I have written about my Great Grandmother Carrie before. Back when I did the original blog I did not have a scanner and I did not have as many wonderful pictures of her. As I mentioned in the original blog she was a school teacher. In this blog I try to document what little I have been able to find about her teaching.
One of the schools she taught at was the Requah school in Mayes County.
Here is a picture of that school.
Of course this is long after Grandma Carrie worked there and obviously after the school had closed. This photo was shared with me from an old family friend/neighbor. He allowed me to borrow it long enough to have it scanned. The family history is that the school Grandma worked at was an Indian school. But all I had was the name from the fallen sign. So I got busy looking online to see if there was anything documented.
After much digging I found some photos of this school from Mayes County near Strang Oklahoma. The photos are in a scrap book that documents some of the area history during the World War II time period. The school was still active during that time frame and it served a farming population. This photo is one of several in that scrap book. The school building is visible in several of them so I was able to confirm that this was the same building as from the closed school from above.
If you are interested, I have added the location below where I found this wonderful scrap book. There are several more photos and a very impressive description of how these children did their part to help win the war.
All I had at this point was the School name and location. After a bit of digging I was able to find a very interesting story that gave just a tiny bit of information. That information was from a person that grew up in that area when Oklahoma was still Indian Territory. It does help confirm the family history that REQUAH was an Indian school.
Here is a portion of a page from the digital libraries at OU from an interview done with Jenks Ross on Sept 5, 1969. Jenks Ross was a black man. His father, Joseph "Stick" Ross, was a slave owned by Chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation and was a well known Freedman. This is from page 17 of the transcribed interview.
"A whole lot of thing happened up and down that Grand River." Yeah. I used to fish there at the Grand River outside from Strang, Lynch's Prairie. There's a school that we call Requah School House. We didn't live far from it. That's where the Indians went to school. In all of my traveling, I'm about 87 years old, and I never had any trouble with no body."
One of the later pages talks about the fact that Mr. Ross grew up with the Cherokee Indians. His first language was Cherokee, not English. Mr. Ross did not attend Requah school he attended an all black Seminary that the Cherokees ran. The Lynch's Prairie that he mentions was a small Freedman's settlement in the same area.
I find this all interesting because he would have lived there near the time that Grandma Carrie would have been living and teaching there. I wonder how many of her students also did not speak English as their first language? Did she speak or understand any Cherokee? In the 1900 Wyandotte census she was almost 16 years old and still living with her parents. I haven't found her in the 1910 census, but the 1920 census shows her married and living in Dawson Township. (Dawson has since been swallowed up by Tulsa and there is little left to show it was once it's own town. The Elementary school my girls attended and where I worked was in Dawson and the school did teach some of the old town's history.)
There is much that I still don't know. It is difficult to locate history about 100 years old just from sitting at my computer. The next thing that I am trying to find is when she worked at this school. I know she married in 1914 in Miami Oklahoma. I don't know when she started teaching but family history says that once she married she had to give up being a teacher.
I do have a photo of her from Oct 15, 1909 at the Long School. The writing on it states that there are 65 pupils enrolled. Grandma is the adult woman standing in front and just to the right of center with a dark apron on. Some of the students appear to be as old as her. I haven't found anything about where this school was located but I haven't spent as much time searching it.
This searching takes place in spurts when I have the time and I am moved to dig through page after page of stuff online.
I don't know the year of this picture or where it was taken. I do know that Grandma Carrie is the lady sitting on the ledge. Everyone in the photo appears to be about the same age. Is this a school group or maybe a church group? It is a nice brick building.
This search can be slow to give results but I am learning some very interesting things about Indian Territory and early Oklahoma history.
Seems like I remember someone telling me that the photo of her in the group, where she is sitting on the ledge, was her graduation photo from teaching school. I could be wrong... that is just a dusty old memory. I also think Mary and I ran across a graduation certificate from said school. I will ask her about it. Then again, maybe I just dreamed all this up? I love these pictures and the history of our family. Thanks, Debbie!
ReplyDeleteHi, I am very familiar with Requah school, my family used to live very close to the Spavinaw cemetery and all of my aunts and uncles (11) attended both Requah and Strang High School which was the stone building just behind Requah. I remember the wonderful pie and cake auctions as well as the Christmas parties that were held there. such good times for the Reed family, as I remember Requah used to have two pot bellied coal stoves inside and a bell tower on the roof. I am now 82 years old.
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