by Mary May Smith Lewis
My maternal grandparents, Thomas Magill Patten and Mary Elizabeth McKaig (Mollie), of Olathe, Kansas, (pictured above) were in the Oklahoma Land run of April 22, 1889, into the unassigned lands. They were late getting to the starting point due to the wagon breaking down. They spent the night on the north fork of the Salt River in Kansas, and on the 22nd of April, 1889, traveled from the starting point in Kansas to a site 17 Miles northwest of Guthrie, O.T. (Oklahoma Territory) and 7 miles southwest of Mulhall.
Grandpa Tom stopped to water the horses at the spring. They had their babies, Lida Patten and Johnie Patten, with them and grandma was pregnant with my mother, Maggie Patten. Grandma Mollie said "Tom, the babies are tired and hungry and night is coming on. Let's stay here tonight." When morning came, the claim was staked all around them. All of the land bordering the piece they were on had already been staked and claimed by other settlers during the night. So all they had to do was place one stake to claim their land. They lived and raised nine children on that very spot.
They quickly got the crops planted and grandma Patten kept her garden watered from the spring during dry times. The spring came out of the rocks and there was a bathtub hewed out above the big spring that Indians had used. There was no time to build a house, so they lived in a sod dugout. It was cool in summer and warm in winter. My mother, Maggie, was born there the last of November, 1889.
The summer of 1891 was very dry, but they lived through it with the water from their spring. There was another spring near the north edge of the claim and it had even more water than the one near the home site. So they used the north spring to water the livestock.
As the years went by, Grandma Patten was very organized. Each child had a task on Saturdays while grandma and grandpa Patten would take off for the day and travel to Guthrie to visit with friends and go to auctions.
"Lida" did the delicate washing and ironing while Maggie did the regular wash in a black pot, using lye soap and a scrub board. John supervised the farm chores and milking. At the auctions, Grandma bought marble top tables and Grandpa bought calves for 50 cents which he placed with his other cows till they were raised. This became profitable for him.
Mary May Smith arrives.
I was born May 18,1919, in the Gipsum Hills, 8 miles south of Freedom, OK. to my father, the Rev James Thomas Smith, and my mother, Maggie May Patten, I was a special treasure; my four older siblings were all boys. With four older brothers, I learned how to defend myself - with my fists - against my rowdy brothers.
1922
The last week of March arrived. My brother Jim, who was 9 years old, was ill with diphtheria. We children were all given antitoxin. The doctor won against my fists this time. On the 9th day of Jim's illness, after his fever had been spent and he could breathe better, he told mother, "Hold me up. I'm fainting away." Then his heart stopped and he was gone! I was less than 3 years old at the time but I do remember my brother Fred putting pennies on Jim's eyes, then he put a dime on and I laughed. I thought it was just a game. I knew nothing of death. My father called a friend to hold the funeral, but he was unable to make it because of muddy roads. So my father performed the funeral. We all went to the Haskew Cemetery in a spring wagon. I watched as the pinewood casket was lowered into the grave. I sang all the songs: "Shall We Gather at the River7" and “Jesus, Lover of my Life". I knew them all.
When they started to shovel dirt onto the casket, I ran screaming to them, "Don't do that. He can't breathe down there!" Then I burst into a flood of tears. Mother carried me away, sobbing. In his grief, my father left the ranch to a couple of cowboys to manage and took off and held religious meetings in numerous towns in Oklahoma, like Gage, Sharon and Shattuck. He left mother and all us kids with the Patten grandparents until the next spring.
Fall-1922
There were several types of wagons used back then. One was called a spring wagon and had leaf springs under the seat to help cushion the ride. The other type was called a jolt wagon and had no springs. I remember being in a jolt wagon with grandpa Patten and Mother. We met a neighbor who was also in a jolt wagon. They stopped to pass the time of day. I piped up "You should go home and wash that stove black off your face and hands." The neighbor man laughed real hard. I had never seen a black man before and never even knew there were people with different colored skin. Mother shamed me but nobody explained what was wrong with my statement.
Guthrie had street cars then, and the first time I rode in one was when Mother and I went to visit Aunt Izella. We also traveled by train to visit Uncle Tom in Ponca City. We went to church while we were there. All the ladies with babies got up and left when they heard me whoop. I'd had whooping cough several months before and they were afraid that it might still be contagious, but it wasn't. I continued to whoop for several years every time I got a cold.
Ring
I had a dog named Ring. He was black and had a white ring around his neck. When Ring was a puppy, two small rattlesnakes bit him. Mother cut the site open and washed it out She washed it again and again with lye water. By the next day she knew the puppy would live, although he was plenty swollen.
