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Pioneer Family of Indian Territory
The George Gray Family
Back Row: L-R James C. Gray, William Riley Gray
Front Row: L-R Gideon Gray, George Gray, Levina Gray, Rosa Bell Gray and Nora Gray
Source of Photo: The Ardmore newspaper May 1, 1980
We will begin this family's story with an article that appeared in the Daily Oklahoman in November 1947 written
by Roy P. Stewart
Ratliff City, --November 15--Today is the fortieth anniversary of statehood in Oklahoma and to many folks that seems like a long tie. But not to George Gray. He had been here 28 years then; he had, ridden through stirrup-high grass where scrub oat now covers this northwest part of Carter county; he had made the long wagon pull to Oregon and back; he fought the great fire of 1887 that swept from the Red to the Washita; he had lived quite a full life before 1907. He is still living in a house built in 1884 after a two story house made entirely of walnut burned down the year before. Tall, his large frame but slightly stooped, his gray hair disheveled, his eyes can look backward down a long and adventurous trail and his memory can recall the little things that made that trail interesting. Since 1914 Gray has seen the bubbling wealth of oil all around him but never on his land. He saw Fox, Tussey, Healdton, Dillard, Ragtown and all the others when this was the biggest oil play in the world. He saw the new techniques of drilling come along, seismograph replace the doodlebug and rock-hound. Then in 1942, in the twilight of his life he saw Allied Materials Corp. of Oklahoma City come in and drill the first of 14 wells of 25 gravity crude on his own land. Land that had lost its original fertility. Land that once supported bountiful wild game, then cattle by the thousands and hogs into the hundreds, now mostly covered with scrub oat and other fast growing brush. Soon to be 90, Gray lived with a son, Jim, and a male relative who is a pumper on a nearby lease, in a womanless home. He has been twice married and has had 10 children, of whom seven still lived. Age has given him the privilege to reminisce but has not impaired his ability to conduct business transactions involving his 570 acres. You can take that from L.O. Harris, auditor for Allied Materials, who has had many business and story telling sessions with Gray. One who did not see it cannot imagine what this country was like 68 years ago. One of nine children, Gray came out here from Virginia with his parents and their nine children in 1879 in the increasing westward migration that followed the war between the states. They first settles near Gainesville and bought land near present Munster. That area was rapidly populated by land-hungry German farmers and the Grays and their friends bought 102 head of yearling longhorns at Fort Worth for $7 a head and drove them to an area near Velma, now in Stephens County. For several years George Gray made a fairly good living hunting for fresh meat and selling it to the east and south to railroad crews. He got 47 cents for a deer hide, $1 for a pair of venison hams, $50 to $70 for a wagon load of deer meat salted down and delivered over to the Santa Fe or the Kay, farther on. Even this country, although still technically Indian land, was filling up. Gray and one Henry Barnard, a youth with a wandering foot, decided to go to Oregon. In 1883 they went over to the Chisholm trail, where highway 81 now loosely follows the broad trail cut deep into the prairie by thousands of longhorns going to Avilene and Dodge City. They went up to Caldwell, Kansas to join a westward bound wagon trail. There was a bit of trouble there because the frighters, in their desire to carry "spares" had bought a score of mules from a driver, only to lose them to a Texas man from whom they had been stolen and who tracked them across Indian Territory. Gray and his companion left the train and went alone. Later they joined trains for a time and at other times dared the wild country themselves, living off game and making their wagon repairs with ax and knife. "That country was too crowded, too" Gray said recently. "We saw some beautiful grass land but not much better than we left here. It was all taken up except some back in the mountains where it was too hard to get out. So the next year we drove back. I got married them, married a woman part Choctaw, and built my first house here in 84. We knew everybody within 50 miles and there weren't many. Had to to Lebanon in present Marshall county to Indian court to see about leasing land." It was not long before he had many cattle and horses and lots of hogs, Gray said. "We never fed those hogs," he added. They lived mostly on pecans on the creek. Made of sort of yellow meat but the best I ever tasted. We could have scooped up pecans by the bushel but we never did. Now they're worth about 31 cents a pound. One year Gray raised 1,200 bushels of corn on his cleared bottom land, gauged by the number of wagon loads hauled out of the fields. They drove the hogs to near present Pauls Valley after fattening them on corn, and sold them to Chan Garvin, Gray said. They brought from 2 to 3 cents a pound. Steers