Another Chapter of My Life

My father, Dennis Lockwood, was born in the family farmhouse in 1900. His Dad, Jasper Newton Lockwood, had homesteaded 160 acres of land near a town that was barely in existence in 1889. It was called Still Water Valley before it was known as Stillwater. It was listed in a map as a town with no name for a long time.

It didn’t attract much interest because it was hard to get to without roads. Indians began to move into the area because of the white people taking over everything else. It became known as Indian Territory.

President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act in 1862 so legal settlers could claim lots up to 160 acres in size. If a settler lived on the land and improved it, he could then receive the title to the land.

There was a date set for the Land Rush. This is what my Grandpa entered into. They lived in Illinois or Indiana at the time. Grandpa was born in Indiana and Grandma was born in Illinois, so I am not sure where they settled after they married. I didn’t pay much attention to such details when I was a kid.

Some of the individuals who participated in the run entered early and hid out until the legal time of entry to lay quick claim to some of the choicest homesteads. These people came to be identified as ‘Sooners’. This led to hundreds of legal contests that arose and were decided first at local land offices and eventually by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Arguments included what constituted the "legal time of entry.” While some people think that the settlers who entered the territory at the legally appointed time were known as "boomers", the term actually refers to those who campaigned for the opening of the lands, led by David L. Payne. The county was named after this man.

Several rivers flowed across Oklahoma, including the Cimarron, which received the flow of numerous small streams that flooded with the seasons. One of these persisted through frequent droughts.

Cattlemen began to take an interest in the area because of the water from the river. It was named Still Water Creek. It was a nice stopping over place for the travelers. From there a colony of Boomers, whose presence there in 1885 forced open the Indian land to white settlement.

Many traveled in a wagon train with many wagons and families. They took household items and food to last for several days. There had been so much rain that the trails were soaked and muddy.

Grandma stayed behind with the seven kids while Grandpa went on the venture alone on horseback. He staked a claim of farmland Northeast of Stillwater. He owned the property the rest of his life and was able to attain more acres. It ended up being 360 acres.

They lived in a dugout while they built the house. My father, Dennis, was born in the new house in 1900. He was the youngest of the children. There were seven boys and one girl. My aunt Carrie was the oldest. Many of the people lived in dugouts while their houses were being built. The house is two stories, but not very large, and it is still standing today with people living in it. He had three brothers that died at very young ages, late teens and 20's. Dad told me they died from kidney problems. I'm not sure if it was someone’s guess or if anyone knew for sure.

Grandma L was 73 when she passed away. She predicted her own death to the day, and she was not sick. She just knew what day she was going to die. I don’t know what caused her death. Maybe it’s like having faith, if you believe something strong enough it will happen. It has stuck in my head all these years. I was four years old and was outside playing when it happened. I don’t know why we were at their house that day, but I remember all the hustling and running around. People were coming and going all over the place.

So I found a quiet place behind the cellar under some bushes where I hid myself and fell asleep. I woke up when I heard everybody calling my name. Until my Grandmother died, my parents lived on the backside of the farm and raised their own crops. They raised cotton, sorghum cane, and corn. They had turkeys, goats, cows and horses.

The house only had two rooms with a screened in porch. One day my mother was tending to her garden while Cecil about three years old was sleeping in a bed by the window. Ray was just a few months old, and was playing on the floor while she went to the garden just a few feet from the house. As she started back to the house she noticed a lot of smoke was shooting out of the top of the house. She ran and opened the door, Ray had crawled to the door so she was able to pull him out easily, but flames were holding her back from entering to rescue Cecil. She ran to the window by the bed he was sleeping in. The window had screen wire nailed over it. She found a way to rip the screen off and pulled Cecil out. They lost everything. The house burned to the ground. They speculated that a mouse may have found the matchbox and chewed on a match and set the fire. There was no fire in the stove, the matches were out of reach of a baby, and the house had not been wired for electricity so electrical wires could not have caused it. The trauma and fear my mother experienced caused her to have a miscarriage later that day. I was the result of her next pregnancy, which was about a year later.

