Recently in Oklahoma::History Category

The Boley Progress. (Boley, Indian Terr.), Vol. 1, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 6, 1905 - Page 1 of 4 - The Gateway to Oklahoma History

From a front page editorial in a newspaper urging black settlement in and around Boley, Indian Territory. "In the states today where the affairs are controlled by Democratic legislatures the hand of tyranny is felt by the Negro. In the states where the Republicans are in authority the Negro has a full exercise of his political rights. The old Republican party has ever been faithful and true to its principals taught.... The great Republican party, with President Theodore Roosevelt at its head, has ever been for the protection of the Afro-American. There has been no discrimination. They have, when expedient, appointed Negroes to positions of honor and trust."

Related, from the same day's Muskogee Cimeter, a black-owned newspaper:

"Negroes who worked for the democrat ticket are not worth their room in hell and the sooner these cusses get home to their Master, the devil, the better it will be for the race."

And from page 4, "Muskogee is a republican town that elects democrat officials because the republicans are such d--n fools they cannot get together. The Negroes were loyal to the ticket in the main but the great majority of white republicans refused to vote the ticket because there were Negroes on it...."

Conversation Catoosa | Oscar Hammerstein's map of Rogers County | Facebook

While in NYC for vacation, Tim Brown spotted Oscar Hammerstein II's hand-drawn map of Rogers County in a New York City museum, showing railroads, towns, and creeks, a reference for Hammerstein as he wrote the libretto for Oklahoma!

Oscar_Hammerstein-Rogers_County-Oklahoma-Map.jpg

(339) Haskell State School of Agriculture | lost-colleges

One of six agricultural junior colleges authorized by the first Oklahoma legislature, but defunded in 1917, the campus sat at the east end of College Ave. in Broken Arrow, and the main building was used by the school district until demolition in 1989. The home of college president J. S. Esslinger, which also served as a girls' dormitory, stood on the SE corner of 5th and College until 2018. LostColleges.com covers 11 schools in Oklahoma and hundreds nationwide, describing the history of each school and the status of any brick and mortar remaining. Essays on the site describe the ripples of loss to a community emanating from the closure of a small college and the stages of decay of a campus's physical remnants. The site is curated by Paul Batesel, an emeritus professor of English at Mayville State University in North Dakota. His introductory essay describes his motivation and where he searches for information.

Television Digest's map of television stations and network routes: 1955 - Digital Collections - Oklahoma State University

Before satellites, TV networks used coax cables and microwave links to relay programming from station to station across the country. This map shows lists TV stations in 1955 and shows the routes that programming followed. A trunk line snaked its way west, roughly parallel to I-70 to Kansas City, then followed the Kansas Turnpike to Wichita and I-35 to OKC and Dallas, with a branch from near Stillwater to Tulsa. At this time, Tulsa had two stations (KOTV 6, KVOO 2), while Muskogee's KTVX 8 would later move to Tulsa as KTUL, while Enid's KGEO 5 would move to Oklahoma City to become KOCO. But stations in Ada (KTEN) and Lawton (KSWO) would remain independent. The number of UHF stations (channels 14 and higher) are surprising.

Scoping Out The Future Home of Reba McEntire's "Reba's Place" | Saving Country Music

"To be called Reba's Place, it will include a restaurant, bar, music venue, and retail store. It will be the home of all things Reba, including many pieces of personal memorabilia from her career. Though Atoka is a town of only 3,000 people and may seem like a strange place to build such an establishment, the town is situated right at the confluence of Federal Highway 75 coming up from Dallas and down from Tulsa, and Federal Highway 69 coming down from Muskogee, which receives a good bit of traffic.

"But the old three-story brick Masonic Temple Reba McEntire has purchased is just a couple of blocks from Federal Highway 75, and will certainly attract folks back to downtown, where there are already multiple businesses trying to bring the area back."

