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T.J. Ray |
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| Ray, T.J.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty Date: January 5, 1938 My father was James W. Ray, born in 1838, in Indiana. Mother was Abigail Mulford Ray, born in 1842 in Indiana. Father was a farmer. There were thirteen children in our family. I was born in Missouri, June 22, 1869. I moved with my parents to the Indian Territory in 1879 and settled in Love's Valley near Berwyn in the Chickasaw Nation. We lived in a log house. We later moved to Lehigh in the Choctaw Nation. It was impossible to dig a well and have good drinking water because of the coal which underlay the town of Lehigh. People bought their drinking , which was hauled in barrels from a spring two miles from town. We charged 20 cents per barrel for water and hauled five barrels at a time with a wagon and team. We made six or seven trips a day. The water was poured into cisterns or barrels. We finally purchased a five barrel water tank which we used for our water hauling. It was while we were living in Lehigh that a great mine explosion occurred at a mine of the Lehigh Mining Company at Savanah near Lehigh. There were many injured and killed. The company then moved their mines to Lehigh and Savanah went out of existence. I married Nettie Howard at Lehigh in 1891 and moved to the Pottawatomie country in 1892, locating near Sacred Heart Mission and Violet Springs. I had a wife, baby, horse, saddle and bridle, and somebody stole my bridle the first night we were there. My wife cooked on the fireplace in a skillet and lid. Water was scarce in Violet Springs. We had to haul water from a well four miles distant. We had to take turns at hauling it as the water was not plentiful. One day I drove up to the well, and there was no water. Somebody had gotten it all. So I returned home, got a shovel, went to a nearby creek, and dug a well in the creek bed. It was not long until I struck water. I boxed the place up with cottonwood lumber and we had plenty of water until the creek got up. Then our well filled up and it was necessary to dig it out after each rain. I hauled freight for the store at Violet Springs from Purcell. Purcell and Lexington gins were always strong competitors for cotton business from the opposite side of the Canadian River. Each one paid more for cotton which was hauled across the river. I nearly always took my cotton across the river to Purcell, because I received more for it and I always met wagons from the Purcell side coming to Lexington because they received more for it by crossing the river. People didn't go in debt in those days. They bought only what they needed from the store where they traded usually paying for it when they sold their cotton in the Fall, but there were no mortgages given on property nor cattle, for money on which to exist. Crops were never failures and we knew that we could pay our merchant when our crops were harvested. If we traded hides or fresh port for supplies and there was a balance due us, we usually took a due bill instead of money. There was very little money, but we didn't need it. There was no place to spend it. It was harder to buy a wagon costing $65.00 then, than it is to buy a $1000.00 car today. Cotton usually sold for 4 cents a pound. My wife made starch by grating green corn on a corn gritter into a tub of water. This was strained through a flour sack and allowed to stand until the next day. The water was then poured off and the lumps of starch were spread out on a board to dry. This was the only starch my wife used for many years. My brother-in-law drove a peddling wagon and I sometimes accompanied him on his trips. The wagon was loaded with groceries and some dry goods, tobacco, snuff and other necessities of the pioneers and natives. He traded for hides, fresh pork, chickens, eggs or anything which the people offered for his goods. Then he sold what he collected after getting back to town, bought another supply of goods and started on another peddling tour. A Chickasaw freedman lived on the South Canadian River south of Violet Springs, who made his living by guiding people across the river when it was high. He drove a team and an old hack. When somebody wanted to cross he guided them into the shallow places and put them safely across if they followed him. He could tell by the way the water flowed, where the shallow places were. He charged $5.00 a wagon. So far as I know he never let anybody drown on one of these dangerous trips. After a few years I traded for a claim in Roger Mills County and we moved there. We lived in a dugout for four years. The chimney was in one end of it. The roof was made of cedar poles covered with dirt. One winter snow covered the ground for nine weeks. I had neglected to lay in a supply of coal and we burned corn and kaffir corn for fuel. One day during this extended cold spell some men in Elk City decided they must do something to secure coal. The town's supply was almost exhausted, and it seemed that they were unable to get any shipped in, so one night they stopped a freight train and compelled the trainmen to cut out a car of coal, for which they put up a deposit and the residents of the town were allowed to buy only a half ton of this, so that everybody would be supplied until a shipment could be secured. The next night the officials of Elk City caught another car of coal for city use. After that there was no trouble getting enough coal to supply the needs of the town. I moved to Murray County and Sulphur in 1916 for my health. My youngest son, Glen, is the Mayor of Sulphur. He is the youngest Mayor in the state, being only twenty-seven years of age. Transcribed by Brenda Choate & Dennis Muncrief, July 2001 |