Winter, Moons & Updates

This has been a dry, sunny week of melting in Southwest Colorado. The roads seem clear, but the snow remains with icicles melting, forming on the edges of house roofs. We did get about a quarter of an inch of snow Friday evening, but the sunshine on Saturday and Sunday has taken care of that new snow.

I wish that I had my camera in hand the other day when I let Sadie out back to take care of her backyard business and exploring. Sadie finally decided to make the trek up the backyard slope to explore because she found out that the snow had compacted and frozen underneath so she did not sink in up to her belly and chest.

After awhile of exploring, I called her in with a bribe of a T R E A T! She came running down the slope in good shape, but when she got to the bottom near some much softer snow, she did a quick sinking into the snow up to her belly. Sadie did a short back track of a few steps then forged quickly forward to the back porch -- shaking off the snow chest and belly.

It was hilarious! I never am prepared for those type of Pug adventures, though.

Did anyone get a chance to view the big, bright Full Moon Saturday evening. With the snow on the ground, it really lit up the night skies! The digital camera that I have did not do justice to the Full moon view, though. I took it from my front porch and it is hidden halfway behind an huge icicle hanging from the roof edge. If you have a better shot of Saturday evenings Full moon, send us a copy to share with everyone.

New Look At OkieLegacy
Some of you have noticed a few more changes to the OkieLegacy HOME page and the OkieLegacy eZine. All of the credit for the 'asp' and 'database coding' goes to our oldest son, Michael E. Wagner.

On the "OkieLegacy HOME" page you will notice a random selection of photos that change each time you view the HOME page. You can view each photo to either view or it might take you to another web page of our "OkieLegacy" and "ParisTimes Pioneer" collection of data.

The NEW item on the "OkieLegacy eZine" page is the "Legacy Recipes" link that connects to our Paris Pioneers Cookbook. You can NOW leave comments, which are moderated. Under the FamilyNet Groups there are a few "surnames" that you can click on to bring up another page with history of that particular surname. We have a few "Classifieds" added and looking for more. Can we help you sale, rent or find something or someone out there in the Wanted, For Sale, For Rent & Wanted sections of the Classifieds. It's FREE! It is limited to 50 characters, so keep it short and precise.
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James' Gang $2 Million Gold Treasure

Where was this alleged $2 million dollar treasure hidden in Oklahoma? Has it been discovered? Where in the Wichita Mountains in Southwest Oklahoma near Old Fort Sill and the Keechi Hills did the Jesse & Frank James gang hide their treasures of gold robberies?

According to Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales, pages 129-147, written by Steve Wilson, The rugged range of the hills in southwestern Oklahoma have drawn more attention and stories than all the other potential sites put together.

The source of the fabled gold and its final place of burial have often varied. BUT ... all stories lead to the Wichita Mountains and most often begin with the year 1876.

The most wanted outlaw of the West, Jesse Woodson James, painfully pounded the letters into an old brass kettle: "This, the 5th day of March 1876, in the year of our Lord ...."

Each member of the infamous outlaw band was bound to secrecy about a golden treasure's hiding place. Jesse carefully chiseled the names of twelve deadly outlaws below the contract and then buried the brass bucket and its secret. The place was Tarbone Mountain, a roughhewn granite colossus easily approached from the north in the Wichita Mountains, in what was then Indian Territory. Jesse worked out a clever plan that no other outlaw of his time had devised. It had all resulted from the winter before.

It all began somewhere in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, not far from the southwestern settlement of El Paso, Texas, when Jesse and Frank and ten members of their gang surprised a detail of Mexican guardsmen driving eighteen burros transporting gold bullion. The brigands led the heavily laden packtrain across the Rio Grande and over the plains of central Texas.

Their destination was Indian Territory, a haven for wanted men and a region already familiar to both Jesse and Frank. When the outlaws entered the Wichitas, they were greeted by a severe winter blizzard. For three and a half days they traveled with little rest through snow almost a foot deep. Jesse and his men were cold and weary, and Jesse knew that the gold had to be buried. It was now obvious that their exhausted animals could travel little farther.

