Muskogee Co, OK

Turning Back The Clock

By: C. W. "Dub" West (c) 1985

Muskogee Publishing Company, Box 1331, Muskogee, OK 74402

Snippets # 5

(Pg 30 & 31) The Green Peach War. [A series of skirmishes between 2 groups of Indians. Began in 1882 and ended in Aug 1883 - set off by tribal politics] ... people mentioned in the article are .....

General Pleasant Porter; Sleeping Rabbit; Isparhecher [also called Spiechee]; Chief Sam Checote; Dick Glass [current outlaw]; Nip Blackstone; Major Lyons; General Fiske; General Whittesley; General Forsythe [small photos of Ispahecher, Checote and Porter]

(Pg 31 & 32) Orange Was A Special Christmas Gift. Christmas in times gone by was very different from that enjoyed today. Some of us came along considerably after 1882 can remember when an orange was a Christmas treat. If you were lucky, you might also get a few nuts and some hard candy in your stocking or under the Christmas tree. A bit, later the big event of the season was to receive an orange, an apple, some nuts and candy at church or a rural school.

Alice Robinson in her "Memoirs" gives us a glimpse of "A Christmas in 1882". [Ms Robinson talking about receiving oranges for Christmas]

(Pg 32 & 33) Muscogee In 1880's Was Cowtown of Rudest Construction. An article appeared in the February, 1884 issue of Lippincott's Magazine entitled An Indian Cattle Town by A.M. Williams, which gives a journalist's impression of Muskogee in the 1880's. He made the following observations.

"The first impression of seeing it (Muscogee) is how ugly is the work of man when he first intrudes himself upon nature, and how little his habitations or handiwork accord with her tranquil beauty. Muscogee is in a characteristically lovely spot of a lovely place.

"There is a Street of wooden buildings, some of considerable size, but of the rudest construction. One would not be surprised to see the whole town hauled off on a train of flat-cars someday, as it hardly seems permanent.

"It is simply a camp of nomads of trade. But, as the tent of an Arab merchant of the desert might contain a bag of diamonds worth a king's ransom, or a bale of priceless silks of Semarcand, so it is not to be supposed that the contents if these stores are necessarily as poor as their exteriors.

"On the contrary, although kid gloves and laces do not form an extensive feature of their stock in trade, their contents often represent a more substantial value in cash than those of some magnificent establishments in eastern cities. Nor are grace and intelligence wanting in the wives and famihes of these merchant adventurers, and sometimes as sharply contrasted evidences of refinement and fashion will be found in these temporary homes as n the officers quarters of a frontier post.

"The great part of the cattle came from the fields of Texas. and are snipped & the various rendezvous along the railroad to which they have been driven.

"They are crowded into the cars as thickly as they can stand, and are slowly transported in the long trains, indicating their impatience by their rattling horns and their suffering by their bovine sighs as their angry eyes gleam through the interstices in their moving pens. They are not allowed to lie down, for one in that position would be trampled to death by its companions.

"Muscogee, besides being a point from which the constantly increasing herds are raised in the Territory are shipped, is a place for the feeding and watering the cattle in route from Texas."

The February 16, 1938 issue of the "Times Democrat" recounted the fact that there were 15,000 head of cattle on Pecan Creek in 1888. It was the practice of many of the Texas ranchers to permit the cattle to "linger" in Indian Territory, during the summer to put some additional weight on the animals before shipping them to market. It was natural that tribal leaders objected to this, as by this time the Creeks had large herds of their own which needed the grass. Incidentally the grass was so luxuriant in the early days that travelers said it often came up to the stirrups as they rode horseback. <complete>

[Two drawings of Muskogee .. pg 32 - the drawing has no caption but has 3 buildings one of which is JA Patterson's store. On pg 33 is a drawing of the new Maddin Hardware building after the fire of 1899 .. Phoenix special photo]

(Pg 34 & 35) Maddin Made His Mark. William A. Maddin came to Muskogee afoot in 1884 from Fort Smith, carrying his chest of carpenter's tools. ...His first job was to construct Alice Robertson's Minerva Home, which eventually became Henry Kendall College. He built many of the early homes and buildings housing Muskogee's business places.

