S. W. FROST

Interview #4081
Birth date: 1858
Birthplace: Southwest Missouri
Post Office: Sulphur, Okla.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty
Date: May 14, 1937
Father: Matthew Frost
Birthplace: Sept 20, 1825, in Tennessee
Mother: Nancy Jane Hale Frost
Birthplace: 1841 in North Carolina

My father was Matthew Frost, born September 20, 1825, in Tennessee.  My mother was Nancy Jane Hale Frost, born in 1841 in North Carolina.  There were five children in our family.

I was born in 1858 in Southwest Missouri.

I came to the Indian Territory in January, 1888.  I came to Berwyn on a mixed train from Missouri.  There were no passenger trains through here at that time.  

I had a store at Berwyn for a short time.  Then I moved to Dougherty.  That town was named for Bill Dougherty, who moved there from Gainesville, Texas.  They were laying out the town site when Bill fell from a fence.  He died from the effects of this, and they decided to name the town in his honor. 

I built the first pasture fence in the Arbuckle Mountains.  Highway 77 goes through my old pasture as it crossed the Arbuckle Mountains.

Heck Thomas wanted to arrest a man, and he knew that he would be in my store to trade.   So he came and spent the night there.  He stayed hidden in the back of the store until the man he wanted came in.  Then he walked in the back door and arrested him. 

The Chickasaw Indians were partners in financial affairs.  If the husband and wife came in the store together he would buy a pair of boots and pay for them.  Then she would buy a pair of shoes and pay for them.  If she bought fifty cents worth of sugar, he also bought the same amount and paid for it.  She had her own money and he had his.  In dealing with them, if you bought a cow from the man, you must also buy a cow from his wife and pay her.

When I first came here the United States Court with headquarters at Fort Smith had jurisdiction over the five civilized tribes and everybody had to go there to court.   They moved the jurisdiction of the western part of the Chickasaw Nation to Paris, Texas.  Then, in 1890, they established the court at Ardmore calling it the   Southern District of the Chickasaw Nation.  Judge Shackleford was made the Judge.

Bill Guy and his wife had a school for Chickasaw boys and girls, in Sulphur, when I first moved here in 1898.  They handled and taught them and the Chickasaw Government paid for their schooling.

Transcribed by Brenda Choate & Dennis Muncrief, December, 2000