View the 2006 Companion Reader

Chautauqua 2006
Good evening, and welcome to the 2006 Tulsa Chautauqua. The Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa is pleased to
bring you the finest in living history re-enactors, providing life-long learning to the residents of Northeastern Oklahoma.
We are especially pleased to be able to provide this program free of charge, thanks to the generosity of the Oklahoma
Humanities Council and our presenting sponsor, The Mervin Bovaird Foundation. We also thank the additional
sponsors listed on the back of this program.
Special thanks to OSU-Tulsa for providing this wonderful event space and tent, as well as very helpful staff and
volunteers. And to ORU for printing the Companion Reader.
I would also like to acknowledge our Chautauqua Committee chaired by Mark Barcus, as well as our Chautauqua
Coordinator, Angela Fox, who work diligently to make this the largest (and best) living history program in the State
of Oklahoma!
Oklahoma begins its Centennial Celebration in November. And we at Chautauqua like to think of ourselves, in the
best tradition of Sooners, as the kick-off event for a yearlong celebration. Our “Oklahoma” theme will repeat in 2007
with a host of new characters.
We hope you enjoy your time with us this year, and we look forward to seeing you again in 2007.
Warmest regards,
Ken Busby
Executive Director & CEO
Memorials, honorariums, and other endowment contributions may be made payable to:
Tulsa Community Foundation
7010 South Yale, Suite 110
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74136
— Or —
The Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa
2210 South Main Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74114
Sponsors
In its 15th continuous year, the Tulsa Chautauqua is a program
of the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa. Funding is provided
in part by a challenge grant from the Oklahoma Humanities
Council and the National Endowment of the Humanities. Major
support for this program is provided by the following:
The Mervin Bovaird Foundation
Oklahoma State University-Tulsa
Crowe & Dunlevy
Lorene Cooper Hasbrouck Charitable Trust
Oral Roberts University
DoubleTree Hotel Downtown
Chautauqua Committee Members 2005-2006
Mark Barcus, Chair
Angela Fox, Program Director
Harry Dandelles
Lynnette Erhardt
Nancy Feldman
Gini Fox
Eleanore Graham
Marilyn Inhofe-Tucker
Chris Kirt
Jeffery Maxwell
Patty McNeer
Marilyn Mitchell
Sandy Moore
Victoria Peterson
Debbie Rank
Kate Reeves
Paula Settoon
Kim Smith
Laurie Sundborg
Mike Williams
Martin Wing
_________________________________________
Layout/Design by Judy Sigl
Photographs by John Fancher
Separating Fact from Fiction
by Karen Vuranch
Belle Starr:
Karen Vuranch weaves together a love of history, a passion for stories and a sense of community. Karen has toured throughout the
US with her traditional storytelling and living history performances and has completed five performance tours of Wales and England
with Coal Camp Memories. She also participated in storytelling exchange in China in 2002. In addition, she recreates author Pearl
Buck; labor organizer Mother Jones; Indian captive Mary Draper Ingles, Civil War soldier and spy Emma Edmonds, humanitarian
Clara Barton, Renaissance pirate Grace O’Malley and performs a WWII play, Homefront. Karen has been honored by many
organizations including the Corridor Tourism Commission, receiving the Robert C. Byrd Community Service Award in April of 2005.
Other honors include the McWhorter Achievment Award from the West Virginia Storytelling Guild; Performing Artist of the Year
for Tamarack, the West Virginia state arts center; the Spirit of West Virginia Award from the state tourism office and the Celebrate
Women Award from the Women’s Commission of the West Virginia Legislature. And, in 1994, Karen and her husband Gene
Worthington performed together at the Ellipse Theatre at the White House. On her audio tape, “My Grandmother’s Necklace,”
Karen performs stories she has written and collected. She is currently in production with a new CD of the stories and song show
Potluck: Stories and Songs about Women, Wisdom and Food, which she performs with Julie Adams and Colleen Anderson.
“I am a friend to any
brave and gallant outlaw.”
Belle Starr in a Dallas Morning News interview, published June 7, 1886.
The phrase The Wild West describes a unique time and place in
American history. It evokes images of wagon trains and gunslingers,
lawmen and outlaws. It was a fairly brief period, lasting from
approximately 1860 to 1890, but one that continues to capture our
imagination. Perhaps it is because of the recklessness required to
defy authority. Maybe it holds our interest because it was a time of
self-reliant individuals. Regardless, both the legends and the facts of
the Wild West engage our modern curiosity. There were many people
who embodied the spirit of the Old West and one of those larger than
life characters was Belle Starr. Known as The Bandit Queen or The
Petticoat Terror of the Plains, Belle Starr has taken her place in history
among the outlaws and desperados of what was then known as Indian
Territory and what is now the state of Oklahoma.
It is difficult today to separate the fact from the fiction of Belle Starr’s
life. Dime novels published at the time sensationalized her outrageous
escapades and her name became synonymous with robbery, horse
theft and outlaw gangs. She was reputed to have ridden with Frank
and Jesse James, given birth to a baby by the notorious outlaw Cole
Younger, and enjoyed riding through towns shooting her six-gun. She
was said to have worked in dance halls and casinos, dealing cards for
faro games. And, she was the Black Widow of the West, when all three
of her husbands (or was it four?), as well as several male admirers,
met with violent death. But how much of these stories are conjecture,
created by sensational newspapers and a public avid for scandal
and intrigue? Her neighbors reported her to be a generous woman,
helping the sick when needed. In a contemporary interview, one of
her neighbors, Fredrick Barde, said, “People knew her to be merely
a harborer of thieves…even had a bit of sympathy for her. She was
human to the heart, and in the thinly settled region where she lived, no
woman was more generous to the sick and the unfortunate…..There
are still persons living in old Indian Territory who feel she was more
sinned against than sinning….the victim of surroundings from which she
could not escape.” Was Belle Starr simply a woman making her way
in the rough and tumble times of the Old West or was she a lawless
desperado defying the rules of society? Most likely, the truth of Belle
Starr’s life lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
5
Clearly, Belle did endorse a lawless way of life, best expressed in
a comment by her to a Dallas newspaper reporter, “I am a friend to
any brave and gallant outlaw.” Her husbands and consorts were men
notorious for their crimes. According to Glenn Shirley in Belle Starr and
Her Times, her first husband, Jim Reed, did not start out as an outlaw.
Although he had ridden with William Quantrell, the famous Confederate
bushwhacker, during the Civil War, Reed tried to make an honest living
after the war. After several unsuccessful attempts at farming, he turned
to horse racing. But, after his brother Scott was murdered, Reed sought
vengeance. Scott Reed had been mistaken for another man and killed
and, in turn, Jim Reed killed the man who murdered his brother. From
crimes she committed. Belle Starr was only ever convicted once and
that was for horse theft. She appeared in the courtroom of Judge Isaac
Parker, the famous “Hanging Judge” of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Parker
sentenced her to one year in the Detroit House of Corrections. She
served nine months of a one year jail sentence, ironically released early
for good behavior.
It might be that what engages our curiosity most about this remarkable
woman is the very fact that she was a woman who made a name for
herself in a man’s world. It was a rough and tumble time, but Belle Starr
held her own. It was unusual for a woman to earn the respect of the men
of her time. But, Belle Starr was a reckless and daring woman, living in a
remarkable place and time.
In fact, it is considering the life of individuals such as Belle Starr that
enable us to better understand the Old West. For many years, scholars
have debated why the West was wild. It was, after all, the last frontier of
America. The eminent historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, postulated
that America was defined by the concept of a frontier. The frontier,
Turner wrote, has been “productive of individualism.” In entering into
areas without established social structures, each person was equal.
