(This was posted in October of 2014, long before I knew much about Virgil Wantland's family. That has since changed)
This family photo was shared on Facebook last week by a cousin (Thanks, Loi!) who snapped the photo from an album that once belonged to our Great-Grandmother Evie (Baker) Childers. The three men are identified as Sam Childers, Sam Baker and Virgil Wantland. Was Virgil a cousin by marriage or blood? A family friend? As of this date, no one has put names to faces in this undated photograph. A few of us think it is the two Sams who stand behind Virgil, each with a hand on Virgil's shoulder.
Thanks to draft registrations from World War I, we have a brief description of the three men. Childers has brown hair, Baker has black hair, and Virgil's hair is "auburn." See their three cards in the gallery below. Click to enlarge for easy reading. Remember to click again to return to this page:
Virgil was lucky not to have suffered permanent paralysis. He sued, and his employer later appealed Virgil's lawsuit:
Source: PETROLEUM IRON WORKS CO. v. WANTLAND, 1911 OK 104, decided March 21, 1911 by the Supreme Court of Oklahoma at URL: http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?id=4108&hits=6627+3553+3547+3270+3245+274+268+6+
Let me back up and lay groundwork as to the possible history between these three men. First, Sam Baker is my Great-Grand Uncle, the younger brother to my Great-Grandmother, Ora Evaline. His full name: Samuel Oscar Baker, born February 14, 1890, in Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri--two years after the birth of his sister "Evie." And Sam was born three weeks after Virgil in early 1890-- also in the town of Gallatin. Might they have been boyhood friends? Schoolmates? Kin?
By 1900, Sam and Evie Baker's mom, born Matilda Anna Lee, is widowed, having lost her second husband, William Henry Ward. This census page below is from the 1900 Fed. Census for Daviess County, Missouri, showing their race, gender, birth month and year, age and marital status:
Virgil's parents were John Woodson Wantland and Lennie Mae (Roach) Wantland, married in Daviess County, Missouri in 1886. They appear in rural Daviess County in the 1900 census. Here's the whole census page for Jackson township. See the Wantlands near the top? Also in the gallery is a cropped photo which may be easier to read. The Wantland family starts on line 2 in this 1900 Federal census page:
KANSAS BOUND: Both the Bakers and the Wantlands are next found in 1905 in Cherry township, Montgomery County, Kansas, along the Oklahoma border. The Wantland family first shows up on Kansas State Census page 63, and continues with the remaining children on the next page. What prompted both families to move from Missouri to Kansas?
The Wantland kids are at the top, and the Baker family appears at the bottom of this next page:
NEIGHBORS: Sam Baker's mother, previously referred to as Matilda Anna Lee, is seen here as Annie Price, age 40. She had married her third husband, James Allen Price, on November 29, 1900 in Daviess County, Missouri. This was her last marriage, as Mr. Price did not die prematurely as did her first two husbands. Together they had three daughters (see Baby "Zela," their first child) along with their children from prior marriages. You will see Harry Baker, Evie Baker (soon to marry Henry Childers), and Sam Baker, age 15. All are neighbors to the Wantlands.
Did these two families move together from upstate Missouri to the Kansas/Oklahoma border? Why move in the first place? I've one idea. You might recall what was happening then in Indian Territory. Thousands of white people were moving into land previously promised to the Five Civilized Tribes. A promise made in perpetuity 70 years earlier to Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Tribal nations--but only if they relocated from southeastern United States. Those tribal members that did not move by the mid-1830s were forcibly evicted. Their land and possessions taken. Hence the Trail of Tears. In late 1907, land was again taken from the tribes as Oklahoma became a state. White westward expansion was in full swing on the prairie.
Just south of the Kansas border where our Wantlands and Bakers would later live, a pivotal event occurred. The Nellie Johnstone No.1 blew in as a gusher, producing up to 75 barrels of oil a day before it was capped in early 1897. Bartlesville in Indian Territory was "the place you ought to be."
Along with the gushing black gold came even more "intruders" to Indian Territory. Intruders = the term applied by the U.S. Government to uninvited squatters on tribal land. Plenty of jobs became available as new communities popped up. With new employment came families, and young people who later tied the knot. I've copied/pasted the transcription of Virgil's marriage to Mayme Saunders, with spelling errors intact:
The Childers/Baker ceremony took place in Basin, a small community in Pawnee County, Oklahoma Territory. Here is Evie Baker and Sam Childers' marriage license in January of 1907. Oklahoma would become a state later that year:
A newspaper editor commented on the upcoming nuptials of my Great-Grandparents in a local paper: The Appalachia Out-Look. (Pawnee County, Okla.), Vol. 2, No. 47, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 31, 1907. See Sam's name highlighted here on page 5.
https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc173546/m1/5/zoom/?q=Childers%20%22Appalachia%20Out-Look%22&resolution=3&lat=3623&lon=3246
Another time I'll continue with the marriage of Sam Baker to Virgil's younger sister, Della Wantland:
(To Be Continued)
-- This was updated with minor corrections in August 2017.