Mattie E. Stone

My fathers was George Carr. He was born in Kentucky March 11,1827. My mother was Catherine Martin Carr. She was born in Missouri, October 7,1832. Father was a farmer. There were three boys and six girls in our family.

I was born January 11,1861 near Springdale Arkansas. I was married to T. Sidney Stone, July 6,1879, by a Baptist named Joe Denson.

We moved to the Indian Territory in 1890. My husband’s brother came to the Territory and we came along with him.

We thought we might have a better living in this new country. We came in covered wagons, and it took us nine days to make the trip. We were detained two nights at Ada by a snow storm. We found an Indian cabin and stayed in it. It was a log cabin with a dirt floor and cat chimney. That's the kind of cabin we built when we got to Murray County, near Sulphur. We joined the house with clay. We had a window with plank shutters. We leased our land for eight years from R .J. Vanderslice. We paid a permit of $5.00 per year for the privilege of letting our cattle graze outside our lease. This money went into the Chickasaw Treasury.

We raised corn, cotton, and good gardens. We took our corn to Byrd’s Mill to be ground into meal for bread. We sowed our cotton and corn by hand, as we had no planters. We put a board behind the Georgia stock, and pushed the dirt over our seed with this.

We made our own soap. We had ash hoppers, poured water on the ashes, and this made lye, which dripped into a pot. This was put over meat skins and boiled until the skins were eaten by lye. Then we removed it from the fire and stirred it until it was ready to pour into pans. This was soft soap. It never hardened.

We also made our own starch, by pouring water over shorts and letting it sour. We then poured the water off and this left starch at the bottom, which  we dried, and used  whenever we needed it.

We used old tallow lamps made out of the bottom of coffee mills.  This cup was filled with tallow and we put pleated strings into this and set them afire.  These would burn slowly and make our lights.

We had a cook stove, which we brought from Arkansas, but our furniture  consisted of a home made bed and table.  We used blocks of wood for chairs, or sat on the ground.  We did our trading at Wynnewood, which was a very small village at the time.

Mary Vanderslice, a full blood Chickasaw woman, was my nearest neighbor.  I have seen her drive cattle on the range all day long.

The whiskey peddlers came through here only at Christmas. They would announce their arrival with three shots fired in rapid succession.  They would ride up close the window shutters and ask how much whiskey we wanted, but they would never allow their faces their faces to be seen. There were not any United States Marshals in this part of the country.

I still have a pitcher and skillet and lid which my mother used.

I am the mother of ten children, four boys and six girls.  We have lived continuously in Murray County since we came here in 1890.

Transcribed by Karen Price-Pfister and Dennis Muncrief, June 2001.

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