January 25, 1006

Many times I have wished and wanted to find a away to learn more about the 1840's and 1850's of this Onega area Things were picking up here during this time. There were several small groups of Cherokees that were following the Western Cherokee Chief out of the Indian Territory coming into the area. They crossed the Red River coming into Texas and made a few purchases at the Coffey Trading Post. The adventuring Native Americans were seeking a better way after they had been forced out of the Cherokee Country in Alabama. Their homes and farms covered several states as we know them today.

After leaving the Coffey Trading Post, they soon approached the ridge in Western Collin County. The traveling families carried everything they owned in a wagon pulled by a team of horses and on pack horses that were trailing along with the wagon and team.

Worship services were a very much part of the traveling Cherokees family as they spread out from the Preston Road on a ridge just to the east of Onega. Incidentally, if you will stand on a high point in the Town of Aubrey on a clear day, and look to the east, the first ridge to the east is the ridge that takes the Preston road on into the area of where Dallas would soon be settled. The Onega area population was more than of Dallas’ population in 1847.

Folks, that is not in the history books and if you try to read it you will have to do as I am putting it all together as it was and as they historians didn’t record. One other thing that I haven’t found in any history book is about the illiterate head of the family, and believe me there were many in this category. They were unable to sign their names, so they had a method for recording their signatures. If the head of the house wanted to purchase an item for the family, he carried with him a potato that had been cut open and engraved with a sort of a small stamping appearance that was unique to his family.

One of my great grandfathers used just such a stamping device when he made a purchase in the 1860's for a family sewing machine that he bought on a credit terms. The stamping potato could be stamped with mud or berry juice or other ingredients. The contract was used for purchasing the sewing machine when the family member lived in Parker County.

The name was spelled different on the contract than the true name, but the stamping pototato was what made the contract binding and when the stamping device got old or dried out he just simply whittled out another stamper for the next transaction.

I don’t know what happened to the sewing machine that could have very well made it’s way through the Coffey Trading Post since the Post received additional inventories in it’s beginning stages. This family with two small children soon died after the machine was purchased. The cause of deaths in family was contaminated water in a well that the family had used frequently.

Onega was a word in the Cherokee language that meant "white". While it may not have been a very attractive and acceptable name to the traveling Indians, it described the land in title work and deed transferrs at filing time when the area was a part of Fannin County. Fannin County was about as large as one-fourth of the entire state of Texas. The massive area of the Fannin county took in part of Jacksboro on the west side and south of Fort Worth and to Nacogdoches and the Red River on the Eastern Boundary of Texas and then on north following the Red River back to the county seat of Fannin and then on west to Jacksboro and the place of beginning of this description.

Methodist services were being conducted in a secret location like a dug out cellar and perhaps other places that would restrict the service from being observed by the Mexicans and plains tribes Indians. Methodism was first introduced at a cellar in and near what is now known as Clarksville and was conducted in 1826. It was perhaps the first protestant service that was made possible in the state of Texas. It was illegal to conduct any religious service other than the Catholic religion, and was enforced by the Mexican government.

The traveling Cherokees were not familiar with the Catholic Church when thy came through these cross timbers and the open spaces just to the west of the old Preston Road. The Cherokees had experienced a horrible life during their advancement of traveling. They had recently lost their homes and farms and livestock back in the Cherokee Country of the old former Cherokee Nation. They faced death threats on the entire journey to get west of the Mississippi. And they were now making their way out of the Cherokee Nation in the Indian Territory and on the way to Mexico.

What a live to be alive and recall all these events in on a few short years and those years being the most damaging experiences for the small family to overy come. It is this part of the 1829's 1830's and 1840's that I wished I knew more about because the holocaust of the Cherokee People then was an experience like the Jewish people have gone through in the last century

Next week I am going to write about the people and families that started the Methodist church in Aubrey and some of the families that were part of the Cherokees that dropped out of the exodus to Mexico, and began their lives all over again but in disguise. The people that had to deny their heritage in order to survive.

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