People had to learn democratic means of social cooperation. Democracy
therefore, Turner wrote, was born of free land, and of free, self-reliant
individuals moving out on to that land learning how to get along with one
another. So, the images of the Old West have become a way for us to
understand ourselves as Americans.
then on, Reed was a fugitive, living a life of crime from the Austin - San
Antonio stage coach robbery to the infamous robbery of an old Creek
Indian, Watt Grayson. Reed was eventually shot and killed, leaving Belle
alone with two children.
After his death, Belle married another man wanted by the law, Sam
Starr. Sam came by his profession naturally, since his father was the
notorious outlaw Tom Starr, a Cherokee, at odds with even his own tribe.
After marrying Sam Starr, Belle lived on the Canadian River, near what
is now the town of Eufaula, Oklahoma. Belle and Sam’s home, located
in Indian Territory, was refuge to outlaws and renegades. After Sam was
shot and killed by a lawman, Belle had no claim to the land, not being a
Cherokee. So, in her inimitable style, a few months after Sam’s death,
Belle married again. She married another Cherokee in order to keep her
home. Her new husband, Jim July Starr was an adopted son of Belle’s
father-in-law, Tom Starr. Although much younger than Belle, Jim was
similar to the other men in her life, reckless and wild and a fugitive from
justice.
Belle Starr was indeed known to consort with men like this, men who
were rash and rowdy and broke the law with abandon. Some of the
most colorful stories about Belle were of the supposed affairs she had.
It was said that she was reputed to have taken up with outlaws such
as Jack Spaniard, Jim French and Blue Duck. While it is possible that
she did, it was more likely merely rumor. The most enduring romantic
rumor of Belle Starr was that she had an affair with the notorious outlaw
Cole Younger and her first child, Pearl, is actually Cole’s daughter. Cole
Younger consistently denied this allegation in later years. And, in fact, it
is not likely. At the time she knew Cole Younger, Belle was already being
courted by Jim Reed. In his autobiography, Cole Younger even mentions
seeing Belle at the home of her in-laws in 1868, six months pregnant.
Maybe it was a newspaper interview she gave years later that gave
rise to the rumor. Belle told a reporter from the Dallas Morning News
that when she was 15 years old she fell in love with one of the dashing
guerillas of the famous Quantrell. This could describe either Reed
or Younger. After Jim Reed was killed, Belle did “take up” with Bruce
Younger, Cole’s uncle and another outlaw for a short time. They were
possibly even married, although her marriage to Sam Starr takes place
just weeks after the alleged marriage to Bruce Younger. Her association
with Bruce Younger may have contributed to the legend of her affair with
Cole Younger.
But perhaps the most difficult question to answer in Belle’s life was
whether she was a participant in the illegal activities of the men in her
life, or simply provided a refuge for them. Indeed, many people gave
eyewitness accounts of Belle’s participation in the crimes, but most of
these testimonials have no basis in fact. Her biographers, such as Glenn
Shirley and Burton Rascoe, were able to discredit many of the supposed
But, the West not only defined the rugged individualism of America, it
defined our conflicts as well. For many of the outlaws of the Old West
were simply dissatisfied Southern soldiers or sympathizers. After the
Civil War, Southern whites were disenfranchised in a South under
Reconstruction. Many Southerners were denied voting rights and were
marginalized in society. Belle Starr’s family was certainly among these.
Many of the outlaw gangs consisted of disgruntled Southerners, refusing
to obey a government they perceived as their enemy. The West was
simply a place that provided an opportunity to defy authority.
Studying the lives of individuals such as Belle Starr allows us to glimpse
the Wild West and bring it to life once more. Through it we can explore
the development of a unique American spirit. We are challenged to sift
7
through fact and fiction to try to understand a fascinating time and place.
Indeed, much of Belle Starr’s life is clouded by fiction and ambiguity.
Even her death created a mystery. Just two days before her 41st
birthday, in February of 1889, Belle Starr was returning home from a
party at a neighbor’s house and was shot in the back by two blasts from
a shotgun. No one witnessed the shooting and her murderer was never
identified. Suspects included even her husband and children. However,
it is most often assumed that she was killed by a man named Edgar
Watson, with whom she was feuding over land he was renting from her.
She was laid to rest near her ranch on the Canadian River in Oklahoma,
southeast of Porum.
In summarizing her life
for a Fort Smith Elevator
reporter about a year before
her death, Belle stated, “I
regard myself as a woman
who has seen much of
life.” It is what she has
seen that fascinates us
and captivates our modern
curiosity. The life of Belle
Starr gives us a glimpse of
the rash and reckless spirit
of the Wild West.
Works Cited
Arnott, Richard D. “Belle
Starr,” Wild West Magazine,
August, 1997.
Rascoe, Burton. Belle
Starr: “The Bandit Queen.”
Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2004.
Schultz, Stanley K. and William P. Tishler. “Which Old West and
Whose,” American History 102: Civil War to the Present. Web site
article: University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, 2004.
Shirley, Glenn. Belle Starr and Her Times: The Literature, the Facts and
the Legends. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1982
“Her wild appearance is of that kind
that would be sure to attract the attention
of wild and desperate characters.”
Fort Smith New Era Newspaper, February 22 1883
History of Marquis James
(1891-1955) by Dr. Paul Vickery
Marquis James
Although originally from Massachusetts, I grew up in Hollywood, Florida. I received my B.A. and M.A. degrees from Florida
State University, studying International Relations, and languages. After graduation I was commissioned in the U.S. Army
Counterintelligence field and spent nearly four years in Europe. Upon returning to the U.S., I taught in the public school system and
after two years was instrumental in beginning a Christian school where I was the Headmaster for 10 years. My family and I came
to Oklahoma in 1986, where in 1989, I received my M. Div. from Oral Roberts University. I then served three years as a United
Methodist Pastor. I am now Professor of History at Oral Roberts University, where I have taught 13 years. I also pastor at Haskell
UMC and Porter UMC. My Ph.D. is from Oklahoma State University. Since 1995, I have been involved in doing Chautauqua
performances and was one of the founding members of the History Alive Program sponsored by Oklahoma Foundation for
Humanities. I have portrayed the characters of Sen. Joe McCarthy, Father Bartolome de las Casas, Henry Ford, H.L. Mencken,
Marquis James and Bishop Francis Asbury in several states and England.
9
In a 1941 radio interview, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author
was asked if he had any advice for aspiring young writers. The author
thought a moment, then jokingly replied, “Yes—but they seldom think it
is much good—the advice is to start writing and keep it up.” If anyone
followed his own advice it was the man who made Enid, Oklahoma,
famous—Marquis James. Initially James wanted to become a printer.
Yet during his long and productive career, James, moved on to become
a tramp reporter for dozens of newspapers. He lived and wrote in such
cities as New York, Chicago, and New Orleans. He would use his writing
abilities for anything that paid, even writing advertisements for patent
medicines. By 1917, when he enlisted in the Army, he had published
over a million words in pulp fiction. He also wrote scripts for radio
and in 1924 assisted Harold Ross in founding the New Yorker literary
magazine. James is best remembered, however for his writing of history,
especially biographies. His well-documented, yet folksy style of prose,
put him in a class by himself.
His mother taught Marquis to read at the age of four and he spent hours
devouring the books in his own family library and later at the Enid Public
Library. History was his favorite subject, but math and grammar were
beyond him. In 1940, “Markey,” as he was known, wrote, “When I add a
column of figures and get the correct answer it is purely an accident and
I am sure I could not name the eight parts of speech, let alone define
them.” He graduated in 1909 from Enid High School, where he helped
found the school publication The Quill, and began college at Oklahoma
Christian (later Phillips) University. The unexpected death of his father,
and the subsequent need to work to help his mother, cut short his
college studies, but launched his most remarkable writing career.
