Mrs. Jane Osbirn


Osbirn, Mrs. Jane
Interview: #1304
Fieldworker: John F. Daugherty
Date: April 20, 1937
Post Office: Rt. 2, Sulphur, Oklahoma
Birth: l860, near Springfield, Illinois
Father: Charles Goodall
Place of Birth: Tennessee, 1826
Mother: Mary Goodson
Place of birth: Illinois, 1836

My parents were Charles Goodall and Mary Goodson Goodall.  Father was born in Tennessee about 1826; Mother was born in Illinois in 1836.

Father was a farmer and stockman and an ex-soldier, having served through the Mexican War and also the Civil War.

I was born in l860 near Springfield, Illinois.  I had two sisters and three brothers.  They are all dead now except one brother and myself.

When I was four years old Father moved to Cottonwood, Missouri.  It was while we lived here that I started to school and attended three years.  This was all the schooling I got.  We moved to Jackson County, Texas, when I was eight years old.

One evening a man came galloping by and told Father to move his wife and children for the Comanche Indians were only six miles behind him.  Father always had good horses.  He hurriedly hitched his team to the wagon, we crawled in, and away we raced for our lives.  Father didn’t let the team stop for twenty-five miles.  Here we found another settlement and spent the night.  However, the Indians were met by a crowd of white men and halted before they reached our settlement.

While living in Texas I met and married, in 1877, Thomas Arms.  He was from Providence, Rhode Island, and was a bookkeeper.

In 1884 we moved to the Indian Territory.  We lived at Washita, a trading post on the Washita River, northwest of what is now Davis.  It is no longer in existence.  My husband kept books for the Loving Mercantile Company.  After the Santa Fe Railroad was built, in 1865, Loving moved his store to Davis, and we also moved to Davis.

I well remember attending a picnic at Wynnewood, just north of Davis, in 1886.  My husband and Sam Paul, who lived in Pauls Valley, were the principal speakers on “The settlement of the Indian Territory by the white man.”  Those were perilous times for the white man.  The Indians strenuously objected to the white man coming to their territory.  Mr. Paul was guarded by four men with Winchesters, and as he spoke someone fired two shots at him, but he calmly continued after the smoke had cleared away.

We moved to a place near Sulphur in 1889 and have lived continuously on this farm ever since.

The old Whiskey Trail running from Texas to Pottawatomie County, runs across our farm.  As the whiskey peddlers came through, they would fire three shots in rapid succession, announcing that they were passing by.  They would ride up to the board shutter window and ask how much whiskey we wanted.  They always came at night and they would never permit anyone to see their faces.

There were very few United States Marshals in this country at that time and travel was so slow that it was hard for them to catch these peddlers.  The United States Marshals would drive around in wagons pulled by mule teams.  The harness bore the letters, U.S.  When the marshals caught peddlers or thieves, they chained them to the bottom of the wagon and continued on their way until they had a wagon load, then they took them to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and locked them up.

Our first house was a log house with dirt floors and board shutter windows.  It was heated with a fireplace in which we burned wood.  We also cooked on these fireplaces.  We baked our bread in Dutch ovens.  Our clothing consisted of calico and jeans and we made all our own clothes by hand, as sewing machines were too much of a luxury for us.

We got water from a hand dug well.  There were only a few Indians living in this part of the Territory and we hardly knew those who were here.

One morning as I was cooking breakfast a man jumped in at the door.  When I saw him I asked him if I could fix him some breakfast.  He said, “No, he was armed with a Winchester and a six shooter.  He said the timber wolves had kept him in a tree all night.  I asked him why he didn’t shoot them and he said he had to save his ammunition for something else and out of the door he ran like a scared wolf.  I never saw him again,  but I’m sure he was a fugitive, looking for a place to hide.

My parents are buried at Hickory.  I am the mother of seven boys and three girls.  My oldest son is county commissioner of Murray County.

My first husband died in l893.  I married my second husband in l899, and we have lived on this farm since.


Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief, August 2001