What’s in a Name?

Have you ever stopped to think about the history behind the names of rivers, streets, towns, and even state parks in Oklahoma? In this episode, Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn take listeners on a journey to uncover some of the interesting and unusual stories behind places you may know or may have never heard of in the state. Their guests are Nicole Harvey, director of the Oklahoma History Center Museum, and Chantry Banks, director of museums and historic sites for the OHS.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
(upbeat music playing)

(00:04):
(TRAIT THOMPSON)Hello, and welcome to “A Very OK Podcast.”
My name is Trait Thompson, and with me as always
is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s greatto have you back this
month for our podcast recording.
(DR. BOB BLACKBURN) Thank you, Trait.
And we survived a brutal August this year.
Never got to 100.
So anyway, it's good to be here.
It's good to be in Oklahoma.
(THOMPSON) Yeah, well, it'sgreat to be talking with you again today.

(00:26):
We have a fun topic today.
I'm really excited about it.
This idea was sent to meby a friend of mine, and,
we've kind of expanded upon it.
It's going to be a little bit differentthan most of our podcast, but
the idea was to talk about exploringsome of the history behind
some of the interesting placenames in Oklahoma.

(00:47):
And as you'll talk about herein a second, Bob,
there are lots of different influencesin how things got their names in Oklahoma.
And just doing a little bit of research,I found myself going down the rabbit
hole really quickly, and so I'm excitedto get into this conversation.
And I'm also excited about our guests
for today's podcast,because we have two first-timers with us.

(01:10):
First of all, we have Nicole Harvey,who is the director of the
Oklahoma History Center Museum,
which is the museum right herein the History Center in Oklahoma City.
And so, Nicole,we are excited to have you with us today.
(NICOLE HARVEY) I am very excited to be hereand disappointed
I haven't been asked to do thispodcast earlier.
(THOMPSON) Oh boy, I'm in for it.

(01:31):
(BLACKBURN) Nicole likes to have the last word.(THOMPSON) Yeah,
believe me Bob, I know.
And with us also is Chantry Banks.
Chantry is the director of Museumsand Historic Sites
for the Oklahoma Historical Society.
(CHANTRY BANKS) And, 24 or so wonderful sitesall across the state.

(01:52):
And I'm thrilled to be here as well.
And I have nothing mean to sayto either of you.
(BLACKBURN) Well, and Trait, I've workedwith both of these individuals before.
Chantry, when he was directorof Preservation Oklahoma,
which is a very important support groupfor the Oklahoma Historical Society,
because we're, we're limitedin our advocacy,
in getting out thereand getting in groups.

(02:13):
And POK has done a great job.
I started with Ralph McCalmont,Susan Guthrie years ago.
I remember Melvena and I sitting in the Journal Record building before the bombing.
So this goes back early 1990sgetting that started.
And, and you came inwhat, about ten years ago I would guess?
(BANKS) Uh, let's see, about six years ago.
Six or seven years ago, yeah.

(02:34):
(BLACKBURN) But you kind of get,really brought it together
with some professionalism and, and,did real well around the state.
And then of course, worked with Nicole
when I was with the OklahomaHistorical Society.
She came in as my executive assistant
and soon expanded her dutiesto a little bit of everything.
So she was kind of ourour utility infielder, put it that way.

(02:56):
It is a baseball metaphorthis time of year.
(HARVEY) You used to call me Radar O’Reilly,and I didn't know what that meant.
(BLACKBURN) Oh, yeah, wrong generation.
But they, Nicole would guess what I neededand knew what I need
before I actually said it,so that used to freak me out.
(THOMPSON) Nicole, how long have you been with the OHS?
(HARVEY) Oh, I think 13 years.
So I was Bob's assistant from 2012,and then basically till he retired,

(03:21):
and then I took on the grant program.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
And director of Strategic Initiatives.
(HARVEY) Yep, director of Strategic Initiatives.
And now, in my current role as directorof the Oklahoma History Center Museum.
(THOMPSON) And, I don't know, she didn't really
raise her hand for that job,but I kind of thrust her into it.
And she's done a wonderful job.(HARVEY) Thank you.
(THOMPSON) So yeah, we're very excitedto have you in that role.

(03:43):
But let's get into talkingabout some of these interesting topics.
And when I was preparing for this,it reminded me of a great scene
from... We like to talk about pop cultureevery now and then on this podcast...
and it reminded me of a great scenefrom “Wayne's World.”
And in that scene, Wayne and Garthgo backstage to meet Alice Cooper,

(04:04):
and they ask Alice Cooper,do you come to Milwaukee often?
And he sits down on the couchand he proceeds to give them a lecture
and says, well, yes, but I'm notthe only one who's come to Milwaukee often.
French fur traders and missionarieshave been coming here since the 1600s.
And then somebody pipes in
from the background and says, well,isn't Milwaukee an Indian word?

(04:27):
And he says,thank you for asking me that. Yes.
It comes from the Algonquin word,Milwaukee, which means “The Good Land.”
And Wayne says, “Does this guy know how to party or what?”(laughter)
So, so we're not the first ones to jump
on the bandwagon of figuring out wheresome of these great place names came from.

(04:49):
And, Nicole, you've got some interestingicebreaker facts about names, don't you?
(HARVEY) I do.
So I knew that there was a Blackburn, Oklahoma,
and I started thinking,all right, is there a
a town name for each of the podcastersthat will be present?
So I did a little bit of her of a dive,and I found that of course,

(05:10):
we have Blackburn, which was namedfor a Kentucky Senator Joseph C. S. Blackburn,
and it was incorporated in 1909.
And then we have Thompsonville,which is a rural community
in Creek Countythat was platted in 1922, named
for J. W. Thompson.

(05:30):
And then we have a defunct town calledHarvey, which is in Lincoln County,
that doesn't exist anymore;had a post office from 1891 to 1900.
And it was named after Judge W. L. Harvey.
And then I am so sorry, Chantry Banks.
I was not able to,
I thought Banks would be a, for surecommunity, but,

(05:50):
yeah, but I could not find one.
At least I didn't see one in in our handy,George Shirk’s “Oklahoma Place Names” book.
But I did find two thingsthat were somewhat close.
I had, I don't know if it's pronouncedChaney or Chann-ee
in Ellis County, which is defunct.
And then Chant, which is in, was inHaskell County, and it's also defunct.

(06:13):
So you and I are defunct.
(BLACKBURN) But Nicole,if you feel short changed with places,
you should know thatthere are many Harvey Houses in Oklahoma
that we still have are still standingand going back to the days of
Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls.You're one of those.
And there's a street goingthrough Oklahoma City, called, you know,

(06:35):
Harvey.(BANKS) Oh, yeah, that's right.
And the Chaney which is, was in Ellis County, Chaney,
Chaney, whichever it is, you know, it'sit's the first letter of six local families.
I just looked this up.This was the Carey, Hull, Adams,
Nichols, Edmonds, and Yarnoldfamilies
that created that name of Chaney inEllis County.

