WPA Oklahoma Bio - Lee Price - Submitted by: Rex Tinrebleride@aol.com ================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ =================================================================== This is a Biography from the Works Progress Administration Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma Interviewee is Lee Price - Son of Constable R. J. Price Interviewers Name: Jasper H. Mead Report made on: January 19, 1938 Name: Lee Price Post Office Address: Amber, Oklahoma Residence Address: General Delivery Date of Birth: September 10, 1890 Name of Father: R. J. Price Born: Arkansas Died at the age of 83 Name of Mother: Melissa Jane Carlton Born: Coffee, Alabama Died at the age of 55 My name is Lee Price. I was born September 10, 1890, at a place called Healdton, which was about twelve miles west of Shawnee. My father was about the first settler in this part of the country. Shawnee about this time was just a small Indian Village. The first railroad that was built through there was called Choctaw Railroad. The country around Healton was very rough and hilly. I have seen plenty of deer, turkey, wild horses and wild hogs. My honest opinion is that there were more wild turkeys then than there are tame turkeys now. I have gone wild hog hunting several times with other men and it is a pretty dangerous game to play, if you don't know what youare doing. The main water supply came from dug wells and springs, mostly springs. The kind of law we had were United States Marshal, one of whom was Heck Thomas. My father, R. J. Price, also was an officer. He put the first man in the Pottawatomie County Jail at Tecumseh when it was first built. When I first began to remember good around this place where my father homesteaded there was no school, no church house and no roads. If you wanted to go any place, you just started across the country. You directed yourself by certain trees and different land markings. There were a great many Indians around healdton. Crazy Snake was one of the chief Creek Indians and an Indian by the name of Big Jim was the Chief of the Shawnees. Crazy Snake was all the time causing a little trouble. He was a little copper-colored Indian. Both he and Chief Geronimo lived to be around a hundred years old. There were several ranches around Healdton. I used to work on the Cofis Ranch at $18.00 per month, board and room, but most of this room was on the back of a cow horse looking after small calves and running the line - that means looking after the outside fence. I said at the first of my story that we didn't have any church house. We didn't but we had what they call a brush arbor. I have hooked steers to the wagon and driven them to preaching at this brush arbor several times. A brush arbor is where you take a bunch of poles and put them in the ground so they will stick up a little higher than a tall man's head and then run poles from one to the other at the top and pile the smaller brush across them. This makes a shelter and a very nice place in the summer time. Willard Johnson, who at that time was a widow's son, but who is today a prominent business man in Shawnee, told my father if he would buy yp a bunch of lots around Shawnee, some day he would be worth something. But my father never did do it. He figered the country would always be like it was then. In those early days around Healdton, people lived differently from what they do today. I was seventeen years old when I saw my first screen door. At meal times, some member of the family would always take a peach tree limb and mind the flies off of the table. It wasn't only this way at our house but everywhere youw ent, there just wen't any screens in those days. I have lived in and around Chickasha since 1921 and am a farmer by trade. I am a 1/32 Cherokee, but never did draw anything.