Life In The Oklahoma Territory

The following article was given to me by Sharon Darr Jones, my second cousin, it was used in a Centennial Celebration Cookbook at the 83rd State Fair of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1989. It is a story of my great-grandfather Henry Walter Welch and Sharon's grandfather. This is written as submitted by Sharon Jones.

My grandfather, Henry Walter Welch, ran in the Land Run and my mother, Abbie L. Welch Darr Smith, was born east of Kingfisher, Oklahoma Territory, July 9, 1890. She had an excellent memory of places, people, and events in early Oklahoma and enjoyed sharing those tales with her children and grandchildren. She would have been thrilled to know that some of her family information was to be included in a cookbook. She died in Kansas at the age of 87.

Henry Walter Welch went down from Rush County, Kansas in time to run in the opening of the Land Run in 1889 in a covered wagon with his two high stepping mares, Vic and Bess, who were of racing stock. He and another man who owned a sulky racing cart, both made the run. They lost in the race as "squatters" or "Sooners" were settled on every quarter of desirable land they saw. Henry's wife's brother lived a few miles to the east of Kingfisher and was married to Annie Grimes, whose people had homesteaded there a few years earlier and were pretty well established. My grandfather, not to be discouraged by his failure to win, enlisted in the Militia or the Standing Army and thus became eligible to homestead. He found a quarter about a mile from the Sturgeons and Grimes, which had a lovely outcropping of stone and being a stonemason by trade, he filed on the land and started to plow some wheatland and to strip the stone quarry, and also plowing sod to use in building a sod house. He then sent for his wife, Ida and small son, Everett, and they came by train from Kansas.

The first winter was a hard one. Money was non-existent, everyone was poor. The Grimes had planted a big patch of turnips and had a few milk cows and had milk and butter to use and also made cheese, which they placed in hoops and after pressing out the whey, they stored the hoops covered in cheese cloth, high on their windmill platform to cure. All they had to live on that first winter was turnips, cheese, mush, and milk from the Grimes. Occasionally, they had jackrabbits, whenever they were lucky enough to shoot them and they had this government issue "fat back" and once in a while a "so-called" ham, which was really only a small salty shoulder, which had to be soaked in water for days to remove the brine.

All that first winter he worked in the quarry using his feather and wedges to make the stone posts to fence in his wheat field and started building the sod house, which, due to his having to report and drill at Ft. Reno with the Militia, went slowly.

In the spring, he had the walls of the soddy finished and half of the roof over the bedroom end. He built a bed frame with slats and filled a tick with prairie hay and with his Government blankets, began housekeeping. They had brought by covered wagon, their kitchen stove and other household furnishings from Kansas. In the bedroom end of the soddy, their clothing hung on pegs and a lantern on another. Their sod house had a dirt floor and they had to worry about centipedes, scorpions, tarantulas and lice. Tornadoes were also a worry, as were as prairie fires. Two of my mother's aunts smoked little clay pipes and they tied cloth around the bowl of their pipes so they wouldn't start a fire outdoors. In July, 1890, my mother was born. She remembers her mother relating later, that when her father was at Fort Reno, she would have the children be very quiet so they could hear the cannon being fired at the fort each sunrise and sunset and that gave the family a feeling of closeness.

My mother remembered that her father belonged to the Anti-Horsethief Establishment Association as the Dalton and Doolin gangs were active in the area at that time. She also remembered the Indians passing their home with their iron kettles and belongings on travois or drag poles. Her parents would have to call in their dogs to keep them from fighting the Indian's dogs. One Indian passing by, looked at her father, raised his hand said, "How, John." Her father raised his hand and answered, "How, John," as the Indians continued on their way. My mother remembered that when they would visit neighbors and friends, that the refreshments usually served were sliced raw turnips.

Contributed by Sharon Jones
Oklahoma City, OK