An
OKGenWeb Project
An
OKGenWeb Project
Contributed by: Glenda
S Brouillette
E-mail: GSBrouillette@anmc.org
 |
Hazel Bonner was born Apr 25,1885 in Allen, Scotsville Co, Kentucky. She was barely 6 years old when her father Dr. R.S. Bonner, her mother, Nancy Caroline Chandler Bonner, and her sisters, Suzanne and Clara, and brother, Coleman, traveled to Indian Territory in the 1890's via wagon train. As I was growing up she would regale me with her adventurous stories of Indians and hardship along the trail before the family settled in Old Doaksville (later Ft Towsen). Her father was one of the first doctors in the tri-county area.
Hazel would be a young widow with an infant in 1906, her first husband W. Franklin Self dying of TB shortly after the birth of their daughter Mabel. She would go on to marry William Nelson Greene, a local attorney. After his death in the early 30s, she would be appointed the first WOMAN for Oklahoma State Commissioner. She was also selected to interview many of the PIONEERS in her area and her work survives today in the Indian Pioneer Papers.
When she was in her 50s she was employed by Mutual of Omaha was their leading "Salesperson" for three consecutive months. Never one to slow down, she was active in the Eastern Star, her church, First United Methodist Church in Hugo, Oklahoma, and numerous ladies' clubs where she was happiest playing Canasta and Bridge. She died in 1967 at the Golden Age Home in Hugo, Oklahoma and is buried at the Old Doaksville Cemetery outside Ft Towsen next to her beloved, "Mr. Greene" , her stillborn child and her parents.
(great-grandmother of the writer.)