It was after almost three hours of slow, arduous travel east of Cache Creek, that Jesse and Frank agreed to bury the golden cargo and burn the packsaddles to warm their chilled bodies.

At the head of a small arroyo the gang of outlaws untied the packs from the burros and watched as the gold bars sank into the snow-covered ravine. After concealing the Mexican treasure with rocks and boulders and kicking the half frozen earth off the side of the arroyo with their boot heels, the horsemen gathered round the packsaddles and set them afire. One lame burro was shot, while the others were set free to wander.

Jesse made two final but lasting signs to the gold. A burro shoe nailed into the bank of a tree served as one. Into a nearby cottonwood Jesse emptied both his six shooters for a second mark. They would do until the day when the men could return to plant their gold in a much safer place.

March 5, 1876 Jesse had made up his mind about what to do with part of the two million dollars, plus other proceeds the gunmen had gathered while terrorizing banks and trains from Missouri to Mexico.

As Jesse carved the contract into the brass kettle, he thought to himself that neither he nor any of his cohorts would ever want for money ... If and when they were taken by the law. But if anyone violated the "brass bucket pact," that fellow would personally answer to him. With that, Jesse James placed the brass bucket beneath a rock ledge on the side of Tarbone Mountain.

The brass bucket with its secret treasure code was never to be retrieved by Jesse or any of his men, even though several would try years later. Only six months later almost to the day, the notorious James gang was shot up and dispersed while attempting to rob the Northfield, Minnesota bank. Jesse and Frank were among the few to escape.

Finally, on April 3, 1882, Jesse James met his death by the hand of a "coward" in St. Joseph, Missouri. Frank later stood trial and was acquitted of his past crimes. Frank had not forgotten the hidden gold down in Indian Territory. He was waiting only for the right time to return as inconspicuously as possible.

Frank James in 1898, before he returned to his Oklahoma haunts to settle on a farm near Fletcher. Frank spent most of the remaining years of his life seeking outlaw gold in the Wichitas and the nearby Keechi Hills.
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Cole Younger Searches For Brass Bucket

Another former badman appeared in the Wichita Mountains country first. His name also appeared on the brassbucket contract.

Cole Younger had just completed a twenty-five year sentence for his part in the Northfield, Minnesota bank robbery. When he was released from prison, Cole made tracks for the Wichitas.

In December 1903, Younger was in Lawton, Oklahoma, a frontier boom town barely two years old. Cole was not particular about what he told the press. One paper reported in November that Younger was in Ardmore visiting a relative and planned to visit Dallas and the Texas Panhandle and then return home to Lee's Summit, Missouri about December 1st.

BUT... Cole changed his mind. On December 1st 1903 he was in Lawton. The papers reported, "Cole Younger was in the city Friday and Saturday with a view to locating there. Reports have it that he will go into the newspaper business. He was given a reception by the citizens and is pleased with the city."

How long Cole Younger visited is not known, but apparently Frank was not convinced that he found much.
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Frank James Returns To Wichita Mountains

By Now ... a 30 years had passed since the border gold was hidden during the bitter winter of 1876, when Frank James made known his return to his old stomping grounds.

In 1907 he and his wife, Ann, settled two miles north of Fletcher on a 160 acre farm between the Wichita Mountains and the Keechi Hills, the latter where Frank was later to dig up a least six thousand dollars of the outlaw loot.

Years before, Frank had hung up his guns for a final time. He was no longer the surly, gentlemanly, outlaw whom so many had read about. At sixty-four and balding, he remained soft spoken and took no pleasure in recounting the past. His objectives he now kept mainly to himself. The news of Frank's purchase of the farm spread fast when papers announced the story in November, 1907. Frank was then building his new home and planned to move in during the spring. Frank was also busy helping celebrate Oklahoma's statehood.