Although Marquis James was born in Springfield, MO, he made Enid,
Oklahoma, and the old Cherokee Strip, famous. His parents were
Rachel Marquis and Houstin (sic) James, a “fifth or sixth cousin of Jesse
James.” His father, a Civil War veteran and attorney who represented
many desperate characters on the edge of the law, participated in
the Land Run of 1893. At 11:55 A.M., September 16, 1893, the fortyeight-year old, Houston James, as well as about 15,000 others, left the
starting line just north of Hennessey in Old Oklahoma for the seventeen
mile run up the Chisholm Trail to the newly opened Indian land. Less
than an hour later, the exhausted James staked a claim to the southeast
quarter of Section 17, Township 22, Range 6, West of the Indian
Meridian, just south of Enid. About six months later, Rachel James and
the nearly three year old Marquis traveled to the raw prairie claim that
was to be their new home.
Growing up in a frontier town and meeting the characters from his
father’s legal practice such as Dick Yeager, Bill Doolin, and Jack
Dalton, was a young boy’s dream. It was amidst that rough and tumble
atmosphere that James acquired his formational education that would
be the basis for his future literary career. These early experiences
especially form the basis for his autobiography, and perhaps best loved
book, The Cherokee Strip.
“Good writing is storytelling and what little
of this art I may have comes natural to me.
I never acquired it in school or college.”
10
At the advice of one of his newspaper employers, James set out at the
age of twenty, as an itinerant reporter. He soon found jobs working
on papers in cities such as Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. This
was great training. James not only honed his newspaper skills, but
also supplemented his income by turning out detective stories for pulp
magazines. In 1914, while working on the New Orleans Item, he met and
married Bessie Rowland who shared his love for the printed word. Soon
the couple was both working on different newspapers in New York. In
1924, their daughter, Cynthia, was born.
With the US entry into World War I, James enlisted and fought in France.
He left the Army as a Captain returning to New York. Soon he landed a
job as the national director of publicity for the American Legion. It was in
this position that James began writing a series of biographical sketches
that were both historically accurate and entertaining to read. His first
literary project was a biography of Sam Houston. James had met Sam’s
son, Temple, while a child, and the younger Houston had planted a seed
in the boy’s mind that now began to sprout. Temple had left Texas for
Indian Territory because he had killed a man. In 1929, he published his
study of Houston, entitled The Raven. This won him his first Pulitzer
Prize in 1930. This encouraged him to tackle a more substantial work,
the life of Andrew Jackson. The two volume work, The Border Captain
and Portrait of a President, was completed after seven years and in
1938 he again won the Pulitzer Prize. This remains one of the most
popular studies of the life of Andrew Jackson.
James desired to write good history with interesting, exciting, and
readable prose. He disliked the fact that so much of history was
written in a pedantic and stilted manner. One of the most well-known
Jacksonian scholars, Robert V. Remini, described James style, “…as
a pulsating, full-blooded, vivid, and durable account of a heroic life
written with imagination, enormous narrative power, and distinctive and
absorbing style.” Yet Remini also believed James treated both Houston
and Jackson in a one-dimensional manner. He wrote, “The biographies
of Houston and Jackson succeeded because they were splendid action
pieces and little more.”
James was aware of his shortcomings. Because of his youthful
experiences in the Old West, the intense nature of newspaper stories,
coupled with his writing of bloodcurdling mystery stories, James was
a man who admittedly loved action and wrote to grab the attention of
the reader. He wrote that, “all my subjects so far have been men of
action. When I feel capable of doing a man of thought… I want to tackle
Jefferson and possibly Franklin.” He never would write that book. To
keep himself going financially, he wrote many magazine articles and
radio scripts.
In 1940, he began to write the histories of businesses. These paid well
and over the next twelve hears he wrote: Biography of a Business, 17911942: A History of the Insurance Company of North American (1942);
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (1947); The Texaco Story
(1953); and Biography of a Bank: A History of the Bank of America, with
B.R. James (1954). Although James has been criticized for becoming a
“pen for hire,” he always stipulated in his contracts that he would write
what he found. He would have the final say in what was printed with his
name attached. His goal was not to write simply a favorable review of
the business, but serious history.
We are not sure exactly when James began writing what would be his
autobiography – The Cherokee Strip. Apparently one day his daughter,
Cynthia, asked why he did not write down the stories he told her about
“the old days” in the Cherokee Strip. Probably to James’ chagrin, she
innocently stated that she found these tales much more interesting than
his usual subject matter. His recollections became the basis of The
Cherokee Strip. These included the details of the capture and death of
“the biggest outlaw Oklahoma ever saw,” – Dick Yeager. Also included
were the yarns spun by the old buffalo hunter, Mr. Howell, who probably
awakened the story-telling part of James’ makeup, and the adventures
and misadventures of his father’s business ventures. Also fascinating
is the “railroad war” between North and South Enid, and the adolescent
happenings of the “Gang of Waumpie Washburn’s” pool hall. According
to the forward by William W. Savage, Jr., James had a detailed
manuscript already written by 1934. The book, however, would not be
published until 1945.
In 1952, James and his first wife, Bessie, divorced. Subsequently, in
January 1954, he married Jacqueline Parsons in Rye, NY. During his
last years, he became interested in race relations. He was working on a
biography of Booker T. Washington, with his wife Jacqueline, when he
suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1955 at the age of sixty-four.
Writing about Sam Houston’s son,Temple, who
after killing a guy in a gunfight was “sentenced”
to Oklahoma, “I guess most Texans thought that
was punishment enough.”
Chronology
1891
August 29: Born, Springfield, MO
1893
Moved to claim on the Cherokee Strip
1901
Moved to Enid, OK
1907
November: Oklahoma becomes 46th state
1908
Death of his father
1909 Graduated from Enid High School
1911 Takes to road as tramp reporter
1914 Marries Bessie Rowland
1917 WWI begins for US, James enlists and goes to France
1923
Published first book: A History of the American Legion.
1929 Publishes The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston.
1930
Wins Pulitzer Prize for biography
1933
Publishes Andrew Jackson: The Border Captain.
1937 Publishes Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President
1938
Second Pulitzer Prize for two volumes on Jackson
1945 Publishes The Cherokee Strip
1952 Divorces Bessie Rowland
1954 Marries Jacqueline Parsons
1955
November: Dies suddenly of cerebral hemorrhage, age 64
Annotated Bibliography for Marquis James
Primary Sources:
Marquis James has written and published millions of words as he wrote
magazines, newspapers, and radio programs. His major books, and those that
are most appropriate for students are:
James, Marquis. The Cherokee Strip: A Tale of Oklahoma Boyhood.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. First published in 1945. This is
a book that every child in Oklahoma ought to read. It is not only great history
about the early days in Enid, Oklahoma, but also great stories of outlaws,
cowboys, and youthful adventures. This is his only book still in print.
The Life of Andrew Jackson. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938. This book is
composed of two books. The first entitled The Border Captain, covers the early
life of Andrew Jackson up to the election of 1824. The second volume, subtitled
Portrait of a President, was published in 1937. It won James’s second Pulitzer
Prize in 1938. In 1935, he and his wife, Bessie Rowland James published The
Courageous Heart, a book about Jackson written for juveniles.
The Raven: The Life of Sam Houston. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928.
This work wone James the first Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1930. He and his
wife Bessie Rowland James collaborated on a children’s book about Houston,
entitled Six feet Six, published in 1931.
They Had Their Hour. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934. This is a series of
short stories about famous and not-so-famous people and the historical events
that happened to them. It too is a great book for high school aged students and
makes for great reading.
Secondary Sources:
Three are no books or articles written about Marquis James, other
than the entries in Encyclopedias or Biographies. Following are a few examples:
Dictionary of American Biography-Supplement 5. New York:
Scribners, 1977 (p 363).
