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The Ordinary, Extraordinary CemeteryEpisode 167 - "Rebel Girls of the Frontier: Cattle Annie and Little BritchesSend us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne ride into the Wild West in this latest podcast episode! 🤠 Together they cover the unique story of Cattle Annie and Little Britches, two adventurous young girls who defied the norms of their time by becoming outlaws in the vast Oklahoma territory of the 1890s. 🌵 Explore their journey, the challenges they faced, and the Ordinary Extraordinary legacy they left behind. 🐎 Whether you're a history buff or just love a good tale, this episode is a must-listen!To wa...
2024-01-1839 min
Remember the Ladies Series31 Agnes "Sis" Cunningham (1909-2004) / WatongaFROM WOODY GUTHRIE TO BOB DYLAN
In 1930, Cunningham formed The Red Dust Players, a traveling Oklahoma troupe that promoted political agitation. She played accordion and sang protest songs in union halls and migrant camps to educate workers on the importance of unions. In 1940, Oklahoma-born Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger met Sis in Oklahoma City, whose lasting influence on American protest music would be as profound as their own. The next year, during the trial of the Communist Party’s leadership in Oklahoma City, Sis and her new husband and fellow Oklahoman George Friesen feared their own arrest so...
2019-09-2704 min
Remember the Ladies Series30 Annette Ross Hume (1858-1933) / AnadarkoPHOTOGRAPHING OKLAHOMA HISTORY
When Hume stepped out of the wagon in unchartered Oklahoma Territory, just after dark on New Year’s Eve 1890, she had no idea what her life would be like. She was 32 years old, a well-educated doctor’s wife, with two young sons. She was determined to help her husband succeed in Anadarko as physician for the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita Agency. Using her first camera, Hume began taking detailed, powerfully historic photographs of her Native American friends and the area. Hume became one of America’s first female photographers, chronicling the acculturation of the Southe...
2019-09-2004 min
Remember the Ladies Series29 Bessie Maree Huff (1892-1983) / MuskogeeHuff enrolled in Muskogee's Spaulding Institute in 1904. She became the Literary Editor of Central High School's newspaper "The Scout" in 1909. She became a teacher at the same high school in 1916. During the summer of 1922, she taught at New York's Columbia University, due to the success of her 1921 book, " A Manual For Journalism in the High School", which was widely used in the United States. She joined Muskogee Junior College in 1923 and became the dean in 1928. For the next 34 years, Huff directed the school from nine students in 1920 to 292 students in 1953. It became unofficially known as Bessie Huff University. Due...
2019-09-1303 min
Remember the Ladies Series28 Myrtle Archer McDougal (1866-1956) / SapulpaSOCIAL ACTIVIST AND SUFFRAGIST
McDougal joined her husband in Sapulpa in 1904. She organized the Sapulpa Reading Club and Oklahoma Authors Guild, among others. In 1905 when oil was discovered on their land, they purchased a two-story Queen Anne home which became the gathering place for artists, musicians and writers. By 1813 McDougal was a well known suffragist. After the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, she was a member of the Democratic National Committee for sixteen years.
2019-09-0604 min
Remember the Ladies Series27 Althea Louise Brough Clapp (1923-2014) / Oklahoma CityQUIET BUT INTENSE TENNIS
Brough was a serve-and-volley master who dominated tennis from 1947 to 1955. With her doubles partner Margaret duPont, they won twenty Grand Slam women's doubles titles, including nine consecutive US Open titles from 1942 to 1950. She was ranked #1 for 91 weeks and was only one of four women to defeat Maureen Connolly in her prime.
2019-08-3004 min
Remember the Ladies Series26 Merle Campbell Montgomery (1904-1986) / DavidsonEDUCATOR, COMPOSER, AND CONCERT PIANIST
Montgomery studied piano in France in the 1930s before completing her masters in 1943 and doctorate in 1953 at the University of Rochester. During the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration, she directed a music series at the Kennedy Center featuring music from 50 states.
2019-08-1604 min
Remember the Ladies Series25 Ruth Winifred Brown (1891-1975) / BartlesvilleCENSORSHIP AND INTOLERANCE
Brown became the Bartlesville librarian in 1919. She stayed for thirty years until she was fired for her civil rights activities, including reading to African-American children from Doulas School on Saturdays and eating at a segregated drugstore lunch counter with two Douglas teachers. Brown was accused of having subversive materials on the library shelves, even though they had been there for years. Brown was dismissed but the Oklahoma Supreme Court later overturned the decision. But Brown was unrepentant and left town soon after. The saga of Ruth Brown would not die quietly. There was...
