Interview # 1240
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date: April 29, 1937
Name: Mr. Roy N. Holt
Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1891
Place of Birth: Alabama
Father: Ruff Holt, born in Alabama
Mother: Betty Allison, born in Alabama
My father, mother and I came to the Indian Territory, Chickasaw Nation and
settled at Burneyville in 1893.
My first remembrance was when we lived at a small place called Gleen.
There were two stores, a blacksmith shop and a gin, and postoffice, which was in
one of the stores. My first school was at Gleen and it was a log school house with
logs hewed down for seats and we had no desks. We used slates and blue back
spellers. A Mr. Wallace was the teacher. He was a large fat man and smoked an
old corn cob pipe. I have seen him while holding classed light his pipe and the
smoke would fill the room.
My uncle, John Holt owned a large ranch near Gleen at the foot of the
Arbuckle Mountains. I have been at his ranch when I was small and watched them brand
cattle. His brand was the Diamond T. It was a big diamond with a T in the
center of the diamond. My uncle also owned the gin at Gleen and it was run by an old
threshing machine engine. They would pack the cotton in the press and when the press
was filled they would screw it someway, and tie out the bale. These isn't anything
at Gleen today, as the stores and gin are all gone.
Mr. Will Gardner was postmaster at Gleen. He now lives in Ardmore.
In 1898 my father moved to Violet Springs in the Seminole Nation, Indian
Territory, where there was a good school.
I have been to the Seminole Indian dances with my father. They would
have a big fire built and the men and women would go around and around singing and
stomping on the fire. I have watched them play ball. They would have a pole
put up and at the top of the pole was a basket but the bottom was out so if the ball went
in the basket it would drop through. They used a stick about three feet long,
and had some kind of an end fixed on it like a saucer. When one of them three the
ball through the basket they would whoop and yell.
At Gleen there were Negroes, Indians, and white children who all went to
one school, but at Violet Springs there were white children only. There might have
been some Indian children going to school there, but I can't remember any. I know
there were no Negro children going there but I have heard my father say he knew of Negro
men marrying the Seminole and Creek Indian women.
I have been at Governor Brown's trading post located two miles west of
Sasakwa. I was there with my father once when there were about fifty Indian present.
There were four stores at Violet Springs when we moved there and it was a
tough place. My mother was afraid to send me to the store for nearly every day there
would be a shooting scrape.
There was a ferry boat crossing on the Washita River east of Berwyn,
Oklahoma. A white man ran this ferry and it cost twenty-five cents to go across the
river on it.
I have heard my father say he first came to the Indian Territory when he
was twenty-three years old. He stayed three years and worked on the Bill Washington
Ranch, located near Hennepin in the Arbuckle Mountains. There was a star mail route
from Woodward to Ardmore, Oklahoma, and a Mr. Vaught carried the mail. He used a two
seated hack and worked two bay horses. He would haul passengers if there were any to
go. I don't believe there are any stores at Violet Springs now.
