The proud young parents in this photo most likely would never have met were it not for a specific piece of Federal legislation. They are are my great-grandmother Zena and my great-grandfather Dave, one of whose children was my maternal grandmother, Cleo. Their families converged in Oklahoma thanks to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889, which opened Oklahoma to settlement by non-Indians.

That isn’t news to me; my gramma did a lot of research into the family’s history and shared what she learned. But in making an animation based on the data I got from her, I understood something new. 

This animation shows the movements of Cleo’s ancestors, up to the point of her parents’ marriage. Members of Zena’s family are shown in turquoise blue; Dave’s family are in orange. 

Cleo used to say, “Mama was a Yankee, and Daddy was a Rebel.” She didn’t mean it literally – her parents were born a generation after the Civil War – but clearly, she knew what she was talking about. Her mother’s family had settled in the North, and her father’s in the South.

I don’t know what specifically spurred my great-great-grandparents to move to Oklahoma. I don’t know if they knew someone who had made the move before them; Zena’s stepfather E.F. Shinn had distant cousins who arrived in Cleveland County before him, but I have no evidence that he knew them. As for Dave’s family, there were others with the Peters surname in the area, but I’ve found no evidence that the two groups were related or knew one another, or whether they read a newspaper article or book extolling the place. (Cousins, if you know those stories, I hope you’ll share them in the comments.)

Seeing these two families, after centuries of more gradual migration, make that sudden dart westward makes me feel the energy my ancestors put into taking advantage of an opportunity. An opportunity that came about because the U.S. government seized land from the tribal nations. It’s an uncomfortable feeling.

Next time: grandparents = fate.

For More Information

Brueck, Gregory James. Breaking the Plains: Indians, Settlers, and Reformers in the Oklahoma Land Rush. 2012, https://media.proquest.com/media/hms/ORIG/2/cQoAK?_s=zX2e9M3So1XobcxGtagfr2oIB5o%3D.

Hightower, Michael J. 1889: The Boomer Movement, the Land Run, and Early Oklahoma City. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2018.

Justice, Daniel Heath, and Jean M. O’Brien, editors. Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege. University of Minnesota Press, 2021.

Maguire, Karen, and Branton Wiederholt. “1889 Oklahoma Land Run: The Settlement of Payne County.” Journal of Family History, vol. 44, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 52–69. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199018798129.