Oklahoma Genealogy

Pryor (officially Pryor Creek), Mayes County, Okla., is beautifully situated on the undulating prairie which dips gradually toward the west to the limpid stream from which the town derives. its name. A prettier town site could not have been found in all this broad and expansive land. The streets are almost level, just sloping enough to afford natural drainage. Pryor is the county seat of Mayes County, and has a population of more than two thousand. It is on the main line of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, 209 miles north of Denison, Texas, seventy-seven miles south of Parsons,

Railroads And Surface Survey The country to the east of Grand River comprises about one-third of the county. Much of it is rough. The rather narrow valleys are very fertile and will grow all kinds of crops. The hills are covered with timber. There are several small fertile prairies. This region is adapted to dairying, livestock and fruit. The K. O. & G. R. R., traverses it, following the east side of Grand River. The country to the extreme northwest and west, where many small creeks have their source, is also hilly. All the central part of the county, comprising

Choteau      Choteau is a town of 700 inhabitants located in the southern part of Mayes County, ten miles south of Pryor. It is located in a prairie section and is surrounded by a good farming community. While all the ordinary crops of corn, cotton, wheat, oats, etc., are produced in abundance, this section of the state is specially noted for its superior quality of prairie hay, great quantities of which are shipped to northern markets. Many owners of horses prefer this hay to the timothy of the country further north. Choteau has the usual number of stores and shops

Numerous streams will be crossed in a drive over the county, because the county is well watered. Grand River, a Government stream (called the Neosho River in Kansas), is the principal stream, enters at the northeast corner of the county and winds its tortuous route to the southwest, passing out near the middle of the south line. Several creeks traverse the county, generally in a southeasterly direction, and flow into Grand River. Chief of them is Pryor Creek, which enters near the northwest corner and flows south and east, entering Grand River a few miles north of the county line.

From the time that Columbus discovered America, in 1492, up to the year 1541-2 or about fifty years after the discovery of America, the Territory comprising Mayes County had very little if any mention historically, probably the first white people to lay foot on Mayes County soil was in 1541 when De Soto the Spanish explorer and his expedition passed through what was then the Province of Mayes County to be. Other Spanish explorers and French explorers, explored this part of the country the following century and a half, the Spanish explorers seeking gold and the French a fur trade.

The people of Mayes County are going ahead and each year finds the county as a whole more determined to build homes and farms. According to the United States Government census of 1920 the total illiterate population of Mayes County is but 3.6 per cent out of the total population of 16,894. There are not many Negroes in Mayes County and very few in any of the towns in the county. Titles to the land in Mayes County are not at all difficult to understand. The land was patented to the Cherokee as a nation by treaty in 1838. The

A ride over the county will reveal to the observer the same reliable crops of corn, wheat, oats, hay, cotton, alfalfa and potatoes thriving here much the same as in older grain and livestock states. The visitor will see the- rolling prairies, the rich creek and river bottoms and the timbered uplands. If it be the late summer or autumn, he will see wheat or oats stacked or straw piles in every direction. He will pass loaded wagons hauling the grain from steam thresher to elevator. Other teams are hauling baled hay, of which thousands of tons are shipped each

Mayes County, Oklahoma, located in the northeastern part of the state, was named in honor of Ex-chief Samuel Houston Mayes, who is now living in Pryor. All of the land comprising Mayes County was formerly a part of the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, with the exception of one township on the south, being a part of the Creek Nation. Mayes County enjoys a citizenship second to none in the state, for the reason that the Cherokee Nation played such an important part in the history making of Oklahoma, and that part of the Cherokee Nation that is now Mayes County

In 1873, after the Cherokee orphans had been cared for at Tahlequah for several years, the Cherokee Nation purchased the home and farm of Louis Ross, a Cherokee citizen located in the eastern part of Mayes County, adjoining the present town of Salina, and converted it into a home for Cherokee orphans.  In 1875, the large Ross mansion was enlarged and the school was prepared to care for one hundred or more orphans. This home was admirably adapted for the purpose to which it was dedicated. The farm consisted of about three hundred acres of land, approximately one-half of which