My Dad and his brothers and Grandpa built another house in the same area. It was a larger house and much nicer than the first one. I was about three years old and one day my big brother, Cecil and Ray wanted to walk over and visit Grandpa and Grandma on the other side of the farm. I wanted to go so it was decided that I could go as long as Cecil and Ray held my hands so I wouldn’t get lost. So we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa. This is another one of my earliest memories. I really thought this was a big deal to go with my brothers like that. We got over there and they made a big fuss over us. Grandma had us sit on a little bench by the front window while she went to the kitchen to make us a snack. Grandpa kept talking to us and asking questions. Grandma came back in with a plate of biscuits with butter and Jelly on them. She gave each of us one and I remember how delicious it was. Grandma had a shelf in the living room with three kewpie dolls which she had made dresses for each one out of crepe paper in different colors. They were so beautiful and I wished I could play with them, but Grandma said they were just to look at. They also had a telephone on the wall. It was made out of dark wood and was big and trimmed with black wood. I didn’t know what it was for, so I asked, and they told me it was to talk into. We finally had to go home so we started out with them holding my hands, but they got tired of that so we could run or whatever we wanted to. We saw a car coming and you hardly ever saw a car out on our roads and the boys were so excited about it. It was black and had no top. When it got nearer I was scared and ran to a tree to hide behind. The tree was not big but I was standing behind it and could peek around at the car. When the car got even with us the man stuck out his arm and pointed straight at me. Now I was really scared, but it kept going so I was safe. I thought that was a really big event, to see a car with no top or even just to see a car.

Everything was hard work. It was a lot of work to create something as wonderful as sorghum molasses. There was no running to the local Safeway and picking up a bottle of Mrs. Butter-Worth’s syrup, original, lite or otherwise. It just wasn’t done. Molasses are delicious on pancakes, cornbread or biscuits and is a wonderful sweetener for cookies. To make the sorghum molasses takes a lot of time as well as hard work from the growing of the cane to the entire process of cutting it and bringing it from the field. It was especially hard work for the horse, which had to walk in a small circle all day, to operate the press that was squeezing the syrup out of the cane.

The yellow colored syrup flowed over a large tray and was heated to a boiling point. I would explain it better, but I was very young and my memory has faded a little. I do remember that my little brother, Bennie was only a toddler and was accidentally splashed with the boiling syrup. I remember the pathetic screams and all the scrambling my parents did to find some relief for him. It took hours to produce enough molasses to can in fruit jars. Enough had been preserved to last until the next year.

The turkeys were sold and Mom was able to buy a much needed winter coat. The cotton field was picked with help from the neighbors. The neighbors helped you and you helped the neighbors when help was needed. The cotton had been packed into a large four-wheeled trailer to be taken to town the following Monday morning to be sold. Sunday night the family went to church to fellowship with the neighbors. A good time was had by all, and when they came home and drove into the yard Daddy said, “What happened to the trailer; somebody must have stolen it.”

When they went inside they found that somebody had also stolen the sorghum molasses and Mom’s new coat. Think of all that work, just snatched away from them. It was a sad time. Thievery was not as rampant at that time as it is today. The news of the stolen cotton and sorghum was spread around. Uncle Tom came over right away and said he had heard about our loss. He was so outraged; he offered to go gunning for the thief. He helped try to track down the trailer wheels, but they kept running into dead ends. It took years to forget the disappointment and hardship of the theft. It was talked about forever. That is why I remember it so well. This story was repeated over and over to different folks they would meet. One time they brought up the incident to Uncle Tom while visiting him in Colorado. It was then that Uncle Tom decided to make a confession.

He was the thief, and he thought it highly amusing that he was over there guiding them away from the tracks instead of helping. There is just something about it. A thief or murderer cannot resist bragging about their crime.

Uncle Tom ended up being driven out of the State of Oklahoma by the county sheriff because of his bootlegging and whiskey making. I think that is what he used the sorghum molasses for.

He left the state and moved to Colorado and never returned again. 
Not the end. Maybe another chapter later.

This is a more recent picture of the old house. It is still standing and the last I heard people were living in it.