Bio of Mosely, Joseph Alexander (m240) - Unknown County, Oklahoma Submitted by: Janet Mosley Hastie 14 Nov 2002 Return to Unknown County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/okstate.html ========================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ========================================================================== bios: Oklahoma - MEMOIRS OF JOSEPH ALEXANDER MOSELY Submitted by: Janet Mosley Hastie Sheba16J@aol.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- OKLAHOMA! MEMOIRS OF JOSEPH ALEXANDER MOSELY By Neal J. Mosely © 2000 Submitted here with his permission. I stood outside our cabin wondering how all of this could have happened. Was I wrong in taking my family into the wilds of the Indian Territory in search of a new life and a better future? Here I was, 38 years old and looking to recover from disaster. We left our old home just before Christmas 1890 and went first to the town that was developing around McAlester's Store in the eastern part of the Indian Territory. My wife, Mary Cole, was a widow with three children when we married. There were six more by the time we started this move. We headed west through the Indian Territory with a wagon train. We had about eight head of cattle, three milk cows and their calves and some young heifers, and also two yoke of oxen. The cows got into a canebrake and were hard to locate but after several hours, the older boys and I succeeded in rounding up the strays and we proceeded on our way. A few days later as we went deeper into the wilds of the Choctaw Nation, we camped in an abandoned cabin. The floor had been torn out and a fire was built on the ground. May and Norman were playing around this fire, jumping from one log to another. Mary warned them to stop as they might fall into the fire. Norman didn't obey and fell into a bed of coals. We pulled him out but he was burned quite badly on one arm and on the side of his face leaving scars that will last the rest of his life. Mary put axle-grease on the burns, as she had read in her "doctor book" that grease kept the air away and there was less pain. This doctor book was her bible for the care of our family. Every time any one of us became ill, she would get this book and diagnose the case. She usually would go to an apothecary shop and she would "dose" according to what the book said. Somehow we lived through a lot of illnesses in spite of all the things she gave us. By this time, I had started to feel quite ill. I alternated between fever and chills; it was malaria. There was nothing that I could do but lie down in the lead wagon and let Mary and her daughter Nora drive the team of oxen with a little help from the boys. We had entered the Chickasha Nation and found there were no roads. There was only a trail that ran along a path of least resistance uphill and downhill. There were no bridges, and the fords were not well marked. Streams were crossed wherever we could get down the bank and up the other side. Sometimes, we would have-to go upstream or downstream to a place where the team could climb the other bank. We came to the Washita River at Wynnewood. The river crossing went well until the milk cows and calves came to the water, which was up to the bed of the wagon. We had to force them into the water and the calves, of course, went completely under. We were afraid they would drown, but they came up, blowing water, and swam on across the one-hundred-foot wide, slowly flowing river. After we crossed the Washita River, we traveled for a day and half travel to reach the home of my brother Ben. He lived on the west side of a valley about a mile wide in width. We built a log cabin on the hill just east of Ben's home. There was a grove of trees in this valley and among them was a well that furnished water for both of our families. There were small settlements, along the streams, of four or five families, or occasionally more. These settlements were spaced several miles apart. There were fences around the farms and houses, but all of the livestock, cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs ran wild. This cabin was our first home in the Territory. We lived there for one year until we moved to a larger cabin that we built about a mile on the other side of Rush creek. Once, during the year that we lived in our first cabin, on the south side of Rush creek, the United States marshal came through to collect permits from all men over 21 years of age. He had a few Indians with him, all wearing colored shawls. They camped at our well among the elms, and in the morning the marshal came up to our cabin to collect for our permit. He was in front and the Indians were strung out behind him in single file. The children were frightened and thought that they had come to take me away. We didn't see them until they got near the gate to our yard and two of the children ran into the cabin to tell their mother there was a band of Indians coming to get us. The countryside was wild and primitive. One day, my brother Ben said: "I'm hungry for venison. I'll just take the Winchester and get a deer for supper." In about fifteen minutes we heard a gunshot. Very soon afterward, we saw him trudging down the valley carrying a deer. Another time I came back from a neighbor's saying " I never saw as many deer in my whole life as there were just over the hill in another valley, more than fifty in one herd, just like a herd of sheep." There were all kinds of wild animals in the surrounding country as it was very sparsely settled. You could hear the wild turkeys calling about every day. One time someone saw a panther in the neighborhood and we kept our children in the yard until we were sure that it was safe. Ben and I, along with two of our older boys, took our guns and dogs and looked for the panther but we never found it. Another time, in the late fall of 1891, Ben and I, and some other men from the neighborhood, organized a wild