(06:58):
(THOMPSON) See, friends, we know how to party too.
(laughter)
(THOMPSON) Well, Bob, why don't you tell usa little bit about some of where
some of the naming comes fromand the background
and some of that,and set the scene for us?
(BLACKBURN) Well, partlybecause Oklahoma is such a young state
and had such a long frontier era,

(07:21):
we've had a variety of ways that nameshave been applied to a geographical place,
to a town, to a crossroads or whateverit might be.
Really starts with American Indians.
Of course, American Indianshave been here at least 20,000 years.
Some archaeologiststhink 30,000, who knows, but at least 20.
And they had names for placesbecause generally they were nomadic.

(07:43):
They were hunters and gatherers.
They needed to remember whereyou could find the best stuff together,
where to get the best hunting,where to get fresh water.
And so they would refer to places.
And so American Indians had their ownnames, generally in their own language,
that often was corrupted becausethe next group that would come in and,

(08:03):
and use their names and sometimes amendthem ,would have been the French.
And the French really started coming into the territory after 1716, 1720.
And of course, the what,what they're coming for is not land
and not even gold, as the Spanishhad been, but they're coming to trade.
And the way that they would worktheir way into the frontier was on rivers

(08:24):
and up a creek,
and so they wanted to name the rivers.
So they would ask the Indians,what's the name of this river?
We'll meet you here next spring.
We'll get your furs,and we'll bring you trade goods.
And it was commerce, and their motivationwas to find American Indians
willing to trade.
So most of the major riversin Oklahoma have French names.
So you have River Rouge, the Red River,

(08:45):
what the Indians called it.
Because the water comes throughthe red beds of the High Plains,
and it is red and saltyby the time it gets here.
But you also have the Canadian River, and then the North Canadian that flows
through Oklahoma City.The Cimarron, the Poteau River,
the Arkansas,
and the Kiamichi.It goes on and on with the French names

(09:08):
because they needed to know where to meetthe Indians the next year.
And so the Frenchnamed a lot of our places.
And then the US Army
would come in after 1803,
as Indians were removed out of the old,the colonial part of the country,
and they were moved west.
Military would say, hey,you've got to go out and keep the peace.

(09:30):
You got to make peace among the Indians.
Let's create safety so we can trade again.
Motivation is to make money.
And as the army came, largely,
they were naming their military facilitiesafter other military men.
And so you get Fort Gibson, namedafter an officer, Fort Towson,
Fort Sill, Fort Reno,these are all names.

(09:53):
One exception, would havebeen Camp Supply, which was
Armstrong Custer's place
where he was going to have suppliesafter his winter campaign in 1868.
(THOMPSON) They weren't too creative on that one.
(BLACKBURN) They weren’t too creative, no.
And of course, we have the townstill of Fort Supply today.
But, the army did a lot.

(10:15):
And then the Five Tribes as they came,and they named a lot of places
because it was their land.They had the title to it.
You a lot of timeswe think of all of Oklahoma
was a reservationwhere the federal government said, hey,
you use it for a while, we'll take it backany time we want.
Well, the Five Tribesactually bought their land
and had a title,and so they were naming their own towns.

(10:36):
And when you expand to other tribes,
like the Osage,
they were naming their facilitiesbased on their, their divisions.
There were three
big divisions of the Osage Nationby the time they come to Oklahoma in 1871.
And so they're using names associatedwith their own
clans and bands and applying that to,

(10:57):
So you get a Fairfax, andyou get a Hominy, you get a
Pawhuska named for White Hair, is the way you actually said White Hair
in the Osage language, Pawhuska.
And so those are those namesare coming down to us from the Indians.
And then Wichita Mountains is a good example.
The Wichita were encounteredby Dragoon Expedition,

(11:19):
and they were campedin the Wichita Mountains.
And so it became the Wichita Mountains.
Yeah, it could have been the Kiowa Mountains.
Could have been Comanche Mountains,but the Wichita were there
when artists were comingin, it became a popular place.
And then after that,
you really get the railroadswould be the next big organization

(11:41):
that had motivation to name it,because they want to make money.
Typically railroads were making moneyin the American West by selling land.
Well, in Oklahoma,they didn't get a lot of land.
It was one of the few Western stateswhere railroads that would go in
early would get land on eitherside of the railroad, then sell it,
make a lot of moneyto immigrants, establish towns.
Well,here they didn't have all of that land.

(12:03):
So they tried to have town sites.
They were more motivated.
So town sites like Edmond and Guthrieand Oklahoma City
and Norman would all have been namedby the railroads.
Perry. It goes on and on.
They were located on these
on the railroad tracks, and the railroadswere trying to make money out of it.
Then after that, you get a waveof settlers who come in, and the settlers

(12:26):
create a community because there's enoughgood farmland in a watershed area
where once you get enough farmersto produce something,
then you need a blacksmith,and you need a schoolteacher.
Then you need a post office.
And so those settlerswould name their towns.
And so a lot of those towns are namedafter a local person
who might have been the first settler.
It could have been an important person

(12:48):
or somebody that, like Vinita,even though that’s an Indian name,
for Vinnie Ream, who was an actresson the on the stage at the time,
because
some Cherokees really admired her.
So the Vinita name came from her.
But local settlers, people developing,

(13:08):
and then we get the a big wave of naming,especially counties are all
named by the Constitutional Conventionin 1906 and 1907.
In fact, there was more time at theConstitutional Convention spent on counties,
where the county seats would be,because this was going to be a big
economic mover in, in the new state,

(13:29):
And so naming them. So Rogers County,a lot of people think it's Will Rogers.
It is actually his dad, Clem Rogers,who was one of the delegates
to the Constitutional Convention.(THOMPSON) Yeah.
(BLACKBURN) So a lot of them hadthings named for them.
Alfalfa Bill Murray, you know,had two. Alfalfa County and Murray County.
So, they had a good time in naming.
And then really last would be developers.

(13:50):
And this is more common, herein Oklahoma City, Nichols Hills,
G. A. Nichols, Doc Nichols, who put 2,000 acres
under contract, developed, brought in architects from Kansas City,
created this entire new community
with some retail, largely residential.
And so developers have done a lotwith names in the 20th century.

(14:15):
And so really, it's through all of these means.
And then there are little thingsin between, like post offices,
and Nicole will talk about that.
You know,sometimes there would be no name.
And they wanted deliverables.
They just put a name on a place.
And names have changed over the years.
So they've changed because of, you know,the German hysteria of World War I.

