Indian Pioner Papers - Mattie Baker

Submitted by Brenda Choate  bcchoate@yahoo.com

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                    Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers
                                      
                                Mattie Baker
                                      
     Interview #8494
     Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
     Date: September 16, 1937
     Name: Mrs. Mattie Baker
     Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
     Date of Birth: March 17, 1872
     Place of Birth:  Arkansas
     Father:  W. L. Roady, born in Tennessee
     Mother:  Margaret Smithon, born in Tennessee
     
                                      
     I, Mrs. Mattie Baker was born in 1872 in Arkansas.  I came to the
     Indian Territory with my father and mother in 1888.  We came from
     Arkansas in a covered wagon.  we first settled at Pauls Valley and
     my father rented some land on the east side of the railroad track
     at Pauls Valley.  The first year we were here, my father had the
     land where the east side of Pauls Valley is now sown in wheat.
     There was a grist mill there and according to older settlers as
     well as myself this mill was put there by Zack Gardner in the early
     seventies.  My father farmed at Pauls Valley two years and then we
     moved southwest of Pauls Valley about ten miles, where my father
     had bought a lease.
     
     There wasn't any school in that part of the country, so with help
     from some of our neighbors, my father built the first school in
     that part of the country.  It was a log school house built of split
     logs and with wooden pegs driven into other logs for seats.  I went
     to this school and we only had Blue Back Spellers for books.    The
     school only held six months out of the year and it cost one dollar
     and fifty cents a month for each child sent.  This school was named
     for my father and was called Roady School.
     
     When we came to Pauls Valley we had to ford the Washita River at
     Zack Gardner's Mill.  There was a ferry crossing at Cherokee Town
     at the time we came to Pauls Valley.
     
     I married R.P. Baker after we had been at Pauls Valley a few years
     and he told me that he and his brother came to Pauls Valley in
     1872.  They were orphan boys and he was only sixteen, and the
     younger of the two.  He said when they came here this was a wild
     country and that there was a stage line running from Caddo to Fort
     Sill through Pauls Valley and that it was dangerous for a white man
     to start west from Pauls Valley by himself as the Comanche Indians
     were bad.  He and his brother helped put up hay along this stage
     line, between Pauls Valley and Fort Sill, and after the railroad
     came through this stage line was stopped.
     
     My husband put in the first livery stable at Pauls Valley.  My
     husband was also in the grocery business at Brady.  At that time
     there were two stores, a blacksmith shop and a gin at Brady.  There
     were lost of people trading at this little place.   After
     automobiles came in they killed those little towns as people went
     to trading at the larger places where they could buy their
     groceries cheaper.
     
     I now live at my home on the southwest side of Pauls Valley.