Margaret Moves the Family to Oklahoma

The Move to Oklahoma

Reuben and Susan Amanda (Smart) Taylor had found land available northwest of Port in western Oklahoma. Reuben determined the soil there was very good for farming and moved his family.

Sometime later [around 1897] Margaret, then a widow, moved to Port, Oklahoma with her eleven children. Pete Kenny and Rachel (Smart) Kenny came along with their toddler, Jessie Leonard.

They all came in a covered wagon, driving their livestock alongside. Bruce Womble of nearby Clinton was on this trip and told several stories in later years of the journey, the Indians, and other hardships encountered.

At one point Pete Kenney drew his six-shooter on some Indians that were holding some of their stray cattle. He talked them into "behaving" and they moved on.
[Ronnie! What was the event or logic that made Margaret and them move to Clinton instead of staying in Port with Rueben and where they eventually were buried?]

The Land in Oklahoma

Property Map ~ Homestead Doc ~ Sales Doc ~ View West (May 2004) ~ View South (May '04) ~ Homestead Act Info

l-r: George, Martha, Rachel, and Margaret. Fred LeBouc and Pete Kenney are in their buggies.

[Property map]

 

Homesteading in Oklahoma:

Around 1900, Margaret paid her $12 and filed a claim on a quarter-section of land west of Clinton, Oklahoma--a few miles north of Port. The land is on the Washita River northwest of the Union schoolhouse (no longer there) and southeast of Stafford. She received a "patent" on this land in 1905 after "proving up" in compliance to the provisions of the Homestead Act.

The house was situated just northeast of the bend in the river just south of the Rufus Phillape family. Later, it had to be moved up the hill to make room for a Panhandle Santa Fe Railroad line (since removed) as it rounded the bend at the river.

Margaret left the property to the twins when she died in 1909. They sold it in 1920 for $5500.

The History of Washita/Clinton

Clinton sits among rolling red hills and cottonwood-lined creeks on the old Interstate Hwy. 66 (Now Hwy. 40) about ninety miles due west of Oklahoma City in Custer County. This area was part of the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands opened to pioneers in a land rush of April 19th, 1892. The county was named after General George Armstong Custer in 1896.

Clinton, at first called Washita Junction, was founded in 1903 at the intersection of the east-west Rock Island Railroad and the north-south "Bes" Line.

After a great deal of mudslinging in the newspapers between the Arapaho Indians and Washita Junction developers--and an act of Congress--the land was purchased from the Indians. The Townsite Company lost little time having the Washita Townsite surveyed and an intensive advertising campaign conducted over much of the nation telling of the sale on June 3, 4, and 5, 1903. Both the Rock Island and the "Bes" lines ran excursion trains into the town on the days of the sale. The town was swamped.

It became a city almost overnight after the sale. Three buildings stood in Clinton on the day the town was opened. The first was the building of the Custer County Chronicle, which was moved from nearby Weatherford. The Townsite office was erected on Frisco Avenue, and the First National Bank building was constructed at the corner of Fourth and Frisco.

When the post office refused to accept the name of Washita, the townspeople changed the name to Clinton in honor of Judge Clinton Irwin.