The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol 44, New York:
White and Co., 1962 (p167).
Twentieth Century Authors. New York: Wilson and Co. 1942 (p 714
Vickery, Paul S. “From Tramp Reporting to Pulitzer Prize: Enid’s
Own Marquis James.” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. LXXXI, Number 3, Fall,
2003. Oklahoma City, OK.
11
(1854-1924) From Frontier Marshal to ‘20s Gangbuster
by Dr. Michael Hughes
William M. “Bill” Tilghman
Dr. Michael Hughes is a member of the art and history departments and American Indian Studies program of East Central
University in Ada, Oklahoma; he teaches courses in art history, U.S. history, and in Chickasaw and other Indian cultures. His most
recent publication is a book on Indian leadership at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He has given ca. 125 historical and dramatic
presentations funded by state humanities councils, state historical societies, and the Library of Congress. His previous Chautauqua
characters in Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas have been Alexander Graham Bell, Jim Bridger, Michelangelo
Buonarotti, William Lloyd Garrison, Judge Isaac C. Parker, Ernie Pyle, Orson Welles, and Bob Wills. Dr. Hughes also leads art,
history, and wildlife tours professionally. His wife, Dr. Eril Hughes, is a professor of English and a regional leader in Habitat for
Humanity.
“Tilghman would charge hell
with a bucket”
- “Bat” Masterson.
Who is Bill Tilghman? When Sam Elliott portrayed Tilghman in the film
You Know My Name in 2000, many Turner Network viewers doubtless
asked this question (You Know My Name, aired TNT 1999; video
release Turner Entertainment 2000). Yet William M. Tilghman was
the most celebrated lawman associated with the creation of the state
of Oklahoma. Newspapers proclaimed him “the deadliest shot in the
Southwest” and “the greatest frontier marshal.”
Deputy Marshal Tilghman was born the Fourth of July, 1854, to William
Matthew Tilghman, Sr., and Amanda Shepherd Tilghman. Conflicting
accounts indicate that Bill’s father was at that date either a post trader
at Fort Dodge, Iowa, or an infantryman at Fort Riley, Kansas (Tilghman,
25-27; Samuelson, 30-31).
Bill was eight when his father enlisted in a Kansas Union regiment to
serve in the Civil War. The responsibility for keeping up the family farm
near Atchison fell largely on the boy. Despite his precocious maturity,
the youngster developed a case of hero worship at age twelve when
“Wild Bill” Hickock asked directions of him. Tilghman’s later skill with a
pistol was supposedly inspired by his desire to emulate the frontiersman
Hickock (Tilghman, 38, 41; Shirley, 15-16).
In 1870, a teenaged Tilghman determined to see the frontier for himself.
With his cousins, he explored as far as the Glass or Gloss Mountains
of present Oklahoma (Fischer, 26). Between 1871 and 1876, Tilghman
hunted for the buffalo meat and hide markets along the Kansas Pacific
and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads. Felling a reputed
3,500 bison in the summer of 1872 alone, Tilghman’s hunting record
easily surpassed that of “Buffalo Bill” Cody (Shirley, 34). His partners
included the Masterson brothers, his rivals, the Earp brothers.
While a hunter, Tilghman constantly violated the law. He and his partners
regularly trespassed onto the Cheyenne-Arapaho and Kiowa-Comanche
reservations of Indian Territory. There they slaughtered bison, stole
ponies, and traded whiskey and weapons. Tilghman camped with
“Huricane Bill” Martin and became friends with “Dutch Henry” Born—both
notorious horse thieves. Not surprisingly, Tilghman was several times
forced to hide or run from parties of Cheyenne. He was nearly lynched
after a knife stolen from him by the Indians was found placed beside the
body of a murdered boy in Colorado (Shirley, 70-71). By 1874, bison
hunters and horse thieves such as Tilghman had incited the Southern
Plains Indian response known as the Red River War.
Tilghman moved to the hide trading center of Dodge City shortly after
the Indian conflict erupted. In 1877, he purchased and briefly operated
the Crystal Palace Saloon. Ironically, Tilghman did not drink and at one
later saloon would advertise non-alcoholic “Methodist cocktails” (Fischer,
66). Tilghman also acquired a wife, the widowed Flora Kendall. Flora
was the mother of two sons, James and Charles. Period records are
so incomplete that it is uncertain which of these boys was fathered by
Tilghman (Samuelson, 35, 144).
Records do show that in 1878 Tilghman was in trouble with the law. He
was arrested by his friend “Bat” Masterson on suspicion of robbing a
train depot. (Tilghman may have been confused with an outlaw named
Bill Tilman.) Tilghman was later accused of possessing a stolen horse.
Both charges were dropped (Fischer, 60-62; Shirley, 97-101). In contrast
with his arrests, Tilghman also served on his first posse that year--along
with Masterson and Wyatt Earp.
Tilghman and his family returned to Dodge City in 1882 after operating
a saloon in New Mexico. During his second residency in the town,
Tilghman became a leading businessman. He owned a livery stable,
a store, and another saloon and bred dogs, racing horses, and cattle
(Samuelson, 37-38). The Tilghmans also produced more children: “Dot,”
Bill, and “Vonie” (Samuelson, 144-145).
As a respectible family man, Tilghman became the marshal of Dodge City
in 1884. His primary responsibilities were dealing with bar fighters and
riotous cowboys. After his term ran out, he remained a Ford County under
sheriff. While involved in a “county seat war” in Wichita County, Tilghman
was, on July 4, 1888, forced to kill a man for the first time. A friend, Ed
Prather, became drunk, threatened Independence Day celebrants in
Farmer City, and drew a pistol on Tilghman (Shirley, 174-176).
Tilghman departed for the future state of Okahoma in 1889 in search
of better luck. He arrived during the first “land run,” the race for the
“unassigned lands.” However, he may have acquired property from a
“sooner” already present (Samuelson, 71; Tilghman, 184). Tilghman
soon opened Guthrie’s Alpha Saloon on his lot.
Tilghman’s years in Guthrie were as complicated as those in Dodge
City. He is credited with clearing the town’s first streets and with helping
establish the Logan County fairgrounds (Tilghman, 180-182. However,
Tilghman was also arrested for gambling and for some connection with
prostitution (Samuelson, 44, 151). The arrests may have been attempts
to force Tilghman to be responsible for the conduct of his patrons.
Ironically, Tilghman had only a few years previously been rewarded for
collecting license fees for legalized gambling and prostitution in
Dodge City.
Despite the arrests in Guthrie, Tilghman was commissioned a U.S.
deputy marshal in 1891. He soon befriended two other deputies, Chris
Madsden and “Heck” Thomas. The trio would become known as the
“Three Guardsmen,” one of the most famous sets of crime fighters in
American history.
Fortunately, the old lawman had film making to fall back on (Roosevelt
also endorsed Tilghman’s films.) In 1908, Tilghman had directed the
Oklahoma Natural Mutoscene company’s three films, including The Wolf
Hunt and The Bank Robbery (Shirley, 326-331; http: www.silentera.
com). These “one reel” shorts were the first movies filmed in Oklahoma
and are among the first westerns. The Bank Robbery “starred” the
“Three Guardsmen,” Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, and former bank
robber Al Jennings.
In 1915, Tilghman, Madsden, and former U.S. Marshal E. D. Nix formed
the Eagle Film Company and produced a longer picture, The Passing
of the Oklahoma Outlaws. Oklahoma Outlaws was a romanticized tale
of how the Starr, Dalton, and Doolin gangs were defeated by heroic
lawmen (Shirley, 392-407). At one point, production stopped so that the
crew could pursue the real Henry Starr Gang. The film created several
legends and motifs found in later novels, “histories,” and motion pictures
(for example, see Graves, Oklahoma Outlaws). Tilghman journeyed the
West for several years showing the film to support his second family.
