GARVIN COUNTY INDIAN PIONEER PAPERS

OKGenWeb Indian Pioneer Papers Collection

Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers

C. S. Cooksey

Interview #8295
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date: August 19, 1937
Name: Mr. C. S. Cooksey
Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1876
Place of Birth: Texas
Father: C.H. Cooksey, born in Kentucky
Mother: Bell Breadlove, born in Kentucky
(should be Breedlove per Nellie Hull

I came to the Indian Territory in 1897 and settled at Old Mannsville.  I leased land form Mr. Mann, for whom Mannsville was named.

In the early day if anyone put up a gin or a sawmill, in a short while there would be a little town there.  There was no railroad at Old Mannsville and when the railroad came through that part of the country, it missed Old Mannsville and a new town sprang up and they moved the post office from Old Mannsville to New Mannsville, but the name was not changed.

I helped haul the first load of lumber from Ardmore when they started to build New Mannsville.

Before the railroad was built, I was farming the land that the town was built on.  We raised lots of cotton and corn back in Territorial days, but it was not worth much.

People tried to raise their living then.  There were lots of wild berries, plums, grapes, and the women canned these things for winter.  My wife and I were both young at that time and she would dry corn and dry grapes and in the winter time there was plenty of game such as squirrel.

We men would get together when a big freeze came and go to some creek and get enough fish to last a month.  I had a home-made ice-house and in the winter I would fill it full of ice and put sawdust over it and in this way I would have ice far into the summer.

We had no church house at Old Mannsville, but we would have prayer meeting at someone's house every week.

There was a log school house there and this was a school where you paid so much for each child.  I had no children at that time to go but I have given a hog and sometimes a yearling to help keep this school up.

We had no taxes except the five dollars a year which we paid to live in the Indian Territory.

By the time I settled in this country most of the big cattlemen had cut their ranches up into farms and were renting them out.  The country around Mannsville was being settled fast by 1896.  I dealt in a few cattle and hogs and this took me around over the country quite a bit and sometimes I have passed by places where there were no houses or tents and the next week in going over the same route I would come up on several log houses or tents and sometimes half dugouts covered with logs and sod.

I now live in Pauls Valley.