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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: April 12, 1937
Name: George W. Smith (Mr. & Mrs.)
Post Office:
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:
Father: B. F. Paden, Jr.
Place of Birth:
Information on father:
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: E. F. Dodson
 
B. F. Paden, Jr., the father of Mrs. Geo. W. Smith, was born near the north end of Muskrat Mountain, about five miles southeast of the present town of Stilwell, Oklahoma, August 22, 1835. He was a Cherokee Indian. He lived at his birthplace until he was about sixteen years old.

Up to this time he had been attending the common schools in the neighborhood, at Muddy Springs school. He was an apt student and from the start he was at the head of his classes. At the age of sixteen years he went to Alabama to bring some of his relatives to the Territory but he stayed in Alabama for about ten years and secured a High School and Seminary education. Then at the age of twenty-six, he and some of his relatives came to the Indian Territory where he again took up life in his boyhood home, engaging in farming, growing crops of corn, wheat, and vegetables. He then entered the educational field and taught school for a number of years.

In 1882, he married Miss Lucy LONGJOHN, a Cherokee woman, only twenty-seven years old while he was forty-seven. By this time he had accumulated enough to enter the mercantile business, which he did. His store was located at his home. He enjoyed a good trade with his neighbors and also had a good transient trade, for it was said that his place was a place that most travelers would ask about and they would try to get to his place to camp or to stop over night with him. He had one of the best springs of water to be found anywhere in the community and a place where young and old alike always enjoyed a visit.

He operated one of the largest farms in the community and as mentioned before, a good store and a blacksmith shop. Later he kept a post office in his store, the Paden Post Office.

He was a member of the National Council of the Cherokee nation and District Judge of Flint District for two terms.

He and Mrs. Paden were the parents of seven children, two boys and five girls, One of the boys was an adopted son, Lewis Paden. The other son, B. F. Jr. lives near the old home place. The five daughters were: Margaret, Jennie May, Mary Ellen, Lucinda, and Susie.

Transcribers Note: B. F. Paden, Jr. was the fourth child of Benjamin Franklin Paden, a white man born in Virginia, and Margaret Elmira Miller Paden a Cherokee born in the Cherokee Nation, east. Benjamin & Elmira Paden emigrated to the lands west of the Mississippi arriving in April, 1834. They remained for approximately two years, but then returned to the east. This transcriber's research leads her to believe that B. F. Paden, Jr. remained with his parents after his birth in Indian Territory when they returned to the east to live in Alabama. He would have returned with them to Indian Territory approximately twenty years later.

Other information indicates Lucy LONGJOHN was Lucy Littlejohn.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Suzanne Grant Griffith <SuzanneGriffith@email.msn.com> 07-2000.