Back on the ranch, spring had finally arrived, and I was allowed to run about barefoot. I was taking a path between sagebrush to the" Old Sow's Tree." I think there used to be a pig pen by the tree and the old sows probably used the tree to scratch their backs and for shade, which explains how the tree got its name.
Behind me padded Ring. Suddenly, Ring ran between my legs and I fell to one side. Ring grabbed this rattlesnake coiled in the path. He shook it until its spine cracked, then threw it into the air, where it landed some distance away. Ring then rushed about 5 feet further and grabbed another rattlesnake who suffered the same fate. Ring hated all rattlesnakes and knew just where behind the head to sink his fangs and kill them. He never let me out of his sight and he killed many rattlesnakes in the Gipsum Hills area by Freedom, OK.
1923
One morning I found a can of open axle grease. I got a small stick and was covering the pine knots low on the east side of the pine cabin. Mother was milking and when she finished, she said "Mary, when you are through, put the can away." I was left alone, humming and enjoying myself. There were lots of knots high up. I wondered, should I paint them? How?
Nearby was a stick with a black rag in the end which had been used to burn down a wasp’s nest. Outside the door was an old time ice box. I took the milk stool, propped it against the ice box and with the stick, the rag and the grease there already, was just able to climb onto the box. I painted every knot on that side of the two room cabin. After surveying the "polka dots," I suddenly realized that I might not have the approval of my family. The can was empty. I took it, the rags and the stick, and threw them all down a ravine a short distance away. Four hours later my father galloped up on his horse and lost his temper when he surveyed my "art work!"
He had my 3 brothers and myself stand in a line. My brothers tearfully denied it. I said nothing as mother had said "It could not have been Mary. She can't reach so high." At last my father sent Fred for a rock. "I'll hit the one who did it!" I ran and hid. The jig was up. My father asked me how it could have happened. When I finished telling him how I managed to reach the knots, he just laughed! My brothers all thought I should have been punished, so they took me into the woods and left me. Mother found me crying beside a tree. She did not punish the boys.
July 13, 1923
The next event was the arrival of my sister that July. Some neighbor boys, Bub and Monk, came over to see the new baby. Bub liked to get me riled up to see if he could get me to fight. He pulled a pillowcase out of his pocket that he had brought along and told me "I'm taking her," gesturing toward my sister. He figured that if he threatened to take her, it would get me upset enough to fight. He was right. I tackled him with my fists.
"That is my sister and you can't have her!" He backed away from her and started laughing.
Grandpa Patten died in late 1923. In 1924, when my sister was walking, we left the ranch and moved to a place between Fort Supply and Woodward.
Pearl
Pearl was there as far back as I can remember. Her mother died while foaling her. I was told she was raised by the bay mare, Queen, who also had her own colt, named Lola, to raise. From lime to time, my father gave Pearl a bucket of separated milk. If Pearl didn't get her milk, she would balk about and actually pout! By 1924, she was ready for the harness and was broken in with a mule. Father had no trouble with her as long as she got her milk. That summer, Father took several mules to Woodward to sell. Pearl and the mule pulled the wagon into town. After selling the mules, father spent the night in Woodward. The next morning, he harnessed Pearl and the mule for the trip home. Pearl, missing her milk, rolled her eyes back, stiffened and fell on my fathers leg, breaking a bone below the knee. Father spent some time in the hospital. He still loved Pearl. She was a pet!
Answer to a prayer
My father was in the hospital at Woodward with a broken leg. After time passed, x-rays were taken which showed that the bones were not joined. He was informed that an operation would be performed. My father prayed. He prayed often and daily, for he was a preacher, "Your will be done."
That night he dreamt that my brother Fred came into the room with an open pocket knife in his hand. He said "Mr. Knife, I'm going to shut you up in your handle!" Then he tossed it under the bed. My father jumped and felt the bones coming together. X-rays did indeed show that the bones were together. Shortly after, my father was home with us.
1925
I walked across ranch land to a one room schoolhouse. There were my 3 brothers and a neighbor boy in school with me, but I was the only girl in school. Back then, girls wore "teddy bear” underwear that were made of flour sacks and used a button in the back instead of elastic around the waist. When I went to the outhouse I could unbutton the back of my "teddy bear" handmade undies, but I would have to go back up to the teacher and ask her to button them again
The teacher would make me stay in the hall when she read to the boys because I would fidget to much. She also told my mother that I memorized too much and knew all the words by heart. Back then, teachers did not want the students to memorize things.
