Photograph 62:
Jewel Harper Cox

The following account on pioneer days in Oklahoma comes from Aunt Jewel’s mother, Daisy Ellen Wall Harper. She was born in 1871 and died in 1940. She married James N. Harper in 1894. Her father was Samuel Clough Wall (1842-1931); her mother was Ellen Jackson Thompson Wall (1844-1903).

The information was contributed by Cindy Cox Mathis, daughter of Jimmie and Barbara Cox, (Ellen’s great-granddaughter). Mrs. Harper did not date her article, but it must have been written in the early 1930s, since it was a WPA project.

Genealogical data follow below on this page.

Daisy Ellen Wall Harper's recount
of early Oklahoma days

My mother came to Oklahoma from Joplin, Missouri. I don’t know what year she came, but she was married in 1863. She came in a covered wagon. Her brother-in-law made the trip three times before he got settled. She lived with her oldest sister, Polly Spencer.

My father was born August 24, 1842 at old Mayhew in the Choctaw Nation. His mother and his father both died in two weeks of his birth, in a week of each other. His mother, Miss Eunice Clough, was sent here as a missionary to the Indians from New Hampshire. At her death, her request was for him to be sent back East to her home and be educated as a preacher. He was sent back East but didn’t receive much education, and when he was about nineteen years of age, his half brothers wrote to him and told him he had better come back to Oklahoma or Indian Territory as it was then, so he could get his land; so he did. He traveled by stage on land and on boats on water. He came back to where his sisters lived in the Choctaw Nation and he married a Cherokee girl, and put in a home, and she died, and he then worked for his brother-in-law, Giles Thompson. He married two of my father’s sisters.

Giles Thompson owned the old salt works during the Civil War at Boggy Depot and owned a lot of slaves. He was robbed during the Civil War. They thought it was the Belle Star gang. Giles Thompson died and then my mother, Ellen Jackson, and my father married. He still held land and they both did up until the Dawes Commission came on the scene and they was throwed off although he had been on the Indian roll all his life and drawed money the same as a full-blood. Our family spent over $1,000 fighting the case, and then lost.

My mother and father lived between Maysville and Lindsay when they were first married. They called it Kickapoo Flat. They had their homes there. Mother owned the land near the Washita [river] and father owned that south of hers on the hill. They established a post office on father’s place which is still there, Wallville, Oklahoma.

I was born on the Washita between Maysville and Lindsay, then called Kickappo Flat. I was born on the 5^th February 1880. My father lived to be nearly 89 years old, and he also fulfilled his mother’s wish. He was a minister of the gospel many years before he died.

When I was small, the men and boys run horse races in sight of our house at White Bead. There was an Indian School at White Bead. They called it Pierce Institute. It was built by the Methodists, and sat on a 10 acre campus and provided education for the Indian and the white children. Mrs. Jessie Moore was my teacher. She was an Indian. Her maiden name was Jessie Randolph. Her father was Bud Randolph, an Intermarried. I think her mother’s name was Sally Moncrief. She was an Indian.

They used to have preaching her out in the open and also have dances for the young folks to go to for entertainment. But they were carried on nice! My older sisters (this would have been half sisters fathered by Giles Thompson) went then, but my mother never allowed us younger girls to go, as there was much whiskey then.

I think Jessie Moore is holding an office. Anyway, she run against Mabel Basset once. I voted for her.

I will tell of our picnic when she was teaching at White Bead, something similar to our school picnics now, only we had no cars. We went in wagons. The boys brought wagons and ice cream freezers and ice, and us girls brought lunch. We met at the school house and on our journey we met lots of full blood Indians in wagons and buggies going to Pauls Valley to get supplies. They were coming from Fort Sill where they were guarded by soldiers. The boys began hollering John. Miss Jessie kept telling them they had better quit, but they thought it was funny until one Indian pulled a white woman’s scalp off his head. He were all scared, and there was no more hollering. We went on about a mile and stopped and put up our little stands and swings and were eating our dinner and the soldiers came along. And wasn’t we glad! We sure had a fine time jumping the rope, saying readings, playing games, anything a child should enjoy.