Interview # 9294
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date: November 17, 1937
Name: Mrs. N.C. Higgenbottom
Residence: Maysville, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1847
Place of Birth: Mississippi
Father: Tom Moody, born in Mississippi
Mother: Nancy Higgenbottom, born in Mississippi
I was born in 1847 in Mississippi. I came tot he Indian Territory
with my husband, L.C. Higginbottom. We rented a farm near Whitebead in the Chickasaw
Nation and farmed one year and in the spring of 1902 we moved on the Washita River north
of Maysville and lived in a tent until we got our house built. My husband built a
grist mill and a saw mill on the bank of the river and both the mills were run by water
power.
Maysville was just beginning to build up. The railroad came through
there in 1902 and most of the lumber used in the buildings at Maysville was sawed at the
old water mill run by my husband and he sawed lumber for farmers living on the river.
The logs would be cut and brought down the river to the mill.
We had an ice house built and in the winter we would cut ice from the
river and fill our ice house and this ice would last us all summer.
The winters were colder then, than they are now. I have seen the
river freeze so hard that a wagon and team could cross on the ice.
People raised most of what they lived on in those days. There was very
little cotton raised then, but I have seen more corn left in the fields then, than is
raised now.
My husband and I ran the the two mills there on the river until 1908 but
that year the river got out of its banks and washed away both mills and we were able to
save only parts of the mills.
After this, my husband was afraid to build back there on the river so we
moved into Maysville and put in a grist mill, and it was run by steam. My husband
ran this mill until he died in 1915. I sold out the mill and still live in the house
he built in 1908 in Maysville.