(14:38):
When you get townslike Berlin wanting to change their name
because they thought that would draw,
and there were some Germans, you know,lynched and tarred and feathered,
and a lot of the Ku Klux Klaneffort of the 1920s
came out of the anti-German and,being against foreigners.
But, so our names have evolvedfor a variety of reasons,

(14:58):
but that's kind of the big picture.
And then within that fitsthese other stories that we'll, we'll
get into some detail here.
(THOMPSON) Well, let's jump into it.
Nicole, since Bob mentioned post officesand you've done some, some research
into postmasters and post offices,why don't you start us off?
(HARVEY) Well, yeah.
So I was, flipping through George Shirk’s book here

(15:19):
that has all of these Oklahoma place names,and as Dr. Blackburn was mentioning,
and a lot of these, these communities are named
after important people or postmasters.
And they start noticing that I'mseeing a lot of names like Sophia or,
you know, Elizabeth, or Anna

(15:40):
or whatever last name,and then postmaster.
And I'm thinking, okay, I'mguessing that these are post mistresses.
And so I start lookingand doing a little bit of a dive,
and I find out that actually,10% of the postmasters
in the United States in about 1890were women.
And, I don't know why that surprised me.

(16:03):
I don't know that it should,but I just did
a little bit of a research into it,and apparently the
US Postal Servicewas one of the first branches
of federal governmentthat was giving jobs to women.
It was seen as somewhat sociallyacceptable because it was seen as a
something you could do from your houseor your, your husband's store.
And it was seen as like a clericalor domestic type

(16:23):
position. It was also a lot of timesa political appointee.
And so you have these, these women in,in our communities being postmasters.
And then they're getting to name the townafter, after them when they fill out
that, that form and send it over to the,to the post office.
So, to the, to the officialsin Washington, DC.
(THOMPSON) Did you find some examples of that?

(16:44):
(HARVEY) I did, I did, back up your work,
Nicole. Here we go.
So I feel like we're in math classfor a second.
(THOMPSON) We're not just
going to take your word for it.(HARVEY) Well, you should.
So, Weatherford.
I don't know if it was namedfor the husband or the wife.
But it the first postmasterwas a Lorinda Weatherford.

(17:09):
And then we've gota couple of defunct towns.
But we've got Snyder,
which was named after Margaret Snyder,who was the first postmaster.
It was later changed to Nagle.
And then we have Whiting,who was Ida Whiting.
And then there was another town, Sophia,and a couple of them were defunct.
But obviously towns like Weatherfordstill exist today.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
(HARVEY) And I was just really struck
by by the power of the post officeand making these, these names.

(17:32):
You know,if a town submitted for a post office
and they left it blank,it was at the discretion of the,
you know, the offices in Washingtonto to give a name
or if there was a duplicate nameor there's some reason
why that name shouldn't be takenin, they could just make it a change.
And in the book, it actually notesthat the gentleman, the Captain Tully,

(17:52):
who was who was, in this postat the time, in the 1880s
and for about three decadesafter that part, a lot of towns across
the United States are namedafter his family members or after his
neighborhood,you know, kids in the neighborhood,
just because they had to think of namesfor some of these communities.
(THOMPSON) Chantry, you are our resident westernOklahoma, guy here

(18:15):
at the OHS.
And, you are from the bustlingmetropolis of Hammon, Oklahoma.
(BANKS) That is correct.(THOMPSON) And then you researched
some western Oklahoma. And what do you have for us?
(BANKS) Well, just to piggybackon postmaster names, the town or the
it's not even a town,
it's a community, of Retrop
was named by, for the postmaster

(18:38):
Ira J. Porter.
And so the legend growing up, or whatI was told growing up, was that
they changed it to Retrop, whichis just Porter backwards,
because the town of Porteralready existed in Oklahoma.
I don't know if that's trueor if he was just being clever
when he named, named the,named his little community of Retrop,

(18:59):
but it is there in Washita County,
not far from, oh it’s on your drivebetween Elk City and Granite,
which are two other interestingtowns in western Oklahoma.
Granite being the most, I think, maybeone of the most obvious named
communities in the entire stateof Oklahoma because it sits right

(19:20):
at the foot of a giant granite hill,a mountain, Headquarters Mountain there
in a Greer County, there in thein the beginnings of the
Wichita Mountains
and, Elk City, which is the largest community
in Beckham County, was originally called Busch,

(19:41):
when it was.
Well,
it went by a couple of different namesbefore statehood when it became Elk City.
But it is named after Elk Creek now, which is there
the source of Elk Creek is right therein Elk City.
And, Captain
RandolphMarcy is the one who named Elk Creek there
because he saw elk tracks in the creek.

(20:04):
But there in good old
Hammon, Oklahoma,my favorite place in the entire world,
which sits at the, sits at where Custer County and Roger Mills County meet,
Hammon is named after, not the postmasteror postmistress, but a gentleman named.
excuse me, James Hammon.
He was an agent for the

(20:27):
Red Moon Agency,which was a sub agency of the
Cheyenne-Arapaho Agency,which was headquartered at Darlington.
So, Hammon existsbecause of the Red Moon Agency.
Once they started buildingthe, and the Red Moon Agency,
Mr. Hammon was sent out there.He was a farmer.
He was sent out there to, to teachthe Cheyenne-Arapaho children how to farm.

(20:52):
And so, Red Moon School was also based there.
And my, the farm I grew up onwas just a couple of miles
from the Red Moon Agency.
And so, settlers saw the opportunityto begin
settling around the Red Moon Agencyaround the school there for trade.
And that's how Hammon

(21:13):
came to be.
And
Mr. Hammon's wife,Ida, was the first postmaster there
at Hammon.
And, so Roger Mills County, also,it was named after, Roger Q. Mills,
who was a Confederate officerin the Civil War
and later a Texas senator.
Its county seat is Cheyenne, obviously

(21:35):
named for the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribesthat that called
that part of the country,that part of the state home.
And then right next door is Custer County,which was named for
General George Armstrong Custer
with its county seat of Arapaho.
(BLACKBURN) Whenever you talk about Hammon,I can't help

(21:56):
but think of one of my heroesin Oklahoma history of all time.
When I wrote the centennial book of the statein 2007,
I ended the bookwith this story of Lawrence Hart,
whose grandparents would have settledin that Red Moon community,
some of the more conservativeof all the Cheyenne,
in the Cheyenne Nation, stayed that far west.

(22:17):
They didn't want to be near Darlington.
They wanted to be, you know, farther awayfrom the corruption, that, you know,
white society and, but Lawrence Hartwould have gone to Red Moon
and became a peace chief there.
(BANKS) Yep, yep.
Same with White Shield Creek,which runs there through the town
of, through the town of Hammon,named after, Chief White Shield as well.

