WPA Oklahoma Bio - Lee Price -
Submitted by: Rex Tinrebleride@aol.com
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This is a Biography from the Works Progress Administration
Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Interviewee is Lee Price - Son of Constable R. J. Price
Interviewers Name: Jasper H. Mead
Report made on: January 19, 1938
Name: Lee Price
Post Office Address: Amber, Oklahoma
Residence Address: General Delivery
Date of Birth: September 10, 1890
Name of Father: R. J. Price
Born: Arkansas
Died at the age of 83
Name of Mother: Melissa Jane Carlton
Born: Coffee, Alabama
Died at the age of 55
My name is Lee Price. I was born September 10, 1890, at a place
called Healdton, which was about twelve miles west of Shawnee.
My father was about the first settler in this part of the country.
Shawnee about this time was just a small Indian Village. The
first railroad that was built through there was called Choctaw
Railroad. The country around Healton was very rough and hilly.
I have seen plenty of deer, turkey, wild horses and wild hogs.
My honest opinion is that there were more wild turkeys then than
there are tame turkeys now. I have gone wild hog hunting several
times with other men and it is a pretty dangerous game to play, if
you don't know what youare doing.
The main water supply came from dug wells and springs, mostly springs.
The kind of law we had were United States Marshal, one of whom was
Heck Thomas. My father, R. J. Price, also was an officer. He put
the first man in the Pottawatomie County Jail at Tecumseh when it was
first built.
When I first began to remember good around this place where my father
homesteaded there was no school, no church house and no roads. If
you wanted to go any place, you just started across the country. You
directed yourself by certain trees and different land markings.
There were a great many Indians around healdton. Crazy Snake was one
of the chief Creek Indians and an Indian by the name of Big Jim was
the Chief of the Shawnees. Crazy Snake was all the time causing a
little trouble. He was a little copper-colored Indian. Both he
and Chief Geronimo lived to be around a hundred years old.
There were several ranches around Healdton. I used to work on the
Cofis Ranch at $18.00 per month, board and room, but most of this
room was on the back of a cow horse looking after small calves and
running the line - that means looking after the outside fence.
I said at the first of my story that we didn't have any church house.
We didn't but we had what they call a brush arbor. I have hooked steers
to the wagon and driven them to preaching at this brush arbor
several times. A brush arbor is where you take a bunch of poles
and put them in the ground so they will stick up a little higher than a
tall man's head and then run poles from one to the other at the
top and pile the smaller brush across them. This makes a shelter
and a very nice place in the summer time.
Willard Johnson, who at that time was a widow's son, but who is today
a prominent business man in Shawnee, told my father if he would buy
yp a bunch of lots around Shawnee, some day he would be worth
something. But my father never did do it. He figered the country
would always be like it was then.
In those early days around Healdton, people lived differently from
what they do today. I was seventeen years old when I saw my first
screen door. At meal times, some member of the family would always
take a peach tree limb and mind the flies off of the table. It
wasn't only this way at our house but everywhere youw ent, there
just wen't any screens in those days.
I have lived in and around Chickasha since 1921 and am a farmer by
trade. I am a 1/32 Cherokee, but never did draw anything.