OKGenWeb   Oklahoma Genealogy

OKGenWeb Indian Pioneer Papers    About  Copies  Copyright  Index  Search  Submit  Transcribers

A B C D E F G H I J K L M Mc N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Name: Owens, Bendy
Date:  May 3, 1937
Interview # 1296
Address: Sulphur, OK
Born: 1879
Place of Birth: Old Mill Creek, Pickens County, Indian Territory 
Father: Josiah Lewis, born in Mill Creek, Stockman
Mother: Melinda Harris Lewis, born in Mill Creek
Field Worker:  John F. Daugherty 

My father was Josiah Lewis and my mother was Melinda Harris Lewis.  Mother was a daughter of ex-Governor Harris.  Father was a stockman.  There were four girls in our family.

I was born near old Mill Creek.  This town is no longer in existence.  Father had plenty and Mother and I didn't have to work much.  Father farmed some, but not much.  He made his living in the cattle business.

The house in which I was born about 1879 was a boxed house covered with shingles.   The first school I attended was on Pennington Creek.  It was a boxed house.   We had home-made benches made of pine lumber.  There were no desks in front of us.  We had to write on slates held on our knees.  My first teacher was Betty Harper.  We had a stove to warm by.

I knew Mrs. William Murray well.  We went to school together when we were children. She was a niece of ex-Governor Douglas H. Johnston of the Chickasaws.  I finished school at Bloomfield Academy, near Kemp.   That building burned and they moved the academy to Ardmore when they rebuilt it.

I was married to Hiram Pickens, a full blood Chickasaw, in 1900.  We had two boys.   Mr. Pickens died and I married Alfred Owens, a white man, and a pioneer, in 1904.   We have five children, two boys and three girls.

My parents are buried north of Old Mill Creek in a private burying ground.  Mill Creek was the home of ex-Governor Harris, who was my grandfather.  Mill Creek was in what was called Pickens County before statehood, then part of it became Murray County, a part Johnston County and the southern part Pontotoc County.  Mill Creek was our trading post.  Our mail came in from Daugherty three times a week.  It was carried on horses.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Brenda Choate  September 2003