In going through material collected by my mother, I came across an article written by my aunt, Ora GEREN Watson (b. 1898, now deceased), concerning my grandparents and their life in the Indian Territory. Perhaps these excerpts will be of interest to some of you: George Franklin GEREN and Florence CAMPBELL were married at Webbers Falls, Indian Territory, on July 6, 1890. When they came West in early 1881, they settled in Indian Territory, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. We have some of his school books with a Fort Smith address, which indicate that he was in Fort Smith schools in the upper grades or high school. There were no public schools in Indian Territory. Then he attended Business College in Fort Smith and received his diploma August 1889. He also attended Bacone College in 1889, -- I believe that was beginning the fall term after he graduated from business college, -- the handwriting was the kind he learned there. [Florence Campbell from Uniontown, Arkansas] went over into the Territory to visit her sister and her family. There she and my father met, and after a brief courtship were married. They lived at Webbers Falls for the first several years; my father owned and operated a dray or freight business. I was born in Creek Nation, November 19, 1898, on leased Indian land. I vaguely remember the inside of the house, --it was of hewn logs with wide board floors. I think it was in 1901, when we moved to another Indian lease; the land belonged to the son of NIFFY TIGER, - his English name, - CORNELIUS GRANT. My father built a house and barn, drilled a well, and cleared the land, for which he was to receive all the land produced rent free for five years. For lumber to build the house he took the logs from the clearing and had the sawmill saw them for a percentage of the lumber. At first we had no neighbors, but later they built a railroad through that part of the country and the little town called Paden, which was about four miles from us. The roads were better and we bought a hack and I think they were very happy to be able to have friends near enough to socialize a little. The town built a combination church and school building, and Sidney, my brother, went to school there. It was not a public school. They called it a subscription school; the pupils paid tuition. I was not old enough to go. The coming of the railroad and building of the town enabled my parents to have a better market for their produce and other crops, and they were able to save enough to buy a farm, but the Indians were not allowed to sell their land, and my father's health was not good there. For some reason he was having pneumonia every winter, and they decided they had better go elsewhere. That was in 1905; so they sold the remaining year's lease. [The family moved to Wheeler County in the Texas Panhandle.) Florence H. King fking@pipeline.com