Dixon Hill was mayor of Poteau 1911-1912.

Submitted by Lola 19 Aug 2009
"HISTORY OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA," Vol 1, 1909.
"History of the State of Oklahoma," Lewis Pub. Co.,
pg 597-598, Col 1, Volume 1, 1909; and pg 478,
By LUTHER B. HILL.


C. DIXON HILL. For more than a quarter of a century C. Dixon Hill has been a developing force in Le Flore county, and for many years past has been a permanent resident of Poteau, where he is still engaged in the promotion of his large business and financial interests; looking after the education of his younger children and, as a tenant landlord, superintending his property near Sugar Loaf Mountain. The latter locality was the scene of his first coming to the Indian country, when as a sturdy youth of eighteen years, he ventured into the land of uncertain but bright promise as an emigrant from his native state of Mississippi.

Mr. Hill was born in Lee county, Mississippi, September 21, 1863, his father being Augustus Hill, a farmer and Baptist minister of Tennessee birth. The latter was born in 1821 and married in the state of his nativity. He acquired only a common school education and became an adherent of the Primitive Baptist faith, his father (Allen G. Hill) being a clergyman of that denomination. The grandfather of C. Dixon finally settled in Arkansas and died at Little Rock about 1874, at eighty years of age. His father, in turn, was the founder of the family in Tennessee and was of Irish birth. Among the children of Allen G. Hill were Horace, who died in Ardmore, Oklahoma; C. S., who passed away near Little Rock, Arkansas; Augustus, who died in Lee county, Mississippi; Mrs. A. G. Nelson, who died in Mississippi; Mrs. Adalaide and Mrs. Adaline Williams, both of whom reside at Meridian, Mississippi.

Augustus Hill, the father, married Miss Naomi Beavers, a lady of Tennessee birth, who passed away in Lee County, Mississippi, the mother of the following: Martha, who first married a Mr. Ryan and whose second husband was John Cummingham, of Paris, Texas, where she also passed away; Elsie, who became the wife of William Bonds and died near Paris, Texas; Erastus, who was killed in the Confederate army; Lucy, wife of Jesse Wilson, of Bonneville, Arkansas; Albert, of Fort Smith, that state; Erastus II, who died near McCloud, Oklahoma, and left a son; Fannie, wife of Jo Eaves, of Bertram, Texas; Adaline, who married James McCarty, of Sherman, Mississippi; Augustus, of Nettleton that state; C. Dixon, of this sketch, and Ruth, who is Mrs. Thomas Gray, of Tom Green county. Texas.

The country schools were all that C. Dixon Hill had at his command while getting his education, and when at the age of eighteen he cast about for a more promising field for the exercise of his maturing abilities his mind turned to the Indian Territory, since in the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain he had acquaintances in the family of Enoches and it was with them that he first found a home in the Indian country. In this locality he commenced to work on shares, next rented a farm and in 1886 was in financial position to take upon himself the responsibilities of a wife and family. His wife, before marriage, was Miss Izora James, daughter of Martin James, a Chickasaw Indian and a Missionary Baptist preacher. The latter married a Choctaw woman, a Miss Merriman, whose father was a white man from Kentucky and whose mother was also a Choctaw. The children born to Mr. And Mrs. C. Dixon Hill have been: Horace C., Orval Q., Elba N., Louis A., Esther J. and C. Dixon, Jr.

By this marriage, under the Choctaw laws, Mr. Hill became an independent landowner: selected his allotments near Sugar Loaf Mountain and became a successful raiser of cotton, corn and grain. In 1889 he removed to Poteau and clerked for several years in the stores of Forbes and Donaghe and Captain McKenna, also associating with C. T. Wilburn for about a year then sold to S. P. Humphrey and clerked for him a time in general merchandise. He then returned to farming occupations near Sugar Loaf Mountain, but with the growth of his Poteau interests and his desire to give his children the advantages of the superior schools at the county seat, he rented his lands and became a fixture in the city. Since then he has been identified with its most substantial enterprises. He was one of the organizers of the Le Flore County Bank and its first president, and is a stockholder in the Miller Hardware and Furniture Company. In politics he is a Democrat.

The family residence is a pretty cottage which caps a picturesque hill overlooking Poteau. Both Mr. And Mrs. Hill, as well as the members of the family, are faithful and active Presbyterians.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=43114824
 

Choctaw Indian : January 17, 1903, Roll #6479, Census Card # 2236. She is
34, 1/32 CDIB.


Page 87 - 91 (Izora James Hill)
Izora James
Poteau, Oklahoma
My name is Izora James, born 1868, about one mile east of what is now
called Oak Lodge,
Oklahoma. It used to be called Skullyville, I.T. I started to school in
1876 at a schoolhouse called Union School, located about one mile due east of Rock Island, Oklahoma, my teacher being Miss Vec Pratt, a white woman. This was an Indian school for the Choctaw children. The teacher was paid out of the Indian fund the sum of two dollars for each child. The school house was made out of square hewed logs, the ends of the logs notched and fitted together. There were cracks about one and one half inches wide between the logs and these were "chinked and daubed" with mud or clay. We sat on heavy plank benches without any backs for them. We used slates for our figuring of numbers. We were not taught to write in this school. We studied the Blue-Back Speller and the school was not subdivided into different grades like it is now. Some white children went to this school, and they paid the teacher but I don't remember just how much. We
moved close to Kully chaha next and I went to school at what was then known
as the Hall, about two and one half miles from Kullychaha, I.T. It was a
two story frame building. The Moshulatubbee Masonic Lodge No. 13 built the
building. They held Lodge, upstairs and school downstairs. Church for the
whites was held downstairs also. This school was not graded either. I went
here in 1878 and 1879. I still have one of the old copies of the old
Blue-Black Speller yet. They did not teach penmanship in this school either.

