He was the son of Thomas H. and Martha McMurtrey.
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Indian Papers Interview #13083
By James Russell Gray, Investigator
Feb. 24, 1938
(Edited for space)

I am about a quarter Choctaw. We get our Indian blood from Mother; she was half Choctaw and half white and some of that white blood was French, though not all. I never did get it straight what her maiden name was; she went by the name of Lanier, but that was the name of her step-father, her mother's second husband. Her given name was Martha. She was born in Alabama in the Tallapoosa River region; her birth date was about 1817, since she was sixteen when she left Alabama with the tribe and came to the Territory over the Lonesome Trail (Trail of Tears) in 1833. That bitter trip is something she didn't like to discuss. Her people settled just across the line from Arkansas, about twelve miles or so southeast of Skullyville. She was still living in that neighborhood when she met and married Father.

Father was a white man, a native of Arkanss. I don't know what year he was born, but I have heard him say he was the same age as the state of Arkansas; was born in the same year Arkansas became a state. He was born over the line in Arkansas, not more than half a mile from the house where I was born.

I came along on March 10, 1868. I was born within a stone's throw of the Arkansas line, just barely within the Territory. I grew up there until I was fifteen. The Choctaw Nation was pretty thinly settled then; we didn't have so very many neighbors; just scattering houses. White men were scarce.

Father raised stock; cattle, horses and hogs. Practically no farming went on except for small patches around the house planted in corn or gardens. A man made his money out of cattle. And the hogs were just a sideline; we turned them out to rustle for themselves, killing a few to eat when we needed them. Although we handled lots of cattle later, until I was fifteen we never kept over fifty head at once. We just turned our cattle loose in the woods after branding them with our Mc brand--capital M, small c. No one ever bothered them; certainly not the Choctaws, for they were as honest as sunshine.

Talking about honesty, let me give an illustration. In those days people didn't lock their houses in the Choctaw Nation. If a man was going away from home for a week, he left the doors unlocked Nobody ever bothered anything. Oh, someone might stop and go in the house to eat, but that was according to the tribal law. A hungry man would eat what he wanted and go on without touching anything except food.

The first house I can remember living in was a two-room log buiding. We had windows with glass in them, though not all houses had glass then; some houses did not even have openings for windows. We cooked at first over a fireplace, then when I was five we got a stove to cook on. I can't say that the food we ate was so very different from what people have now, except that we had more game Deer and turkeys and the like were thick and easy to get. The creeks had plenty of fish in them.

I went to school at Hackett City; got there most of what schooling I did get. The school was a one-room building, taught by one teacher, usually a man.

In 1883, Father decided to move from Skullyville County to Gaines County, and we came to a location about thirteen miles southeast of old North McAlester--three miles southwest of the present site of Hartshorne. To give you the location in another way, it was roughly a mile east and two miles north of the present school-house called "Sulphur," and Sulphur school is in Section 21, Township 4 North, Range 16 East.

Father wanted to put in a cattle ranch on a larger scale than he had ever before attempted. I was fifteen years old then, and for the next three or four years, I traveled back and forth between our old home and the new one. We put up fences and built houses and barnes; then Father moved our furniture and all our things, and we came to the new place to stay.

We changed our brand then to Bar M Bar. A man's brand, in those days in the Choctaw Nation, was registered at the county seat and with the county clerk.

After we moved to Gaines County we built up a pretty good sized heard of cattle, having at one time around a thousand head. We drove a herd once or twice to LeFlore and shipped over the Frisco Railroad, but most of our stuff was shipped on the M. K. & T. from McAlester. We shipped to St Louis. There wasn't any Hartshorne or Haileyville when we first came here.

I have fire-hunted for deer many a night where the two towns are now We'd take a pan with a long handle, and we'd put rich pine sticks about two inches thick in the pan. There were plenty of deer and the burning pine made a bright light that blinded them.

There were canebrakes in the valley between the two towns; you could find plenty of canes long enough for fishing poles.

Then coal was discovered, and white men began to pur into the country. The first mine at Hartshorne was put in in 1888 or '89. I had an Indian "right" and considered myself an Indian; I hated to see the white men come, because I knew that it was just a matter of time until they would take the country away from the Indians. I told all the Indians that right from the first I said, "Boys, you now I don't want to see statehood but it is coming, and we can't help it. The thing to do is to get the best terms we can."

The allotment of land started about 1904, whether some of the Indians wanted it or not. The number of acres an Indian got depended on the estimated worth of the land in question; I got 320 acres.

Then after the allotment was over the Indians held a vote on whether we should have statehood or not, but I, for one, saw that our election meant little. Statehood had been inevitable ever since the discovery of coal in the Choctaw Nation.

And I just want to say this before I am through: I felt safer against robbery and violence when I was under the Choctaw law than I do now. A man never had to worry about thieves, because an Indian wouldn't steal. There are more killings in one year now than there were during all the years of the Choctaw rule.
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Possible parents, though in above interview he states his mother was born about 1817.

Thomas H. McMurtrey
Mattie McMurtrey