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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: July 16, 1937
NAME: Alice B. Hambleton
Post Office: Chickasha, Oklahoma
Residence Address 316 Colorado Avenue
Date of Birth: January 15, 1892
Place of Birth: Texas
Name of Father: S. A. Hambleton
Place of Birth: Missouri
Information on father: White man
Name of Mother: Elizabeth Bradford
Place of Birth: Henry Co., TN
Information on mother: One-eighth Cherokee-Buried in Texas
Field Worker: Thad Smith Jr.
Interview # 1324

I came to Oklahoma in the year 1902. My father leased a farm seven miles south of Temple, near Cache Creek.

I have seen a good many people come to Cache Creek from several miles off for wood, driving a yoke of oxen, hitched to a wagon. There was lots of timber on the creek but the people were only allowed to get the dead wood, it being mostly burr oak, elm and cottonwood.

Cache Creek had a second bank and sometimes after or during the rains the creek would get a mile and a half wide and in normal weather the creek was form twelve to twenty feet deep. There was lots of catfish in the creek.

Red River was about eight miles south of where we lived and there was a ford there that was called Charley Ford. I have seen the water so low in the river that I could step across the stream.

Once I remember seeing a man start across the river with a wagon and team and hit quick sand. He had to take out his team, and leave the wagon until later.

My father drove across the Indian Territory on his way from Missouri to Texas in 1875. He camped on the north bank of the North Canadian River for about two weeks waiting for the river to go down so that he could ford it. My mother and sister were with him. They made the trip, driving a pair of mules hitched to a covered wagon. They crossed Red River at some ford north of Gainesville, Texas.

After we first moved to Oklahoma to live in 1902 there were lots of wild cats and cougars, and there were quail everywhere.

The O H Triangle Ranch (the brand was made like this: 6D ) was in the Chickasaw Nation, three miles west of where we lived. They ran about twenty thousand head of cattle on this ranch.

In 1904 a six day celebration was held at Temple. The business men in the county donated money to buy two hundred head of steers to be barbecued. It was estimated, then, that there were three thousand five hundred Indians there and two thousand white people.

Geronimo, a Mescalero Apache Indian, was there, and it was said that he had ninety-nine scalps.

There were Indian dances, horse races, steer roping and bulldogging, something like a rodeo, only then it was not called that. The prizes for the winners of some of the features were groceries and pieces of furniture.

My mother and father and I often made trips to Burkburnett, Texas, in a wagon and we would cross the Red River eighteen miles west of where we lived, on the Suggs' Ranch, on a railroad bridge. It was just barely wide enough for two wagons to meet and pass one another.

The bridge was nearly a mile long, and there was a keeper at each end. The charge for crossing with a wagon was one dollar.

I was living near Temple in 1906 when Oklahoma became a state. Celebrations were held in several towns, but I did not happen to be able to attend.

SUBMITTER COMMENTS: This person's name should read Alsie B. Hambleton Fathers name was Samuel Alsie Hambleton Mothers name was Elizabeth Fraxinella Bradford.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Phyllis Arbogast < shelties@erinet.com > February 2001.