I, Mrs. Mattie Baker
was born in 1872 in Arkansas. I came to the Indian Territory with my father and
mother in 1888. We came from Arkansas in a covered wagon. we first settled at
Pauls Valley and my father rented some land on the east side of the railroad track at
Pauls Valley. The first year we were here, my father had the land where the east
side of Pauls Valley is now sown in wheat. There was a grist mill there and
according to older settlers as well as myself this mill was put there by Zack
Gardner in the early seventies. My father farmed at Pauls Valley two years
and then we moved southwest of Pauls Valley about ten miles, where my father had bought a
lease.
There wasn't any school in that part of the country, so with help from some of our
neighbors, my father built the first school in that part of the country. It was a
log school house built of split logs and with wooden pegs driven into other logs for
seats. I went to this school and we only had Blue Back Spellers for books.
The school only held six months out of the year and it cost one dollar and
fifty cents a month for each child sent. This school was named for my father and was
called Roady School.
When we came to Pauls Valley we had to ford the Washita River at Zack Gardner's
Mill. There was a ferry crossing at Cherokee Town at the time we came to Pauls
Valley.
I married R.P. Baker after we had been at Pauls Valley a few years and
he told me that he and his brother came to Pauls Valley in 1872. They were orphan
boys and he was only sixteen, and the younger of the two. He said when they came
here this was a wild country and that there was a stage line running from Caddo to Fort
Sill through Pauls Valley and that it was dangerous for a white man to start west from
Pauls Valley by himself as the Comanche Indians were bad. He and his brother helped
put up hay along this stage line, between Pauls Valley and Fort Sill, and after the
railroad came through this stage line was stopped.
My husband put in the first livery stable at Pauls Valley. My husband was also in
the grocery business at Brady. At that time there were two stores, a blacksmith shop
and a gin at Brady. There were lost of people trading at this little place.
After automobiles came in they killed those little towns as people went to trading at the
larger places where they could buy their groceries cheaper.
I now live at my home on the southwest side of Pauls Valley.
