The archives have coughed up some more interesting information about Clay County, too much of it not properly
identified. The following seems to have been printed by the Henrietta Independent in 1945 and was written by a former
Clay Countian
“MEMORIES OF CLAY COUNTY”
J. E. WAGNER, NEWTON CENTRE, MASSACHUSETTS
“CHISHOLM TRAIL”
One can read in histories about the time of the vast herds of Texas cattle driven across the Indian Territory in the
‘80's and until the Rock Island and Santa Fe Railroads put an end to it. What interests me right now is the fact that the
Chisholm Trail used by these herds started in Clay County mainly and was fed by shorter and less famous Texas trails
leading up from the interior of Texas, where cattle were produced by the hundreds of thousands, but for which there was
no market. I have no means at hand to tell just when the Chisholm Trail was started but, of course, it was just when the
railroad from the East arrived just north of the throbbing heart of the Texas beef supply.
Herds came through our part of Clay County to make real problems for us, to cross Red River somewhere near
Ringgold and then to go on up Beaver Creek and measurably to survey the way for the Rock Island Railroad, which
came south in the early ‘90's. It crossed and made necessary the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893 and the rapid
growth of towns like Enid, El Reno, Chickasha, and on down through Duncan, Rush Springs, Ryan and so into Texas.
This yarn would be too personal to tell but for the fact that it is so typical of those early times. What happened to
me and mine happened to thousands of everyday people like us in the ‘90's
The Cleveland depression, so called but wrongly, put a crimp in Henrietta’s growth. Until 1894, the County Clerk’s
office, which was then also the Registrar’s office, was good for about $4500.00 a year and in those days that was real
money. But in 1896 it had dwindled to little more than $1500.00 a year. Property was not changing hands, deeds were
not being made or filed for record, and the clerk lived on what came in. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, of which
I was pastor, suffered. I had to find a new charge and finally went to Ryan, where a neat little church offered me the
princely sum of $65 a year to become their pastor.
Walker Ryan, the leading citizen of the community, had married a thirty-second Cherokee woman, who gave him
the right to fence all the land he could and he finally had more than 16,000 acres of Red River bottom land fenced and
in cotton cultivation by white renters. He was an elder in the Ryan church, a devout and intelligent man. His twenty
dollars a month paid nearly half the pastor’s salary. But the depression caught up with Ryan and another thing caught
up with me. “The aunt who had reared Mrs. Wagner as one of her own children died near Norman, leaving several small
children. Their father urged us to move to his farm near Norman, care for his children, raise a crop on free land and we
consented to do it.
I was twenty-five and my wife was four years younger. To get to the farm we had to cross Indian Territory , or nearly
150 miles of it, and the most direct way was up the Chisholm Trail to Mineo and then directly east to a crossing on the
South Canadian, which was but two miles from the farm.
A good friend loaned me a farm wagon and a team of mules for the trip. I had no cash for railroad freight. The
wagon had been specially built for freighting furniture and it held what we had with plenty of room left for my family of my
wife, my one-year old daughter, and my orphan sister who was with us.
Our furniture was an easy load except through a deep sandy region about eight miles wide. It was October and
fortunately no rain. We made about twenty miles the first day over pretty good road. We camped beside the road,
cooked over an open fire, with the bedding laid out on the ground. The next day we reached the vicinity of Duncan and
for several miles drove along the Chisholm Trail, where trail wagons had beaten out rutted roads in places half a mile
wide.
Later, as we reached the divide country between the Washita and South Canadian Rivers, the trail marks were
plainer. Often there would be sections several miles across where the soil had been torn up, blown or washed away and
practically nothing grew along a mile-wide trailway. “And there were long distances without a tree or a shrub in sight.
One evening we camped beside the railroad track where it crossed a draw and there was water, and we just had to have
a fire to cook something to eat. The only wood anywhere was railroad cross ties, or posts for the wire fence that kept
cattle off the right-of-way. There were buffalo chips to be sure, but my young wife put her foot down solidly that she’d
not cook over such a fire. She still knows how to put her foot down, too.
So I worked at a fence post until I got it loosened and then, using a hatchet, managed to clear the wire from it
without breaking it. Then we had a fire as guests of the Rock Island Railroad. We were six days on the road. When we
reached the farm the team was a little lighter and ready for a rest. Our camp bedding was dusty, if not grimy. We were
all fed up with camp-cooked food. Uncle Wrin Britt’s girls had a supper ready for un, and in it were turnip greens,
potatoes, boiled pig knuckles, corn bread and fresh milk. There were beds enough for all of us with more than two to
each bed. It was a three room house, but we were at home and contented.
A week later I headed south to return the team and wagon and went on to Newport, where my father had ready for
me a four-horse team, wagon, feed for the horses and a few farm tools. Two of the horses were four years old and
unbroken to anything but the saddle. I made the trip up the Chisholm Trail that time in pretty nearly record time,
camping by the roadside alone. It was an easy trip. I was twenty-five then and tough muscled. I’d not like to do it again.”
Submitted by Lucille Glasgow