Between the forcepts and the stone... Mitakuye Oyasin

Tracing these lines of family history, and crisscrossing Route 66 like a wind-blown tumbleweed, I found myself rolling south and west and tumbling, finally, into the tiny town of Pryor Creek, Oklahoma...

to see about my mother’s people.  My sweet momma's name is Janet Adair Hogan (nee Brown) and, as it turns out, these lines span centuries and continents, crisscrossing the ocean, from ancient Ireland to the Cherokee Nation, and pushing ever westerly from the Carolinas to Georgia and out into the wide-open spaces of the (formerly) Indian Territory of present day Oklahoma.

Nestled in the green hills 40 miles east of Tulsa, the land around Pryor Creek is a dry ocean floor stretching for miles to the north and west, and waving at you with great swaths of blue stem, sedge, and switchgrass. Serious cattle country. Rattlesnakes abide. Shade is rare, wind is not. Recall the song: Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.

It is not hard to imagine a time when very few people lived here. Actually, having said that, hardly anybody lives here now! But 1400 years ago, a few footsore Aztecs (Spiro Indians) put down roots and lived here for several centuries. Viking explorers are said to have wandered through the area in 1015 AD – apparently lost. The Wichita Indians, descendants of a prehistoric culture known as the Earth House People, farmed corn and beans and generally avoided their warring neighbors to the west - the nomadic Plains Indians (Comanche, Apache, and Ute) that followed vast buffalo herds grazing the grasslands.

Nathaniel Pryor, veteran explorer of the Lewis & Clark expedition, came to the area in the 1820's and established a trading post on the Grand River. More people arrived over the next 20 years as the Five Civilized Tribes, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole were forcibly moved to Indian Territory by order of the United States government. 

Gold had been discovered in northern Georgia, and very shortly thereafter, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, thus beginning the “Trail of Tears”, a mass relocation of families from the Carolinas and the Deep South out onto the windswept prairies west of the Mississippi River.

Oh, hey, sorry but thar's gold in them thar hills! We are gonna be needing all this land round here... So if ya’ll could just giddy-up on outta here for us - that'd be great!

Pulling into Pryor, OK (pop. 8650) on this sunny day in spring, I took a couple of quick laps around the town, surveyed the situation, and found myself crossing streets with vaguely familiar names like Graham and Hogan and Adair.

It wasn't August and it wasn't Osage County... but, still, it all felt strangely familiar.

The locals seemed to take an extra long look at my wife's shiny black convertible - the wife's  Toyota Solara - which I had somehow ended up taking on this roadtrip. Who goes there? Elvis? Garth Brooks?  Nobody?
 

Hearing almost no banjo music to speak of, I wheeled sharply into the Eastside Cafe, pulled my faded yellow ballcap down low over my RayBans, and went inside. Even with all the noise and chatter, I had no chance of being inconspicuous, so I acted like I came here everyday, set my backpack on the floor, and plugged in my camera battery, and slid into a well-worn booth next to a bright, sunny window.

The smell of bacon, maple syrup, and coffee reminded me of home.  Soon a wiry, chipper waitress sidled up next to me:  

"What ch'all gonna have to drank?  

I think I'm fixin' to have a cup of coffee and some ice water - if that'd be alright? (I am nothing if not adaptable.) 

The coffee was hot; the pancakes prize-winning; and the service downright chipper. Ya'll doin alright over here? (Even though I was alone.) 

Eventually, I got her name. Tiffany. (Of course.) I asked Tiffany, the wiry waitress, I said: Tiffany, can you tell me where is the cemetery round here?

Oh, heck yes, theys a big one right out east of here! You take a right and then you take a left at the gas station and you're on the Old Highway 20. You caint miss it! Theys graves on both side the road...

Thank-ee ma'am.

Sure enough I did find the quiet little cemetery straddling a long hill and spanning a distance of several football fields, both north and south of the road. A few scattered trees gave the doves a place to sit. A peaceable place to rest one's bones, I reckon.

I drove the convertible slowly round, reading family names from days gone by. Harrison. Graham. Hammer. Smith.

A still, small voice inside me said: Too many, Brown. Find a directory. (...I am nothing if not intuitive.) 

 Eventually I stumbled into a little wooden sign with roof and a directory tucked in under a glass case. (Thank-ee.) After a quick search, I found the name I was looking for. Comparing the map to the ground around me, I slowly came to realize I was standing just a few paces from the final resting place of my mother's ancestors. My ancestors. Sacred ground.  Like they say down South: How's your Mom and 'em? (...Now you know.)