(22:40):
(THOMPSON) Well,and since you mentioned, towns that,
their names are pretty obviouswhy they were named that because of towns
like Granite.
Reminds me of the town of Marble Cityin eastern Oklahoma,
and it's because there's a giantmarble quarry right there.
(HARVEY) Cement, Oklahoma.(BANKS) Right.
Sulphur? Yes.

(23:01):
(THOMPSON) So sometimes you don't have
to really kind of stretchthe imagination to name a town.
You just look at what's aroundyou and say, well, this is the name.
(BANKS) Yeah.(laughter)
(THOMPSON) I wanted to talk about the,
there are, the name Noble pops upseveral times
in the former Unassigned Lands,which became Oklahoma Territory.

(23:21):
There's the city of Noble,there is Noble County,
and on in several townsyou also see a Noble Street.
And so why did this name pop up so often?
Well, as it turns out,these, this town, county streets,
they were named for the Secretaryof the Interior, John W. Noble, who served
under President Benjamin Harrison from 1889

(23:45):
to, I'm sorry, 1889 to 1893.
I wrote 1983 in my notes,
and that is not right.
He would have served in therea long, long time.
But he was born in 1831, in Lancaster, Ohio.
He ended up graduating from Yale in 1851,and he was admitted to the bar in Ohio
in 1853, moved to St. Louis,and then during the Civil War,

(24:10):
he served in the third Iowa Cavalry,was promoted to lieutenant colonel,
and then became the Judge AdvocateGeneral of the Army of the Southwest.
He ended his service in the waras a brigadier general.
He went back to Missouri,where he was appointed
the US District Attorneyfor the Eastern District.
In 1867, and he was tapped

(24:30):
to be the Secretary of the Interiorby President Harrison.
Now, why do we see so many, townsand things named for Noble?
Well, the land runs,and the assignment of lands
during that time, from 1889 to 1893,it was the Interior Department who oversaw
all of the nitty gritty detailsof making that happen.

(24:53):
So the Interior Department was responsiblefor setting the rules and regulations
for the land run, including the dates,
the geographical areas,any procedures for claiming land.
And they were also to establishthe location of the land offices.
I read a funny storyin “The Chronicles”
as I was doing my research on this.

(25:13):
He really didn't have much informationon the topography of Oklahoma.
So the first place that he choseto be the location
of the Kingfisher Land Office was actually in a ravine.
He ended up having to move itaround a little bit.
He would also settle legal disputesfor land claims.
So in today's day and age, when we talkabout the Secretary of the Interior,

(25:35):
we mostly see someone, of course,who's in charge of a massive department,
and the national parks,
and the Indian Affairs.
But they are in a lot of waysa figurehead.
They don't do a lot of the nitty grittywork.
Well, back in these days,he would have been a very involved
in all of the affairs to the pointof actually settling land disputes, too.

(25:56):
And I found this case of a man named Ransom Payne,
who was a deputy marshalin the Unassigned Lands.
And at the momentthe gun goes off at noon on
April the 22, 1889,he just goes a little bit
north of Guthrie,and he claims his 160-acre plot of land.
And of course, another personwho who fairly

(26:18):
participated in a land run,claimed that same spot of land.
And the big dispute was, well,he was here before,
you know, he wasn't technically a soonerbecause he was in the
Unassigned Lands legally, but he had an advantage.
And this was a casethat, ultimately came to Noble.
And he wrote, “Parties who occupiedpositions similar to that occupied

(26:42):
by Payne had abundant opportunityto qualify themselves as claimants
by withdrawing from the territoryand placing themselves on par with others,
had they so desired. This,Payne declined to do but
sought to take advantage of his positionto anticipate the arrival
of any other claimants from the pointthey had occupied in obedience of the law.”

(27:02):
So basically what Noble is saying here ishe had an unfair advantage.
Well, this works its wayall the way up to the US Supreme Court
and the US Supreme Court in 1898ultimately sides with Noble
and his interpretation of law, and Paynewas forced to give up his claims.
But at one point it was estimatedas many as one-third of the claimants

(27:23):
during the 1889 Land Run were probably fraudulent
by sooners and people who took advantage,
and it was a giant mess,to say the least, Bob.
And, but this is the,
this is the kind of, workhe was deeply involved in.
All of the details of the land runs, and the land lotteries,

(27:45):
for all of that time during his tenureas Secretary of the Interior,
in 1902, at the 13th anniversary of the land run,
he gave a keynoteaddress here in Oklahoma.
And he said, “On the 22nd day of April, 1889, at noon that day on time, the bugle
and the cannon sounded forward, Oklahoma,and the echoes are yet in our soul.

(28:08):
And today we have come to celebrate it,because it has proved to be
one of the signal eventsfor good in American history.”
I think that that, you know,people might disagree with that today.
Of course, we, we look at historywith a little bit more nuance, too,
but Noble, what came back, many times to Oklahoma.
He also supported the statehoodfor Oklahoma Territory

(28:30):
and would come back and speakat those events and conventions as well.
So that's who, these places
named Noble are named for John W. Noble.
And he ended up, he died in St. Louis in 1912.
(BLACKBURN) Well, we’re talking about the land run.
But the town comes to my mind onthe southern edge of the Unassigned Lands,

(28:51):
the little town of Purcell.
Yes. And a lot of people
don't think much about, you know,what happened to Purcell.
But Robert Jeremiah Love was
a Chickasawwho was orphaned during the Civil War,
and both of his parents were killedduring the war.
He survived, became a cowboy.
By 1870s, he had a couple of horses.
And a small herd of cattle,but just getting by largely

(29:15):
in the western partof the Chickasaw Nation.
But then he became friends with cattlemenout of north Texas and Gainesville.
And when the Santa Fe Railroadstarted building through in 1885,
he was selling beefto the construction crews.
And of course, those guys needabout 8,000 calories a day.
Well, on the railroad.So he was getting beef.
He was getting beef from other Chickasaws,doing real well.

(29:35):
Well he became so ingrained with the Santa Fe people
that he found out where the North crewand the South crew
were goingto meet somewhere in the middle,
kind of like driving the golden spikeon the transcontinental railroad.
He found out it was going to bejust south of the South Canadian River
in the Unassigned Lands.
And so he went forward and as a Chickasaw could claim a townsite

(29:59):
and named it Purcell.
And so, didn't do real well at first,because not many people wanted
to live that far on the frontier.
But when he made it, Land Run of 1889,because it became the southern port for
everythingcoming into the Unassigned Lands
and everythinggoing out towards the south.
And until the Frisco Railroadwas built in 1897,

(30:21):
almost all of our commerce went south.
So all of our cottonwas going to Galveston and Houston.
Everything went down riverlargely to New Orleans.
So that southern route and having Purcell
and then
some people might, especiallyfrom central Oklahoma, would know
that there was a famous merchantwho started his business

(30:43):
in Purcell in 1892, B. C. Clark.
(THOMPSON) Yeah, I was going to mentionthat you beat me to it.
(BLACKBURN) I beat you to it.
But anyway, little town of Purcellhas that interesting history behind it,
and Robert Jeremiah Love'sgreat-grandson
would start his ownstring of businesses
in 1963 and 1964.

