Grandma GoGo and the Indians   

GoGo's mother and father, Reeder and Electa Kraus

(Author's note: Sometime family history just falls out of the algorithm "like sands through the hourglass.")

As always, unapologetically unedited

I. 

The title of this blog post isn't entirely correct. Oh, now, it isn't way off. It's just that I've used a little bit of literary freedom in naming it, and, if you will, in pulling all this together.

You see, I've used it to honor my great-grandmother. This lady tenaciously saved used holiday wrapping paper and offered drinks of cold water from a tin cup on a hook by the sink that all were expected to unceremoniously drink from. (It was the best drink of water any eight-year-old kid like me ever had.)

Indeed, the title here is wrong. Affectionately called "Grandma GoGo" by some, there are few places where I would never expect to find mention of my great-grandmother's actual name, Mary Ogle. A stalwart Civil War widow and Mayflower descendant of William Bradford, finding her name mentioned near or adjacent to The Five Civilized Tribes was very much a surprise. Indeed, the first time I saw mention of "The Five" on this 1924 probate record, all I could think was, WTF? Not to go all woke on the subject of just what exactly constitutes "civilized," but really more curious as to why my great-grandmother's name should be mentioned in any collection of paperwork connected to the same.              

It didn't make sense.

The thing of it is, though, this post has little to do with Grandma GoGo and more to do with her father. Mary Ogle's life just happened to cross one of life's many intersections of circumstance that would bring her in a remote way connected to The Civilized Five. The truth of it is that this post has more to do with GoGo's father than anyone else. Yes, GoGo's father, and the strange accounting of what he left behind.

Mary's father (or GoGo's if you prefer) was a guy named Louis Reeder Kraus (1846-1920). Now I never heard much good about "Reeder" Kraus, but as I try to account for all of this, I will do my best not to pass judgment on him. Family legend was that he was hard-headed and cruel to his wife Electa, and that the family lived hand-to-mouth in late nineteenth-century Kansas. (I was likely subject to the hand-me-down version from Electa's descendants and not the Kraus kinfolk) The nuts and bolts of it, however, were that about 1904, there ensued a nasty divorce between Reeder and Electa, with each suing the other for desertion. In the back of my mind, I recall hearing that Reeder had refused to support Electa or their younger girls.        

        

                                        Reeder

All this divorce business caused the older boys to move away and the eldest girls to seek out husbands to get away from all the Kansas drama. Mention can be made that Grandma GoGo, at the age of fifteen, married a man in his sixties to escape Reeder's (and no doubt Electa's) bitter tirades against one another. Even Electa, tired and worn out from it all, would soon pass away, but not before more tragedy and drama were to play out. Dead ex-wives tell no tales except those of broken hearts. Whatever had happened between the two, or whatever ensued up to 1920, in the end wouldn't matter anyway.

By the 2nd day of that year, Reeder Kraus was dead.                    

                             

No, there isn't any murder mystery here. No, Electa didn't grab the gun and make her stand for women's rights. No, Reeder instead managed to get in the way of an oncoming train, or rather two oncoming trains. And as you can imagine, things got a bit messy from there. (Excuse my poor choice of words at Reeder's expense.) Now I have always wondered about the circumstances of Reeder's death that cold winter day outside of Emporia, Kansas. To me, there has always been something odd about it; something odd about how a sixty-six-year-old man was still out working in the railyards, and how something about it always felt more like a suicide than an accident. I have absolutely no reason to think this. After all, the coroner's ruling was that Reeder was simply crushed between two trains. Certainly a grisly end to a cantankerous son of German immigrants who may not have been the best at supporting his wife and seven kids. 

Again, not for me to judge (too much) and not for me to say.

What is for me to say is why a guy who was divorced (and did divorce) on the grounds of abandonment had so much property in another state? I mean, nobody mentioned before (outside of the newspapers of the time of his death) that Reeder Kraus owned at least one hundred and twenty acres of prime land in Oklahoma. Kind of a big asset to have for someone living hand-to-mouth and accused of neglect and abandonment. Beats me, Reeder.

                   

Enter the Five Civilized Tribes.

Enter my great-grandmother, GoGo.

II.

                             

I guess you could say that this is where the story both starts and ends. You see, I hadn't expected to be prompted by Ancestry.com's algorithm to look at a probate administration in Oklahoma for Reeder Kraus. I remember thinking, "Reeder died in Kansas. Why would there be a probate record in someplace called McCurtian County, Oklahoma?" Why was there a record of land ownership in some town called Idabel? And perhaps most interesting to me, why was there a bill of sale back to (you guessed it) The Five Civilized Tribes for a portion of it as part of the probate administration?

           

Three Hundred Dollars in his 1920 pockets? Is that weird or what?

There really isn't any mystery here. It's just curious that Redder managed to secrete away so much property, property valued at over $2000. And indeed, it isn't that curious that The Five Civilized Tribes showed up at Reeder's Oklahoma estate sale to buy back a small piece of ground that had likely been stolen or taken from them anyway. It was just curious to see in the file. It was just curious to see the division of Reeder's Oklahoma real estate among his children. I don't recall anyone ever mentioning Grandma Ogle's inheritance from her father. Who knew that GoGo had seed money all her own?          

Much of this has come up serendipitously as my sisters and I try to navigate the upcoming estates of our father and stepfather. Like I said, it isn't so much a mystery that GoGo had this inheritance that no one knew about, but more of how Reeder had been able to come by it at all. What had Reeder's plans been? Had he planned to escape to McCurtain County in his dotage and plant sweet potatoes? Was his land in Idabel just some folly or retirement dream? 

Indeed, what became of GoGo's share of Reeder's land?         

I assume GoGo managed her affairs wisely. She no doubt received her check from the Five Civilized Tribes or one on her behalf via her brother Roy. She probably discussed what to do with this great sum with her husband, Daniel. (Who one might even call "Grandpa GoGo") I like to think, though, that GoGo put her money away and saved it for the future. I like to believe that it was GoGo's cash (and previously Reeder's) that GoGo loaned my grandparents to buy their own investments on Willow Street in Long Beach and retirement property thirty years later in Riviera, Arizona. I like to think that it was GoGos' money, and with still a dab of the Five Civilized Tribe's cash sprinkled in that helped fund things like my father's RV dealership, and maybe even on some distant level trickled down towards me as I struggled to make that down payment on my first house.

        

Yes, GoGo's share of Reeder's money. Money that may have gone to pay for cemetery plots that GoGo purchased in 1932. GoGo worried that we might not all be together in the end.

III.

Anyway, as I said, there is no great mystery here other than one man's life affecting the outcomes of so many down the road. There are few anymore who would even remember the name of Reeder Kraus, or whether he was a good man or bad, and certainly none that would know that he ever left behind some land in Oklahoma somehow connected to the Five Civilized Tribes. Soon enough, even the name of GoGo will be forgotten. 

                          

There is, however, a small wooden chair. It was made by Reeder and still survives. It seems a random thing concerning a man's life. Yet still it's a creation that he honed a cared about as he crafted it for his daughter Mary, our girl GoGo. The chair isn't great stretches of land in Oklahoma, or great cash amounts coming in post facto from McCurtain County. But it is a lasting legacy.

     

It's a lasting legacy to Reeder and GoGo, and maybe just maybe a little bit, a lasting legacy to Reeder's dream about living among the land of the Five Civilized Tribes.

END