My Great Aunt Ethel was born in Sullivan County, Missouri, September 22, 1888 and came with her parents, Walter Fields McWhorter and Allie Celestia Broyles McWhorter to the Cheyenne-Arapaho Indian Territory by covered wagon in the spring of 1893. There were three little sisters in the family at that time, the youngest being only a year old. My Great Grandfather had obtained the 160 acre farm through buying the relinquishment from a woman who had made the run in 1892 and staked her claim but decided she didn’t want to live on it long enough to secure it.



The McWhorter family planned to live there for six months, return to Missouri to select their forty acres there and move the remainder of their belongings, but due to the danger of prairie fires, they decided to go back before the six months were up, and move the second time by train.



Aunt Ethel wrote a book about the families experiences as she remembered them, beginning at the age of five and on through her growing up years, to the statehood of Oklahoma in 1907. Ethel wrote this book for the family and it was published in 1984, when she was 96 years old. Ethel lived to the ripe old age 100 years old.



The book has long been out of print. As an extension of my genealogical research, I was able to transcribe the book so that future generations of our family can enjoy and understand where their family came from and the hardships that they endured.