On Frank's sandy farm land he built a frame house, worked a plot of ground, and planted a grove of peach trees. Just before his mother died, in February, 1911, she visited Frank and his wife at their farm. She died in Oklahoma City while en route back to Missouri. It was reported by old timers that say Frank James wore out six horses riding the trails, searching for landmarks to put him back on the road to the golden treasure. But the country had now been fenced and plowed. The Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation had been opened to white settlement in August, 1901. Miners had swarmed into the Wichita Mountains to seek their own fortunes. Towns had grown up overnight, and new roads were traveled. The old trails were not called by the names the outlaws had known them.

Frank hoped that the old landmarks would help him recall his secluded haunts of thirty years before, the treasure code Jesse had laid down, and the brass bucket somewhere on Tarbone Mountain. It was one of Frank's day after day rides that attracted the eye of Dr. L. C. Knee, a highly respected physician of early Lawton. While paying house calls near Apache, Dr. Knee observed every day for a week or more that Frank had ridden to the top of a hill about four miles east of Apache. There he sat astride his mount, facing south, staring as if in a kind of trance.

One day, out of curiosity, Dr. Knee drove his buggy up to Frank James. After the usual comments about the weather, Dr. Knee dismissed his manners and said, "I don't want to seem inquisitive, Frank, but why do you sit in that saddle up here for so long, just staring at the bald prairie? What is it you're looking for?"

It was not known what Frank replied, but it was not many weeks later that the doctor and two local men arrived with teams and fresno scrapers and dug out a portion of a small canyon. Their search yielded the proper clues, for they had not dug long when they uncovered the skeleton of a burro, and not far away they found a burro shoe firmly embedded in a large tree. But it was their last clue, and after spending more than four thousand dollars, Dr. Knee gave up in disgust.

Frank had once explained that the eighteen burros had traveled so slowly after they forded Cache Creek in the winter of 1875 that it would take him only about a fifteen minute ride on a good horse to cover the same distance to where they had unloaded the heavy golden cargo.

Dr. Knee may have known the old Fort Sill stage driver, Holsey Green Bennett, who one winter day early in 1876 spotted seventeen burros grazing at the base of Mount Scott. Bennett had thought it strange, for o military animals were allowed to roam that far from the fort, and the animals he saw carried no government brand.

One piece of property just east of Cement in the Keechi Hills, attracted Frank James. It was the farm of a teacher, Mrs. Belle Hedlund. In 1907, Frank inquired about an old spring and some symbols etched on a rock and asked Mrs. Hedlund whether he could look over her land.

The schoolteacher was curious and walked along with the stranger (Frank James) as he poked an iron rod into the ground in an inviting spot. She showed him the only spring she knew about, at the foot of a lone knoll with a natural cave through one side, known as Buzzard Roost.

Frank pointing to a nearby rock as he bent down to reach under a stone and pulled out a rusted spoon, declared, "If this is the right place, this was Jesse's Kitchen."

As Frank continued his search, he confided in Mrs. Hedlund that he was seeking sixty-four thousand dollars that Jesse had taken during a robbery at Independence, Missouri.

Jesse had carved a map and directions on a large rock and turned it upside down. That rock Frank believed was on Mrs. Hedlund's farm, near the spring, where the outlaws had camped on many an occasion. Frank revealed that Jesse drew a similar map on his boot, later transferred it to paper, and gave it to his mother.

Some time later Frank found some of the markings he was seeking. At the foot of "Buzzard Roost" he found the carving of a pair of crossed rifles cut deeply into a rock. The barrel of one pointed east to an aged tree, on which were etched the letters "M. O. O." and below, the letter "Y." Beneath the carvings was a "mule shoe nailed into a blaze."

