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Mary E. Stanton |
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| Stanton, Mary E.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty Date: March 4, 1938 I was born in Denton County, Texas, July 6, 1873. I moved with my parents to the Indian Territory in 1889. There were three families and three wagons in our caravan. I was in high school when I left Texas and how I wept when I had to leave my friends and come to such a wild country. The parents of the boy I married came as we did, so I soon became reconciled. We camped at Thackerville the first night in the Territory. We crossed Red River on a flat boat at Thacker's Ferry. We were all afraid of the Indians and none of us slept much that night. We finally settled north east of Dougherty, in the Chickasaw Nation. Our trading point was Daugherty and we got our mail there. About the time we came here, 'The Indian Citizen', a small paper published at Atoka by Standley and Smezer was circulated and father subscribed for it. It was published monthly and had a circulation of about one thousand copies a month. This was at that time a large circulation. It published the revised laws of the Chickasaw Nation in Chickasaw and English. Newspapers were scarce and we always looked forward to the reading of the Citizen. The Indians were very reluctant to make friends with the white people. Their homes were always built in secluded spots and when a stranger appeared, they hid and peered through the cracks in the house like trapped animals. Mother made our clothes from cloth which she had dyed and woven. She used blackjack to make gray, bois d' arc and copperas for yellow, postoak made dark gray, walnut made brown and indigo made dark blue. The first dye we purchased from the store was in lumps. The first dye I can remember was a ball covered with paraffin and wrapped in paper. Mother first canned fruit in earthenware jars and sealed them with bees wax. Father kept honey in a barrel. We had honey the year around. Father went to the woods and gathered it. Wild bees were numerous. We had a small brass lamp with a round wick and a handle on one side. A cap hung on one side which fit over the wick. That was the way the flame was extinguished. Several years after we came, about 1903, prospectors began to come to our community. There were many black rocks lying around on top of the ground. Day after day men came and prodded around in the earth, taking some of the rock with them. At last we found that some of the prospecting was for asphalt. Finally a prospector by the name of Joe Crawford opened a mine and Murray County's principal industry was brought into existence. The first pit was about half a mile under ground and the asphalt was brought out on a car which was drawn by a horse. The asphalt mill was built at Daugherty, near the Santa Fe Railroad and the asphalt was hauled to the mill where it was prepared for shipment. They made a liquid for roofing purposed and a dry asphalt for paving roads and streets. I married Ed Stanton in 1891, in a small clay hut built by the Bass Boys, desperados, for the purpose of resting as they passed through here in earlier days, enroute from Little Rock, Arkansas, to West Texas and New Mexico. Our home today occupies the ground where this log hut stood. Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief, May 2001
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