We had a young man come to the museum this past week. He said he used to work for the Department of Corrections and during his training he learned when Oklahoma was still a territory prisoners were sent to Kansas to be jailed. I did research and if the person was sentenced to more than a year they were sent to Kansas otherwise the local area housed them. They paid 25 cent a day for food, clothing, bedding, and medical attention. That custom continues. When the prison N.E of Watonga was open it housed prisoners from other states. Governor Ferguson worked on reforms for prisons and insane asylums for the territory while he was in office. Several bills were put before the Territorial Congress but none passed to be signed by the governor. Governor Haskell finally got one signed and the prison at McAlester was built. It wasn’t finished when the contract was up with Kansas. This caused a situation with what to do with the inmates after the contract was up but before the prison built. The state temporarily housed a group of 100 at the former federal jail at McAlester. To work around this they had the inmates build the prison. They built a wooden structure first for them to live in while they built the prison.
We have a wooden table in the down stairs parlor that has metal caps on the end of the legs that look like claws. I have thought about that table every time I dust it or move it. I turned it over to see if there was any markings on it to say who the manufacturer was and found no label but did find an interesting construction. The legs are put on by a groove cut in the bottom on the table top. It is narrow at one end and deeper where the legs fit to be secure. I kept searching and discovered it is probably a Chippendale. Saturday I took one of my granddaughters and 2 great grandchildren to the Cherokee Strip Museum in Enid for the live re-enactment going on the first and third Saturday of the month and they had the same table in the house on the grounds there. So guess it was a popular table back in the day.
Work came to a temporary stand still last weekend while they were putting the columns on the front porch. Clay and the guys ran into carpenter ants. The Home was sprayed for the carpenter ants on Wednesday and inspected for termites and thankfully there weren’t any termites found. The guys should be able to get back to work on it when they can.
I want to thank Sandra Hightower for all the work she has done to clean out the flower beds. It is looking so much better.
A bill which Governor Ferguson signed that caused considerable criticism was one permitting the osteopathic doctors the right to practice in Oklahoma. This was at a time when the osteopathic doctors were making an effort to become established and the medical men were trying to keep the bill from becoming a law. The legislature passed the bill, and Governor Ferguson signed it. Most likely no man ever had more bitter enemies that he had for a time among some of the medical profession.
Ferguson quoted in an editorial in the Republican that if Roosevelt ever became president, Rough Riders would come into their own. It had always been a bitter disappointment to Ferguson that he had not qualified for Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. He had to wear glasses, so he was disqualified. This became a true prophecy as the end of the Ferguson term as governor drew near. Many of these men had been appointed to high positions in the territory and in the state. President Roosevelt announced that he would not be reappointing Governor Ferguson even though the President gave him the terms of official integrity of the entire administration as Territorial Governor because he wanted the place for Frank Frantz, a comrade during his Rough Rider’s days. More to follow.