hundreds of acres in the bottoms around here never made any corn at all.

I now live in Pauls Valley where I have lived since 1906.