GARVIN COUNTY INDIAN PIONEER PAPERS

OKGenWeb Indian Pioneer Papers Collection

Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers

Mrs. Delia Moore

Interview: 8968
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date: October 18, 1937
Name: Mrs. Delia Moore
Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: September 19, 1879
Place of Birth: Arkansas
Father: Dr. J.L. Stewart, born in Arkansas
Mother: Rebecca Owens, born in Missouri

 

Mrs. Delia Moore was born in 1879, in Arkansas.  Her father, Dr. J.L. Stewart, deceased, was born in Arkansas.  Mrs. Moore's mother, Rebecca Owens, deceased, was born in Missouri.

I came to the Indian Territory with my husband, John M. Moore.  We settled at Pauls Valley in the Chickasaw Nation in 1900, and at that time it was a very small place.   There was one bank owned by Sam Garvin, and the stores and restaurants, what few there were, faced the railroad.  Mr. Moore put in a restaurant right after we came to Pauls Valley.  Dr. J.R. Calloway and Dr. Branham were the leading doctors when I came here.  Jim Hightower was a large cattle owner.

There was quite a lot of cotton raised at that time, but the main crop was corn.   Alfalfa was just being started.  There were two or three small patches of alfalfa.

Pauls Valley was called a Saturday town.  Through the week there wouldn't be many people in town but on Saturday the streets would be crowded with people.  We had board sidewalks and no pavement at all.

When it would rain, Rush Creek would get up and overflow the town, and mud would be knee deep in the streets.  The first year we lived here the creek overflowed several times and Mr. Moore was dissatisfied and wanted to go back to Arkansas but his business was good and we were making ala living, and owned our home, so he decided to stay.

Year by year the town grew.  People began building and a new church house was built.  Pauls Valley, at the time I came, had a free school.  The town was building fast by 1908.  And that year we had the biggest flood I have ever seen.   The Washita River got out of its banks and water was all over town.  People rode around town in boats. 

In 1911, we had our worst drought.  Along in June everything looked beautiful.   There were large fields of corn, from two to three hundred acres in a field, and just in the silk and tassel, and the hot winds set it.  In thirty or forty days the corn was wilted to the ground.

Mr. Moore stayed in the restaurant business seventeen years.

I have lived in Pauls Valley since we settled here.