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September 16, 2012
WOLF CREEK HERITAGE MUSEUM NOTES by Virginia Scott MUSEUM HAPPENINGS I am adjusting to my new schedule and trying to keep up with our email. It is a challenge but I am enjoying the time at home. If you forgot, Georgia is now the Keeper of the Keys for the museum on Monday and Tuesday. I come in on Monday and do the column then go home. I am also trying to answer emails before I go home. This keeps the box at a reasonable volume. We are continuing our inventory of paintings and framed photographs that are on display and archived and the number is growing to over 300. This is an amazing number for a "small museum". It is also amazing when you consider that all of our collection is a gift from the artists and photographs in our region that have donated their work to our museum. Peg and Lovella are doing a great job that is very thorough and will be a great model for other categories for future projects. The rest of us are cleaning, accessing needed items, and reorganizing our work room. Georgia is constructing lids for our boxes. She continues to amaze us with our skills. HISTORICAL MUSINGS In his weekly column "Prairie Dog" Jewell LaGeal Dixon wrote in the Higgins News on September 16,1965 about the arrival of Dr. O.C. Newman. "When Dr. Newman first arrived in this part of the country, he stepped off the passenger train in Higgins in the month of May, 1900. The Doctor met a man at the deport who was just about ready to make a trip to Grand, Oklahoma, Anzley Ellis. That was a lucky day for the Doctor as Grand was his destination. Mr. Ellis carried the mail from Higgins to Grand which was about twenty-three miles southeast of Higgins on the north bank of the South Canadian River. At that time, so I have been told, Grand had only a few residents. The population of Old Day County was only 350 at the time. Some seven years later Day County was split up, much of it forming what is now Ellis county. The doctor climbed aboard the mail hack with Ellis driving and they started on their journey to Grand. The children on the route stared at the stranger riding with the mail carrier as they passed the sod houses and dugouts that the pioneers lived in. Upon arriving at Grand, several people were there. Dr. Newman stood a bit undecided as they began to drift away. Anzley Ellis asked Newman where he planned to stay. The Doctor replied that he hadn't an idea. Ellis suggested that he might stay with Mr. and Mrs. Adam Walch. They were a kindly old couple and made him welcome at the frame hotel. The good doctor explained that $2.50 was all he could pay with more depending on his earnings from the practice he hoped to establish. It became necessary for him to pick up odd jobs to make ends meet. The Doctor was a willing worker and he was soon working in the country clerk's office as a deputy county treasurer. he also worked in the judge's office and at the post office. In the fall of 1901 small pox broke out on the Eller Flats and on hackberry Creek. It wasn't long until the disease was all over the country. The county allowed Dr. Newman a dollar for each vaccination. At the close of the epidemic the Doctor was paid over $500. The first thing the Doctor did was to pay his hotel bill of $252 to Mrs. Walch as well as a month's bill in advance. More about Dr. Newman next week. |
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