Green family: The Lawton years
… and a story of luck and loss for Doug’s father, Timothy Clarence Green
This family history journey is a fascinating one to me. Oftentimes, as I’m searching through old newspapers and online records I feel like I’m a relic hunter on some type of archeological dig. Sometimes I discover a large find that leads me to nowhere but a dead end. But other times I unexpectedly uncover a tiny find that opens up a huge cache of other discoveries. That was the case for me in researching my family ties to Lawton, OK. I have easily found at least three or four chapters worth of discoveries to share from just one small inquiry into newspapers.com. So much so, that I’ve decided to take a short break from the LaBelle letters to document what I’ve learned so far from my Green side of the family. I’ll get back to the letters sometime in late January. In the meantime, enjoy this chapter on my discoveries about the Green’s family life during their early years in Lawton, Oklahoma.
As I shared in my previous chapter, I knew little about my maternal grandfather until I embarked on this project. Growing up Clarence Douglas Green (1905-1941) was no more than a name and a photo to me. His portrait always sat on my grandmother’s baby grand piano and that (until recently) was the only picture of the man I had ever seen. But since starting this project I’ve been able to uncover so much more… college transcripts, post office employment records, high school yearbook photos, and a plethora of small-town newspaper items. These have assisted me in shaping a larger picture of not only who Doug Green was (note: Clarence Douglas always went by his middle name) but also what his growing-up years and family life were like before he met my grandmother, Helen Hinkson (1907-2003).
Clarence Douglas “Doug” Green was born August 27, 1905 in Lawton, O.T. (Oklahoma Territory) two years before Oklahoma would become the US’s forty-sixth state. Both his parents had been “homesteaders” who had migrated to the area with their families in the late 1890s / early 1900s in pursuit of free and cheap land.
Timothy Clarence Green (1878-1937), my great-grandfather, had been one of the lucky ones to have had his name pulled during the El Reno Land Lottery of 1901. Over 170,000 registered for the record-setting land giveaway and he was one of the lucky 6,500 individuals to have had his name drawn. With registrations much higher than anticipated, the odds of the lotto were 1 in 28. My great-grandfather must have had luck in his side on August 6, 1901, the day his number was pulled.
Doug’s mother, Mattie Maria Cook (1883-1918) had been just a young girl when her father, Henry Albert Cook (1850-1907), in 1894 moved the family from Sanilac, Michigan to the “unassigned lands” of the O.T. (as they were called before 1889 land rush). The family had settled first in Enid, but then moved to Apache, near Lawton, in 1902 to pursue business opportunities. There’s a lot more to these two family “homesteaders” histories that I will share in the future. For now, I’ll focus this chapter on the early life of the Green family in Lawton between 1901 and 1915.
Lawton, O.T. (Oklahoma Territory) was a very interesting place for an aspiring young man like Tim Green to seek his fortune and start a family. In 1901 it was a newly formed town that literally sprung up as a result of the land lotto. Initially comprised of mainly “tents”, Lawton was erected on the former lands of Comanche Indians that were vacated as a result of the Medicine Lodge Treaty and Jerome Agreement of 1892. This photo of the First Christian Church in Lawton provides a view of what the town looked like when Tim arrived in 1901. I feel pretty sure that Tim, as the son of a First Christian Church minister, probably attended services here and may have even assisted in organizing the early church.
Although Tim Green had secured land through the lotto just a few miles northwest of Lawton near Cache, it appears his time as a farmer and rancher were relatively short-lived. Within 18 months of starting to homestead his land he embarked on a new career.
In 1903, Tim was selected as one of Lawton’s first mail carriers from over 100 applications that were received. The news item below provides the announcement of his selection. It also provides insight into the state of the young town. It requested local residents to put down boardwalk sidewalks and have their mail addressed with a house number and street name to avoid potential discontinuation of service.