2019-08-0904 min
Remember the Ladies Series24 Joan Hill (1930-) / MuskogeeMASTER ARTIST
Hill's family includes chiefs of the Cherokee and Creek Nations. In 1956, she devoted herself to painting fulltime. Indian artist Dick West encouraged her to learn from traditional Indian cultures. Her stylized, acrylic paintings use palettes of neutrals, oranges, reds and purples to depict Native women. She has accumulated 270 awards for her art, making her the most honored female Indian artist. Her artwork is displayed in numerous American galleries and sell for several thousand dollars each.
2019-08-0204 min
Remember the Ladies Series23 Jeraldine "Jerrie" Ann Cobb (1931-2019) / Norman, Ponca CityRIGHT STUFF BUT WRONG SEX
Cobb earned her private pilot's license at seventeen and her commercial pilot's license at eighteen. In 1959 she was praised by NASA and told she would be the first woman in space. The next year she passed all the training given to the male astronauts, ranking in the top 2% of all candidates. NASA required all astronauts be military test pilots so the Mercury Thirteen program was disbanded. Soon after, the Russians put a woman in space. It would be nineteen years before a woman flew in space again. For the next 34 years, Cobb...
2019-07-2604 min
Remember the Ladies Series22 Mollie Gene "Bee" Beachboard (1939-2009) / Oklahoma CityCHILD STAR TO COUNTRY SINGER
Mollie was discovered at a grammar school performance in Tucson by singing cowboy Rex Allen, who put her on his radio show. Her next stop was "Hometown Jamboree" in Los Angeles, which was somtimes called "The Molly Bee Show". For nine years, she performed with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his television show. She did two movies in the 1950s but felt she was too shy for acting. In the 1960s, she was a Las Vegas headliner and traveled with Bob Hope's USO troupe. By the end of the 1960s, she retired...
2019-07-1904 min
Remember the Ladies Series21 Bertha Frank Teague (1898-1991) / ByngLEGENDARY BASKETBALL COACH
Teague began her basketball coaching career at Cairo, OK in 1926. The next year she moved to Byng when her husband was named superintendent. She became an innovator in the sport, including modernizing it. She set the standard for high school basketball and rewrote the book on the game. Teague's teams compiled a 1152-115 record, including 36 seasons of twenty wins or more. In 1962, she wrote the book "Basketball for Girls" in which she described her philosophy and coaching methods. A New York school followed the fundamentals in the book and won two state championships. In 1967...
2019-07-1204 min
Remember the Ladies Series20 Elizabeth Jane Fulton Hester (1839-1929) / Tishomingo, MuskogeeINDIAN TERRITORY MISSIONARY WORKER
Elizabeth was the first woman admitted to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1928. She came to Tishomingo to work as a teacher and missionary in the Chickasaw Nation. After marriage, she moved to Boggy Depot to teach at Choctaw National School. A woman suffragist, she moved to Muskogee after her husband's death to be near her daughter and husband, Oklahoma's first U. S. Senator. She founded the Muskogee Day Nursery in 1904. In 1917. Elizabeth became the first woman to speak in the new state capitol building.
2019-07-0504 min
Remember the Ladies Series19 Lilah Denton Lindsay (1860-1943) / TulsaTIRELESS COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
Lindsay taught at Wealaka and Koweta missions before she married and moved to Tulsa. Tulsa started out as a rowdy town with no activities for women. Lindsay changed that by organizing the Women's Relief Corps and presiding over the WCTU. She established the Frances Willard Home for Women. Her contributions were too numerous to mention.
2019-06-2804 min
Remember the Ladies Series18 Alice Brown Davis (1852-1935) / Park Hill, WewokaCHIEF OF THE SEMINOLES
Brown Davis' Scottish doctor father was assigned to accompany the Seminoles on their Trail of Tears journey. In 1867, her parents died of cholera so she went to live with her brother John, who was Seminole chief. John resigned after 30years in 1916. Needing someone to manage tribal affairs, President Harding made the70-year-old Alice chief. When she was ordered to transfer Seminole lands to the Creeks, she refused. They tried to appoint two other chiefs and they also refused. She remained chief until her death in 1935.