Despite age and health problems, Tilghman retained his feistiness into
the 1920s. In 1922, he stood beside Governor J. B. A. Robertson at
the Muskogee court house and faced down a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen
(Tilghman, 331-336). The old warrior faced one further battle. The oil
boom town of Cromwell in Seminole was rumored to be a center for
cocaine smuggling, bootlegging, car theft, and the “white slave trade.” It
was even being called “the “wickedest city in America” (Shirley, 139-142)
In addition to colleages, Tilghman acquired a permanent home. The
Sac-Fox Reservation was “opened” in the “run of 1891.” Tilghman
staked a claim near what became Chandler in Lincoln County. Here Bill
established the Oakland Stock Farm, where he raised thoroughbreds
(Shirley, 199-200).
Though now a horse rancher, Tilghman accepted assignment as a
federal peacekeeper in preparation for the Cherokee Outlet run of 1893.
As soon as the town of Perry was organized, its citizens chose Tilghman
as city marshal. Tilghman spent most of his time at Perry policing the
dangerous quarter known as “Hell’s Half Acre.” According to legend, he
barely outdrew and killed a belligerent drifter known as Crescent Sam
there (Shirley, 215-216, 227-230; Tilghman, 197). In 1894, Tilghman
returned to his farm and to federal assignments.
The climax of Tilghman’s career as a U.S. deputy marshal was the capture
of Bill Doolin. In 1892-95, the Doolin Gang stole tens of thousands of
dollars from trains and banks in Arkansas, Texas, and present Oklahoma.
The Three Guardsmen were ordered to break up the gang; one by one,
they eliminated its members. Tilghman captured--and reputedly spanked-Jennie “Little Britches” Stevens, a supposed courier for the gang (Miller,
131-132, 135; Samuelson, 114-115). In January, 1895, Tilghman tracked
Doolin himself to the spa community of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The
lawman single-handedly captured the “king of the Oklahoma outlaws” in a
hotel lobby (Shirley, 256-258; Tilghman, 219-227).
Tilghman also drew national attention after the infamous 1898 “Seminole
Burning.” Two young Seminole falsely accused of killing a white woman
were tortured and burned by a mob. Employing detective skills, Tilghman
secured convictions on eight culprits. The outcome was celebrated as
one of the first prosecutions of whites for a crime against non-whites (see
Littlefield, Seminole Burning for an extensive description of the case).
Tilghman followed this success by winning two terms (1900-1904)
as sheriff of Lincoln County. His now estranged wife Flora died of
tuberculosis around the time of his election. Tilghman married Zoe
Agnes Stratton, a college-educated rancher’s daughter over twenty-five
years his junior, in 1903. The couple would produce three boys, Tench,
“Dick,” and “Woodie” (Samuelson, 144-145).
In 1905, Tilghman formed another important relationship–with President
Theodore Roosevelt. In that year, Roosevelt personally asked
Tilghman to handle a sensitive extradition case in Mexico. Tilghman
was subsequently invited to join Roosevelt’s “Big Pasture wolf hunt” in
southwestern Oklahoma.
14
Despite his friendship with the Republican Roosevelt, Tilghman won
election to the young state Senate in 1910 as a Democrat. He resigned
a year later to become chief of police of Oklahoma City. Tilghman
vigorously fought vice in Oklahoma City but evidently was soon told to
ignore certain crimes. He resigned in frustration (Samuelson, 99-100;
Tilghman, 283-289).
The circumstances of Tilghman’s going to Cromwell remain mysterious.
But although Governor Martin E. Trapp later denied it, Tilghman was
obviously a special investigator for Trapp (Fischer, 123-125; Samuelson,
; 117-118l Tilghman 348-352). Bill was now 70. But despite his age,
as Theodore Roosevelt said, “Bill Tilghman would charge Hell with a
bucket” (often quoted but original source unknown).
Tilghman quickly faced off against Wiley Lynn, a federal alcohol
prohibition agent assigned to Cromwell. Each men claimed that the
other was protecting unidentified criminal interests. On November 1,
1924, Tilghman heard Lynn—who may or may not have been drinking—
fire his pistol. Tilghman seized the weapon and pressed his own to Lynn.
But Lynn then killed Tilghman with a concealed second pistol (Fischer,
126, 133-156; Samuelson, 120-121; Shirley, 440-441).
Lynn was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. Over the next
several years he was arrested several times for drunkenness and “riot.”
In 1932, Lynn was killed in Madill while attempting to murder a law
officer who had embarrassed him.
Like Lynn’s, Tilghman’s life contained some moral contraditions. But
men who will “charge hell with a bucket” are seldom fastidious. As
a “town tamer,” Tilghman is still remembered--in the words of “Bat”
Masterson--as “the greatest of us all” (Shirley, 332-333).
Notes on sources: Where possible, the reader is referred to published
primary sources rather than the less accessible originals in the Zoe A.
Tilghman Collection at the University of Tulsa. Therefore, the notation
“Tilghman” refers to Zoe Tilhman’s Marshal of the Last Frontier unless
otherwise noted. Also, the notation “Shirley” always refers to citations from
Shirley’s Guardian of the Law rather than Shirley’s West of Hell’s Fringes.
15
Primary sources:
Zoe A. Tilghman Collection, Department of Special Collections,
McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
Tilghman, Zoe A., Marshal of the Last Frontier; Life and
Services of William Matthew (Bill) Tilghman, for 50 years One of
the Greatest Peace Officers of the West (Glendale, CA: A. H. Clark
Company, 1954; rev. ed. 1964).
Secondary sources:
Fisher, Ron W., The Last Great Frontier Marshal: A Biography of
William “Bill” Tilghman (Tombstone, AZ: Ron W. Fischer Enterprises, 2001).
Graves, Richard S., Oklahoma Outlaws; A Graphic History
of the Early Days in Oklahoma; The Bandits Who Terrorized the First
Settlers and the Marshal Who Fought Them to Extinction (Oklahoma
City, OK: State Printing & Publishing Company, ca. 1915).
Hanes, Bailey C., Bill Doolin, Outlaw O.T. (Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1968; reprint 1980).
Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr., Seminole Burning: A Story of Racial
Vengeance (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1996).
Miller, Floyd, Bill Tilghman; Marshal of the Last Frontier (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968).
Samuelson, Nancy B., Shoot From the Lip: Legends and Lide
of the Three Guardsmen of Oklahoma and U.S. Marshal Nix (Eastford,
CT: Shooting Star press, 1998).
Shirley, Glenn, Guardian of the Law: The Life and Times of
William Matthew Tilghman (1854-1924) (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1988;
reprint 2000).
West of Hell’s Fringes; Crime, Criminals, and the Federal
Peace Officer in Oklahoma Territory, 1889-1907 (Norman, OK: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1978).
her hatchet was her vote
by judy gail
Carry A. Nation
Judy Gail, since age eight, has been speaking and singing out for and about people who have made a difference. Her historical
portrayals make history jump off the page. Through songs and stories on topics including work, labor and the Dust Bowl, she
shares the lives of courageous people who championed justice and dignity creating a more humane world. Judy was in the studio
with her father, Director of Children’s Records at Columbia in the Golden Age of kid-disks, 1940s-1950s, when he produced
“Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and other classics still heard today. Her soon-to-be-published memoir, The Man Behind The
Music, tells about these recordings, the celebrities her father produced, and of Judy’s singing backup for Captain Kangaroo, among
others. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Judy became musical director and voice-over artist for Manhattan’s Shadow Box
Theater. Later, at Miami’s Museum of Science, she created live presentations and wrote and hosted Wonder With Me, a PBS
television series. Her first book, Day of the Moon Shadow, received several academic and storytelling awards. Judy is a Kennedy
Center trained Artist-In-Education and performs nationally and in Europe. She has been a Chautauqua Scholar/Performer with the
Florida Humanities Council since 1996.
