| Owens, Bendy
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty
Date: May 3, 1937
Interview # 1296
Address: Sulphur, OK
Born: 1879
Place of Birth: Old Mill Creek, Pickens County, Indian Territory
Father: Josiah Lewis, born in Mill Creek, Stockman
Mother: Melinda Harris Lewis, born in Mill Creek
My father was Josiah Lewis and my mother was Melinda Harris
Lewis. Mother was a daughter of ex-Governor Harris.
Father was a stockman. There were four girls in our family.
I was born near old Mill Creek. This town is no longer in
existence. Father had plenty and Mother and I didn't have to
work much. Father farmed some, but not much. He made his
living in the cattle business.
The house in which I was born about 1879 was a boxed house
covered with shingles. The first school I attended was on
Pennington Creek. It was a boxed house. We had
home-made benches made of pine lumber. There were no desks in
front of us. We had to write on slates held on our knees.
My first teacher was Betty Harper. We had a stove to warm by.
I knew Mrs. William Murray well. We went to school together
when we were children. She was a niece of ex-Governor Douglas H.
Johnston of the Chickasaws. I finished school at Bloomfield
Academy, near Kemp. That building burned and they moved
the academy to Ardmore when they rebuilt it.
I was married to Hiram Pickens, a full blood Chickasaw, in 1900.
We had two boys. Mr. Pickens died and I married Alfred Owens,
a white man, and a pioneer, in 1904. We have five children,
two boys and three girls.
My parents are buried north of Old Mill Creek in a private
burying ground. Mill Creek was the home of ex-Governor Harris,
who was my grandfather. Mill Creek was in what was called
Pickens County before statehood, then part of it became Murray
County, a part Johnston County and the southern part Pontotoc
County. Mill Creek was our trading post. Our mail came
in from Daugherty three times a week. It was carried on
horses.
Transcribed by Brenda Choate & Dennis
Muncrief, June, 2001.
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