There was a time several years later, when we lived between Woodward and Fort Supply, that we went to school at Liberty School, located 9 miles south of the first school I went to. Our father got us a buggy which Pearl and Lola pulled.
Every day we went by Bucksy Bozeman's place and he knew our horses well. We lived across a ranch from Fort Supply which was a mental hospital. From time to time an inmate would escape and make it across the ranch land and beyond. Never would they get by Bozeman's place. They mostly were just epileptics. By the time they reached Bozeman's they would be tired and hungry. He fed them, put them to bed and called the Sheriff. He got $10 for each inmate he reported.
Pearl was grazing when she saw an inmate. She approached him, wanting that bucket of milk The inmate tore his blanket into strips and made a halter and reins, then rode her to Bozeman's place. She absolutely would go no further She balked and turned into his drive. The inmate told Bozeman that his horse was sick and needed something to eat. Bozeman recognized her at once; so he put her in a stall, fed her hay and grain, then fed the man, put him to bed and called the sheriff.
Turkeys
Mother raised White Holland turkeys and also some bronze ones. My mother found out that turkeys that were mixed bronze and White Holland produced sterile eggs, but they were meatier than the unmixed ones. Mother had an incubator. After 14 days of incubation she candled the eggs.
Candling an egg is when she would light a candle, then take a piece of cardboard that had a small pinhole in the center of it and place the piece of cardboard in front of the candle. Then she would hold an egg next to the cardboard. The light from the candle would shine through the hole in the cardboard and through the egg. That is how she could tell if the egg was ready to hatch. The eggs that were sterile, she boiled and put in the bran-clabber mixture she fed the turkeys.
Clabber
After separating the milk, mother saved the cream for butter and buttermilk. The sweet milk we would drink and the milk that was going sour we made into a product called clabber that was used in the turkey feed. Sometimes she would take the clabber and put it on the stove to warm. When the cottage cheese would rise to the top, she screened it with a flour sack The part that was left after removing the cheese was called whey and that could also be used in the feed mixture for the turkeys.
Mother knew so very much about natural foods. She always had a garden, a flock of chickens and milk cows. We were a healthy family. We always had good food to eat, even during the depression, which helped us grow up strong and healthy. She made wild plum and grape jam & jelly. We had tender greens such as Curly Dock, lambs Quarter and many other plants that were healthy for us. She also baked pound cake, bread, bread puddin, and all the other foods that children love.
It was my task to watch the turkey hens and to find their nests. Turkeys are smart, and they would try to hide their nests. They would try to trick me by sitting in false nests but finally they would reach their real nests. They didn't mind losing the eggs to us as long as a nest egg was left. No so with the guinea hen. Her eggs had to be removed with a spoon. She would not tolerate human scent in her nest and would leave it if we dared reach into her nest. One of the turkeys became wild. No one could find her nest and she never came home to roost. She was last sighted with her babies. After that, a coyote must have gotten her. One time we even caught a prairie chicken and tried to tame it, but it refused to eat. Mother would go out with the turkeys early in the morning and stay with them until about 10 am. She left them at a tree. The turkeys would rest there in the shade until about 4 pm.
At 8 years old, I would ride Queen out to get them and bring the turkeys home. One day they got away from me and chased clouds of grasshoppers through a barbed wire fence toward a small herd of old stags. Stags were old bulls that had been castrated, and I was deathly afraid of both bulls and stags. I jumped Queen, got through the fence and chased the turkeys back. I picked up a branch of sagebrush and threw it, hitting the upper leg of one young turkey and breaking it. I carried the turkey until I was almost home before letting it down. I knew Mother would take a switch to me if I told her about it. The next morning, Mother set the leg. I never let her sell the young turkey and she lived to raise babies for 2-3 years.
One afternoon, the turkeys and I came upon a rattlesnake. One thinks of turkeys as dumb, but read this. The turkeys made a ring around the coiled snake with their bills toward it All the time they were making this noise with their beaks that sounded like "put, put, put, putting!" The snake did not dare strike at their bills. After a few minutes, the snake finally crawled away.
My sister Susie rode out with me on Oueen one afternoon. We had to go through a fence into a ranch as we looked for the flock of turkeys. A young stallion came running up with romantic notions. We hurried Queen to the fence but all the time the stallion kept jumping on her. We had a hard time staying out of the way of his hooves! When we got to the fence I got off Queen and rolled under her and under the fence. My sister did the same. The stallion soon tired of Queen's cold reception and ran off. I opened the gate and we rode Queen home. The turkeys came home on their own that evening.