Not far from that tree Frank unearthed a copper kettle with a crock cover containing six thousand dollars -- or so he said. One old settler who was sure that Frank's claim was true was Uncle Billy Royce, who owned the farm adjacent to Mrs. Hedlund's. Billy Royce knew that the kettle of loot was not all that Frank was seeking. One day while Frank was in Cement buying supplies, Royce first spotted him. He took a double look and then hollered out, "Hello, Frank!" The old outlaw wheeled around, staring, as if trying to remember where he had seen him before.
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Billy Royce & Frank James Meeting

The two men had met almost forty years before. Yet neither had forgotten that accidental run-in so many miles away up in Montana Territory. It was early in the 1870's, remembered Royce, that Frank, Jesse, and five others were making tracks between them and the law. After a long day's ride the brothers ran into a group of buffalo hunters.

One long-haired sharpshooter recognized Frank and called out to him. Frank placed his hand close to his six shooter and then almost instantly recognized the hunter as William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody himself. That evening they camped together. Cody's cooks served a hot meal of venison and wild turkey. One of the cooks was Billy Royce, then only a tousled haired youth of fourteen. Billy was the son of an Irishman who had served as a doorkeeper at the White house when Lincoln was president.

Billy Royce homesteaded in the Keechi Hills, the very place where Frank and Jesse had hidden part of their booty and holed up on more occasions than Frank cared to recall.

Retrieving the Caches of Gold
From the time Frank retrieved the cache of gold, Royce became a persistent treasure hunter of the Keechi Hills. In a newspaper article about him in 1932 the eighty-year-old settler reported that within only a few days a niece of Frank James and some male companions were due to arrive on a mysterious hunt.

What they found has never been learned, but the story of Frank's niece turns up time and again in as many locations over the Wichita Mountains of what she was seeking. She kept to herself and divulged very little with people she talked to. There was at least one other cache that Frank removed successfully from its secret depository, and there are stories of still others.

There is no question that Frank James dug up two caches hidden near the Wichita Mountains. There were rumors that he recovered more, each carefully guarded by landmarks known only to him or Jesse.

Even though Frank recovered a portion of the outlaw loot, he did not retrieve it all, because he did not find the "brass bucket with the outlaw contract" carved into it. Nor did he find the "iron teapot," which he must have walked over a thousand times in the Keechi Hills while searching Belle Hedlund's and Billy Royce's farms.

When Frank James finally left his Oklahoma farm about 1914 (a year before he died), he must have thought often of the brass bucket pact and the two million dollars in gold hidden during that bitter winter of 1875, so many years before. Perhaps it was his niece who came back to find them, with Frank's final instructions. She was no more successful than Frank James, though.
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Treasure Trail Only Just Begun

The long treasure trail was not to end with Frank James. It was only beginning. A serious and determined treasure seeker named Joe Hunter made startling news when he unearthed the long hidden "brass bucket" and many more of the "treasure clues" that Frank had missed.

The long search began for Joe Hunter in 1932, the same year that Frank's niece made a final attempt to find her uncle's gold.

Twenty-five years after Frank James's long quest in the Keechi Hills, Mrs. Belle Hedlund found the strange rock he had so patiently sought. It happened one spring day, when Mrs. Hedlund was attracted to a large stone that appeared unnatural in its position. It reminded her of what Frank had told her years before. When she had it turned over, it was obviously the stone Frank had sought. Strange markings were etched on its underside. But there were no clear directions telling where to find the buried gold.

By then, the secret pact had been lost to history for 72 years, and most of the outlwas' names on the bucket were of men about whom little was known. In 1948, at the foot of looming Tarbone Mountain on the north edge of the cedar clad Wichitas, Joe Hunter unearthed the legendary brass bucket.

The Outlaw Gold Pact
The pact read: "This the V day of March in the year of our Lord, 1876, we the undersigned do this day organize a bounty bank. We will go to the west side of the Keechi Hills which is about fifty yards from (symbol of crossed sabers). Follow the trail line coming through the mountains just east of the lone hill where we buried the jack (burro). His grave is east of a rock. This contract made and entered into this V day of March 1876. This gold shall belong to who signs below."

