The area of my birthplace and residence is located near Amarillo Texas.
My Great-Great Grandmother Rebecca Jane McGhee was a Muscogee from the area known as Poarch Creek in Alabama who married my GG Grandfather who himself was a mixed blood Tsalagi. Little is known about her, except for the fact that she was born around the year of 1845 and sometimes is found in documents under the name "Nancy."
There are several tools that I publish as a way to assist you in your quest that may be of use, one is a lookups page for Cherokee Census Rolls, and there is also some very excellent Free Genealogy Charts and worksheets provided to help keep you organized.
If you have Vital Records available to share, or perhaps other information, please consider contributing to our Archives as a way to help others in their own research.
If you have a webpage with information that you would like to share, then please submit your links to be included here for others to enjoy.
Your help is greatly appreciated! -Thank You!
Official Papers
1889 -- a federal court was established at Muskogee. Unions
of many white settlers will be found from 1890 to 1907 (statehood).
1890 -- a federal court was established at Ardmore
These were later divided into four
districts with 26 substations. They are:
Northern District, established in 1895, covered the area of the Cherokee and the Quapaw Agency, with Vinita as the court seat.
Central District, established in 1895, covered the area with Muskogee as the court seat.
Southern District, established in 1895, covered the area of the Choctaw and Chickasaw , with South McAlester (now called McAlester) as the court seat.
Western District, established in 1897, covered the area of the Chickasaw, with Ardmore as the court seat.
From about 1890 until statehood in November of 1907, unions of
white and black citizens in the area were listed in the various
districts of the U.S. federal court.
Filings (if either the bride
or bridegroom was a citizen) prior to 1890 will be found in the official
holdings. They are scattered and no known index exists to them.
A white man who married a female member became adopted and was listed as an intermarried citizen. The number of these folks
increased so rapidly that strict laws were enacted regarding these unions. The
cost of a license was expensive and at one time it amounted to $100 with the Choctaws.
Among the Cherokees, a man had to get 10 individuals to vouch for his good
character. A white man coming into the area to work was required to take out a
license or permit, and its cost varied according to the business. Ordinary laborers paid
only a small fee, while peddlers, mechanics and professional men had to pay much more.
All the groups passed laws forbidding the leasing of land to white men, but in all of
them the laws were broken. A tribal citizen could employ a white man as a laborer to work
on a farm and could make a contract that the fellow would have a share of the crops
instead of a wage in money.
A little info. . .
The cousins of Muskhogean linguistic stock, had adopted
fragment groups since early times. They contained
members from the Koasati, Hitchiti, Natchez, Apalachicola, Alabama, Tuskegee and
Euchee. All of these, with the exception of the Yuchis, belonged to the
Muskhogean language group.
The populace had begun arriving in the region since the early 1830's, mostly from
Alabama.
The 1867 constitution divided the area into six districts -- Okmulgee,
Coweta, Muskogee, Deep Fork, Eufaula and Wewoka. Its Council elected a judge for
each district, the principal chief appointed six district attorneys with the approval of
the council, and the voters of each district elected a captain and four privates to serve
as a light-horse police force. Trial by jury was provided for civil and criminal cases.
All suits at law in which the amount in dispute was more than $100 were tried by the
Supreme Court, composed of five justices named by the Council for terms of four
years.
The vicinity was known for fertile land that attracted wild
game and farmers to the Three Forks area (near what is now Muskogee) and close to the
Canadian River (adjacent to what is now Eufaula). Asbury
Mission had been established in 1847 and several villages grew up and flourished there. North Fork Town grew and was important until the Missouri, Kansas
Railroad was built in 1871. After a station was constructed at Eufaula, the
older towns moved to the tracks. The towns of North Fork Town and Micco Post Office
vanished, while Eufaula grew. The St. Louis and San Francisco RR (a successor of the
Atlantic and Pacific) extended its line to Tulsa in 1882 and to Sapulpa in 1886.
From the close of the Civil War in 1865 to the admission of
the state to the Union as a state in 1907, the circumstances of the eastern half of the
present-state of OK is quite different from that of the western section. When the
Five Civilized Tribes ceded their lands as a home for friendly allies of the Plains, they really
divided IT into two nearly equal parts.
After 1890, the western portion became known as OK
and the eastern part was called IT. These areas were nearly the same size, but were quite unlike geographically and politically.
The citizens did not pay taxes in the ordinary sense of the
word. Money to support the government and schools came from annuities, from the
license fees, coal royalties from the Outlet lands in the case of the Cherokees, and from
some other sources.
The number of whites in this area steadily increased. In
1880 it was estimated that there were 6,000 in the area,
not including railway workers and certain other laborers, whom the tribal officers
had allowed to remain. The U.S. government tried to remove those who had no permits, but
they usually came back again. By 1884, the number in this area was estimated at
25,000. In 1890, between 120,000 and 140,000. As new transportation was built into the region more arrived. By 1895, they were estimated at 300,000 and by
1900 there was a population of nearly 400,000 and only 70,000 aboriginals.