Hogan - A Pioneer Family said the large granite stone. On the far left, the bones of my Great Grandfather Graham Hogan rested. Next to him was John Z. Hogan, his elder brother by ten years. Their two sisters must be sleeping elsewhere; but there a few steps away, I spotted my Great Great Grandparents: John C. and Margaret M. (Adair) Hogan resting peacefully next to each other. 

Greetings love birds!

Great-Great Grandfather: The lines of this family history pass through John Christopher Hogan; born August 18, 1847 Charleston, South Carolina. His father was of the Irish Hogan clan and came over from Ireland some years prior. Perhaps the man was a bit too fond of whiskey,. He was last seen rafting south on the Mississippi River. It is not known whether he reached New Orleans or his homelands in Ireland - which was his stated desire and destination. J.C. Hogan's mother came from North Carolina and the family moved west soon after young John's third birthday, settling into the northwest corner of Georgia, Murray County, just under the morning shadows of the Blue Ridge mountains. Twelve years later, shortly after Abraham Lincoln became president of these United States, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union. Later that same spring of 1861, angry cadets at the Citadel (near Charleston) began jostling for control of Fort Sumter, shots were fired, and the rest, as they say, is history.

(One man's 'freedom fighter' is another man's 'guerrilla terrorist'. So much depends on who gets to write the history books.)

On the backside of Great-Great Grandfather's headstone, the phrase: Deo Vindice 1861 – 1865, is inscribed. This is Latin for "God is our vindicator" and happens to've been the official motto of the slaveholding Confederate States of America; engraved on their official seal. Umm...I did not know that. (So, Mr Hogan, I am guessing you would not be a big fan of our current administration - would you sir?)

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Sidebar: Seems strange to have lived all this time and not suspect this family connection to so-called cause of the South. Heck, I grew up in the south. I had read all three volumes of Shelby Foote’s Civil War, but I still felt no particular connection South or North.  Generally, you feel sorry for the North because they lost so many battles and so many boys. The Union generals seemed tragically inept as they flung themselves forward. (Fredericksburg is just one example.) The South had many advantages accruing from defensive positions and superior generals, but eventually, even these gave out under the steady onslaught and relentless wheels of Sherman and Grant. (To say nothing of the moral imperatives against slavery - for God's sake!)

So this late-inning discovery that our Great-Great Grandfather John was actually a "Johnny Reb" is at once both interesting and a bit disconcerting. To be fair, John C. Hogan may have been just another guy, swept up in the times, doing exactly what duty called for. On the other hand, protecting your homeland from Northern invaders, maybe causes your basic instincts to take over. Push comes to shove. In any event, there it was: A good part of my heritage inextricably linked to the rebel-yell sons of the South. 

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War ended at Appomattox in 1865. Four years later, the now 22-year old John Christopher Hogan left Murphy County in Georgia and headed west by covered wagon route, bound with a number of friends and family for the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

Apparently, the young Civil War vet was particularly fond of one fellow traveler, a beautiful young 19 year-old girl named Margaret Martha Adair (...of the Cherokee Adairs.)  Not much is known about the couple. Perhaps these two were childhood sweethearts and never dreamed of being with anyone else. Perhaps they were simply fellow travelers thrown together by chance and fate. While the many details of their long and fruitful union are, perhaps, now lost to history, much of what is known follows below. (Dug up by Ms. Nancy Keithly - my mom's cousin.)

Great-Great Grandmother: Margaret Martha Adair (1850-1928) was the daughter of John Adair and Anne Berry Graham. Her father John Adair was born in 1812 to Edward Adair and Martha Ritchie. Edward Adair was born in 1789 to John Adair (of Ireland) and his full-blood Cherokee wife, GaHoGa, of the Deer Clan.  The Deer Clan are said to be excellent hunters and trackers. Gahoga's father was Captain John Lightfoot, (1730) making her full name Nancy GaHoGa Lightfoot. Captain John Lightfoot's ancestors trace back to Jamestown and Grays Inn.

=== If you click this picture lineage to enlarge, it is easier to trace the connection back to Native Americana, Crazy Horse, and understanding why the sacred drums of my Lakota friends resonate. Crazy Horse was not fond of Blue Coat soldiers. Johnny Reb was not fond of Blue Coat soldiers. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. (...Just sayin.)

