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Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date:  [none given]
Name: Fannie Blythe Marks
Post Office:  Vinita, Oklahoma
Residence Address:  241 N. Thompson Street
Date of Birth:  1865
Place of Birth:  Enterprise, Missouri
Father:   James Chastine Blythe
Place of Birth:  
Information on father: Indian (Cherokee)
Mother:   Sarah Jemima Rogers
Place of birth:   
Information on mother:  Indian (Cherokee)
Field Worker: 
Interview #

Mrs. Blythe's story
I do not know the year my ancestors came to Oklahoma but they came at their own expense from Tennessee and Georgia.

The did farming, stock raising, merchandising and took part in politics. I am a housewife. I have held offices in the State Federation of Women's Club. "I suppose I am the longest living resident, in point of time, of Vinita. Have grown up with it".....

At the request of the Historical Society I have written and sent them articles on Tom Buffington, the only living Cherokee Chief, and on the Grant and Rogers families. And I am now working on the "Memories of Stephen Forman."

.............................................................
Vol. 65 page 2176
COBB, Isabelle DR. 
Cherokee Schools 13663

Living in Tahlequah at this time, 1870 , were Uncle James Blythe and Aunt Jemima (Rogers) and their girls, Love, Josie Ellen, Howard and Fannie. Elvira the oldest had married John Forman , son of Rev Stephen Forman of Park Hill. Love married and died soon. Josie a beautiful young woman latter married a man named Cass and became the mother of Bruce and Ethel Cass. Cousin Josie's second husband was Dr. Arnold by whom she had one child - a daughter, who later became the wife of of Mayor of Bartlesville. Buck by name. After the death of Cass, she Josie married George Keeler a wealthy man of Bartlesville whose first wife was also our mother's cousin Clare Gilstrap who left a son Fred Keeler.

Ellen Blythe - Howard we called her, married Wm. Miller, lives in Bartlesville, had three children. Fannie married...... Marks, lived in Vinita and has a son that is M. D. Her daughter Marjorie married but died young of Cancer.

Father found a place on the prairie in Cooweescoowee Dist 10 Miles north of Fort Gibson - the Steadman place with a spring as the main attraction... only 10 A of land in cultivation, a log cabin for a kitchen and bed and living room; another log cabin chicken house a log spring house, and the hull or frame of a new cabin with roof extendign over for a porch and ktichen. (we made them).

We hung up quilts and blankets and father laid a floor of rough planks to make a room in which to welcome a the new comer.....

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Sharon (Pappin) Clement, August 2001.