17
“The advantages of being a resident of Oklahoma will be so great...
Mothers and fathers often say, ‘O for a place where I can raise my
children where there are no saloons!’ What an outrage is perpetrated
by this Rum-soaked government in not allowing us to have statehood!”
Thus spoke Carry Nation, the country’s most famous and infamous
temperance activist: an American icon both praised and vilified. In
Oklahoma, she organized Prohibition Federations to insure the territory
would join the Union as a dry state and published The Hatchet, a
temperance newspaper distributed nationally. In Kansas and other
states and territories she demolished illegal saloons with a hatchet,
gave speeches, performed in temperance plays, and raised a ruckus
wherever she went.
Most journalists of her time and historians thereafter portrayed Carry
Nation as a virago, unsexed woman, religious zealot, and lunatic, even
“The Hitler of American Morals.” With descriptions such as these, I knew
portraying her would be quite a challenge. I followed my belief that in
creating portrayals, I always find something in the character that triggers
a point of compassion. In Carry Nation, I not only found compassion, I
found a human being I actually liked and one who, historically, has too
often been unjustly judged.
teething for infants. Drugstores were often fronts for illegal joints.
Sherry, the “Prozac” of the era, was prescribed for women. Carry Nation
describes gatherings in Holden, Missouri, where under tables laden
with empty Sherry bottles, the mothers passed out as their unattended
children ran wild or cried.
Many doctors constantly under the influence of alcohol delivered babies
and operated on the sick with trembling hands and muddled brains.
Included among them was Carry Nation’s first husband, Dr. Charles
Gloyd who died of alcoholism 18 months after their marriage. He left
Carry heartbroken, penniless, and with a newborn daughter. Beaten
wives and children frequently were abandoned and destitute, the result
of rampant alcoholism among men of all classes and professions. The
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), other temperance
associations, and the hatchet-wielding, saloon-smashing activist Carry
Nation, had more than reasonable cause for their zealotry in fighting for
dry counties, states, territories, and for a Prohibition President.
Contrary to journalists’ descriptions of Carry Nation as an over six-foot
To understand Carry Nation, the era in which she lived must be
examined. It was a time when alcohol production and alcoholism
affected almost all aspects of society. Through her ardent belief in
temperance and radical form of protest, Carry Nation became a powerful
figure in the nation’s history. Her faith in her mission brought about
significant change, even nine years after her death in 1911, with the
passing of the Prohibition Act on January 16, 1920.
In the 1800s through the first third of the 1900s, temperance, illegal
saloons, and religion were a quintessential part of daily life. Victorian
morality emphasized the “God-given” roles of the sexes. Women had
few rights. Men were free to do as they pleased, including drink away
their wives inheritances, which became theirs to control upon marrying.
Carry Nation’s use of the words “Rum-soaked nation,” were not the
ravings of a lunatic. They were based upon fact.
Between 1830 and 1930, 50% of those buried in the graveyards across
the nation had died of alcohol-related diseases or incidents. (Vessel
of Wrath: The Life and Times of Carry Nation, by Robert Lewis Taylor)
Heavy drinking was common among the clergy. Clubs like the Masons
drew men away from their families each night to the saloons where they
indulged in drinking, smoking, and prostitutes. Many men infected their
wives with syphilis. Liquor was prescribed for most ailments, including
Carry Nation made it quite clear that until
women had the vote and could be heard, her
hatchet would have to serve as their vote.
18
tall, huge-muscled woman, she stood a few inches over five feet. She
looked like a plump little grandmother and always had a hug and smile
for those whom she helped. People called her “Mother Nation.” Why,
then, was she maligned as an Amazon? Perhaps the following from
Fran Grace’s book, Carry A. Nation: Retelling The Life, offers the best
explanation.
In 1900, in his essay, “Effeminate Men and Masculine Women,”
published in the New York Medical Journal, Dr. William Lee Howard
scorned the so-called New-Woman who had “masculine ideas of
independence.” These women were “viragints” who lifted up a “pseudovirile” voice in public and proclaimed a right to discuss questions of
war, religion, and politics. Such female androids were unsightly and
subnormal beings, always restless, continuously discontented, morbidly
majestic, and hysterically forcible. Women who act like men are a
menace to civilization.
The Darwinian theory of evolution was misused to emphasize women’s
reproductive roles in order to prove that, should women engage in any
pursuits other than motherhood, the human species would disappear.
With this viewpoint, none could realistically take note that, when Charles
Gloyd died, Carry Nation was able to remain female even while fending for
herself, her child and Charles Gloyd’s mother. None would praise Carry’s
survival abilities when, married to her second husband, David Nation, she
almost always provided the sole means of support, using her ingenuity to
farm, establish hotels, and become a certified osteopath with a well-paying
practice. Instead, she was slandered as a negligent, genderless wife.
The WCTU gave women the opportunity to work outside their homes,
training them to type, write, speak in public, and organize. Their fight
to outlaw alcohol was waged under the protective banner of preserving
family life through removing the evils caused by drink. Unwittingly (or
seemingly so), the WCTU became a groundbreaking feminist movement
with suffrage also on its agenda. Carry Nation made it quite clear that
until women had the vote and could be heard, her hatchet would have
to serve as their vote. When Carry Nation needed a band of women to
march into drugstores and saloons and demolish them she could find
her army among members of the WCTU who added bricks, stones, and
iron bars to the hatchet artillery. Yet, these women marched under a
cloud of fear. According to the law of the day, their husbands could have
them declared insane and place them in asylums, a fact that had one
journalist write he’d rather be sent to a “sausage mill.”
With the independence her marriages forced upon her, Carry Nation
found it difficult to lead the life of what was called the “True-Woman.” This
and other factors produced the hatchet-wielding feminist who became
a household word across the nation. Carry’s mother, Mary Campbell
Moore, rejected her as a child, called her a “freak” and grew evermore
mentally unstable. Carry spent most of her childhood living in quarters
with the slaves on the Moore Kentucky plantation while her father,
George Moore, was away for months at a time. The religious exuberance
and stories she experienced among the slaves instilled her with a joyous
religious fervor combined with a dreaded fear of hell and damnation.
She was allowed to be a tomboy until age ten. Then, like the girls of
her time, she was forced to remain inside, most-often in bed. In this
In Carry Nation, I not only found compassion, I
found a human being I actually liked and one who,
historically, has too-often been unjustly judged.
way, so doctors said, the female reproductive organs could have the
body’s full energy to grow properly. Hence, like other girls, she suffered
from chlorosis, a discoloration of the skin due to lethargy, loss of
appetite and lack of fresh air and sun. Additionally, she was confined
to bed nearly five years with consumption of the bowels. She claimed
that, at age fourteen, her forced mid-winter baptism in an icy creek
while ill transformed her life, healed her, and revealed that God had a
mission for her. Further intense spiritual experiences led to her belief
that alcohol was evil. Daughter Charliene’s slowness and subsequent
illness resulting in hideous disfiguration increased this conviction. Carry
Nation’s intense faith gave her the strength to smash saloons, survive
rough police treatment, jail, beatings, threats of lynch mobs and angry
saloonkeepers, and to spend more time sleeping on trains and in
austere hotels than in a comfortable bed at home.
appeared as “Your Dishonor,” and refused to abide by their legal jargon,
holding up her Bible and saying, “These are the laws to be followed.”
