Part 3: 160 Acres in All
My daddy, taken in the late 1950s.
The first claim chosen by Walter Catlege was just west of a part of Oklahoma that would later be known as Trousdale. In the 1944 telling of his story, Catlege mentions the town, but if you were to look on a map of Oklahoma today you wouldn’t find it. The town that was named after the sheriff of Pottawatomie County is now considered one of Oklahoma’s more than 100 ghost towns.
For as far back into my childhood as I can remember there hung a painting in the living room of my grandparents’ home in Lexington, Okla., an arts-and-crafts monstrocity that depicted in primary color detail a cowboy walking along a dirt road. His head hung low, and along his path were shacks and picket fences and a curve in the dirt that led to a large shop, presumably either a post office or general store. The painting was a persistent fixture in my memory, so much so that I can even recall exactly where it hung for almost 20 years (alongside various other relics of folk art including faux-rusted tin Coca-Cola signs and the black-and-white photo seen here) but I never thought much about it until I found it hanging in the music room of my father’s house, entirely out of place. It was then that I learned the story of Trousdale, Oklahoma ghost town and birthplace of my grandfather.
The next morning Avants and I rode over to the Pete Greemore spring, about a mile to the northeast, where we found a number of settlers who had come to get water. Among the men was Tom Griffin, a white man who had married a Pottawatomie woman and who had been alloted land on the north side of Salt Creek, a mile north of the spring. In conversation with Griffin I told him I would give him that saddle horse I was riding if he would locate me on a claim with some good bottom land. He replied that he could and we rode over and looked at a tract of 120 acres adjoining his. This suited me and I told Griffin I would take it and for him to inform others that the land had been taken. This 120 is in section 26, 7n, 2e, and I also staked my claims to a forty in the adjoining section n the east, making 160 acres in all.
Avants and I then started to Oklahoma City to file on the land. We made it to the Big Jim crossing on Little River that night where we camped, using our saddle blankets for beds and saddles for pillows. The country then abounded in wild game and we could hear the wild animals around us that night in Little River Bottom.
We started early the next morning through the woods and across the prairies and ate breakfast in Moore, probably twelve miles from where we camped on Little River. Arriving at the land office in Oklahoma City we were informed that the filing fee was $14.50. We only had $14.00 between us. Therefore there was only one thing to do; I must go back home and pick some cotton before I could file. I returned to Johnsonville, got my family and pulled up my tent and went home to gather my crop.
To be continued…
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