2019-06-2104 min
Remember the Ladies Series17 Jennie Weatherford and Stella Pierce / Muskogee, BraggsWORKING WOMEN OF WORLD WAR I
Just like the Rosie the Riveters in World War II, women worked in male-dominant jobs during the First World War. Jennie Weatherford began work in 1918 at the Muskogee Garage as the first woman automobile mechanic. Stella Pierce became the first woman to pass the civil service exam to become rural mail carrier.
2019-06-1404 min
Remember the Ladies Series16 Olivia Juliette Hooker (1915-2018) / Muskogee, TulsaTIRELESS VOICE FOR JUSTICE
At age six, Dr. Hooker survived the Tulsa Race Massacre by hiding under the kitchen table. When she was rejected by the Navy on "technicalities", her Ohio State University sorority protested. She joined the Coast Guard instead, becoming the first black woman in the Women's Reserve. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1961, she taught at Fordham University. In 1997, she founded the Tulsa Race Riot Commission to try to get reparations from Tulsa and Oklahoma. The U. S. Supreme Court dismissed their lawsuit without comment in 2005. She had two Coast Guard buildings named...
2019-05-3104 min
Remember the Ladies Series15 Anna Catharine Trainor Bennett (1872-1939) / MuskogeeA WOMAN OF BEAUTY AND CHARM
On Statehood Day November 16, 1907 at the state capital of Guthrie, Cherokee Nation citizen Trainor portrayed Miss Indian Territory to Charles Gashman Jones' Mr. Oklahoma Territory in a mock wedding joining the Twin Territories. Trainor was married four times, with each husband dying young. Her second husband was Dr. Leo Bennett, owner of the Muskogee Phoenix, a U. S. Marshal, and mayor of Muskogee. They traveled extensively to Washington DC where President McKinley admired her beauty and charming manner. She re-enacted the mock wedding on the 25th anniversary Statehood Celebration.
2019-05-1704 min
Remember the Ladies Series14 Jane Impson Robinson (1863-1940) / Jumbo, HartshorneTHE LADY ON RUSSIAN HILL
Jane came to Hartshorne in 1886 to claim the family's allotted land from the Dawes Commission. Many immigrants were coming there to work in the coal mines. In 1897, Jane donated six acres of their land to immigrants on Russian Hill to build Saints Cyril and Methodius Russian Orthodox Church. As a Choctaw, she faced prejudice but she never let it defeat her.
2019-05-1004 min
Remember the Ladies Series13 Mary Browne Robinson Blair (1911-1978) / McAlesterARTIST, ANIMATOR AND DESIGNER
Blair was an animator on many Disney Studios productions like Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. Walt Disney asked her to create a pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in New York that centered around children and featured "It's a Small World". It would become part of Disneyland in 1966. Her final Disney project was to create a ninety-foot mural for Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort.
2019-05-0304 min
Remember the Ladies Series12 Ora Veralyn Eddleman Reed (1881-1968) / MuskogeeWRITER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Eddlemans bought Muskogee Morning Times in 1897. Ora and her sister established “Twin Territories: The Indian Magazine of Oklahoma,” a monthly literary magazine, with Ora as editor and chief fiction writer. got lots of experience as writer and proofreader. By 1905, she was the Indian Department editor in “Sturm’s Statehood Magazine”. When her husband's oil exploration relocated them to Casper, WY, she became the "Sunshine Lady" on the radio.
2019-04-2604 min
Remember the Ladies Series11 Alice Lee Marriott (1910-1992) / MuskogeeETHNOLOGIST OF TRIBAL HISTORY
Marriott began her career as a cataloger of book titles and authors at the Muskogee Public Library. This was a service performed manually in the book's inner margin before World War II. She spent most of her time building library collections on local history, and studying the ethnology of Indian tribes of eastern Oklahoma. She studied anthropology at OU, becoming the first graduate of that degree. She became one of Oklahoma's pioneering female anthropologists.
2019-04-1904 min
Remember the Ladies Series10 Janie West Robertson Stewart (1874-1962) / MuskogeeWOMEN OF THE SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND
Lura Rowland Lowrey (1867-1923) founded the Indian Territory school for blind children in 1898. She ran the school for a decade without governmental assistance until the Oklahoma Legislature in 1908 made appropriations for the maintenance of the school. In 1911, the institution became the Oklahoma School for the Blind with Oscar Stewart as superintendent. After his death in 1925, his wife Janie took over for the next twenty years. A tornado struck the school in 1945, demolishing the gymnasium and killing three girls. Stewart had planned to retire but stayed on for the next...