Below the pact appeared the following names: Jesse Jjames, Frank Miller, George Overton, Rub Busse, Charlie Jones, Cole Younger, Will Overton, Uncle George Payne, Frank James, Roy Baxter, Bud Dalton, and Zack Smith.

On the bottom of the bucket was inscribed the patent dates and the manufacturer. It was first patented on December 16, 1851, it was reinstated on March 24, 1870, and was extended in 1873 by E. Miller and company.

Not far from where Hunter found the brass bucket under the rock ledge where Jesse had concealed it, he dug up a three-legged iron Dutch oven. Inside were the chain and fob that matched the watch he had uncovered in the Keechi Hills on the Hedlund farm, 35 miles northeast.

Landmarks Change & Time Running Out
With luck running out as time was passing, too many landmarks had changed. Too many clues had been destroyed. It had been more than 3/4 of a century since the outlaw gold had been hidden. Nature had successfully played its role well in concealing it.

One of Hunter's waybills showed a grave, a horse and saddle, a cave, various symbols and five caches of buried loot, with the descriptions: "$32,000 in gold, 136 paces north of cave; $428,000 in gold, 76 paces west of care; $18,000 in gold, 72 paces north of cave; $38,000 in gold, 42 paces west of cave, and greenbacks and jewelry, 142 paces west and 11Hbg."

It is told that Frank and Jesse James were planning on giving up their robbing and killing. They planned on having a ranch that stretched from the Wichita Mountains South to the Red River. But they never saw those dreams come true. After Jesse died, Frank left Missouri and came to Oklahoma, and bought a farm near Fletcher, in Comanche county. It leaves us wondering why he would leave his homeplace to come to the good for nothing county if he had not planned on digging up something pretty big -- Gold. Frank dug up a good amount of money on the very farm he bought near Fletcher in Indian Territory. Frank also dug up more at other places.

With Joe Hunter's death in the 1950's many of the clues, along with the famous brass bucket, disappeared, and most of the treasure maps have scattered.

Frank James recovered some of the loot, but Joe Hunter unearthed some of the treasure that Frank had failed to find. The clues were too many to dismiss as legend: the brass bucket with the outlaw pact, the silver watch, the graves, the gold bracelets, the copper sheet with its secret code, and the maps -- too old and perhaps too cryptic for anyone to read. Treasure seekers still dug in lonely canyons, scanned out of the way pinnacles, and explored musty smelling caves in quest of the James Brother's 2 million dollar treasure, secreted in the Wichita Mountains at a time when those hills harbored some of the deadliest outlaws of the West.

Frank is said to have once revealed that the treasure was buried alongside the Old Chisholm Trail between Fort Sill and the Keechi Hills. Does it still await some lucky finder, one who can break its secret code and follow the long trail that Frank James rode hard enough to wear out six horses?
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Indian Territory Haven For Outlaws

Indian Territory was home to other Native American tribes, including Apache, Choctaw and Comanche. These tribes had to share their land and resources with the Cherokee.

The white encroachment on Indian lands was spreading further and further West.

Sam and Belle Starr also settled in the Briartown area, naming their homestead Younger's Bend. Younger's Bend became a haven for outlaws. Ironically, Frank West lived only a few miles away. Sam and Belle were arrested in 1882 when deputy marshalls found stolen horses in their stables. Sam was arrested on many counts of hold-ups of US Mail hacks and post offices. Belle was indicted for Larceny in stealing horses and robbery. She often wore mens clothing in her raids and was dubbed "gang leader" after a robbery in Cache of horses and about $40.
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Legendary Belle Starr (1848-1889)

The legendary American outlaw Belle Starr (1848 - 1889) developed a reputation as a "Bandit Queen" of the Old West.

Though she was an expert rider who could handle a gun, and who was associated with famous outlaws such as Frank and Jesse James, many accounts of her life contain more legend than fact.

