March 17, 2005

            During the early days of Onega there were the following businesses:  blacksmithing, a small drug store of tobacco and home brewed liquid that was manufactured locally, a small bakery, and a livery stable with housed the horses of the newcomers that were deciding if Onega was the destiny of their long hard trip from the east. 

            If the trip was made in the winter months, food, shelter and medicine were not readily available and in some cases death came to the families as they journeyed the long painful and dangerous trip.  When the travelers stopped in Onega, they discovered the atmosphere of loving and kind Cherokee people that were also known back in the native Cherokee Nation.

            The brotherly love and spiritual uplifting of the local folks to their relatives who had just completed the extraordinarily long wagon train trip. 

            When the order of removal was made, the preparations of the family’s goods, furniture, clothing, medicine to make the long trip, it was something very important in the family’s welfare when they arrived. 

            The closeness of the settlers and the small newly established business in Aubrey were well received by the newcomers. 

            I have an item that came with my great-grandmother upon her arrival in the Onega area.  It is a small back carrier that was used with blankets and straps to secure the small babies in the carrier to carry on the mother’s back.  The mother was the load carrying member of the family.  She was also the person who supplied the food and prepared it for the small children. 

            After the children reached the age of seven, they along with the older brothers and sisters helped the more secure the food from the wild.  They were also trained to collect wild plants that were used for food. 

            After the family members arrived in Onega, it they began preparations of a place of spiritual uplifting and built a log cabin that was used for a school and a church. 

            Sam Houston generally helped the Native Americans, but his hands were tied when it came to making deeds out to settlers of land, and the Native Americans became squatters and were later surprised that they had to move because their land had been sold by Houston for only a dime or a quarter in many cases. 

            The family members were soon faced with the task of fighting another conflict a few short years after the Mexican government lost Texas.  The newly settled Cherokees had changed their identity from Native Americans to struggling pioneers. 

            They were enlisted in the Civil War.  My old great grandmother lost a son-in-law, Sanford Slaton, to fight in the Civil War.  She also lost a son John Williams.  Eliza Wood Williams lived to be 102 and is buried in the Masonic Cemetery at Arlington, Texas.  She died in 1911.

            The Black Jack community family of Williams yielded another son-in-law, George W. Goin, to the war. 

            John Williams died near Waco near the end of the Civil War.  I have letters from the Civil War that were written by John Williams to his mother and sisters.  The letters have the most inspiring penmanship.  Eliza Williams no doubt taught her children the three “R’s” in Miladegeville Georgia while she was teaching in the prison system. 

            I am grateful to the great-granddaughter of Eliza Wood Williams, Lillian R. (Goin) McKinney.  She was to me what Eliza Williams was to the prisoners of the Cherokee prison system. 

            We called her Aunt Sis.  She helped me pass English 100 back in1947 while I was a student at UNT. 

            The photo this week is of great uncle, Sanford Slaton some time around the time that he entered the Civil War. 

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