The Cherokee Adair family spread wide and deep, from Adairsville in northwest Georgia over to Adair County in eastern Oklahoma. I passed through the tiny hamlet of Adair, OK nine miles north of Pryor - although there was no stoplight to impede my progress. The Adair family has long been prominent in Cherokee tribal affairs. Even Oklahoma's favorite son Will Rogers (1879-1935) was William Penn Adair Rogers.

===== Sidenote: My 6x Great Grandfather John Adair was born in Ireland in 1753 and died in 1815. Apparently his Last Will and Testament, filed in the Abbeville, South Carolina courthouse, is said to have divided his ample properties amongst many children, including the specific dispensation of several (negro) slaves including Friday, Old Jenny, Peggy, Susan, Peter, and also asking that his "...still (liquor) and property be sold for sufficient money to secure the release of Harry from Thomas Reid from the present embarrassment.  

Not sure what the 'present embarrassment' was all about... but even two hundred years later, it sickens to read of these ownership rights over human beings and hear them being treated as casually as livestock.

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While Margaret Martha Adair’s paternal lines (Adair and Gahoga) go back to Irish and Cherokee roots, her mother's family tree (Graham and Lewis) reaches all the way back to the (so-called) Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence which reflected the push-pull resolve of certain North Carolina tobacco planters against the yoke of British rule.

Margaret's mother was Anne Berry Graham, who was born in 1816 in Rutherford County, NC and lived 74 years and died in Adairsville, GA in 1900. Anne Berry Graham's father was Ezekiel Graham and his father was William Graham. Mr. William Graham (my Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather) was one of the North Carolina planters said to have signed the Mecklenburg Declaration.

Anne Berry Graham's mother was Thomasina Farrar Lewis (1791–1863), who was, interestingly, the daughter of a Major John Lewis and his lovely wife Anna Berry Earle (1768-1845).  Anna Berry Earle was the proud and fine daughter of Thomasine Prince (1746-1781) and the brave Colonel John Earle (1737-1815). The Prince family line can be traced back to England and the late 1400’s. 

(That family lines can be traced that far back hints of nobility because birth records simply did not otherwise exist.) Edward Prince had immigrated to America in 1639 and his great grandson John Prince eventually settled near Spartanburg County, SC in 1768.

== Yet another sidebar: Late in 1958, US Air Force duty brought young Captain Ray Brown and his lovely wife, Janet Adair (Hogan) Brown east from Oklahoma to Greenville, SC, and shortly thereafter Janet gave birth to their second child, and first son Steven Charles Brown. (Moi!) All this happened in Greenville, SC, twenty miles or so west of Spartanburg, and the home lands of Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandmother Thomasine Prince and Grandfather Colonel John Earle.

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Thomasine’s daughter, Anna Berry “Nancy” Earle, (my 5X great Grannie) died in 1845 in the town of Adairsville, Georgia, a scant 35 miles south of Murray County, which is where 3-year old John Christopher Hogan's family would settle in 1851.

When the covered wagon train finally arrived in Indian Territory in early 1870, John Christopher Hogan and Margaret Martha Adair were soon married and to this union was born nine children, five of whom died in early infancy and childhood, and four who lived to mature manhood and womanhood. These were Viola (Hogan) Hancock, John Z. Hogan, Graham Hogan (my great grandfather), and Mabel (Hogan) Worsham. 

By virtue of Margaret’s Cherokee ancestry, John Hogan received the same privileges as a full Cherokee and selected an allotment of land northwest of Pryor in 1875. Within ten years he was considered a very wealthy man in the area.

A mason by trade and a freemason by association, J.C. Hogan built a stone chimney for a neighbor, and receiving a yearling calf for his labor, he gradually added to the herd and soon became one of the largest cattle dealers in the area. Later joining forces with his wife Margaret's cousin, W. A. Graham, together their ‘IXI’ cattle brand became well known throughout the sector. Graham and Hogan started many commercial and civic institutions together including the First National Bank of Pryor, Hogan Mercantile Company, and the First Christian Church. John Hogan helped to establish the Masonic Lodge in Pryor and also took part in the establishment of Oklahoma Statehood in 1906.

======= Driving through modern day Pryor Creek, OK, one can sense the impact of these founding fathers. Graham Street (Hwy 20) is the main east-west artery , intersecting both 

Hogan and Adair streets, which run north and south. Native Americana can be seen in the always bustling Indian Smoke Shops. 

