Samuel Gann of Winchester Va Family

From William Charles Gann, Tulsa, OK.

Sometime during 1904, William Allen made a trip from his home in Dallas County, Mo., to the small settlement, Claremore, Indian Territory. Claremore was located on the San Francisco and St. Louis Railroad which ran from St. Louis, Missouri southwesterly to northeastern Oklahoma, through the Cherokee Nation and on to San Francisco. A post office had been established there on June 25, 1874. This settlement would later become the county seat of Rogers County when Oklahoma became a state in 1907. William Allen was the first to arrive in 1904. He was back and forth several times before the family finally came to stay. Oral family history records that sometime after 1904, William Allen became obsessed with the notion that he would not allow Eliza Jane, his wife, to become a registered Cherokee. He threatened to take them all back to Missouri before he would allow it. No one one in the family has been able to explain why William Allen felt as he did. It may have been because he had not been successful in obtaining Indian lands simply by walking in, without proof, and declaring himself to be married to a half-blood Cherokee. The proving process included such things as affidavits, sworn statements, witnesses, etc., something a simple farmer might have seen as "too much trouble." A man's "word" in the old West was a strong element in any "deal" and all this "proving-up" process was an indicator that his word was not good enough. The sixteenth bloods and lower would in most cases get no land at all. A forty-acre allotment of thin, rocky soil might have been too small for all the trouble. In the reasoning of William Allen, he simply denied the Cherokee Nation one of its own by not allowing Eliza Jane, his wife, to become registered. There may have been other reasons. Arrogance, meanness, and confidence have never been recessive traits in the Gann men. Whatever the circumstances, William Allen was described by all who knew him as a man of quick and violent temper. His memory was long when perceived injustices were thrust upon him by others. He was creative in his methods of "getting even." By 1908/09 William Allen and Eliza Jane would settle with their eight children one and one-half miles west of Coweta, Oklahoma. A farmer and obviously a man interested in land, he never acquired a square inch of Oklahoma soil. He became a "tenant farmer." There were two ways an individual could rent land for farming. One way was to give over one-third of the corn crop and one-fourth of the cotton at the end of the season. Another was to "cash rent." Both methods carried risk. Those who gave over crops at harvest time were the less fortunate and therefore had less status when farms became available for rent. The farmer who paid in crop yield at the end of the harvest was a "sharecropper." The protocol was to never refer to a "cash renter" as a "sharecropper" but as a tenant farmer. This pattern of farming was very prevalent in Oklahoma from 1910 up to the middle 1950's. William Allen would "cash rent" a farm and with the help of his sons, who were unmarried, make a living for his family. William Allen would "rent" a farm and his two youngest sons, George Washington and Louis, would plant and harvest the crops. The story is related of how William Allen treated his two youngest boys. When the crops were ready to harvest he would go to town early and wait for the boys to bring the corn to mill or the cotton to gin. He would collect the money for the crops and tell the boys to "get on back home and hire yourselves out to other farmers and earn your winter money." William Allen lived the balance of his life as a widower in the home of his youngest son, George Washington Gann. He died near the small Oklahoma town of Porter, located in southwestern Wagoner County. He is buried in the Shahan Cemetery just west of Coweta. His grave is unmarked and the cemetery records showing his burial place have been lost. The sandstone that marked his burial place has long since disappeared. On his death certificate his father is shown as Henry Gann, which must be William Henry.

From Dorretta Moore

Marriage date in LDS Records, Dallas Co., MO -- Marriages