Throughout it all, she tended to the financial and physical needs of her
extended family, contributed her earnings from speaking tours and sales
of souvenir hatchet-pins to charities, and founded homes for orphans
and abandoned wives. Later, she bought land in Eureka, Arkansas and
established a settlement for elderly women and deserted wives and their
children. The settlement’s school was open to all children in the area and
encouraged the education of young girls.
Nation, Carry A. “Your Loving Home Defender,” The Use and Need
of the Life of Carrie A. Nation. IndyPublish.com, McClean, Virginia.
(Periodically, Carry Nation spelled her name Carrie).
Carry Nation was a product of the Midwest, where women’s skin
weathered from hard work in the dry, windy outdoors. In order to bend
and stretch as they toiled, these women removed their restrictive
Victorian corsets. Marquis James wrote of his own uncorseted mother
looking wistfully through old magazines at the fashions and smooth
skin of more genteel women of the Northeast. The women activists of
the Northeast, including suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, viewed Carry Nation as a vulgar threat to a more refined
women’s movement. These women would not openly endorse or meet
with Carry Nation, but they could not help but acknowledge the positive
effects that she was having as crowds who both loved and hated her
gathered to be entertained and mesmerized by her speeches. Her
hatechetizing and the mayhem it created captured the imagination of
the nation with the same fervor as did outlaws Jesse James, the Young
Brothers, and Belle Starr. Taking the law into one’s own hands smacked
of Yankee Doodle fighting the thousands of Redcoats sent to quell the
American Revolution.
Holding her Bible in one hand and her hatchet in the other, Carry Nation
found just cause for her “smashings” in biblical verse through the
examples of Jesus, Moses, and Deborah. As God’s anointed “Deborah
of the evils of alcohol,” she often addressed judges before whom she
Carry Nation shaped history. She brought national attention to the fact
that an ever-more corrupt nation was evolving because no regulations
were placed upon the production and sale of alcohol or the political
power wielded by the wealthy owners of liquor companies. She roused
thousands into action and others to sign temperance pledges and
reform their own lives. She gave many women the courage to work
for the community beyond the confines of their homes. Like George
Washington, Carry Nation proudly and honestly confessed, “I cannot tell
a lie. I used my hatchet.”
Primary Sources
Taylor, Robert Lewis, Vessel of Wrath. 1966: New American Library, New
York.
Madison, Arnold, Carry Nation. 1977: Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers,
Nashville & New York.
Grace, Fran, Carry A. Nation. 2001: Indian University Press, Indiana.
Beals, Carleton, Cyclone Carry: The Story of Carry Nation. 1962: Chilton
Company, Philadelphia & New York.
Kansas State Historical Society, http://www.kshs.org
Secondary Sources
Mattingly, Carol, Well-Tempered Women: Nineteenth-Century
Temperance Rhetoric, 1998: Southern Illinois University Press,
Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois.
19
Behr, Edward, Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America. 1996:
Arcade Publishing, New York.
Moore, Douglas, Jayme, William North, Carry Nation: An American
Opera. 1966, University of Kansas Debut.
“There ain’t nobody that can sing like me.”
Woody Guthrie:
An Oklahoma Living Legend
by Kevin (K.C.) Mathey
- Woody Guthrie
Kevin (K.C.) Mathey was born October 30th, 1954 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On his eighth birthday he received a four-string tenor guitar and
began playing Bluegrass and Folk Songs while composing his own music. In 1987, K.C. earned his Bachelor of Science in Education
from the University of Oklahoma where he graduated with Special Distinction. Every past experience in his life has prepared K.C.
Mathey for the role of Woody Guthrie. K.C. has worked as a sign painter, graphic artist, teacher, chef, actor and musician. He has
been a company member of Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park, Santa Fe Actors Theatre, and Shakespeare in Santa Fe. K.C. has
presented “Woody Guthrie - An Oklahoma Living Legend” for numerous Oklahoma Metropolitan Libraries and Public School audiences.
He has performed as Woody Guthrie at The Oklahoma Opry, Mary Jo’s Pancake Breakfast in Okemah, the Oklahoma State Capital,
Pampa Texas’ Tribute to Woody Guthrie, and has appeared on OETA’s Gallery program. In addition to being a member of the Oklahoma
Humanities Council’s History Alive program, K.C. presents an original two-act Chautauqua program as Woody Guthrie for audiences
of all ages. Members of the Guthrie family have heard K.C. perform as Woody Guthrie. Woody’s sole surviving sibling, Mary Jo Guthrie
Edgmon has said, “K.C.’s performance is as close as you will ever get to hearing or seeing my brother perform,” a sentiment shared by
Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie. K.C. Mathey continues his studies in a large number of disciplines, but is happiest when strumming his guitar
and singing for an audience.
Unlike fellow Oklahoman Will Rogers, Woody Guthrie met a lot of men
- and – situations - he didn’t like.
In his short time as a performer and spokesman for the poor, hungry,
migrant workers and any other folks who didn’t have enough of anything
to go around, Woody helped found unions, all kinds of unions. His
visions of the United States from border to border, nation to nation give
him another vision that still lives.
He used words as ammunition in his war against injustice. Singing or
speaking, everyone has heard a Woody Guthrie song, but most don’t
know the man who spent his latter years in an asylum because there
was no diagnosis for Huntington’s Chorea.
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14th, 1912 in Okemah,
Oklahoma. During the fifty-five years of his life he became a living
legend, a legend that is continued today by his family, friends and
followers. Woody, as he came to be known, traveled across America
sewing a gossamer thread through the fabric of our land with his songs,
writings and illustrations.
Woody was born into a family that loved music, shared strong values
and contributed to local politics. Woody’s mother, Nora Belle Tanner
Guthrie introduced her children to folk ballads and gospel music when
they were still in the cradle, while Woody’s father, Charles, taught them
hard working values and respect for human rights. From his parents’
teachings Woody started writing songs in his childhood already reflecting
a deep compassion for the suffering of others. Both good times and bad
visited the Guthrie family during Woody’s childhood.
Woody’s family seemed plagued by fire, with flames first taking their
large house, then the life of Clara, Woody’s older sister, and finally his
father’s health when he was burned. Fires were not the only tragedy to
befall the Guthrie family during Woody’s early life, however.
For years, Nora Guthrie’s erratic behavior had been the talk of Okemah,
and she finally was committed to an asylum in Norman, Oklahoma. Her
death was a mystery until the discovery of the degenerative nervous
system disease now called Huntington’s Chorea. This inherited disease
would later afflict Woody at the peak of his career as a folksinger.
Woody moved to Pampa, Texas, in 1929 where he took a number of
odd jobs. He spent a great deal of time in the local library studying every
philosophy and religion book the small collection had to offer. His uncle
Jeff Guthrie taught him to play guitar and Woody soon formed his first
band, the Corncob Trio.
In 1932, Woody married Mary Jennings and tried to settle down as
a family man. By the mid-1930s Woody realized the power of music
to express his experiences of people and places, and longed for the
inspiration the open road would provide.
As The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl days hit the middle of
America, Woody migrated West along with thousands of others seeking
a new life and more income for his family.
Reaching California in 1936, Woody lived in “Hoovervilles” and the
“Jungle Camps” made up of people looking for a better life as migrant
workers. Woody took pride in being called an “Okie”, a term used to
describe any migrant worker from the dust bowl area, whether they
were from Oklahoma or not. Every person he met gave him ideas for
songs and stories and soon Woody formed a musical partnership with
his cousin Jack Guthrie. Promoting themselves as the opening act for
the “Beverly Hillbillies” on radio station KFVD, Woody soon caught the
attention of the station manager, Frank Burke, and landed his first job as
a professional entertainer.