We learned to write whenever someone would come around and solicit
subscriptions for a ten or twelve day writing school. This cost one dollar
per student. We learned to write with pen and ink. About 1881 we left Kullychaha I.T., and moved close to the place where the Fairview school now stands, about three miles northeast of Poteau, Oklahoma, and I went to the Wapanucka school in the Choctaw Nation, which was called also Rock Academy. If a person went to school here long enough they could go to school in the States. This was a mixed school for boys and girls both. I attended in 1884 and 1885. Nance Rivers and his wife were teachers here. This school was not graded and we had old books that were clear out of date. They would be worth a fortune if they were still there. I remember one time the Music Teacher asked me, where do peanuts grow and when I told her they grew on trees, she did not know any different, because she had never seen any growing. Nance Rivers and wife were from Georgia. This school was supported out of the Indian funds and by the Methodist Church.

My father was Martin James. He was a Methodist Circuit Rider and District Attorney of the Moshulatubee District. This was composed of five counties, Skullyville, Sugar Loaf, Gains, San Bois, and Tobucksy. He used to ride a buckskin pony from the Skullyville County Courthouse on down to the Sugar Loaf County Courthouse. It caused his death from exposure, resulting in pneumonia. He was the District Attorney in the following years I think, 1878 and 1879. He was about one sixteenth white, the rest was a mixture of Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian. Martin James was a charter member in the Moshulatubee Masonic Lodge No. 13 at Kullychaha, I.T. He died September 22, 1881, and was buried at the Hall cemetery at the location of the lodge building. My mother was Julia Merriman and she was born at the old Merriman Homestead. This was the same place I was born. It was an old double house with an open hallway through it, it was made of square hewed logs and was "chinked and daubed." The roof was covered with "clapboards." These were made of straight-grain post oak. The boards were two feet long and four or five inches wide, made with a "froe and maul". This house is still standing: it is weather boarded now though. My father spoke both the Choctaw and Chickasaw languages. I do not speak very much of either as my father said, the time will come when the whites will be plentiful and I want my children raised as whites are raised so it will not be so hard for them to mix up with them. It would be a blessing if more of the old time Indians would have seen this coming in and not know anything about the white man's ways.

I married Dixon Hill April, 1886, a Scot-Irishman. We married by tribal custom, at a Presbyterian Church for whites close to Hill, Oklahoma, a place called Bethlehem. The license cost twenty five dollars. My husband shared in the allotment the same as I did. The license was issued by Noel Holson, a full blood Choctaw Indian, out in the country close to Summerfield, I.T., at his home. He was the Sugar Loaf County Clerk, Indian Court. Sugar Loaf County Courthouse was between Howe and Wister, Oklahoma, on the road to Glendale, Oklahoma. It has since been torn down. I never did see it. The Skullyville County Courthouse was on Bush Creek Prairie, about four miles northwest of Panama, Oklahoma. It burned down several years ago and burned all the records that were in the Courthouse. When we registered before allotment, we registered in our mother's name. It was customary on the account of unlawful children in some of the Indian families as they would be maybe one half Indian and the rest of the children full-blood Indian, so the policy of registering under the mother's amount of Indian Blood came into effect. I am registered as one-thirty second while I am better than one-half Indian.
My brother and sisters were as follows: Izora Ann James, born Jan 23,
1868; Wiliam Wesley, born
Jan 30, 1870; John Bunyan, born March 10, 1873; Hiram L., born May 20,
1876; Izadora, born July 7,
1878; and Bellemont, born July 1, 1880.

Additional information supplied by the Author:
Martin VanBuren James was Sr. Warden of the Moshulatubbee Lodge Number 13,
when it was organized 5 November 1879. Other charter members were: Orin Frank Ross, Master; Joe Barnes, Alfonza Patterson, etc.

Julia Ann Merryman James Beard was the daughter of William and Anna Merryman. After Martin Van Buren James died, Julia married John G Beard. John was born in 1825 and was the son Littleton and Elizabeth Beard. Julia and John's children were: Ada Mae born 1884 and married James E. Stalcup in 1905, Buchanan born 1885 and married Stella, in 1908, Amos Sanford born 1887 and Matthew born 1890 and married Pauline Park in 1912. Julia Buchanan and Sanford all died with Tuberculosis. John died in 1900, Julia died in 1912, Buchanan died in 1911 and Amos Sanford died in 1912. They are all buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Poteau, LeFlore County, Oklahoma. Izora's husband, Cornelius Dixon Hill was born in Mississippi in 1863. He was the son of A.T. and Neoma Jane Beaver Hill. Dixon served as mayor of Poteau 1911-1912. Izora and Dixon's children were: Horace C. born 1888, Orvel I. born 1890, Elba N. born 1892, Lewis A. born 1898, Esther born 1904 and Cornelius born 1908. Dixon died in 1919 and Izora died in 1958. They are both buried in the Oakland Cemetery.