Indian Pioner Papers - C. J. Cooksey

Submitted by Brenda Choate   bcchoate@yahoo.com
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                    Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers
                                      
                                                                    
                             C.J. Cooksey



Interview #8295

Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson

Date: August 19, 1937

Name: Mr. C.J. Cooksey

Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

Date of Birth: 1876

Place of Birth: Texas

Father: C.H. Cooksey, born in Kentucky

Mother: Bell Breadlove, born in Kentucky





I came to the Indian Territory in 1897 and settled at Old Mannsville.

I leased land form Mr. Mann, for whom Mannsville was named.

In the early day if anyone put up a gin or a sawmill, in a short while 

there would be a little town there.  There was no railroad at Old

Mannsville and when the railroad came through that part of the country, 

it missed Old Mannsville and a new town sprang up and they moved the post 

office from Old Mannsville to New Mannsville, but the name was not changed.

I helped haul the first load of lumber from Ardmore when they started to 

build New Mannsville.



Before the railroad was built, I was farming the land that the town was 

built on.  We raised lots of cotton and corn back in Territorial days, but 

it was not worth much. People tried to raise their living then.  There were 

lots of wild berries, plums, grapes, and the women canned these things for 

winter.  My wife and I were both young at that time and she would dry corn 

and dry grapes and in the winter time there was plenty of game such as squirrel.

We men would get together when a big freeze came and go to some creek and get 

enough fish to last a month.  I had a home-made ice-house and in the winter I 

would fill it full of ice and put sawdust over it and in this way I would have 

ice far into the summer.



We had no church house at Old Mannsville, but we would have prayer meeting at 

someone's house every week. There was a log school house there and this was a 

school where you paid so much for each child.  I had no children at that time 

to go but I have given a hog and sometimes a yearling to help keep this school up.

We had no taxes except the five dollars a year which we paid to live in the Indian 

Territory.



By the time I settled in this country most of the big cattlemen had cut their 

ranches up into farms and were renting them out.  The country around Mannsville 

was being settled fast by 1896.  I dealt in a few cattle and hogs and this took me 

around over the country quite a bit and sometimes I have passed by places where 

there were no houses or tents and the next week in going over the same route I 

would come up on several log houses or tents and sometimes half dugouts covered 

with logs and sod.



I now live in Pauls Valley.