Queen died in 1929. Mother took it hard! Queen had been a wedding present to her when she married in 1912, and was very special to her. Mother whipped me once for riding her up and down sand dunes until I was pitched into sand burrs.
We had this tiger cat. She had been raised as a barn cat. We never fed her; she would hunt on the ranch land. When she had kittens she lost no time presenting them with meat. We were never surprised to see her dragging in a jack rabbit, cottontail, or prairie chicken.
Back then, the state used to have a bounty on rabbits because they thought there were too many of them, so they would pay you for every pair of ears you turned in. We saved the rabbit ears and received 2 1/2 cents a pair for them. In a year, we might have $2 worth of Rabbit ears.
One afternoon I came upon a mother quail with her little ones. I saw one of the babies go into some bunch grass. I got it and made a pet of it. After a time it spent the nights in the cedar trees with the turkeys and went out with them. One morning the cat saw it fly out and killed it.
Fishing trip
Once, father took us all on a fishing trip to a lagoon off Wolfe Creek near Ft. Supply. We got there about 4 pm. We had brought 3 cream cans with us to hold the fish. We kids all put out our lines. My father had made dough balls for us to use as bait. The dough balls had cotton in them that helped them stay on the hook. We children waded in the lagoon and got many mussels to eat. Upon returning to our lines, I discovered that a huge shad was on mine. I got the biggest fish that trip. We slept in the wagon bed that night, and the next morning went swimming. After the cream cans were filled with cleaned fish, we left and arrived back home about 4 pm.
Because of a cyst on my right wrist, I could not milk. Everyone else went off to milk the cows and I was left to salt the fish we had caught and cleaned. No one told me how much salt to use and a whole bag of salt was available, so I put a handful of salt inside each fish and packed them away. The next day we had a delicious dinner, a large platter of fried fish -- oh boy! Then everyone said "Mary, how much salt did you use?" I had no idea that I had used way to much salt on them. We did eat the fish, but my mother soaked them overnight to remove as much of the salt as possible. My brother called me "Salt the fish, Mary!" for many months after that.
Liberty School
Behind my desk at liberty school sat a boy named Art Porter. Art came from a large family of boys. He delighted in reaching into his shoes and getting the "toe jam" to put in my braids. I never told on him because I was kind of quiet and reserved.
One noon recess, my friend Beulah and I were playing farming. We marked off the house and the barn on the ground. Crochet mallets were my horses. I put them in the barn and went in the house for lunch. Just then, my "wife" Beulah had to go to the outhouse. I looked around and Art Porter had grabbed my horses. I said, "I am playing with those," and we started struggling. Then the bell rang. The teacher asked why we were fighting, and I told her I was playing with the mallets. She asked, "Were they on the ground?" I said yes. She did not give me time to explain and told Art that he could go. Then she said to me, "You lie, and liars don't go to heaven." I wanted to try to explain to her that even though they were on the ground and that I was not using them at that precise moment, they were my horses, and as such, they were still a part of the make believe game I was playing, but I didn't know how to convince her. After lecturing me, she pulled down my panties and paddled me with a ruler. I always knew I did not lie! They were my horses.
A few days later Beulah called me out to the outhouse and told me the teacher would keep her in after school and paddle her for not knowing her Bible verses
Before the term was out, the teacher’s beau, “Wallen,” from Chicago, started to come for her each day. I'll never forget Wallen standing on one of the desks one day, singing an old song called “The Baggage Car Ahead.” When they were courting, we kid’s used to stand up on a railroad viaduct and watch them while they were parked down by the creek. Not long after that, she came in late one day and told us all about her marriage and “Shivarie.”
A Shivaree was a fun-type ritual where friends of the couple being wed would play tricks on them. In her case, some friends had tied some cow bells to their bed springs so that every time they would move in bed, the bells would ring. After her marriage, she quit teaching and went off to Chicago.
On Sundays, a picnic dinner was held on the school grounds. The ladies brought all kinds of goodies to eat. After that church was held inside and sometimes my father preached the sermon
Hard Winters
We had some real hard winters, and at times the weather was so bad that the teacher took me to spend the night with her or to spend the night with some family nearby rather than having me try to make the 10 mile trip home. One cold day. the teacher put hot bricks next to our feet and we were snuggled up in blankets as the horses dew the buggy northward the 10 miles toward my home. After going about 4 miles, a blizzard struck. It frightened the horses and we tumbled out into the Snow. Along came a neighbor in a Model-T who took us home.
