Springfield, MO
Well, the second chapter of my serial, "Lacey's Quonset Hut" has been delayed. I break camp early in the morning -- the Ford Escape tells me it is headed into western Oklahoma tomorrow and that I should come along. I still need to scan in court house documents for my cousin and fellow Morris researcher, Nancy Morris Boyd.
Well, my search today provided evidence that Great-Grandfather John Morris was probably not a Cherokee. Still, I got to visit the Cherokee Nation office in Sallisaw and learned a lot about the tribe. For you Douglas County folks who wonder about the Cherokee homesteaders back there, I was told that some Cherokees saw the hand writing on the wall and started west into unsettled lands before the Trail of Tears even started. I always wondered if the Bell family that was supposedly in the county before 1820 were in fact from an eastern tribe.
I visited the graves of my Great-Grandparents in Akins OK north of Sallisaw. The cemetery precedes statehood, and the village there was call Sweet Town by the Cherokee. The cemetery is only about three miles from Sequoyah's 1829 cabin which I also visited. The Curator there, Jerry Dobbs, cleared up a lot of questions too.
Well, while Sequoyah is the most famous person around, the most infamous former citizen is Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd. His grave is less that 200 feet from those of my grandparents. In the early 1930s, "Pretty Boy" was considered the neighborhood boy who did good.
All in all, it was a good day -- that final serial chapter on Lacey will come soon plus I need to give you my thoughts on something called "anchoring." I'll use Tiger Woods' chaos to illustrate my point.
From what I read up on Akins,Ok. The population is very small. Most likely it was small back in the day of "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Given the birth and death dates of your grandparents, I'd say there's a good chance that they knew him. Wonder if they ever dreamed things would turn out for him as they did.
ReplyDeletePretty Boy was a cheap punk hoodlum who caused a lot of sadness and misery.
ReplyDelete