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James T. Petty |
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| Petty, James T.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty Date: January 6, 1938 My father was Joshua Petty born in 1830 in North Carolina and my mother was Mary Jane Underwood Petty, born in Tennessee in 1830. There were ten children in our family. Father was a timber man. I was born near Paris, Tennessee, July 4, 1854. I married Charlotta Pearson in Tennessee in 1876. A short time after we were married I became ill and the doctor said I had consumption. He gave me a prescription which contained peach brandy. I began drinking after this and one day while in Paris, Tennessee, I was drunk and became angry at a man, so I shot him. Then I ran away and hid in the woods for days trying to hear whether the man died or not. I knew I was being hunted, so I dared not come out from my hiding place. I finally decided to leave and go to the mountains. I walked two hundred and forty miles and stopped at a saw mill where I got a job. I stayed here several months, but I continued to drink whenever I had a chance. At last I became tired of being a fugitive and I collected what was due me from the owner of this saw mill and went home. The man whom I had shot had not died and I still craved whiskey. My wife and I talked it over and we decided the Indian Territory would be the place to cure me of this dreadful habit so we moved here in 1891 and settled at Homer on Wild Horse Creek in the Chickasaw nation. This was in a settlement of Negroes. I built a store and put in a stock of merchandise. I paid a Negro 35 cents per hundred to make two foot boards for the roof of my store. Amid these raw surroundings I quit drinking. I hauled the merchandise for my store from Ardmore. My wife didn't like being in the Negro settlement so I sold out and we moved to Davis. There, I got a job on the section gang for the Santa Fe. My first wife died here and I then went to where I became a section foreman. I soon moved back to Salt Creek, five miles from Robinson. I took a ten year lease of one Arthur Alexander, a full blood Chickasaw. I had lived here three years when the Dawes Commission began allotting land to the Indians. The government declared all leases null and void. The land had to be turned back to the Chickasaw Government. This caused me to move again. I moved to a place near Norman and here I remained until very recently when I came to Sulphur for my health. Transcribed by Brenda Choate & Dennis Muncrief, March 2001. |