2019-04-0504 min
Remember the Ladies Series09 Donna J Nelson (1969-) / EufaulaAWAKENING SCIENCES TO DIVERSITY
Dr. Nelson became the science adviser to the TV show "Breaking Bad". She felt it helped attract young people to science. In 2001, she began research on the race/ethnicity, gender and rank of female college science professors. Her Nelson Diversity Studies showed no African-American, Hispanic, or Native American females were either tenured or tenure-tracked in the top 50 science departments. Her research received national recognition, including coverage in major magazine, recognition from the National Organization for Women, and a Congressional Report on Title IX.
2019-03-2904 min
Remember the Ladies Series08 Elizabeth "Betty" May Jameson / NormanLADIES GOLF PIONEER
Jameson was one of the golf tour's Big Four - including Patty Berg, Louise Suggs and Babe Zaharias - who established the LPGA. In 1952, she donated the Vare Trophy - named after her idol Glenna Collett Vare - still given annually to the lowest average score. In 2000, Jameson was recognized as one of the Top 50 golf players and teachers. Her talent in being able to hit the ball straight was often compared to Ben Hogan.
2019-03-2204 min
Remember the Ladies Series07 Eva A Jessye (1895-1992) / MuskogeeHARLEM RENAISSANCE CHOAL DIRECTOR
Jessye began her teaching in Muskogee. In 1926 she moved to Harlem to join the Dixie Jubilee Singers. The following year they performed in the film Uncle Tom's Cabin, and soon became the production's curator and guardian. Soon the group became the Eva Jessye Choir. In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. selected them as the official choir for the March on Washington, where they performed "We Shall Overcome".
2019-03-1504 min
Remember the Ladies Series06 Tsianina Redfeather Blackstone (1882-1985) / EufaulaNATIVE AMERICAN MUSICAL TRAILBLAZER
Tsianina traveled with composer Charles Wakefield Cadman and performed Native American music in America and Europe. Cadman created the opera "Shanewis", based on her autobiographical stories and performed by her. In retirement, she promoted archeological and ethnological research related to Native Americans.
2019-03-0804 min
Remember the Ladies Series05 Lawrencine "Lorrie" May Collins (1942-2018) / TahlequahPHOTOGENIC ROCKABILLY STAR
Collins was one of the most dynamic rockabilly stars of the 1950s. With her beautiful voice and brother Larry's guitar skills, the Collins Kids toured with everyone from Eddie Cochran to Johnnie Cash. She briefly dated teen idol Ricky Nelson and played on his show. "We had the luckiest childhoods that you could imagine."
2019-03-0104 min
Remember the Ladies Series04 Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008) / Park HillAEROSPACE PIONEER
Ross worked on satellite orbits for future Apollo missions and helped write NASA's "Planetary Flight Handbook", the agency's comprehensive guide on space travel. She also worked on preliminary concepts for flights to Mars and Venus. Upon retirement, she advocated fpr Native American female engineers.
2019-02-1504 min
Remember the Ladies Series03 Sarah Rector (1902-1967) / Twine (Taft)OIL MILLIONAIRE AT ELEVEN
When Rector received Creek Allotment land, her father tried to sell it but the state forbid it because she was a minor. In 1913, when oil was discovered on the Glenpool property, 11-year-old Rector became an oil millionaire. She would eventually buy a mansion in Kansas City and settle into a comfortable life.
2019-02-0804 min
Remember the Ladies Series02 Narcissa Chisholm Owen (1831-1911) / Webbers FallsMOTHER OF CHEROKEE PAINTING
Owen taught music at Cherokee Female Seminary until she discovered the love of painting at age 62. Her most famous painting of Sequoyah is the one most people remember. Her "Thomas Jefferson and His Descendants" won a medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.
2019-02-0104 min
Remember the Ladies Series01 Gloria Twine Chisum (1930-) / MuskogeeMUSKOGEE'S OWN HIDDEN FIGURE
As a research psychologist, Dr. Chisum worked on methods for flash blindness protection, in which she became an expert. She also worked on methods of protecting jet pilots against vision loss during sharp turns. She developed specialized, protective goggles for pilots who operate high-performance aircraft.
2019-01-2504 min
Remember the Ladies SeriesRemember the Ladies - IntroductionREMEMBER THE LADIES
Abigail Adams (1744-1818) coined the phrase when she asked her husband John to be more generous than his ancestors while drafting the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. It became the battle cry for the 1800s women's movement. This series explores Oklahoma women - past and present - and their contributions to their towns, state, and nation. A written narrative of these women can be view at http://remembertheladies.weebly.com.
2019-01-1104 min