Elmer Cleveland

Field Worker:  John F. Daugherty 

Date:  June 2, 1937
Address: Sulphur, OK
Born: May 1, 1881
Place of Birth: Fannon County, Texas
Father: William J. Cleveland, born in Illinois
Mother: Georgia Jones, born in Texas

My father was William J. Cleveland, born in Illinois.  He was a railroad man, an engineer on the Katy railroad, out of Denison, Texas, and he was a farmer. Mother was Georgia Jones Cleveland, born in Texas. There were six children in our family.  I was born in Fannin County, Texas, May 1, 1881. 

I came to the Indian Territory with my parents in 1884.  We drove through in covered wagons.  It took us about a week to make the trip.  We crossed Red River at Colbert Crossing north of Denison.  We located three miles north of Fort Washita on Twelve Mile Prairie. 

This country was a paradise in which to live.  There was plenty of wild game and we always raised some kind of crops.  Our first home was a log house with shutter windows and a cat chimney made of dirt and sticks.  We hauled water from Taylor Town Springs, three miles from our home, and drove cattle there for water.

We used to catch prairie chickens in corn stalk traps, which were arched.  The corn stalks were pegged together at the corners with wooden pegs.  This was the very best catching method.  They wouldn't go into traps made of wood, but the corn stalk traps resembled the fields in which they were ranging and they were easily caught in this manner.

We moved to Murray County in 1888, on Scotland Hawkins' place near old Nebo, south of Sulphur.  We raised cotton and sold it at Ardmore.  We had it ginned at Berwyn part of the time and we hauled it in wagons with ox teams.  We received about two and a half cents per pound for it and the seed was thrown away or burned for fuel under the engines.  They knew nothing about the by-products of today made from cottonseed.

All of the prairie was open country and everybody had cattle and hogs which ran loose.   There were only two small farms between Nebo and Durant.  A man could govern all the land he could fence.  There was a permit of five dollars paid to the Chickasaw Government for grazing purposes.  A collector came once a year to each land owner, got the name of his tenants and collected from them.

The mail came from Dougherty to Nebo twice a week over a Star Route to Mill Creek.   The carrier spent the night in Mill Creek, returning to Dougherty the next day.

I was married in 1906 to Edna Runyan.  We have seven children.  I was elected the first county clerk of Murray County in 1907.

My mother is buried in the cemetery at Drake, south of Sulphur.

Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief, March 2001.