Volume 9 , Issue 6

William Edkin & Cordelia (Holt) Miller

"William Edkin Miller originally came from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His wife, Cordelia Holt Miller, came from Paducah, Kentucky. They came to Caldwell, Kansas, and when the Cherokee Strip opened, they settled on land north of Waynoka. Mr. Miller rode the train down because it was faster than by wagon. Mrs. Miller drove the wagon. They lived in a dugout until they could get a sod house built. They picked up "buffalo chips" for fire wood. They shot prairie chickens for meat and the cowboys would give their neighbors beef when they butchered.

Mr. Miller built a hotel on the north part of his farm near the Santa Fe Shops because he thought the town would be settled there. The family saw the Daltons as they rode through the area. It was customary to feed the horses and riders, whoever they were, when they stopped. Grant Miller, W. E. Miller's brother, married Arpy Holt, Cordelia Miller's sister. They built the commercial Hotel in Waynoka which Arpy owned and operated until her death in 1939.

The Indians frequently came from south of Seiling, Oklahoma to the Waynoka stockyards located south of the present grain elevators. The indians took the refused animals, temporarily set up camps around the stockyards, and prepared their meat. They often traded at John Eaton's second hand store. Once a squaw came to the front of the store with a mouth full of water which she squirted on a child's head to smooth its hair. -- [Miller history as told by Katherine Lowther Nunnelee, pg. 475, "Footprints Across Woods County."]
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