When Tim moved to town for his new mail carrier job it appears he decided to lease the land he had acquired in the 1901 El Reno Lottery. This most likely provided a nice supplement to his mail carrier income. The following news items from the Lawton and Cache newspapers indicated he not only rented the farm(s) but also occasionally took leave of his mail carrier job to tend to farm business.
Tim’s good fortune would continue when he met and married Mattie Marie Cook on May 29, 1904. She came from a very well-respected family. Her father, Henry Albert Cook, owned a successful grocery, coal, and dry goods store as well as several properties throughout Lawton.
I assume that Mattie met Tim during her frequent trips home from college to visit with her father, who had opened a dry goods business in Lawton in 1901. In the fall of 1903, Mattie was attending Fort Worth University in Texas, which today is known as Texas Wesleyan University. The couple’s wedding took place at Mattie’s father’s home in Apache, O.T., just north of Lawton, and was witnessed by Mattie’s father and step-mother, Henry Albert and Eliza Jane (Hymers) Cook. Mattie Maria Cook was twenty-one when she married Timothy Clarence Green, who was twenty-five.
The couple's first son, Clarence Douglas Green, arrived just over a year later on August 25, 1905.
During the first years of the couple’s life together the family prospered. Tim Green continued delivering mail for the post office, while occasionally checking in on his rented farm near Cache, and seeking other opportunities in town to expand his side business as a landlord. In 1906, his father-in-law, H.A. Cook helped broker a land deal that helped to set Tim’s plan into motion. The exchange involved a four-part land swap between H.A. Cook, Tim Green, and a third Lawton businessman and was covered in the local newspaper’s “Deals in Dirt” section.
In addition to acquiring several more in-town rental properties over the next several years, Tim also bought stock in a local realestate and land development company (he had 1 share for $100) and invested in a mining company along with a few other coworkers. In 1909 this newspaper announcement for the Lawton Mining Company noted Tim and fellow mail carrier, Tony Pokorney, as Lawton investors. Tim’s relationship with the Pokorney family, especially related to investments, would also have an important impact on him later in life.
Although I could not find any follow-up articles noting that the mine did in fact make it’s investors wealthy, I did find an article noting its sale to another mining company less than two years later. This would suggest that the ore strike wasn’t as profitable as had been hoped for when it was reported in 1909.
From my research, it appears that the Green family moved around very frequently. In fact, I discovered eight different addresses over a period of just eleven years. The addresses on E and H avenues appear to coordinate with city blocks 20 and 21 (part of the four part land swap deal) where Tim owned property. This suggests to me that Tim and Mattie were also personally involved in finishing homes for their landlord business. I speculate that they would live in a new home while fixing it up and the rent it out and move onto the next. These “for rent” ads from 1913 highlight two of the properties that Tim Green rented.
Here are the eight addresses that I found associated with the Greens during their Lawton years.
1904 marriage announcement: 713 E. Ave.
1905 Lawton City Directory: 603 B. Ave.
1907 Lawton City Directory: 212 E Ave.
1908 Voter Registration: 313 H Ave.
1909 Lawton City Directory: 306 Sumitt Ave.
1910 US census: 311 H Ave. - the census noted that this home was “mortgaged.” This home was also next door to the home the family occupied in 1908.
1911 Lawton City Directory: 311 1/2 E Ave.
1913 Lawson City Directory: 1006 A Ave.
The only home from the addresses listed above that is still standing is the residence the family occupied in 1910, located at 311 SW H. Avenue. Douglas Green was five when his family lived here.
Among my research discoveries I stumbled across a fantastic online archive at the Museum of the Great Plains which contained thousands of photos from Lawton’s early years. This archive yielded one of my best research finds to date… a rare photo of Lawton’s mail carriers in 1913.