(31:05):
And that was Tom Love,Love’s Country Stores and Travel Stops.
So, that one family has had a lot to dowith with changing place names
around the state.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
Without B. C. Clark,we wouldn’t know when Christmas starts.
(HARVEY) So say Chantry and I will comeback in December and do a rendition for you.
(CHANTRY) And the first Love’s was in
Watonga, is that correct?(BLACKBURN) Exactly. Yep.

(31:27):
(BANKS)Which also was home at one time to a restaurant called the Noble House.
(THOMPSON) So there we go.
(BANKS) The best cheese soup you'll ever have.
(THOMPSON) There we go.
And with that,we're going to take a quick break.
(ANNOUNCER) Got a sweet tooth and a love for history?
Then mark your calendars for the Cinnamon Roll Social at
Fort Towson Historic Site on Saturday, September 27 from 10 a.m.

(31:52):
to noon.
Enjoy fresh hot cinnamon rolls straightfrom a Dutch oven. While you snack,
wander through the museumand stroll the fort’s
scenic grounds, where soldiers oncelived, worked, and built their community.
It's free, it's fun,and it's a chance to connect
with neighbors, community leadersand the Oklahoma Historical Society team.

(32:14):
Don't miss this cozymix of history, conversation,
and of course, cinnamon rolls.
So grab your friends and step into history
with the side of sugar.The Cinnamon Roll Social,
September 27 at Fort Towson.
(THOMPSON) And we're back.
Okay.
Nicole, you've got some funny namesin Oklahoma you want to talk to us about.

(32:37):
(BLACKBURN) She's a funny girl.
(HARVEY) Well, I am.
Just call me Barbra.
You get it?
You get it, Chantry?
(BANKS) Of course.(HARVEY) Barbra Streisand. Yeah.
(BANKS) Not Barbara. Barbra.
Yeah.
(HARVEY) Okay.
So, I think a lot of peoplehave heard of this one.
Or maybe not, I don't know, but Slapoutin Beaver County, which apparently

(33:02):
I don't know if this is true or not,but the legend says that the storekeeper
was always “slap out” of whatever it isthat you needed, from his store.
And so the name stuck.
(THOMPSON) Well, as we know from the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,”
when the legend becomes fact,print the legend.
So we'll we'll go with that.(BANKS) And that's all I've ever heard.
That's the only.(HARVEY) That's the one.

(33:22):
(BANKS) Yes. That'sthe only explanation I've ever heard.
(HARVEY) You’ve also got Frogville,
which is somewhat self-explanatory,but apparently it has swarms of, which
I've never heard the term swarms of frogs,but that's what my notes say.
Swarms of frogs, and this is in quotes here,
“So large they ate young ducks.”

(33:44):
(THOMPSON) Wow. That's straight out Genesis.
(HARVEY) That is a real big frog.(laughter)
This one's not funny.
This one's just kind of cute.
The town of Henryetta was namedafter a couple
named Henry Beard and his wife,Etta Ray Beard.
So you take Henry and Etta, and make Henryetta. That was kind of sweet.

(34:06):
We have, this is,
It's October now, or we're coming intoOctober, I should say, Pumpkin Center.
But I don't know anything about itother than it's called Pumpkin Center.
And it sounded
fall-esque and sounded fun to me.
There’s also like a, oh, I can't remember if it's Cookieville or Cookietown,
but there's a, there's a cookie something.

(34:28):
We had a really great poston our social media for the agency
in which it kind of was using,like all the terms
of all the different places we've got in our state that would make up a meal
and then, you know,get “Foyil” to wrap your leftovers.
I mean, just kind of cute little puns,
and that was one of the onesthat was listed.

(34:49):
Pumpkin Center was on that.
And then last we've got Antlersand this is again,
not funny, but it's just, antlersapparently were just
nailed to a tree to mark a streamcrossing.
And, that was what the name took,
the town took its name afterand again, a postmistress.
Ella Colbert was the first postmasterthere.

(35:12):
(THOMPSON) Very nice, very nice.
Bob, you have any other namesyou want to talk to us about?
(BLACKBURN) Yeah.
I wanted to mention that within cities,you have place names.
People know,
you know, a certain part of townby a name and
two examples would be one in Tulsa.
And the Arkansas River,of course, flows through Tulsa,

(35:34):
everyone knows. Well in the 1970s,
the idea is create some low waterdams and create more of a lake.
And then around the lake will have trails,
and then we'll have statuary.
And lots of thingswere happening in Tulsa.
And it it really helped Tulsa's economic
development downtown, alongthe Riverwalk was what we still call it.

(35:55):
But the name given to the lake was Zink Lake,
Z-I-N-K. And it was not from the,
you know, the mineral zinc,but it was from, Jack and John Zink.
John Zink had studiedmechanical engineering
at OU. Worked for Oklahoma NaturalGas 1931.
Went out on his own, starteddeveloping new kinds of burners and floor

(36:19):
furnaces and different apparatusfor industrials, and then along comes
Jack, his son, after World War II expandsthat into an international company.
And between Jack and John,there were two different foundations
that put up the initial moneyto come in with the low water dams.
And so you get Zink Lake.(THOMPSON) Okay.

(36:39):
(BLACKBURN) And here in Oklahoma City, a good example is that the old industrial section
of town on the on the northeastside of town, which would have been east
of the Santa Fe tracks,south of the Frisco and Rock Island
tracks, and north of the river,which cut through.
So it created a trianglethat was an industrial district.
No one wanted to have homes there,

(37:00):
if they could help it, and it became
an area
with two and three, sometimesfour story brick buildings.
Well, fast forward to World War IIand coming out of World War
II with industrial districtsand and trucks that couldn't
get into these old industrial partsof Oklahoma City, as well as Tulsa.

(37:20):
And so you get this.
The industrial districts will, companiesstart
leaving that area of Oklahoma City,
and it becomes kind of a wastelandwith literally grass.
Growing up, I took a photograph in 1978,in this part of Oklahoma City,
and grass was literally grown up between the brick.
There was not enough cars to keepthe grass from growing in the bricks.
And so literally,it was grass growing up in the bricks.

(37:42):
Well, a developer who got interested inin historic preservation
very early, Neil Horton,who had developed the oil and gas building
right by the First National Bankbuilding today,
he got excitedabout historic preservation in the 1970s
when it was a big, big deal, really,starting with Congress in 1966
and coming to Oklahoma.

