| Notes |
- Stories written by Mary Elizabeth Barnes for the Wiseman Family and Allied lines book. I found these stories very interesting since I am one of the cousins from Lawton, Oklahoma and have other family who obtained land in the Oklahoma Land Rush. My notes are added in italics. -Sandra Harrison
?When land opened up in Oklahoma, they (Robert and Elizabeth) decided to join Lizzie's family already living there. Her brother William M. Hayes was a judge in Ryan, Oklahoma and several of her cousins lived in Lawton. About 1905, Rob, Lizzie and baby Rachel left for Memphis on their way west, where they encountered the Cholera quarantine. After a week in Memphis they took the train west, only to be set upon by outlaws. They arrived in Oklahoma penniless. Nevertheless they were able to acquire land and build a cabin. Later Lizzie said that they had to keep an eye out for the Indians, not for fear of harm, but because they stole the family?s chickens. In 1906 in Mangum, Oklahoma, another daughter Ethel was born. Rob heard a noise outside and saw a tornado approaching. They had a storm cellar in a nearby bank, so Rob grabbed Lizzie, baby Ethel and the mattress and headed for the storm cellar. Lizzie later said that as she lay there listening to the storm roar by, she looked up in the rafters and there, coiled up was a bull snake looking back at her. She said she and the snake eyed each other till the storm blew past. Rob, after carrying his family back to the cabin, got his shotgun and killed the snake. This apparently helped convince him that this was not a good place to raise a family, so by 1907 when their third daughter Edna was born they were living in Ryan, Oklahoma near Lizzie?s brother William. By 1908 they were back at Dark Hollow in Warren County, Tennessee. In 1910 they were in Burt, Cannon County, Tennessee.?
[1]
|
1882 - 1968 (85 years)
[1, 2] 
