Indian Pioner Papers - Melissa Humphrey


Submitted by Brenda Choate   bcchoate@yahoo.com

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                    Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers
                                      
Melissa Humphrey



Interview #8114

Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson

Date:  July 29, 1937

Name: Mrs. Melissa Humphrey

Residence: North Cherry, Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

Date of Birth:  1860

Place of Birth: Texas

Father: John Alpin, born in Missouri

Mother: Lemina ???, born in Texas





I was born in 1860 in Texas.  I came to the Indian Territory in 1893.



My husband and I left Texas in a covered wagon, working a team 

of horses and a yoke of steers.  It was in the summer time and we 

could only travel late in the evening and early each morning as it 

was so hot through the day.  We met a great many Indians and these 

Indians would stop us and want my husband to give them some tobacco.



There wasn't much of a town at Pauls Valley.  This country around 

Pauls Valley was a wild looking country.  There were a few farms 

fenced in with rail fences.  We settled in the Union Springs Community, 

about four miles north of Pauls Valley and my husband cleared up 

some creek bottom land and put in a small farm.   There were a great

many cattle there but the people who owned them, herded their cattle 

to keep them off of other people's crops.



At that time there was a one room log school house about a mile from 

where we lived.  It was called Riverside School.  It was located near 

the Washita River and they held three months of school out of the year.  

You had to pay $1.00 a month for each child sent to this school.



We raised a great deal of cotton and corn but they were not worth much.   

We only got from 10  to 15 cents a bushel for corn and would have to 

haul it to Pauls Valley.



We raised lots of hogs and have sold big, fat hogs for 3 cents a pound.

 

There were several Indians living in our community, who were fine 

neighbors and willing to help in any they could.  People settling 

in this part of the country had a hard time the first year or so 

until they got a start, having to live in half dugouts and roughly 

built log houses with dirt floors.

Where we lived, the country was very thinly settled and our nearest 

neighbor was about two miles away.  There was not any church in the 

community we lived in.  It was three or four years after we came to 

this part of the country before we got a church house.



There was a small church house about a mile south of Pauls Valley.   

The only entertainment we had then was a school play which the 

teachers would have the children put on.  Sometimes they would 

put on two plays during the three months of school.  The school 

teachers called these plays "Get Acquainted Plays".



Pauls Valley didn't build up much until after the court was established here. 

I have lived around Pauls Valley about forty-five years.