(38:03):
Well, Neil Horton looked at that.
He said, this looks like an asset to me,
and maybe it'ssomething that I can develop.
So he put together a, a developmentcompany, hired a young architect
named Don Beck who would later designthe Oklahoma History Center,
hired a young PhD student from OSUwho is willing to scramble and work
named Bob Blackburn.(THOMPSON) Who’s that guy?

(38:26):
(laughter)(BLACKBURN) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (HARVEY) What ever came of him?
(BLACKBURN) Put 10 buildings on the National Register. Don put together a concept
and they called it Bricktown.
Well,
Bricktown didn't come from the CityCouncil saying it's going to be Bricktown.
It didn't come from it, but it came fromthis developer who had this idea.
And just like Zink Lake in Tulsa,Bricktown here you get different

(38:46):
names applied to geographical areasthat we know today.
And so I think those are two urbanstories
that kind of you can trace backto individuals making decisions.
(THOMPSON) Fascinating, fascinating.
Chantry, I was wondering, you had mentioned,when we were getting prepared for this,

(39:07):
you did a little research on the namebehind the Washita River.
(BANKS) Yeah.
(THOMPSON) And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about the Washita River.
I would love to.
I grew up on a bigbend in the Washita River
at the confluence of Quartermaster Creekand the Washita River.
Washita is, so it’s W-A-S-H-I-T-A

(39:33):
is the Europe,
well, not even the European, it's not the French,
it's the English pronunciationor spelling of two Choctaw words:
Owa Chito, which means big hunt.
And so we have two separate
spellings of Washitain the state of Oklahoma.
Of course, the

(39:55):
Ouachita National Forest,the mountains in southeast Oklahoma.
But then the Washita River,which begins in the Texas Panhandle
and, is a tributary of the Red Riverand runs its way down,
through northwest Oklahoma, central-western Oklahoma,
into central Oklahomaand dumps there into the Lake Texoma now.

(40:17):
But there were, where
I grew up, on the Washitawith Quartermaster, with the
Quartermaster Creek was named for James Bell,who was a quartermaster for Custer
at the battle or massacre
of the Washita in 1868.
It was this areawhere these two bodies of water meet

(40:40):
was the short-lived home of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Cattle Company.
Just lasted a few years.
It was I believe a million-acre
cattle operation and
a beautiful Oklahoma Historical Society
marker marks that there on the highway,

(41:03):
just south of the, of that area.
But the, the Washita where I grew up.
So as you're driving down I-35, you you drive over the Washita
a couple of different times,and it looks like a beautiful big,
well hydrated river,
a very nicely flowing river.

(41:25):
But up where I am,sometimes there's no water in at all.
The last time I drove over the bridgethat I grew up, playing under,
dangerously,there was not a drop of water
in the river,but that's changed in the last,
this very wet and mild yearthat we've had.
So, yeah, that's the, that's

(41:45):
what I've learned about theabout the Washita, of course,
Battle of the Washita happenedthere on the Washita River
just west of Cheyenne, Oklahoma.
(THOMPSON) It is really interesting
because if you go to that, that siteof where that massacre took place and,
and just a little plug,we did a podcast about that,
battle or massacre of the Washitaa couple of years ago.

(42:08):
So you can go and listen to that,
but you can almost jump over the riverright there.
It's not very wide.
(BANKS) We'd call it a “crick” or a creek, right there,
where there at Cheyenne.
And especially even just a little furthernorth and west.
One of my favorite places to visitis the Metcalfe Museum and Break O’Day Farm
there near Durham, Oklahoma.

(42:30):
And it's barely a, it's barely,
you could spit in it
and get quite a bit of water to theto the flow of it, of it right there.
So as it
I mean, it's it's it is a major tributaryof the of the, of the Red River.
Just picks up a lot of springsand creeks on its journey.
(THOMPSON) Yeah, we did our podcast over the 1834

(42:53):
Dodge Leavenworth Expeditiona couple of episodes ago.
And, you know, one of the placesthey camped was where the Washita meets
the Red River as they're working their wayto go west to the Wichita Mountains.
And, I got on a little larkand I pulled up Google Maps,
and then I just started.
I zoomed inand I just started tracing the Washita.

(43:16):
First of all,it is not a straight river at all.
Yeah, it twists and curves and bends,but I traced it.
I mean, it coversa lot of territory in Oklahoma.
And you're exactly right.
When you're driving west on I-40, you'redriving west on any of the major towns.
You'll cross the Washita several times,and you just think to yourself, like,

(43:36):
where does this river go?(laughter)
(THOMPSON) And and,
just like you said, there are placeswhere it's not very wide,
and then there are places where it's,you know,
good, wide, and it's flowing really well. (BANKS) Right.
And it has those beautifulat some, very steep
red cliffs, that, that make up the banks
of, of the Washita, to the,

(43:59):
to the fact that,
my grandparentsreally believed that there on the farm,
there's a huge bluff that fallsright into the Washita.
And they had found a few bison
remnants at this site.
So they believe they had a, we had a, bison kill site there on the Washita
there in Custer County.

(44:22):
And, I love,I could talk about the Washita all day,
but it's also was just so notoriouslyknown for flooding,
almost every spring, to the factto the point that the Upper Washita
Conservation Districtwas one of the first conservation
districts created in the countryto create a series of ponds and dams

(44:43):
to help with flood control there,and in Roger Mills and Custer County.
(BLACKBURN) Because of the flooding,
some of the best farmland in the state isaround the Pauls Valley, Chickasha,
you just
if you meander up the Washita River,you're going to see
some of the richest farmland in Oklahoma.
(BANKS) And I have spent many an hourfollowing like you, Google Maps, just it
just, follow that route of the riverbecause there are several little oxbow

(45:07):
lakes that have been created overthe decades for that river.
(THOMPSON) Nobody can tell us
we don't know how tohave a good time, Chantry.
(laughter)(THOMPSON) Well, I
want to take us to the oppositeend of the state, in the far
southeastern corner of Oklahomain McCurtain County,
and I want to talk about Beavers Bend State Park.
And when you'rewhen I was doing research online,

(45:30):
most of the sources that I lookedat about Beavers Bend State
Park said it was named for John T. Beaversor, you'll see
him referred to as Johnny Beavers,a Choctaw citizen who married
Lavina Hudson Beavers, who was a fullblood Choctaw, and her father
had also been chief of the Choctaw Nation.
And in 1930,the land that they lived on in southeast

(45:52):
Oklahoma,it was sold to the Choctaw Lumber Company.
And then, that company ended upselling it to local community leaders.
And it became,
ultimately ended up becoming oneof Oklahoma's original state parks,
also a podcast episode that we've donehere,
Beavers Bend State Park.
And what's interesting about this,and I called our resident McCurtain County

(46:14):
historian, actually, I, I didn't call,I texted him
because I've started seeingsome information that maybe Beavers Bend
wasn’t named for Johnny Beaversin the Beavers family.
Maybe it was actually namedbecause there were beavers there.
And so I texted Kenny Sivard, our board member

(46:35):
who knows everythingthere is to know about Choctaw,
about southeastern Oklahoma,and in particular, McCurtain County.
And, I said, hey, can you give me thethe straight scoop on this?
And he said, yeah.
He said, John's wife, Lavina,gave an interview to the WPA in 1938,
and she said that it was called Beavers Bend long before Johnny Beavers.

