Volume 9 , Issue 10

Oklahoma Centennial Book: Mama Grace

"Mama Grace is very interesting reading, relating a woman's trip in a covered wagon with her 5 children from Blackwell to Waynoka in 1906. Grace's destination was her father's farm less than 2 miles northwest of Waynoka (Oklahoma Territory). On the 1906 Woods County Atlas, you can locate the Yourt farm on S26-T25-R16. I'm including the Publisher's description of the book. It is an officially recognized Oklahoma Centennial Book. We have them at the Museum Gift Shop for $17.95 plus $1.61 tax. For mailing, add $2.50, for a total of $22.06. Send orders to Museum Gift Shop, PO Box 193, Waynoka OK 73860. Thanks very much." -- Sandie Olson

FROM THE PUBLISHER... "After the flood demolished their home along the banks of the Chikaskia near Blackwell, Oklahoma in 1907, Mama Grace packaged her five children and her treasured Majestic cookstove into a covered wagon and travelled -- minus Papa -- to her father's homestead in Waynoka, Oklahoma.

Many years ago, Mama Grace was a historical story penned by Mama's daughter. Letha Crossman. Publishers were not interested then, but a great-granddaughter, Dana Bagshaw, rewrote the story and completed the project and took it to Evans Publishing, Inc. Mama Grace was selected by the Oklahoma Centennial Commission to bear the Centennial Commission logo.

Letha Crossman was a resident and teacher in Ponca City from 1940 to 1968. Dana Jones Bagshaw grew up up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, attended Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma in the 1960s. She received a B.A. degree from San Jose State University in California, and took employment in Silicon Valley as a technical writer. She currently resides in England where her play Cell Talk has been published and performed. "What a story!" Sandra Olson of the Waynoka Historical Society exclaimed. She described Grace as "a couragous woman, a true pioneer who braved the unknown," "an entrepreneur," and "a wife who longingly watched the road for her husband's promised coming."

The book includes a section of photos courtesy of the Waynoka museum, along with those from the author.

In the final chapters of the book, Papa packs up the cookstove and the family and travels -- minus Mama -- perched atop the refurbished wagon through a bemused Tulsa in 1918 to a new farm in Siloam Springs, Arkansas."
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