When these historians made such statements, we must consider that the county records on file were destroyed by fire. The county commissioners replaced the building with a permanent fireproof building. The years prior to the court house fire left documents of many different pioneer families possessions which used the name Onega as a reference point on many of the old filed and unfiled deed records. This area of the Key Settlement was a place with an operating district supplying the bartering offers of the Cherokees that were here and already living and dying and being placed in their final resting place.

At least fifteen or more families with Cherokee lineage from the native Cherokee Nation back east had been silently developing the community of Onega by establishing blacksmith shops, churches, schools, saloons for the mushrooming business of the visiting dignitaries from other communities.

Food was grown and bartered as well as sold in a central business district that was originally located to the East of where the present-day peanut dryer is located. The town was in the pathway of the newly planned railroad that would in the 1870's take the place of the business district that the Indians were using at the time.

The railroad was a route from Pilot Point to Denton and down to the Roanoke and Watauga settlements. Both Roanoke and Watauga were Cherokee settlements like Onega and Tioga. In the Cherokee language, Tioga meant good or healthy water. Onega meant the white settlement. Watauga meant plenty of water.

This business district in Aubrey mysteriously burned to the ground in 1867 sometime before that huge well was dug by the Indians. The well was intended to supply the community with water.

This was the scene of Onega when the Civil War came along. Many of these Cherokee businesses were located on land that did not belong to them. They were considered squatters until they learned to begin purchasing the land. One of the large land owners of the time was Sam Wilcox and his wife.

You may remember that I mentioned this family name in the 1930 census. Mrs. Wilcox was 70 years old then and Mrs. Mary S. Edwards was 88 at the time of the census.

In the 1850's, when the village of Onega was being established the Rev. John B. Denton, a Methodist preacher and Indian fighter was interested in the land too. He was chasing down the Indians that he could locate over to the south of present day Denton (named in his honor for the killing of the Indians) to a Keechee tribe that had developed huge tracts of corn for food as well as the ingredient. These Indians had begun calling themselves Black Dutch. The Keechees led Denton into an ambush and ended his career in the fighting of the Native Americans. The Rev. John Denton wanted the Keechee dead but the local Black Dutch enjoyed manufacturing a quality moonshine that they had learned how to produce before arriving in Onega.

It seems that the local Black Dutch whiskey makers were also getting good at producing cotton in addition to corn.

The fifteen or so mentioned families that were enjoying the Onega business district also learned to purchase land and obtain the title to the land. The name Onega was used in the old hand written deeds. Apparently the early history writers never read these deeds with the town name of Onega that were filed in the old courthouse. About the only time our area was mentioned in the early history books was that whiskey could be bought for 25 cents a quarter and 10 cents a glass in the saloons.

The fifteen or so families that were here back in the 1850's and 1860's have descendants that are still in the community. Some have prominent jobs on the city councils and school board.

John Morgan, one of our natives was on the county commissioners court when the decision was made to make the new court house a permanent structure.

The earliest I can document families in this area would be in 1828, when the two Byrom brothers traveled here by horseback. The Byroms were like the other families; these brothers traveled west and knew enough of the Cherokee language that they were able to communicate with the plains Indians. However, they didn’t like what they saw to the West and came back to this area to settle. They went back to Tennessee where one got married and brought his new wife and in-laws back to this area.

That family along with other early day families had begun to mix with the European immigrants and found the Native Americans to be an attractive race. The Black Dutch nationality quietly and quickly became friends with the Indian killers and with their quality of moonshine, a friendship was established.

It was during the late 1800's that the Dallas County sheriff came to the Onega village to arrest a horse thief, and soon became under the influence of the native’s product, that he returned to Dallas empty handed with plans to make more trips back to the area of Onega – the town that nobody thought about in the history books.

The photo this week is an example of what a stranger ran up against when he made his way through the woods. I am certain that these two local Indians were careful not to sample the daily batch they were guarding, until someone came to relieve them of their post. The guards are natives of the tribe and early day ancestors of many of the local residents of this day.