She has been credited with a long list of spectacular crimes, but it appears she did little more than steal some horses and harbor some fugitive friends.

Starr was born as Myra Maybelle Shirley on February 5, 1848, in Jasper County, Missouri, near Carthage. Her parents were John Shirley and Eliza (Pennington) Shirley, who called their daughter Belle. John Shirley, married three times, was the black sheep of an affluent Virginia family. Pennington, his third wife, came from the Hatfield family of the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud. In 1839, Shirley moved his family to southwest Missouri, where he became wealthy raising wheat, corn, horses, and livestock. -- Belle Starr @ Answers.com
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Inquiry: White Sisters of NW Oklahoma

My name is Lois Anderson-Flury-Vanskike. My parents were Dwight and Esther White-Anderson. I was born in Alva and at age 4 we moved to Kiowa, Kansas. My parents maintained a good friendship with the Warricks and Grubers and Parkers.

I attended Northwestern in 59-61 and 65-67. I married and divorced James William Flury from Avard. His father was Bill Flury. His grandparents had a farm near Avard when we were going to college.

I recently had a reunion of the girls who lived in Shockley Hall on campus in 1959-61. There were about 12 of us from all over the country. I now live in Wichita, Kansas.

My daughter has found your site and emails me when she finds something about her grandparents. We lived with them in Kiowa after Jim and I divorced and I went back to Northwestern to finish school.

If you find anything about the White sister's trio, please let me know. The other White sisters were Miriam and Lois. They are both still living but Lois has Alzheimer and Miriam is in a nursing home but has her memory. Esther passed away. Both Esther and Dwight are buried in the Alva cemetery. " -- Lois Vanskike - Email: bwglois@cox.net
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The BCS Championship & Fedex Bowl Game

Well! It was a disapppointment, but the Oklahoma Sooner football team of OU did not quite take the BCS Championship as I had wanted them to.

The Florida Gators defense held the OU Sooners to their lowest score ever this season -- 14 points. BUT... the Sooner defense held the Gators down for a 10-point winning spread -- 24-14. I am still proud of Mike Stoops, Sam Bradford and the OU Sooners for making it to the BCS/Fedex Bowl. That has to be something, huh?
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History At Your Birth

What was happening when you were born? Ellis Raymer sent us a few links to a website where you can click on the particular year and found out just that information.

I clicked the link for the year I was born, 1948, and this is some of what I discovered:

World Statistics for 1948: Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi by a Hindu militant (Jan. 30); Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia (Feb. 23-25); Organization of American States (OAS) Charter signed at Bogotá, Colombia (April 30); Nation of Israel proclaimed; British ends Mandate at midnight; Arab armies attack (May 14); Arab-Israeli Wars; Berlin Airlift begins (June 21); ends May 12, 1949; Stalin and Tito break (June 28); United States of Indonesia established as Dutch and Indonesians settle conflict (Dec. 27); President Harry S. Truman; No Vice President; Population: 146,631,302; Life expectancy: 67.2 years; Homicide Rate (per 100,000): 5.9; Truman ends racial segregation in the U.S. military; Margaret Sanger founds the International Planned Parenthood Federation; The Hollywood Ten, a group of writers, producers and directors called as witnesses in the House Committee's Investigation of Un-American Activities, are jailed for contempt of Congress when they refuse to disclose if they were or were not Communists; Columbia Records introduces the 33 1/3 LP ("long playing") record at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. It allows listeners to enjoy an unprecedented 25 minutes of music per side, compared to the four minutes per side of the standard 78 rpm record.

Here are some of the Links Ellis sent along: Year by Year: 1900-2008 - 1920 - 1938 - 1943 - 1950 - 1970 - 1980 - 1990 - 2000 - 2008.

