Week 1 (2020) #52Ancestors: Fresh Start

On March 6, 1871 Richard Benjamin "Ben" Winchester, my great-grandfather, began life in Pickens, South Carolina.  His parents were James Mattison Winchester and Mary Ann Howard who descended from a Winchester line that settled in South Carolina in the 1760's.   The family was firmly rooted in the area.   Ben grew up working on the family farm along with six siblings.  After his mother died in 1878, his father remarried two years later to Rebecca Stansell and she would give birth to eight children.

Flag of South Carolina. Source: Wikipedia

Ben was restless and evidently unhappy on his father's farm.  Some say he and his brother John were punished if they couldn't recite the preacher's Sunday message. He was at the age where we begin to dream of striking out on our own.  Apparently he wanted to go West and discussed it with his brother John and sisters, Martha and Ida or so the story goes that was published in "Richard Benjamin Winchester. An Indian Territory Farmer" by Linda Mae Saunders.  Unfortunately James Mattison Winchester would lose his farm hands as Ben and John would come in from working in the field to get their clothes that were stuffed into a pillow case and let down from an upstairs window by their sisters.  The boys rode off on their horses along with a bed roll, gun, and $1.60 and apparently never spoke to their father again.  They were approximately 19 and 17 years old.  When the young brothers reached Texas, Ben began working on a ranch near Bowie, Texas but young John did not want to settle in Texas and continued further West most likely driving cattle.  He would eventually settle in Wyoming and the brothers lost touch with each other.

Image found on Hayneedle.com

Ben was a cowboy and drove cattle to market in Dodge City, Kansas.  According to Linda's research, the cattle were driven on the Western trail that crossed the Red River at Doan's Store in Greer County and then continued north through the western part of the Kiowa-Comanche and Cheyenne-Arapaho reservations, in what would become Oklahoma, and through the Cherokee Outlet to Dodge City.  The going wage for a day of work on a cattle drive was one dollar.  After the cattle were delivered then the cowboys were on their own to make the return trip which was not paid.

Source: Westerncattletrail.net

In 1900, Ben was living in the Chickasaw Nation with the Davenport family.  Despite being an early settler in Oklahoma, he apparently did not participate in any of Oklahoma's land runs.  The lonely, hard life as a cowboy ended for Ben when he married Mary Alice Matilda Wilkinson on December 23, 1901 in Indian Territory.

Marriage license of Ben Winchester and Alice Wilkinson

To this union were born five girls listed in birth order: Clellie Ruth, Ida Elizabeth, Vada Pearl, Opal Frances, and Matilda Candacy.  My grandmother was Clellie.  The young couple remained in Indian Territory and their third daughter Vada Pearl was born in May 1906 just six months before Oklahoma joined the Union as the 46th state.

State Seal of Oklahoma. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The couple decided to purchase 140 acres of land held by the Chickasaw Nation in 1910.  This was Grady County and there was a school within walking distance for the girls.  The property was also near Alice's brother Richard Wilkinson.  The initial payment of $350.00 (25% of the purchase price) was made and the balance was to be paid in two installments.  Now the man known to many as Ben would become our “Papa.”

Richard Benjamin Winchester

Papa would remain in Oklahoma and learn how to farm the land moving to Comanche County and then back to Grady County.  Papa finally returned to South Carolina in 1918 and visited his many relatives. He would later be contacted by his niece Winnie Winchester who was a daughter of his brother John. She would share the details of John’s life and legacy in Wyoming.  The lives once separated now rejoined. Papa lived to be 92 years old and as my second cousin Aaron Decker says, “those Winchester’s have long telomeres!”

Thanks to my second cousin, Linda Mae Saunders, for providing much of the information in this blog in her book.