(46:56):
Johnny Beavers was
born in Alabama and made his wayinto the Choctaw Nation in the 1890s.
And she said it was calledthat long before because
there was actually, before it was alltrapped out,
there were a lot of beavers in that area.
And, she did an interviewin the Indian Pioneer Papers
that we have here in our collectionat the Oklahoma Historical Society.

(47:20):
So this morning I asked Chad Williamsif he could help me pull that up.
And and I actually read her interview,and in it, she said,
“Indians call this place
Bokfolta in Choctaw,which is ‘winding around river’ in English;
but white people call it Beavers Bend
because there were many beaverin this river in those early days.”

(47:40):
And so she kind of sets the recordstraight that it was called
Beavers Bend before, beforeJohnny Beavers got there.
Now, I did also look on The Gatewayto Oklahoma History and, and, looked up
John Beavers name just to see if therewere any mentions of him in the newspaper.
And boy am I glad I did,because I found a couple of great quotes

(48:04):
about John Beavers in the newspapers.
So, Idabel’s “Democrat-Record”newspaper on November 9, 1911,
notes that “John T. Beaverswas here from Eagletown Monday.
John says that while he had killedevery kind of animal in the woods,
he likes to look at the big catsthat grow in other countries.
He claims, and can no doubtverify the claim...” which I would,

(48:26):
I would really loveto see how you do that.
“He claims that he has killed moredeer than any man in Oklahoma or Arkansas.”
So, interesting.
And then in February 7, 1912,the “McCurtain County Gazette”
announced John Beavers’run for county commissioner.
And in the quote it said, “John Beaversis perhaps one of the most widely known

(48:49):
men in the county, having a hunting recordfrom Maine to Mexico.
He intends to make you a commissioner,of which you will dream about
in the after years.”
And he says he knows the needsof McCurtain County and will, quote,
“take no monkey businessif he is commissioner.”
So, he looks like he was a manwho was not to be trifled with.

(49:11):
And you probably,he could probably have many different ways
to kill you if you wanted to.(BANKS) But did he win?
(THOMPSON) I suspect not because he was runningas a Republican and, they,
and he was probably the only Republicanin McCurtain County in 1912.
He ended up dying in 1936at the age of 86.

(49:33):
But his wife, Lavina, lived on until 1955.
So despite what you find online,it seems that Beavers Bend State Park
is really named for the,at one time, abundance of beavers.
I'm sure that has a lot of,I don't think they trap it anymore.
So maybe the beaverpopulation has come back.
So, I thoughtthat was pretty interesting.

(49:57):
Nicole, what do you got for us?
What's some other funand interesting things you have for us?
(HARVEY) So, I thought there,
I noticed there were some repeat names,and by repeat names, I mean names from
other states or other places in the world
that found their way to Oklahoma.

(50:19):
One of the most obvious examplesthat a lot of us will know is, Prague,
Oklahoma.
And, you know, I, I strugglewhen I am talking about Prague
to properly pronounce it now,just like Miami, Florida.
You want to say, you know, “Miam-uh.”
But yeah.

(50:40):
(THOMPSON) Prague.(laughter)
(THOMPSON) She twisted her tie again.
(HARVEY) Prague, Oklahoma,
was named after Prague at the time,
Czechoslovakia.
And we've got
two Muscogee (Creek) names of Eufaulaand not quite Tulsa, but,

(51:01):
it was a Creek or Muscogeeword called
Tallasi
I think is,maybe I'm pronouncing that correctly.
And it was, mean old town.
And these were two locations in Alabama.And Eufaula,
the book I was readingactually didn't go into this detail,

(51:24):
but I did a little bit of researchand saw that Eufaula was the tribe
that was under the Muscogee (Creek)Confederation.
And of course, these names came with themas they made their
way during removal to Indian Territory.
And, you've got some more, you know, some other ones like Dover,

(51:45):
originally I think Dover, Delaware.
And then it comes to, you know,Dover, Dover, England, and then you've got
Lebanon, which comes from Lebanon, Tennessee.
And then I looked at Lebanon,Tennessee's origin,
and it was, for the cedar treesin Lebanon, Tennessee,
which I guess, have a

(52:08):
there's a biblical...(THOMPSON) Cedars of Lebanon.
(HARVEY) Thank you. Trait.
And, and so that was, that cameand there was,
it was a headquarters of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
And then lastly is Kildare,
which again, most likelynamed after County Kildare in Ireland.
So you got a lot of people bringing,you know, their place names, their culture

(52:29):
with them as,as they're coming into Oklahoma.
(THOMPSON) Bob, one that's been lost to timethat I can't figure out
who it was named for is Gene Autry.(laughter)
(BLACKBURN) It’s Roy Rogers.
(THOMPSON) That's what I thought.
But I wanted to get some more.
(laughter)

(52:49):
(BLACKBURN) A name that I grew up with thatI didn't know anything
about for years here in Oklahoma City, Tinker Air Force Base.
(THOMPSON) Okay.
(BLACKBURN) And it's the largest employerin the state,
Tinker Air Force Base, we've known since,you know, World War II was on board.
My dad was in the Army Air Corps,so that was of interest to me.
But, when it was first established,when the war,

(53:10):
before we entered the war,actually the European war was going
and America was arming and they needed
a depot somewherein the Midwest for the Army Air Corps.
There was no Air Force at the time,but it was part of the Army.
And they decided to come to Oklahoma Cityand it was called
Midwest Air Depot originally.
So Midwest City comes from Midwest Air Depot.

(53:31):
(THOMPSON) I honestly did not know that.
That's, that's news to me.
(BLACKBURN) So that was it.
And when Bill Atkinson established a town,he did the name after the base.
Well, in 1942,
there was a a, a major general,
with the Air Force named Clarence Tinker,who is Osage.
And Clarence had joined the armyduring the Philippine Insurrection

(53:55):
and served in the army, laterbecame a pilot,
learned to fly at Tinker Air Force,
excuse me,
at Fort Sill, which was a centerfor aviation with the Army Air Corps
at the time, and was a real advocatefor aviation in the interwar period.
When the war began,they put him in charge of the air
base in Honoluluthat had been destroyed by the Japanese.