Now if you keep driving east on the old Hwy 20, our past the cemetery, you may catch some of that old-time religion at the Tent Revival. Full gospel, thank you very much; although no snake-handling was apparent from my vantage point. A few folks were milling outside the tent when I slowed down to stare back at them. I thought I heard some faint banjo music, so I touched my hat, stepped on the gas, and sang Hallelujah bye-bye.

During their fity-plus years together, John and Margaret Hogan buried five children in infancy, as well as, their two grown sons. No shortage of sadness on these sun-baked Oklahoma plains. No sir.  Graham Hogan (my great grandfather 1886-1917) was the younger son, and ran a business called Hogan Transfer. He married Neva Campbell (b. 1891) from Mound City, KS and together they had two children: Campbell Norton Hogan (my grandfather) and Gara Adair Hogan. At some point Graham Hogan was exposed to syphilis - perhaps at a carnival, along with several other Pryor young men. His father (J.C. Hogan) took the lads off to Kansas City (or St Louis?) to seek treatment. After remaining dormant for some years, the disease apparently re-emerged, hit the brain, and Graham Hogan died very painfully in 1917 at the age of 31.

A Night in the Arms of Venus: Syphilis, it turns out, has felled quite a few over the centuries. These include C. Columbus, G. Washington, S. Joplin, N. Bonaparte, and A. Capone. Others were greatly hindered including A. Hitler, B. Mussolini, L. Tolstoy, and Karen Blixen (Out of Africa). Most of the Lewis & Clark’s crew were infected by syphilis and required dosages of calomel pills (mercurous chloride).

Prior to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, the treatment was often as fatal as the disease itself. Arsenic was used at first, but mercury proved more effective and gave rise to the expression: A night in the arms of Venus, leads to a lifetime on Mercury. Mercury also had grave side effects and very often caused dementia. The phrase “mad as a hatter” refers to hatmakers who used mercury in their trade and often went a bit crazy from the mercury fumes. Sad endings all round.  ===========================

Gara Adair Hogan married and had Nancy (cousin to Janet.) and more to follow on these branches of the tree.  John and Margaret Hogan’s oldest son, John Z. Hogan was born in 1876, married twice and served as Pryor’s major, before dying in 1921, at the age of 46. 

The couples’ two daughters Viola Hancock and Mable Worsham married and had many children. Altogether there were 16 grand-children, including Campbell Hogan (my grandfather).  Campbell N. Hogan married Adelaide Lenore Philips in 1934.  

Adelaide Lenore Philips Hogan is pictured below.

 

 

Together they had three children, all born in Pryor Creek, including Philip C. Hogan (1935), my mom Janet Adair Hogan (9.13.1936), and John Christopher Hogan (1939).

 

John and Margaret Hogan built a legacy in their lifetime. In addition to family, they also had hundreds of friends as well. John was a long-time Mason and lay-minister at the lodge. Margaret was Order of Eastern Star (OES was Masons for the rest of us.). The couple was remembered for kindness and generosity. The Hogans had been married 58 years, when Margaret died in 1928. It was said that John seemed like a lost child after she passed. 

Later in October 1929, the stock market took a mighty tumble and much turmoil followed. More than 1300 banks failed in 1930. Some bankers locked the doors, pulled the shades, and refused to answer calls from their desperate depositors. John Christopher Hogan, however, is said to have dipped mightily into his own accounts to help his neighbors.

John Christopher Hogan was 82 years, 7 months, and 21 days on the spring day April 9, 1930 when he walked, as usual, from his home in town out to tend to his farm. He walked off down through a wooded pasture and attempting to cross the Pryor Creek on a foot log, he fell from the log and was found drowned, laying face downward on the water, where he had fallen.

A week later, the Mayes County newspaper reported the Friday afternoon funeral for J.C. Hogan was probably the most largely attended funeral ever held in Pryor Creek. Men and women from all walks of life came out to pay their last respects to a life well-lived and well-spent. 

More suffering came to Oklahoma as the wind picked up and blew hard for ten years. The Dust Bowl. and Great Depression era lingered; but John and Margaret flew above the wind.

Turning toward home, I looked with new eyes on some of the things I had come to believe over the years. 

Even tumbleweeds have roots. Seek and ye shall find. 

I felt gratitude for being led toward these roots. The soulful Irish. The proud and complex Cherokee. The steady drumbeat of Native American grandfathers and grandmothers calls to my spirit.  May our lives reflect their suffering.  Mitakuye Oyasin. All my relations. Long to dance. Aho.
Peace.

(Special thanks to Momma Janet Adair Hogan Brown and her ever lovely cousin Nancy Keithly.)