|
W.H.H. Keltner |
||
|
|
||
| Keltner, W.H.H.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty Date: Aug 10, 1937 Father was J.C.C. Keltner, born April, 1826, in Kentucky. He was a cattleman and farmer. Mother was Nancy E. Davis, born in Alabama, April, 1932. I was the only child and was born July 18, 1850, five miles southeast of the present site of Hugo, in a hewed log house, with a pine floor. The lumber for this floor was sawed with a whip saw which is similar to a cross-cut saw. There was a pit in the ground and a scaffold above to hold the log up. One man stood in the pit and two men stood above. They put water and copperas in a gourd and made a brown line down the log to follow. This kept the board straight and it could be sawed the thickness desired. I went to school in a double two-story log house at Spring Chapel. This was hewed of red oak logs and is still standing one and a half miles south of the depot at Hugo. The upper part of this building was used for the Masonic Lodge. The lower part was for school and church. Father moved to Kingston in the Chickasaw Nation just before the Civil War. In August, 1864, all boys fourteen years or older, were conscripted for service in the army. They got me and took me to Shreveport, Louisiana. I stayed there until the war ended in 1865. Father was in the Confederate Army and after I left, Mother was alone. The Southern Bush Whackers came along and took everything she had. They took her cotton and corn and threw it in the creek. Her bed quilts were stolen, rolled into a bundle and carried off. They took all the food in the house and left her without a morsel to eat. She saddled a pony and rode into Texas, where she remained with friends until the end of the war. There were five hundred young boys in the camp where I was stationed. We didn't see service. When the war ceased, they turned us loose with a good pair of shoes, good clothing and I had an Enfield rifle, six feet long and a six shooter. There were other boys coming this way and we all came together. We walked about twenty miles a day. There was no food to be gotten except wild game. The houses were few and far apart and the people who lived in them were starving, because the soldiers had ransacked and taken all their supplies. We killed deer, wild turkeys and prairie chickens and ate them as we went along. We got a forked stick, put the meat on this and held it over a fire, which we started with a flint rock and piece of steel. There were no matches and each boy carried his flint rock and steel. Mother, Father and I arrived about the same time. That was a glorious family reunion. Father and I went to farming after we came back to Kingston. In the meantime, Mother fell heir to an estate in Platt County, Missouri, and it was necessary for Father to be there to settle things. He was notified by mail at Colbert Station and we began to make preparations for the trip. We had a large made wagon with the hind wheels higher than a man could reach. It had a wooden axle which we kept greased with tar, and it squeaked noisily as we drove along. The wheels and axle were made of bois d' arc. We bought another wagon quite like this one. We drive five yoke of steers to one and three yoke to the other. We rounded up about a hundred fifty head of cattle, including about fifty milch cows and started north. We went by Atoka where at that time there was only one store. We traveled on through Limestone Gap and camped near where McAlester now stands. There was a camp ground near some springs. We got a bucket and started to the head of the spring for water. We hadn't gone far when we discovered, to our horror, a dead man lying in the water. We got a shovel, dug a hole, and buried him, since there was no one near to notify. The next day at a trading post, we ran into a squad of ten or twelve United States Marshals. We told them what we had found the day before. About three years later they found the man who had slain this one, in Illinois. We forded the Canadian River and went through Checotah and Muskogee. We milked the cows every morning and poured the milk in a barrel on the wagon. We had plenty of milk. When we reached Fort Gibson we camped in a cane break. We were tired and thought perhaps we would rest here for several days, but we were eager to move when an officer came and told us that those Creek Indians were dying with the cholera and if we stayed there we would be quarantined along with the Indians. We moved on and didn't stop until we got to Tahlequah. We found the line between the Cherokee Nation and Arkansas. It was hexagon shaped iron posts about six feet high and six inches at the base, set a mile apart. We traveled into Missouri on the Wire Road, so called because the Government had telephone wires into Fort Smith along the side of this road, during the War. We arrived at our destination in Platt County, Missouri on the seventh of August, and lived there five years. We then returned to the Territory and settled on Mud Creek in the Chickasaw Nation. In 1872, I found some engineers surveying for the Katy Railroad near Atoka and they gave me a job of driving stakes for them. I became a surveyor. The first passenger train on the Katy came to Atoka October 6, 1872. The engine was fired with wood. There were cords of wood and barrels of water at intervals along the right of way. A passenger train consisted of an engine and three coaches and a freight train had four cars and the engine. When the Katy got to Red River with their road bed, Texas said, "Stop". The laws and treaties stopped the Indian Territory at the south bank of Red River. In 1883, I made a survey from the mouth of Big Wichita to the mouth of Peas River, along the south bank of the Red River. I found nearly all the markings made by a surveyor named Sam Green in 1852-53. When the Railroads were first built across the Territory the fare was five cents per mile and one entering from either side had to stop at the line and buy a ticket. If one were going from Missouri to Texas he must buy a ticket on the north line of the Territory to the south line, and then buy his ticket at the south line to his destination. The same was true when going out of the Territory. There were no tickets sold past the line. I married Susie Potter in 1875. We have thirteen children. My parents are buried at Leon, Oklahoma. Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief, June 2001.
|