... [organized] Maddin Mechanics Band, which played for many public events for a number of years.

He married Letitia Bertholf, the daughter of an early Indian Territory missionary.

According to an 1890 map, he opened the Maddin Machine Shop near the site of his future hardware business.

Maddin entered the hardware business early in the 1890's, building a structure at Main and Court streets, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1899. He, along with his competitor, Clarence Turner, built back "better than ever." The business flourished for several years ... It eventually succumbed to the financial crisis of the time and was combined with the Turner Hardware.

The stately old building was empty for a period when the Young Men's Christian Association bought it on Feb. 13, 1914. The Y had been organized April 14, 1911, by C.E. Fenstermacher, who had come to Muskogee to supervise the playground program.

The swimming pool was dedicated March 21, 1915. One of the features of the dedication was the baptism of Fred Woodson by Robert Van Meigs of the First Baptist Church. Incidentally, Fred Woodson was Muskogee's first Eagle Scout, and the 17th to attain that rank in the United States. He became one of the outstanding physicians of Tulsa. Financial difficulties resulted in the building being sold to a fabric and rubber plant Oct. 16, 1922. The Y obtained ownership of the building and resumed its program Jan. 29, 1925. A large group from Tulsa participated in the re-opening. Since the Y was near the Katy depot, it became a home away from home for many of the railroad men. Many of them regularly "laid over' here, staying at the Y. The long association with the Y came to an end in 1960 when the organization moved to its new quarters at Sixth and Court streets. The building was bought by Charles Heirich and remained vacant until it was bought by Royal Casket Co in Jan 1963 ...

[Photo of William A Maddin]

(Pg 35 & 36) Cherokee Youth Brought Phones to Area. ... telephone came to the little remote hamlet of Muskogee just 10 years after it was introduced to the world... a 16 year-old Cherokee lad's interest was responsible for this feat.

The new marvel, the telephone, made its debut at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. ...

The mother of Ed Hicks, a descendant of a Cherokee chief, died when he was an infant. He was raised by his grandparents and uncles and aunts. When he was 16, he and a friend attended the World's Fair, held in St. Louis in 1882. ... captivated the attention of young Hicks was the telephone. ...

Hicks had a vision that a telephone line between Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation and Muscogee, the headquarters for the Union Agency, would be of enormous value.

In the summer of 1886, he went to Tahlequah with the purpose of organizing a telephone company and securing the proper financing. ... The original members of the company were: Hicks, C.W. Turner, J.B. Stapler, J.S. Stapler, John S. Scott, and L.B. Bell.

.. problem ... was obtaining a permit from the Cherokee Nation to construct the line.. The Cherokee National Council granted the permit when it was found that the new fangled contraption "could talk Cherokee"... that no surveying instruments could be used, because they were afraid that might lead to building a railroad...

Ed and his uncle, J.W. Stapler, went to St. Louis, where they purchased three telephones for $75 each. Late in the summer of 1886 two wagons - one for tools, and the other a chuckwagon - were equipped, and Hicks, a teamster and two other workmen began stringing the telephone line, beginning at Tahlequah. The wires were strung in trees when possible and tightened by the wagons and team.

They reached Fort Gibson on August 6th, and the first conversation carried over the new telephone line was between one of the workmen and J.S. Stapler. The workman said, "Hello-who is this?" Stapler replied, 'This is the devil, and I'm coming after you." - quite different from the first words transmitted by Alexander Graham Bell.

The difficulty of getting the line through the canebrakes and swamp and across the Arkansas River ... The latter was done by unwinding the wire as they crossed the river on a flatboat. They again tightened the wire, using a team and wagon.

The line was completed five weeks after leaving Tahlequah, and there was communication between Tahlequah and Muscogee - the first commercial telephone line in present Oklahoma. The success was short lived - the copper wire strung across the river broke after two weeks, and it was necessary to replace it with steel wire.

Headquarters were established in Muscogee at Turner Hardware with Jim Bozeman as operator. The Tahlequah headquarters were in a store operated by J.W. Stapler and Sons, and J.B. Stapler was the operator. The small telephone company later became the Pioneer Telephone Company with E.D. Nims as president. This company was eventually brought into the Southwestern Telephone Company in 1916, and Nims became vice president of that company.