hog hunt (hogs ran on the open range). We went to a place along the creek where there were large oak, pecan, and walnut trees, to kill meat, and I came back with a wagonload of hogs that gave us a years supply of meat. In the winter of 1891-92, we moved to our new, large cabin. In the summer, Sidney (Mary's older son) and I built another log room on the cabin. All the houses were built of logs. We also dug a well that was only about 150 Yards from the house, and also fenced off a place for a large garden. There was a small orchard of peach trees, which was the only fruit in the surrounding countryside. In 1892, there was the second " Homestead Run" that opened the "Cherokee Strip." Ben and I and a neighbor, Joe Cobb, took a wagon with a team of Ben's mules up to Purcell and crossed the Canadian River to a small town on the Oklahoma Territory side. The Canadian River was the boundary between the Indian and Oklahoma Territories. We camped at the line, from which the "run" started, which was some six or seven miles east of Lexington. There, we waited until a cannon was shot to tell everyone that the time had arrived that they could make a run for their claims. All of us picked out their land and made our "marks", four logs laid in a square. Ben and Joe Cobb moved that winter to their homesteads. I did not take my homestead then, because Mary was expecting a baby (Ray, born in February). The next summer, however, I went back and bought a relinquishment from Ben's son, which was not nearly as good as the one that I had picked the previous year. I gave my nephew a horse, a feather bed and twenty-five dollars for the relinquishment. We started to move to our new home during Christmas week. It was about fifty miles and we were on the road for nearly three days. Ben's second son, Joe Mosely came down to where we lived in the Chickasaw Nation with a mule team, for our wagons, and helped us move to our new home, which consisted of a one room log cabin. Then, on January 1, 1894 we moved to our new home. Just a few days after we moved into our new home there was a storm and one morning we awoke to find a foot of snow on the ground and no wood to build a fire in the fireplace. Sidney and I went a few yards from the cabin and cut down a dead "Black Jack" oak and we had fuel for a day or two. We had no shelter for the horses and the one cow that we had brought when we moved. We cut down trees; hauled them near the house; and built stables and a log crib for the stock. There was a dry well about twenty-five feet deep, which never was finished, so we had to haul water in barrels from the Creek about a quarter mile from the cabin. The first year was hard sledding for us, as there was no "plow land" on the place. Our stock ran wild and we cut down trees and dragged them into a row to make brush fences. We had no money to buy barbed wire. This kept the stock out of what little we did plant. That first spring I hired a cousin to break some new ground for us, giving him a wagon in pay. He had an ox team and we were to help him and to plant corn in each third furrow. He didn't finish the job but took the wagon and skipped the country So we did not get very much land broke that year and had to rent land for planting. That first year was the worst drought that part had ever seen. There was a little rain up to the first of May, and no more until the last of September, so there was very little of anything raised that year. We had to look for something else for a living. Sidney got a job as "water boy" at the gin that fall, at ten dollars a month, working six days a week and each day was from 12 to 18 hours. I took four of' the children, Minnie, Rector, May and Norman to pick cotton. First we went down on the Canadian river, ten or 12 miles away, where we picked for two 'weeks or more, then over to the Washita river where we picked for two weeks, and this helped fill the larder. That first summer we ran short of money and corn so after roasting ears got too hard to eat, Sidney took an old tin wash tub and cut one side off and with a hammer and nail punched holes to make a large grater. This he used to grate the soft corn, which made a coarse meal that, tasted real good. We did have plenty of milk, butter, chickens, eggs and bacon, but no fruit (as we had at the other cabin) as none grew in that part of the country as yet. I put out a small orchard the second year. However, for the first few years we had to hunt for wild plums and strawberries, which were very scarce. There were plums down on the Canadian River but that was ten or fifteen miles away and took all day to go down and back, so we did not go often. While we were at Payola, we finished the cotton picking at noon on Saturday, so we picked native pecans from a large grove nearby and got about two bushels, which was all we needed for the winter. One night we heard quite a lot of singing and loud talking and some of us (some neighbors were there to pick cotton also) went to investigate the excitement. We found about fifty blacks of all ages having an old country dance. They were lined up around two small trees and were dancing around and around the trees. They stayed there nearly all night. This performance I shall never forget. That was surely a happy crowd. That first year on the homestead will be long remembered by the family. We had no well operating and were forced to use water from the creek. As a result, by the start of winter, the water had become so contaminated that typhoid struck the family. Not all members had it. Baby Ray was still nursing and escaped the sickness. However, four of the boys and three of the girls did. Hugh, the second youngest boy, died. Hugh was a very robust and a bright child. Some of Ben's family had it and his wife died, leaving a baby of two weeks. Mary took the baby and will keep it as long as necessary. I guess that we'll get right back up, pick up the pieces, and start all over again.