Some winters were so cold that chickens that hadn't roosted in the chicken house had their combs frozen off.
Father
My father’s health was breaking and he thought a change of climate would help. He had an auction, selling 27 head of cattle and 10 head of horses. My father sold Pearl when he held that sale. The last I saw of her, she was trotting behind a car with her colt trailing behind her. She was sold to Bozeman's step-daughter. One thing about Pearl: she always got her separated milk from time to time.
After the sale, we moved to Sunshine Valley at Hoehne, Colorado. It was an irrigated farm. We were there 3 years, then moved near Fisher’s Peak east of Trinidad, CO.
During the depression, grandma Patten divided the oil royalty she received among her children each year. It really helped the Smith family in Colorado when my father's health declined. My father knew how to make me feel I had some worth. He let me help him work on the farm and that made me feel like I was pulling my own weight and contributing something worthwhile to the family. I would monitor the broom corn.
A “monitor" was a piece of Farm equipment that was pulled by two horses and would aerate, or break up the hard soil around the broom corn. I helped pull the broom also. He built up my confidence, nurturing me in helpful ways. When I had trouble with my spelling, he took time to help me out. I could talk to him about anything that was troubling me.
1928
My father stated having trouble with the veins in his legs. He went to a doctor and was given some medicine that came in a jar, called “Denver Mud,” to rub on them. He spent long hours in the fields, and would come home with terribly swollen legs. I helped him undress and get into bed, then I elevated his legs and tried my best to massage the blood out of his legs so the swelling would go down. I remember he said, “Mary, you must become a trained nurse.” Years later, after my father had been gone 15 years, I did indeed become a trained nurse and served in the ANC, (Army Nursing Corps), in the pacific area.
My father would have been proud of me! I owe all the good things in my life to him. Raising a family at his age was too much for him. He was around 55 years old when I was born and almost 60 when my little sister was born. He died June15, 1933, and I still miss him.
After my father died, we returned to grandma Patten's. One interesting story about Grandma was the one about her grandson, Ray Gene Patten. His mother died before he was a month old. His father, Tom, tried all he could think of, but Roy just couldn't keep anything down. Tom took him to Grandma for help even though she was in her 70's and bent with age. She took him to a chiropractor in Guthrie and was told that children have an easier time digesting goat's milk. Grandmother got some goats and always kept some around the rest of her life.
They had the most delicious canned goat meat that tasted super on cold evenings. She knew exactly how John was to butcher the young goat, using lots of water and getting the skin off quickly, never letting it touch the meat. She boiled the meat first, then stuffed the fruit jars with the pieces of meat. The fruit jars were then put into a tub with water and simmered for hours before sealing the jars and being put in the cellar. I never knew of any meat ever spoiling,
Grandma died in 1944. All those Patten times were in the past. The house burned down and John went to a veteran's home in Oklahoma City. The veteran’s home insisted that he will all his 80 acres to the head of the home, to cover their expenses. After his death, the head of the home had everything bulldozed, even the Indian bathtub was filled in.
Thomas Magirl Patten and Mary Elizabeth Patten’s nine children were Izella, Alice Tom, Beulah, Mary, little Jim, Lida, John and Maggie. All of them have gone to a better land now. Beulah was the last to go. Most of them are buried in the family cemetery north of Guthrie at the Laurie Cemetery.
Laurie once was a railroad switch and a town. It is remembered only for an auction where a man put his nice looking wife up for bid. A man in a covered wagon was the highest bidder. He paid a team of horses, farming implements some household articles and a wagon for her. She happily climbed up in the covered wagon and they took off for Texas.
1945
I became a RN from the Oklahoma General Hospital (later Mercy). and joined the AMC in 1945, then served in the South Pacific. When I went over to the Philippines, I was on a ship called “Comfort." The ship was late in picking me up. When I got on board, I talked with a man who had already been on the ship and found out the reason they were late was because they had been hit by a Japanese Suicide Plane. Apparently the Japanese pilot was so high when he started his dive that the force when he hit the ship was great enough to send him through 5 decks of solid steel and end up in the surgery room. Twenty-seven doctors and nurses were killed immediately. One patient woke up, and found he was the only person in the room still alive.
My mother moved to Guthrie, OK where she died November 12,1957. She is buried north of Guthrie, near her parents. I nursed in the US for 39 years, mostly in the Palm Beach area, and was widowed. I’m now married to an old beau I went with in 1944.
Copyright 1997
Published The Legacy Magazine June 1997
All rights reserved
Unauthorized reproduction in any manner is prohibited.
- Log in to post comments