were worth $10 for yearlings, $15 for 2 year olds, bull calves $7 and heifers $5. Good horses, oddly enough were worth as much or more than they are now, and oxen brought a good price. In 1887 they had to get the oxen and plow fire breaks across the prairie and start backfires. A great fire which started near the Red River swept northward, jumping the beaten military tract from old Fort Arbuckle, westward toward Fort Sill and in many places the fire guards themselves. "That was a site" Gray recalled. "you'd look and look for hours and the fire wouldn't seem any closer. Then it'd be there right on you. It jumped in the air and caught way up ahead. It got in the tops of the trees along Wild Horse creek and they burned for days in the tops. We saved the place but lost most of the rail fences that Indian day law said had to be around fields." In 1897 Gray bought a homestead in the big land sale, a quarter section or 160 acres for $3.25 for grassland and $6.50 for bottom land. Then he got several pieces of surplus or unallotted land too. Later in Ardmore, he made successful bids for small plots of land to square off his holdings. Forty years ago, when the two territories were joined into the one state, he was "just a-workin", he thought not remembering exactly what he was doing in mid November of 1907. He had renters, plenty of labor and good teams; 14 cent corn and lots of it. Later he heard the talk of oil. He'd ride over and watch Pat Murphy work at his cable tool wildcat, some weeks cutting wood to fire the boiler, other weeks drilling, with finally a trace of oil about two years before the Pernell field came in. But never too close to Gray's land except once in 1933. Then in 1942 the land many times passed over gave up its store of crude. Now he can ride over in the car and see Gid, one of his sons, on his nearby farm. Mrs. Rosa Deck lives at 3217 N. McKinley in Oklahoma City; another daughter, Mrs. Georgia Barbe, lives at Portales, New Mexico. Three sons: W.R., T.R., ?? live at Littlefield near Lubbock, Texas. Mostly though George Gray just stays at home living in the present but enjoying a lot of the past, particularly those days before statehood in a new and uncrowded country.
The picture above is the marriage license of George Gray and his wife,
July 12, 1890 in Indian Territory.
This is a copy of the George Gray's Choctaw Enrollment card.
The picture on the left is of George Gray's headstone and on the right is that of his wife, Vinnie.
They are buried in the Dripping Springs
Cemetery on the very land that he was lotted by his indian allotment.
The land was for a cemetery of his family.
[ Permission to use photos by Brenda Choate.]
The following article was printed in the Daily Ardmorite on Thursday,
May 1, 1980 by Mac McGalliard
It is difficult to imagine these days how plentiful
the native game animals and birds were around Southern Oklahoma in Indian Territory days. After the last
of the wild buffalo were killed out in the 1870's, there were big numbers of deer, antelope, wild turkey, quail,
etc. One pioneer who saw that plentiful supply of wild game is shown with his family in the old photo in
Territory days. He was George Gray, grandfather of present day Ardmoreite Pres Gray, who moved to North Texas
with his family about 1879 and a year or two later entered Indian Territory into the area that is now northwest
Carter County near the present Ratliff City. George Gray lived around Ratliff City until his death at about
90. From the memories Pres can call up, and an article written by Roy P. Stewart in Nov. 1947, we can get
an idea of the old man's hunting experiences. He killed deer and sold venison to railroad construction camps
and military posts. He got $1 for a pair of venison hams, and $50 to $70 for a wagon load of venison salted
down. A deer hide brought 47 cents. Quail were so plentiful, the hunters didn't waste ammunition shooting
them. They simply herded the birds into nets, and filled barrels with them, salting the meat to prevent spoilage
enroute to market. Once Gray was paid a $20 gold piece for two barretls of quail. Mostly the quail
was shipped to eastern restaurants as a delicacy. George Gray told of the northwest Carter County and eastern
Stephens County area covered with stirrup=high native grasses, with trees only along the creeks. It was only
after the grasses were destroyed by burning and by farming and overgrazing that the oak and blackjack timber covered
the uplands. After the game was thinned out, Gray made a living for his family as a farmer and rancher, raising
cattle and hogs and planting crops in the fertile soil. He remembers a great prairie fire in 1887 that swept
from the Red River on the south to the Washita River on the north. He sold hogs for 2 to 3 cents a pound.
A yearling steer brought $10, and a two-year-old $15/ He sold corn for 14 cents a bushel, and pecans were
so cheap they weren't worth picking up. They let the hogs harvest the pecans. Gray was married twice,
and raised 10 children. Late in his life oil was discovered on his land.
Thanks Pres for sharing this Gray family lore with us. George Gray knew the bounty of Southern Oklahoma in
its primitive condition.