Performing weekly with Maxine Crissman, better known as “Lefty
Lou”, Woody had his first bittersweet taste of fame. Lefty Lou and
Woody’s show was popular with audiences that understood the oftencontroversial social commentary and criticism of corrupt politicians,
lawyers and businessmen. The sponsors of the program heard them too,
and censored some of the songs and comments.
In 1938 Woody met an actor named Will Geer and together they traveled
to numerous “Hoovervilles” and “Jungle Camps” entertaining the populace
and promoting unionization of workers. Disgusted with censorship on the
air, Woody followed Will Geer to New York in early 1940.
Almost immediately, Woody’s career skyrocketed as a folksinger and
political activist. He continued writing his “Woody Sez” column for the
1971, the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1977, and The Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 1988. He was inducted into the
Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in its inaugural year, 1997.
He also has received several awards for his humanitarian and artistic work
including U.S. Department of the Interior’s Conservation Award (1966),
The Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award (1996), and a Grammy from
the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (1999).
In addition, Okemah hosts the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival near his
birthday each July. The free public festival has named its biggest stage
the “Pasture of Plenty” after his song and has visitors and performers
from all over the world. Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and his children are
frequent guests at the festival. Woody’s youngest sister, Mary Jo Guthrie
Edgmon, sponsors a pancake breakfast each Saturday morning of the
festival with proceeds benefiting Huntington’s Disease research.
Pampa, Texas has its own Woody Guthrie Festival the first weekend
in October, close to the date of his death. While this festival is smaller,
it provides visitors the opportunity to visit “Harris Drug Store” where
Woody found his first guitar in a storeroom while working for Shortie
Harris. The drug store has now been converted into a public museum
and folk music center named after Woody Guthrie. Harris’ own house,
across the street from the museum, is being converted into “The Woody
Guthrie Inn,” a bed and breakfast inn that will house the numerous
performers that provide entertainment for the event. The grounds of the
inn provide an open air theater with ample seating for the audience to
enjoy music while they dine on pork and navy bean soup and cornbread
(Woody’s favorite meal).
“Daily Worker” (the East Coast equivalent of the American Communist
newspaper the “People’s World”) in New York. Though Woody did
performances to gather crowds at meetings of radical political parties, he
was much too charismatic to become a member of any party that wanted
people to be led by a single leader. There is no written documentation
to prove that Woody Guthrie was ever a “card carrying” member of
the American Communist party, a fact that has been substantiated by
Woody’s former wives Marry Jennings and Marjorie Mazia.
At a benefit for the John Steinbeck Committee for Agricultural Workers
Woody was introduced to Alan Lomax. Lomax was in charge of the
Archive of American Folk Songs at the Smithsonian and immediately
recognized Guthrie as a National Treasure. Lomax helped Woody obtain
a recording contract with RCA Victor that resulted in the now famous
album “Dust Bowl Ballads.” Coast to coast radio programs and the job of
host for Model Tobacco’s weekly program “Pipe Smoking Time” provided
Guthrie with an income that allowed him to send for his family and live in
comfort in New York.
Always active, Woody constantly wrote songs (including the ever
popular, “This Land is Your Land”) and drew illustrations for his weekly
column. Again, Woody found his material being censored on the air and
returned to the west coast. On this second venture, Woody was invited
to work for the Bonneville Power Administration as an “Information
Consultant” for a documentary film about the dam construction in
Oregon. Woody wrote twenty-six songs, including “Roll On Columbia”
and “Pastures of Plenty” during this time. After his contract was finished
in Oregon, Woody once again returned to New York, this time without his
wife and children.
There he joined Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Millard Lampell and
formed the Almanac Singers. This popular folk band appeared on radio
programs, produced albums and raised their voices against Hitler and
fascism. In 1942 Woody met Marjorie Mazia, a dancer at the Martha
Graham School in New York. Marjorie encouraged Woody to perform
his music for the dance troupe and to complete and publish his first
auto-biographical novel, “Bound for Glory.” Divorcing their respective
spouses, Woody and Marjorie married in 1946. Together they had four
children: Cathy, who died at age four in a tragic home fire accident, Arlo,
Joady, and Nora.
During World War II, Woody served in the Merchant Marines and the
Army while still writing numerous songs and recording when he was
home on leave.
Like his mother, Woody’s moods began to swing and his temper and
behavior became more and more irrational. He was hospitalized in 1954
and over the next thirteen years Woody would move from one hospital to
another seeking an answer to the ailment that was stealing his talent. On
October 3, 1967 Woody died at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens,
New York, a victim of Huntington’s Chorea, the same genetic disorder
that had claimed his mother’s life.
22
Woody’s contributions are as numerous as his songs – estimated to be
more that 3,000. He was inducted into The Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in
His innovative musical style and compassionate philosophy has
influenced countless singers and songwriters, including popular and folk
musicians such as Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen,
Billy Bragg, Wilco, Ani DiFranco, Arlo Guthrie, and countless others.
Many might consider Woody Guthrie to be a product of his times,
however, our times are a product of Woody Guthrie’s life.
Without Woody Guthrie and people like him there would not have been
a voice for the common man, weaving that gossamer thread, holding
it together in the face of fascists, abroad and within, and developing
a system of human rights asking for a fair day’s pay in return for a fair
day’s work.
The birth of the American Federation of Labor (ACL) and the Congress
of Industrial Organizations (CIO) would not have come together without
a common man such as Woody Guthrie to weave their actions with
words. The pair merged into the AFL-CIO in 1955.
In his latter years, Woody focused on writing children’s songs, one in
particular was called the “Needle Sing.” It’s not clear whether he meant
a sewing needle or the needles of countless record players singing his
23
songs. “Mama don’t you hear my needle sing.”
With his needle, Woody Guthrie stitched together studios that recorded
only black artists in only black studios with white artists that recorded in
only white studios. Woody was the first to integrate the recording industry.
Woody Guthrie never forced people to make up their minds by quoting
facts and figures. Woody emptied entire libraries into his mind, first in
Okemah, then in Pampa, then in Los Angeles.
His son Arlo, who has a collection of books his father read, has said,
Woody never owned a book where he didn’t carry on a conversation with
the author by underlining parts and writing notes in the margins.
Woody Guthrie, like Will Rogers, has self-penned books plus sections of
libraries dedicated to their lives and times.
While Woody never tried to force other people to join him in his
philosophy or opinions on the issues of history or current events, neither
do I. I invite readers to discover their own version of Woody Guthrie by
following the published bibliography of this article.
Primary Sources
Guthrie, Woody. American Folksong. Edited by Moses Asch. New York:
Oak Publications, 1961.
Guthrie, Woody. Best of Woody Guthrie. Arranged by Mike O’Brien.
Milwaukee, WI: TRO Ludlow Music.
Guthrie, Woody. Bound for Glory. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1943.
Reprint. New York: Penguin USA, Plume, 1983.
Guthrie, Woody. Pastures of Plenty: A Self-Portrait. Edited by Dave
Marsh and Harold Leventhal. New York: Harper-Collins. 1990.
Guthrie, Woody. Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Secondary Sources
Coombs, Karen Mueller. Woody Guthrie: America’s Folksinger.
Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 2002.
Cray, Ed. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New
York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2004.
Edgmon, Mary Jo. My Favorite Things About My Brother, Woody
Guthrie. Edited and designed by M.A. Blochowaik. Oklahoma:
Oklahoma Historical Society, 2002.
Kline, Joe. Woody Guthrie: A Life. New York: Delta, 1980.
Neimark, Anne E.. The Life of Woody Guthrie: There Ain’t Nobody That
Can Sing Like Me. New York: Antheneum Books, 2002.
“You all take it easy, but take it.”
- Woody Guthrie
CHAUTAUQUA
IN ENID
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MAY 30-JUNE 3, 2006
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June 12-15
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In its 15th continuous year, the Tulsa Chautauqua is a program of the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa. Funding is
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