Enid: 2005 architecture tour sites | enidnews.com

Bookmarked for the next time I'm in Enid: A list of historic buildings in the capital city of Oklahoma's wheat belt for an architectural tour that was held on August 14, 2005, sponsored by the Greater Enid Arts and Humanities Council. This list and the accompanying article were published in the August 7, 2005, edition of the Enid News.

On the list is the Bamboo Club, a dance hall that hosted Bob Wills on Christmas day 1964, followed by Billy Parker and His Western Swing Band on New Year's Eve, and Conway Twitty two days later. Enid native and western swing saxophonist Rudy Martin performed with Ray Price at the Bamboo Club, which led to an opportunity to tour with him, and later worked several years with Leon McAuliffe. (That's Rudy Martin singing the "Baby Bear" part on the far left in this Ozark Jubilee performance of "The Three Bears," with Keith Coleman, Chet Calcote, and Leon McAuliffe.) Here's the obituary of Bamboo Club owner Bill Pauline, Jr.

Hastain's township plats of the Creek Nation : Hastain, E : Internet Archive

This handbook has a pair of pages for each 36 sq. mi. township showing which citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation citizen was allotted each parcel. The letters before the roll number on each parcel indicate the allottee's status:

C = Creek Indian
F = Freedman
MC = Minor Creek
MF = Minor Freedman
NBC = New Born Creek
NBF = New Born Freedman

It's fascinating to see how much land was allotted to freedmen -- descendants of slaves who had belonged to Creek citizens and were freed by the 1866 post-Civil War treaty.

"Senator Gore's Opinion of New Election Law," The Tulsa Democrat. (Tulsa, Okla.), Vol. 10, No. 14, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 15, 1909 - Page 5 of 8 - The Gateway to Oklahoma History

Democratic U. S. Senator Thomas Gore expresses his support for the new election law in Oklahoma, approved by the majority Democrats over the objection of the Republicans. As evidence that the Democrats are committed to honest elections, Gore says, "If they [Democrats] had been disposed to tamper with the ballot box, they would possibly have begun with the negro commissioner in Wagoner [County] and the negro representative in Logan [County]." Sen. Gore explains that the Oklahoma law is only going as far as Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in disenfranchising African-American voters "within the purview and limitations of the Fifteenth Amendment." Gore warns, "The negroes hold the balance of power in fourteen counties today and will soon hold the balance of power in fourteen more." Gore claims that Lincoln would have opposed giving African-Americans the vote, had he lived, and concludes, "The democrats and the Lincoln republicans will assuredly make common cause in Oklahoma to preserve and perpetuate Saxon supremacy and Caucasian superiority."

Founder of Braum's Ice Cream and Dairy Stores passes away | 5newsonline.com

"William Henry (Bill) Braum, the founder of Braum's Ice Cream and Dairy Stores, passed away at his home in Tuttle, OK, on Monday, March 23 [,2020]. He was 92.

"Bill Braum was an innovator in the marketing of dairy products. He was a dairyman, farmer, processor, manufacturer, and retailer of dairy products....

"Early in his life, he began helping his father, Henry, in the family business - a small butter and milk processing plant in Emporia. In the 1930s, Henry added ice-cream processing to the operation.

"After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1949 with a B.S. in Business Administration, Bill went to work full time for his father...."

Braum and his father built the Peter Pan Ice Cream chain in Kansas, Braum sold the stores in 1967, and began building a new chain under his own name, based out of Oklahoma City. I can recall a Peter Pan store near my great-grandmother's house in Coffeyville, on the NE corner of 8th and Spruce (now the Natural Food Center), and one in Claremore, south of the park on the west side of town, where OK 20 turns south (now Francesco's Italian Restaurant). Interesting to learn that Braum's is vertically integrated -- still making ice cream and dairy products from Braum's own herds near Tuttle and Shattuck.

Bartlesville Area History Museum : Online Collections

Archive of 2,274 scanned items, including photos, documents, newspaper clippings relating to Bartlesville, Dewey, and Washington County.