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Mary Jack |
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| Jack, Mary
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty Date: November 19, 1937 My parents were Thomas W. Johnson, born in Memphis, Tennessee, and Rosa Turner, born in Mississippi. Birth dates unknown. Father was secretary to the Chickasaw Government for eighteen years. He helped revise the laws of the Chickasaw Nation, after which he owned a ranch west of Davis. Mother and Father were married in Mississippi and moved to the Territory when Father was eighteen years old and mother was seventeen. They located at Stringtown, in the Choctaw Nation. There were no schools in the Territory at that time and Father, with the help of some Indians living near, built a log cabin and established a school. He was the teacher and his pupils were mostly Indian children. There were very few white people in that neighborhood. The children paid five cents a day to attend. Governor Guy freighted from Fort Smith to Fort Sill. He drove a yoke of oxen and always spent the night with Father and Mother, when he was making the trip. They enjoyed his visits. That was company and they got so lonesome because there were only full bloods near them and most of them couldn't speak our language. I was born in Tishomingo, February 1, 1884. When I was a very small child, Mother sent me to St. Mary's Academy at Denison. During the time I was in school, Father moved to Daugherty. I married Mr. Jack in 1898. He was seventeen and I was fourteen. He was working as an apprentice at the Santa Fe depot when we were married. The depot was a box car set out by the side of the railroad. He gradually worked up to train dispatcher at Daugherty. There was much shipping at that time. The asphalt mines were opened and many carloads of asphalt were shipped each week. They were so rushed part of the time that my husband went without sleep for three or four days, except a few naps through the day. I carried his food to him and I would sit at the desk and receive his calls over the wire. He slept until he was called. I would open the key and call him. He would get up, take the message and return to his cot for another nap. I would put the train through, give the engineer and conductor their orders and see that everything was all right while he slept. Then he had to stay up all night. He worked up to Chief Dispatcher for the Santa Fe and we were living in Vermont when he died. Oklahoma was my native state, so I returned to Sulphur where my brother is County Sheriff, to make my . My parents are buried at Daugherty. Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief, May 2001.
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