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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: March 29, 1937
Name: Frank Sullivan
Post Office: 1301 S. 5th, Chickasha, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1883
Place of Birth: Newton County, MO
Father:
Place of Birth:
Information on father:
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: E. A. Cabler
Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma
LDS Microfische  6016953
Sullivan, Frank Interview
Interview #1074
Page 336 to 341

Frank Sullivan was born in 1883 in Newton County, Missouri, near where the town or post office of Ritchey, Missouri, is now located.  I moved from Missouri when I was three years old with my parents to the Indian Territory, and located at what is known as the old Moncrief Crossing, and the Little Washita River.

My father in 1886 was appointed to run a mail route from the crossing to Anadarko.

Mother died when I was seven years old over near Purcell. When I was nine years old I ran off from home as the neighbors went to talking about dad marrying again and I couldn’t stand to hear about this.  There was a man, I don’t remember his name, whom I helped to sell apples, and he persuaded me to leave.  He told me I could make a lot more money by going away so I left, and located two miles north of Lexington with a man by the name of Bill KILLIAN.

When I was fourteen years old I went to my first school near Oil City.  It was a little one room school named Oil Spring School, and was in session during the months of July, August and part of September.  The teacher’s name was Bill CARROLL, and he was a very nice young man.  I really studied hard for I wanted an education.  I never got but one scolding, but in a few days the teacher apologized for that.  During these days I was working for Scott SPARKS and he sent me to school.  The next year in January and February I went to school at a place they called Buck Horn near Ardmore.

The desks were made of logs split half open and so were the benches in which we sat.  It was a very crude one room school.  The teacher’s name was Mr. WATKINS, and he was a nice old man, but this is all of the schooling I ever had.

When I was sixteen years old I got my first public job on a building at Wetumka from a man by the name of H. H. HOLMAN.  This was the first building in the town.

Later I got a job from the Government as a guide showing a Corporal and four soldiers where the different Indians lived.  These were the Creek Indians and they were to try to round them up.  We had a lot of trouble with the Chief whose name was Chitto HERJO, meaning in our language Crazy Snake.  Many of the Indians liked me but others didn’t, for I knew a lot of different ones for whom the soldiers were looking.  I have been in thirty-eight states, Canada, and Cuba, but have spent most my life in Oklahoma, in Grady County.

I am married, and I went to see my father near Purcell in 1914 when he was ill, and from which illness he died.

Transcribed by Donald L. Sullivan <donald.l.sullivan@lmco.com> 05-1999.