Tom R. Gibson

My father W.A. Gibson, was born in 1850, in Virginia.  He was a farmer and carpenter.  Mother was Luella Barnett Gibson, born in Virginia (date unknown).  There were two children in our family.  I was born December 29, 1870 in Texas.

I came to the Indian Territory in 1885.  Chapman had a bunch of cattle which were being handled by Ben Carter and he sent me up here to look after those cattle.  I met and married Mary McCoy, February 4, 1891.  Her father was a freighter from Caddo to Ft. Smith.  He died in Ft. Smith while on one of those trips.  He had four teams which he used for freighting and his men returned all of them to Mary's mother after he was buried  in Ft. Smith.  A short time later her mother died at Boggy Depot and Mary went to live with Judge Ben Carter.  His wife was Governor William Guy's sister.  Judge Carter was a very learned man, an excellent writer and an interesting speaker.  Judge and Mrs. Carter had charge of Harley Academy at Tishomingo for four years.  This was an Indian boy's academy.  They employed five teachers and Judge Carter also taught.  There were about seventy pupils who boarded at the school.

The Carters always had plenty of the world's goods.  They cooked on a stove and baked light bread in a rock oven outside.  they built a very hot fire in this oven, got it hot and raked the fire out.  The bread was set inside the hot oven to bake.

Charlie was the youngest permit collector in the Chickasaw Nation, being appointed when he was eighteen years of age.  One day when he came , he said he had found people by the names of Pot, Kitchen, Frying Pan and Bacon, all in the same settlement.  It was later discovered that those were assumed names.

After my wife and I were married we lived on Ben Carter's ranch, three miles west and one mile north of Mill Creek for forty one years where I was foreman.

James Davidson had a store at Mill Creek with the post office in connection.  He had his goods hauled from Caddo and Dennison.  He handled everything from hair pins to threshing machines.  When he had to go away, he left me and another boy in charge.  He had been gone three days and we had been caring for the store.  When he came in I went for supper.  After I had eaten, I decided to return to the store for a while.  When I entered the door a stranger met me with a gun.  I paid no attention to him, thinking it was only a joke.  I walked around a stack of boxes and another stranger met me with two guns.  By this time, I decided I was in the midst of a holdup.  They had Mr. Davidson at the safe trying to work the combination which I had turned off the night before.  He always left it on and had forgotten what it was.  He couldn't open the safe door at all.  I said, :You'll never get in that safe, I threw the combination off last night and we've tried all day to get it unlocked".  Mr. Davidson said to the robbers, who were Al Jennings and the Daltons, "Do what you're going to do, kill me if you're going to.  I can't open that safe."  They had about twenty of us line up.  I saw a chair and decided on a way to escape if they would only let me sit in the chair.  So I said "I've been plowing all day and I'm tired.  I wish you'd let me sit in that chair.  I want to rest."  He said "Bring the chair over here and sit down.  I don't want to have to shoot you".  So I stayed in line.  Mr. Davidson offered them the money from the post office, but they refused that.  One of them said before leaving.  "We were here last night to get the money from that safe, but we wouldn't bother the boys."  We had sold them feed for their horses and food for themselves for two days, but we were not aware of their identity.  They had to depart without the money in the safe which amounted to about fourteen hundred dollars.  That was a lot of money in those days.  There were three of them in the store and they were not masked.  We supposed there was a fourth one with the horses.

Transcribed by Dennis Muncrief,  December,  2000.