What happened when you were born?
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Fletcher, OK

Fletcher was located in northeastern Comanche County. The post office was established, May 10, 1902. Named for Fletcher Dodge, local early day resident. According to Wikipedia, Fletcher is a town in Comanche County, Oklahoma with a population that was 1.022 at the 2000 census. It is included in the Lawton, Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical area.

There is another site that tells of Ghosts of America where after dusk you cold perceive some menacing things. Dark hour is living dead time in Fletcher. there is the ghost of a civil war combatant that had purportedly been spotted on a few occasions in Cyril Park before sunrise pulling a dead body across the dirt.

Then there is the phantom of a man with a word cut into his foot who can be observed howling mid stream in Chetonia Creek. It is one of those scary ghosts you should not go looking for.

Another ghost of Fletcher is the ghost of the driver of a train that was observed taking in the scenery at Lonell Hays Dam before dawn. A bystander terrified the ghost who then vanished. So ... was that ghost a bit shy, timid?
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Wichita Mountains of SW Oklahoma

In 1876 the Pawnee moved to Oklahoma and were given a reservation in the North ... a ridge of hills in the southwestern Oklahoma called the Wichita Mountains.

Check out Access Genealogy & Indian Tribal Records for more information.

Also... Check out Oklahoma - the Land and Its People, by Kenny Arthur Franks, Paul F. Lambert.
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Google Maps of SW Oklahoma

Cement, OK -- Cement was located in southeastern Caddo county. the post office was established, June 2, 1902. It took its name from nearby quarrying operations. Check out this Flickr website with photos from Cement, Oklahoma.

Tarbone Mountain and satellite map of Lawton, Fletcher, Cement areas in SW Oklahoma.
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Floyd H. Huddelston

"My name is Bob Adams. Floyd Huddleston and my Mom were first cousins. My Mom is still living and I am copying the picture and info that you have posted so that I might show it to her.

Have you any more information on him? I knew that he had attended Kemper and that he had a fairly lucrative career in the music business. Other than that, details are sketchy. Thank you." -- Bob Adams

[Editor's Note: This is a picture of Wm. Nelson Gibbens, Oklahoma City, OK, backrow, sax; Phillips Brooke "PB" Gentry, piano, Clarendon, TX; Floyd Houston Huddleston, left-front sax, Leland, Miss.; William Olus Greer, front-center, sax; and Robert McGill (on left-front, coronet). These fellas also played in a dance swing band in third class & tourist with my Uncle Bob aboard the "Ship Europa" during the Summer of '38 voyage to Europe.]
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James P. Renfrew Memories

"A Chara! I came across "The Okie Legacy" article concerning the James P. Renfrew, in 12/1/2007, Issue 48, Vol. 9 and am wondering if you could possibly help with my quest for details concerning a Mary Ellice Black Doak which appear on p 92 of:

Several Ancestral Lines of James P. Renfrew and His Wife, Ella Black .. by James Philander Renfrew, pub. Alva Record Print, 1925/1926 (2 editions, I think).
,br> Google Books, alas, only give a snippet of the relevant page and there seems to be no online alternative.

Mary, incidentally, was my grandmother - from a 1920 Census entry, I know she was born in Missouri and that her father was born in North Carolina but that's all. Mise, le meas." -- Ralph Ellis Doak, (Co Cork, Ireland) - Pioneer James Philander Renfrew
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More Memories of Alva's Downtown Square

Rod says, "Golden Krust Bakery on the east side of the square. TG&Y and Jett's were on the west side (with C.R. Anthony on the SW corner), and the Ben Franklin store on the north side.

Fred Neuman's music store moved a lot, it seems. I can think of at least four locations. 1 - just north of Central National Bank (I think), then just west of the bank, then on the north side of the square (was it in the old theater building?), and finally on the south side of the square where J&J Appliance is located today."

Christy says, "I have memories of Golden Krust Bakery as well, as a child, skating across the floured floor. My Grandpa, O'Dell Henry worked & retired there. My dad worked there too, but I wasn't even thought of at that time."
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