(54:20):
And he was a very aggressive warrior,typical of Osage traditions. And,
but like Lawrence Hart,
a good example of that, became a Marine,Air Force, jet fighter pilot.
The warrior traditionwould live among American Indians.
And generally American Indian tribes overthe years have volunteered for service

(54:41):
in the military in greater numbersthan any other part of the of our society.
But Clarence Tinkerwas one of those warriors, very aggressive.
And out of Hawaii,
he planned several missions to bomb Midwayand other Japanese outposts.
And on one of those raids, planewent down and killed him.
And so in his honor,an Osage Indian from Osage County,

(55:01):
they named Tinker Air ForceBase, renamed it from Midwest to Tinker.
And so that's the name that we know now.
And we need to honor Clarence Tinkeras not only a great war hero,
but an Osage Indian and someonewho was willing to serve his country.
(THOMPSON) That's great.
That's great. That's a good story.
I, I knew some of that,but not all of that, so that's good.

(55:24):
Chantry, do you have any othersto share with us?
(BANKS) Well, I wanted to ask Dr. Blackburnto clarify what I, what I grew up
hearing about thethe community of Berlin, Oklahoma.
Is it truethat it was originally called Berlin
until this wave of anti-German
hate rose in the state or in the country?

(55:47):
(BLACKBURN) I think you're right.(BANKS) Okay.
Because there's also in Roger MillsCounty, that's in Roger Mills County.
There's also Hamburg in RogerMills County, a little community there.
So I don't know if it was,you know, originally called Hamburg
until we decided we had to changethe pronunciation of things.
(THOMPSON) Well, we know that German settlements would,

(56:07):
Germans did migrate to northwest Oklahomafor the farming.
And we know that they establishedcommunities out there as well,
so it stands to reason.
(BANKS) Yeah, I was wondering if, you know, there
there are certain towns pronunciations
in this state that, you know,you are an Okie or you're not an Okie.
If you don't if you can't pronounce,the town correctly, and

(56:30):
I was wondering if you had any thatcome to mind immediately.
(HARVEY) Durant.(BANKS) Durant. Okay.
(BLACKBURN) Miami.(BANKS) Miami.
(THOMPSON) Well, one of my favorites that you hearmispronounced a lot is Tahlequah.
Because if you hear someonethat is pronouncing it and they’re
from out of state, sometimes on the newsor whether it's, you hear “Tah-lee-quah.”

(56:53):
(BANKS) Yes. Yeah.
Well, a very famous, a more recent example of that
is that first season of “Only Murdersin the Building”
where Tina Fey's charactermispronounces Chickasha.
(HARVEY) They had to go back.(BANKS) And they had to correct in season two.
For me, it's Vici. People say “Vicki”all the time or “Vichi,

(57:14):
which is that's actually the,
yeah, the,
the town was named after veni, vidi,vici the, the Latin term there.
So, it says in jest in the, in,
Mr. Shirk’s book, it does say in jest.
So maybe it wasn't,
maybe nobody was conquering anythingthere
in Vici, Oklahoma.(HARVEY) I have a friend

(57:37):
who grew up here,but her parents did not.
And she thought that Miami,
Oklahoma,was supposed to be pronounced Miami,
but that Gary Englandjust had a very thick Oklahoma accent.
And I had to explain to her that no,
it is actually Miami.(laughter)

(57:57):
(BLACKBURN) He was a Seiling boy.
(BANKS) Yeah.
(BLACKBURN) One little quick pop culture referencehere. You reminded me of that, Chantry.
My mother had a television show,and she was interviewing Bob Hope
one day on the show, and, Bob Hopekind of turned around the interview.
He said, well, Ida,where were you born, because of her accent?
And she said, Ninnekah.

(58:17):
And he said, Ninnekah, where is that?
She said, oh, about eight miles from Agawam.(laughter)
And Bob Hope says, Ida, that's funny.
That's a good joke.(laughter)
(THOMPSON) Oh, man,
(HARVEY) We could do a whole podcast on funnystories of Ida B.
(BLACKBURN) Yeah, yeah.
(THOMPSON) Well, I'll,I'll close this out here with a story

(58:41):
about the name behind the city of Langstonand Langston University.
And, Langston was actually namedfor John Mercer Langston.
And I realized that I have talked aboutthree gentlemen named John here today.
And I did not do that on purpose.
I kind of picked these towns randomly,and they were all named for

(59:01):
someone named John.
Of course Beavers Bend wasn’t a town.
But, John Mercer Langston was born free
on a plantation in Virginia in 1829.
He was the son of a woman,
Lucy Langston, who had been enslavedbut had since been freed.
And then his father was a white man,

(59:23):
Captain Ralph Quarles,who had been her former enslaver.
He's actually sent to Ohio
to be raisedby a close friend of John Quarles.
And he attended Oberlin Collegeand studied law.
In 1854, he became the firstAfrican American to pass the bar in Ohio.
And, he made an important speech

(59:46):
at the AmericanAnti-Slavery convention in 1855.
And this is a quote from the speech.
I really like this quote.
“There is not within the lengthand breadth of this entire country,
from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlanticto the Pacific Ocean,
a solitary man or womanwho is in possession of his
or her full share of civil, religious,and political liberty.

(01:00:09):
We have been in the habit of boastingof our Declaration of Independence,
our federal Constitution,and the Ordinance of 1787,
and yet I am forced to declare,looking the truth directly in the face
and seeing the power of American slavery,
that there is notwithin the bosom of this entire country
a solitary man or woman who can say,I have my full share of liberty.”

(01:00:33):
He was a passionate advocate
for civil rights and equal rights for,for Black Americans.
He helpedfound the National Equal Rights League
with Frederick Douglass in 1864.
In 1867, he was selected to bethe inspector general
of the Freedmen's Bureau,and then he later went on
to become law professorat Howard University in 1869, and was then

(01:00:57):
made the dean of the law school in 1870.
He ran for Congressas a Republican from Virginia
in 1888, and the results of the electionwere disputed.
Finally, in 1890,the House of Representatives
settled the dispute andand brought him in,
and then he lost his reelection bid,and he died in 1897

(01:01:18):
at the age of 68 years old.
But that is who Langston Universityand the city of Langston are named for.
Just north of here,where we are in Oklahoma City.
(BLACKBURN) Real hero.(THOMPSON) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, I've had the best time learningabout some of these place names.
And, thank you, Chantry.

(01:01:39):
And thank you, Nicole, for going onthis little lark with us.
This is definitely a differentkind of podcast
than we've done before,but I had a lot of fun with it.
(BANKS) We could have gone all day,I'm afraid.
(THOMPSON) Oh, yeah, I, I had more to talk about.
So I think we may have to revisitthis topic sometime in the future.
What do you say, Bob?(BLACKBURN) Let’s do it.

(01:02:01):
(THOMPSON) Okay.
Well, with that, we will look forwardto seeing you next time.
Thanks and have a great day.