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Pioneer Citizen Writes Letter
Tells of Leaving Delight in Ox Wagon Thirty-Five Years Ago.
San Gabriel, California
Apr. 27th 1923
Mr. Grady Alexander
Editor, Pike County Tribune
Delight, Arkansas
Dear Sir:
I received a copy of your paper this week and I want to say that I have read
every word of it with quite a good deal of interest.
I find only a few names of people who are familiar to me. It has been only
thirty-five years the first of June (1888) since I drove two yoke of oxen
and a covered wagon from Arkansas to what was known as Chickasaw Nation,
I.T. We started from Delight, or Uncle Rollie Threlkeld's at Antioch, as it
was called then, before Delight had ever been heard of. Our party was
composed of a man by the name of Kemp who married a girl by the name of
Emily Barrong, who was a daughter of Mrs. Lou Parr and a half sister to Mrs.
M.C. Threlkeld. There are people in your community who would be able to
remember back and possibly know something of this trip.
I see you have a man by the name S.R. Threlkeld hanging around your town,
you might tell him to write to me please. I also notice there is a man there
by the name of H.M. Gilliam of Los Angeles, will say that I know this man
personally. I observed an add of a merchant by the name of C.E. Reid, ask
him if he remembers trotting around with a boy by the name of Clarence
Threlkeld will you? Perhaps he remembers my cousin Ollie Bell, she used to
live there too but now lives in Colorado Springs. I had a nice visit with
her last summer.
I notice your bank statement, it is quite interesting. I do not believe
there was as much money in all of Pike County when I drove the two yoke of
oxen out of it as you have in your bank now.
I note that Mrs. Holder Capehart of Hope spent the week with her parents,
Mr. and Mrs. Ed Brock, wish you would give my regards to Ed. I remember
him and I am sure he does me. It has been about thirty-five years since I
have seen him, we used to go swimming in the Old Blue Hole on Sundays, when
our parents were wondering where we were.
Ed thinks he is smart, a grown daughter and married, I too, have grown
children, a boy by the name of J.A. who is cashier of the First National
Bank of East San Gabriel, a suburb of the great city of Los Angeles, and a
girl, twenty-one, who is a graduate of the University of California, and is
now teaching in the city schools.
Give my personal regards to all of my friends, tell them my address and that
I would be glad to have a letter from any of them, and would be proud to
have any of them visit me if they have occasion to drop over this way.
Anxiously awaiting each issue of your paper hoping to hear something more
of my friends that are there. I beg to remain,
Very sincerely yours,
C.C. Threlkeld
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Pike County Tribune, Volume 8, Number 10, May 4, 1923, page 1, columns 4-5.
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