Mariah and Me Present: My First Presentation

Presentation! What did they mean presentation? I don't know nothing bout birth'n no presentation!!!


A presentation at the Arizona Black Family Genealogy and Historical Society Meeting, you must be kidding me!

Later though I gave in and made a promise to Leafshaker my genealogy bud that I would do my best to comply. I didn't want to flub when one of Arizona's premier researchers was watching me.


The topic had to do with blogging and highlighted with the research technique I used to find and document a Clark family in Logan County Oklahoma.


I swear ggg- grandmother Mariah it had nothing to do with you.

My friend Angela sent me some information to guide me on my way and get started on the blogging side. I stayed up half the day and night trying to put the information in my own vernacular.


But noooo Mariah, you would not let me save it to my computer.

Every time I hit the save button, and went back all my changes I made did not take. After about 5 hours continuously I finally got it saved it to Power Point.

Now I can finally put my presentation on a CD. Smiling, I looked to my left and realized that the drawer/doors to the CD copier was broken.

This one I am not blaming on you Mariah because Tyler your 5th great grand-son had one of his CD's break off inside and we could not get it out.

We neglected to have the drawer replaced and now I really need it. I should have remembered and followed that saying "never put off tomorrow what you can do today."

My next trip was to go and buy a memory stick. I got one on sale at Fry's for nine dollars, bought it home and the durn thing would not even load up down or around.


Not to be undone, I went to Staples and got another brand that I was more familar with. I put it in the USB port and a dog-gone message came up saying "try again later." Heck it was already late!

I know it had to be you Mariah. I have felt you late at night in my presence before, and I know for a fact that you don't want to be found yet.


Time for me to take a break so I headed to the kitchen looking in every cabinet for that bottle of wine from five Christmases ago. You had been in that cabinet hadn't you? I am not getting smart with you, but its awful funny that I could not find that bottle that had your surname Taylor on it. Mighty Strange I must say.


Time was ticking: I started to type and my thumb on my right hand froze up like I had just been in the World Thumb Wrestling Championship and lost.


It was time for me to call a back-up now. I hurried up and got on the phone and called my friend Lil Leaf and asked if I could send my PP presentation to her and put it on a CD.

Yes, she said and with a sigh of relief I hit the send button.

Why thirty minutes later did she call me and say that she could not open it?

It was now around 9:30 at night and I was scheduled for the next day. Our only solution was to send her the slides one by one through the email.

I got my other unwelcomed call around 10 P.M.

As the old folks used to say after almost pulling out my hair, I took to my bed!


Armed with nothing on Saturday I went to the meeting with good intentions. My only solution was to go to my Mariah's Zepher site and read from my last Blog.

Mariah had to follow me there because the computer crashed just as I was getting ready to start.

With bated breathe I started to cold talk about my last blog entry, no power point, no slides, just those twelve pair of eyes looking my way.

Then the computer came back up. Whew!! Finally Mariah, you let me finish.
It was not what I planned but the presentation turned out okay. Thank you God.

Thank you too Mariah.

I also want to apologize for calling you by your first name. I was not raised like that and I kind of look around to the right and left to see if anyone saw me typing.

Oh one those memory sticks I bought that did not work. Well Taylor my grand-daughter came home that evening, put it in the port and the blankety- blank blank things worked on the first try.

Now quit playing with me granny number three and show yourself. (pretty please!)

Love ya!

A Little Girl's Bravery: Logan County Ok 1893

Last month,a young lady by the name of Ruby came to The Black Family Genealogy and Historical meeting wanting to learn more about her family and wanted to learn more about the process of searching.

One of the comments she shared with me was oral history related to her ancestrial family who lived in Oklahoma. That family was frank and Meldia McGlory.

Ruby then mentioned that her grandmother Meldia's family had come to a horrible end but that the oral history was rather sketchy. She stated that there had been a robbery and her great grandmother's parents were killed.
Ruby in turn did not know the name of her grandmothers parents. She had also heard that her great grandmother was raised by family friends by the name of Sellers and later met and married Frank McGlory.

Here I go, nosey me again, loaded with the name of her family friend and the first name of the grandmother. I took to the 1900 census in Logan County Okla and after careful searching,there they were, Wilson Sellers and his wife Mary. In the household was Meldia Clark. (be sure and click on images for better viewing)


Another jewel was the state that this family came from. Since Tennessee was the state of birth, and the grandmother was born in 1879 I went to the 1880 census and found several Clark's. One of these families could have been Meldia's parents or other family members.


I decided to look for clues in the census by searching Meldie with her husband Peter McGlory. Perhaps then I could be able to help Ruby tie in the loose ends of the actual names of Meldia's parents.
I found Peter and Meldia in the 1920 census in Logan County Oklahoma and listed also were their children Lee and Gabriel.


The next step was to see if there may be a clue from a newspaper that was active in Oklahoma and had mentioned a family that had been murdered in Logan County or a surrounding county.

With tired eyes, I decided to continue my search the next day and shut down my computer for the night.


Just as I was about to get off I decided to look in the Guthrie Daily Leader an Oklahoma paper.

A heading caught my eye. "Negro Milligan Meets His Creator" I thought to myself hmmm this may be something to blog about in the future.


Reading on I realized this guy was the culprit in Ruby's Families massacre! Oh My Gosh!!!


The Milligan Hanging was the first legal hanging in Oklahoma. Oh, there had been plenty of hangings before then but Oklahoma was now a Territory and has been put in the books as such.

Dead,Dead Sheriff DeFord said as he pronounced his sentence on Milligan and asked if he had any last words.


Some of the other names mentioned I assume were friends who witnessed the hanging or were people involved in a church because there was numerous Reverends in attendance.


This is the story of what happened to the Clarks and Milligan's brutal role.

Clark had only been in the Deep Fork Settlement for a few weeks when his wife and child were bought to Oklahoma along with Milligan a youngster from their home town in Tennessee. Mr Clark had just built a log cabin for them to stay in.

Sometime after the ghastly deed happened a young girl came to collect money owed for her father and saw what had happened.



All for one hundred and seventy five dollars for a thief in the night.


After reading the story and finding the name Gabe and Hannah Clark, I went back to that 1880 census. Gabe could very well be Chester with wife Hannah. (that can be filed again for later.)I also went back to the 1920 census and saw that Meldia and Frank named one of her sons Gabe.

It is sad to read that a family was taken off the face of the earth because of greed
especially when they have tried to help you have a better life than what you had.

The one good thing that came out of the story was that the little girl Meldia lived to tell the story of what happened that day.

The little girl Meldia lived to grow up and have a loving husband and children.

The little girl grew up to have a great-grand daughter by the name of Ruby who wants to know her heritage and spread that heritage to others in her family.

The little girl had to endure those visions for the rest of her life but she was a brave little girl,one her ancestors must be very proud of.