Transcribed For Online by Geraldine [email protected]
Records Contributed by Vicki Bell-Reynolds [email protected]

Woodville had excellent schools they ran from the primary to and through the 12th grades then you received your promotions through the teachers. If he or she thought that you could do work of a higher grade the would promote you on their own disision. I can remember that when I was a small lad of a boy I started in school at the first opening of school and I was in the first grade and when school was out or closed for the term I came out in the third grade and I went back in the following fall term I started in the third grade and came out I was in sixth grade I made 6 grades in two terms of school.

When mid term came that would be around Xmas time the schools would put on a play or exhibition that would be worth one dollar of any ones money and it would all be free and then at close of school there would be another play at close of school and more espicially the ones that was fraduated from high school of the 12th grade, they would be leaving school to go to college or some work of some nature.

Cheldren would come to Woodville that lived several miles in the country and most of all times the children would walk to schol. I have known some of the kids walking 5 or 6 miles to school and then 5 or 6 miles back home and think nothing about it. The school board would get the best of teachers that they could find in the territory to teach. I walked a mile and quarter of miles to school several terms I went the 180 days without being absent or tardy a time.

Woodville schools boy had both a base ball and foot ball teams usually the same boy played on both teams and we had some real good players on both teams we would play the towns close around, sometimes we would win and other times we would loose.This base ball team does not include the team that I have mentioned in this letter earlier. That team included mostly all farm boys and men that did not go to school.

There was a man who lived in and around Woodville, Okla., by the name of Bill Wilds, who got the name of being a big liar.

One time Bill Alred told the he dream that he died and wen to hell an when he arrived in hell, old satan meeting with him, gave Allred a piece of school crayon and said to him you see that big mountain over yonder and Bill Allred told him that he did, satan told him to go over there and take that stick of crayon and mark down one mark for every lye that he had told from the time that he was big enough to talk up until then. Allred started toward the mountain as he was walking along the way he noticed an object approaching him so he stopped until it met up with him and when it did it was Bill Wilds he said hello to Wilds and ask him what he was doing and Bill told him that he was going back to old satan to get more chalk that he had run out.

That day in time there was but a few mules horses in use and the farmers used oxen to do their work plowing and hauling with.

The dray from the freight depot to the grocers was dawn by some oxen teams. I have seen as many as 30 or 40 yokes of oxen in one team. A man rode a horse to drive them down the road. Oxen done fairly well until they begin to wanting water and then they were mighty hard to handle specially driving by a branch of a creek of water.

Oxen were very easy to break to work, you would put an untrained oxen in the yoke with a well trained one and it would lead it so they were quick to learn to pull their share of the load.

The yoke that was used was carved out of heavy oak timber with two holes bored in back end of the yoke and one drilled in the center and an eye bolt was put through the center to fasted the grab chain and the other end of the grab chain was fasted to your lead. The two holes drilled in backend of the yoke was for a half circle piece of wood you would run each end of the circle through the two holes and put a key pin in the to holes the yoke on the oxen necks.

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