Interview #10105
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date: February 22, 1938
Name: Mr. J.F. Jackson
Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: February 24, 1858
Place of Birth: North Carolina
Father: J.W. Jackson, born in Virginia
Mother: Matilda Belton, born in North Carolina
I was born in 1858, in North Carolina. I came from Texas to the
Indian Territory in 1887 and I leased a farm from John Need, a Choctaw Indian. When
I settled on this farm near Connerville, in the Choctaw Nation, that part of the country
was very thinly settled. John Need gave us a five year lease on the place and all I
made off of it, for clearing the place up and putting it in cultivation. The nearest
post office was Connerville.
There was no cotton gin there at that time. The nearest gin was
about twenty-five miles, at a place called Pontotoc and after getting the cotton ginned
there, I would have to haul it to Denison, Texas, to market it. I would usually make
two trips a year to Denison to sell my cotton and bring back what provisions I wold nee.
We bought salt and sugar by the barrel. Frank Byrd owned a grist mill and
flour mill then. I would take corn and wheat to his mill. That was the only
mill I knew of in the country. He was a brother to William Byrd, who was at one time
Governor of the Chickasaw Nation.
I was assistant postmaster at Connerville for three years. I was
appointed in 1888.
When I settled in that part of the country there were plenty of deer
turkey and wild hogs. I raised and bought cattle and I believe I owned the first
farm dairy in that part of the country. I owned several milk cows and about one
hundred chickens and I sold all the milk, eggs and butter I had to spare. I have
heard old timers say, who lived in that part of the country, when I did that they believed
I sold enough milk, butter and eggs to geed the United States Army. Well, I know
besides doing my farm work, I did sell quite a lot of each.
In 1900 when the new town of Ada started to build, I was able to sell all
the milk and butter my cows could make. I sold out in 1904 and went back to Texas
and at the sale I had twenty-five good milk cows, which sold from $15.00 to $20.00 each.
Today they would be worth $50.00 each.
I moved from Texas to the farm I now live on in 1908, nine miles west of
Pauls Valley.
