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George Lucas |
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| Lucas, George
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty Date: September 25, 1937 My father was John Lucas, born March 4, 1850, in Tennessee. Father moved to Tennessee from Ireland. He was a wagon builder. My mother was Martha Watson, born in Tennessee, June 11, 1855. There were eight children in our family. I was born March 4, 1877, in Tennessee. When my brother was fifteen years old he fell in love with a young girl whose parents lived in Texas. The girl, with her family, moved to the Indian Territory and my brother followed them here and married the girl. He settled near Nebo until Mother and Father moved here a year or two later. I was very fond of playing the violin, so I went to Ardmore and took violin lessons from Bob Looney in 1891. He played for a show each night and after the show was over the seats were pushed to one side and the theatre was made into a dance hall. I played for the dances and paid for my lessons this way. I received $3.00 a night for my services, which was a good salary in those days. Cowboys came from far and near to these dances. The girls were usually of the bold type and they asked the boys to dance with them. The boys always had their six-shooters on and usually they wore chaps. There was always plenty of champagne and a gay time was had by all. The Chamber of Commerce finally issued a proclamation, declaring the show a nuisance and it was closed. Then I played anywhere I could get a job. One night I was playing for a dance at Sulphur and I heard some shots being fired outside, but that was such a common occurrence that nobody paid the least attention. We later found out that Scar Face Jim had shot at Buck Garrett. Scar Face rode up to the dance hall to peddle his whiskey. Buck asked, "That you, Jim?". He replied, "That's me Jim", and began shooting at Buck. He shot the top of Buck's hat off and burned his hair with the powder from this shot, as he rode into the darkness and escaped among the hills south of Sulphur. When Father moved here, he decided to try to find a farm west of the place where Brother lived so we hitched a mule to a buggy (buggies were scarce in those days) and started west. That was an interesting trip. As we passed through Greer County the corn which had been fine, was completely eaten by grasshoppers. We went to Mangum and through Granite and Chickasha. All along the trails we met Indians dressed in breech clouts with bright colored ribbons tied in their hair. They were greatly interested in our buggy. I am sure they were not accustomed to seeing buggies. The cattle, also, would run up to the buggy and look at it as we drive along. One night we camped not far from Chickasha. We drive down to a creek and camped. When we retired for the night on our pallets the mosquitoes came in droves to pay their respects. They ran us out. We searched for the mule, hitched up and drove to higher ground. The grass was waist high all around us, and we made our bed under the buggy. We tied the mule to the buggy with a long rope so he could graze near and not wander off. When daylight came we found the mule and the buggy about a quarter of a mile from the place where we had slept. He had grazed along and had dragged the buggy from over us. We drove through the Pottawatomie Country, past the Corner Saloon and back into the Chickasaw Nation. We drove through Lexington just a few days after a man had been murdered in the wagon yard there. It seemed that the wagon yard man thought one of his customers had some money and he wanted it so he cut the man's head off and threw the body in the South Canadian River. When the crime was discovered the next day, another man who had spent the night in the wagon yard was accused and arrested along with the owner of the wagon yard and his wife. After a few hours the officers went to the wife and told her that her husband had confessed. She told the whole story and the other man was set free. Father and I came to Mill Creek and he leased land there after our trip through the Comanche and Pottawatomie countries. A man rented land near Mill Creek from a Chickasaw Indian named Jackson Hart. Then this man wanted to leave the place and so sub-rented it to a man from Texas. Jackson Hunt used to get drunk and go to the first renter's house and stay until he was sober. One night after the second man moved in, Jackson got drunk and came to the house as usual. When the man heard him fumbling around the door trying to open it, he called, "Who's there?" Jackson made no answer but went to the window and began climbing in. The man didn't know it was the custom of the old Indian to come here when drunk, so he pulled his gun and shot, killing the old Indian. The next day this man moved his family back to Texas. He was afraid the Indians would seek revenge for the death of a fellow tribesman. I was living near Mill Creek when the Frisco Railroad was built here. They laid only a small part of the track each day, laying the ties and rails as they got the grade ready. Mill Creek became a great cattle center. Although there were more cattle shipped from Scullin, between Mill Creek and Ada, there were more handled at Mill Creek because of the feeding pens. The Frisco contracted to haul cattle from the plains of Texas to the northern markets and Mill Creek was a feeding point. They unloaded and fed all their cattle here. Those plains cattle were very wild and vicious. They fought anything which came near them and when they happened to escape from the pens, it was time for people to get away to safety. They fought the horses of the cowboys who were trying to herd them and drive them back to their pens. One year there was a drought and these cattle were very thin and poor. They crowded seventy or eighty steers into a car where usually they put thirty to thirty-five. When they got to Mill Creek and began unloading there were many dead. One day I was at the pens and when they began to unload sometimes every steer in a car would be dead and many times there were only two or three alive. The railroad company hired men to haul the carcasses to the hills southwest of town and they shipped in car loads of oil to pour over them and burn them. That was a terrible night and the railroad company lost much money that year on their cattle hauling contracts. I was married October 5, 1906, to Ollie Campbell at Mill Creek. We are the parents of seven children. My parents are buried at Mill Creek. Transcribed by Brenda Choate & Dennis Muncrief, February, 2001 |