I believe Tim Green is the fourth fellow from the right, standing just behind the last motorbike. As one of the first three mail carriers to the city Tim was assigned to route #3 and had seniority which provided him one of the nicer in-town routes. To give you a sense of what the town looked like when Tim was first hired, here’s a photo of Lawton (including the Post Office) in 1903. This was the second location for the post office. It replaced a tent that served Lawton in its first year.
It appears that the years between 1907 and 1911 were relatively quiet ones for the Green family. Outside of a few more reported real estate transactions in which Tim purchased more lots within the city, not much Green family news made the papers. The Green family welcomed a second son, Robert Oscar Green, on December 4, 1909.
In 1911, Tim Green traveled to Bethany, MO to see his ailing father, Rev. Oscar Green. Oscar died on October 2, 1911, but Tim didn’t make the funeral. After two unplanned trips to Missouri in the months before his father’s death, I suspect Tim had exhausted his available time away from his postal carrier job. These two news items from Lawton newspapers note one trip and his father’s passing.
Tim, like his father, was very involved in the First Christian Church. Tim served as a church deacon while Mattie lent her singing talents to worship activities. (See news postings below)
For the most part, life appeared to be going smoothly for the family. But all that came to an abrupt halt in early 1913 when Tim found himself named as a co-defendant in a civil court case.
From what I can gather, it looks like Tim Green had been a partner with Thomas B. Green involving some shared land ownership. T. B. Green was a local rancher and farmer who had several types of investments around town. I suspect that Tim may have sold part of his farmland (or a share in the land) to T.B. Green, who had in turn, used the land later on to secure a loan through a well-known businessman named P.H. Jones. Mr. Jones served as a Director for Lawton’s Citizens State Bank and frequently advertised himself in area Oklahoma papers as a money-lender with the slogan “Money to Loan. P.H. Jones.” In early 1913 it appears that P.H. Jones took the two men to court to recover debt owed to him.
Beyond the common last name of “Green” I don’t believe there is any family connection between Tim and Thomas B. In all my research, the one connection that stands out to me is the Pokorney family. T.B. Green’s daughter Sydney was married to Otto Pokorney. Otto in turn was the brother to Tony Pokorney, Tim’s mail carrier colleague. The Green and Pokorney families were close and often socialized together. This is how I suspect Tim initially connected with T. B. Green.
In May 1910 Thomas B. Green was shockingly murdered while on a business trip to Mexico. From my research it appears that this event was the start of significant financial trouble for Tim Green.
According to the newspaper reports, Thomas B. Green had apparently left Lawton for Mexico in the spring of 1910 on a “prospecting tour and at the time of (his) leaving had ten thousand dollars in his pocket.” While he was away in Mexico the family received a letter from him informing them that if “anything should happen to him there, which would cause his death, his family should immediately investigate.” A short time later the family received word through the American Counsel in Tempico, Mexico that T.B. had been shot in the back. He survived three days before succumbing to his injuries. The sensational murder of T.B. Green made the front page of the paper (see Bonus at end of the chapter). His estate was finalized through the Lawton probate process in late 1912, which appears to align with the court filing by P.H. Jones.
I believe that T.B.’s death and outstanding debt on his estate were the reason that Tim’s share in the property was seized. In May 1913 to settle outstanding debts, a Sheriff’s sale was ordered by the court for the property jointly owned by Tim and T.B. Green. I believe the additional defendants noted in the filing were merely rental tenants.
From this point forward Tim Green’s financial problems appeared to only get worse. Between January 1915 and April 1916, Tim and Mattie Green suffered five more court orders resulting in Sheriff’s sales on their properties. By the spring of 1916, it was apparent that the couple had lost everything that they had spent years building. I can only imagine how crushing this was for the family, both financially and emotionally.
Listed below are the notices for the Sheriff's sale as a result of five separate court orders. Four of the properties sold to satisfy debts appear to be properties that Tim had owned in town. The property identified in the litigation involving Charles H. Colin (Oct 1915) appears to have been for the land he acquired in the 1901 El Reno land lotto. You can click on the image to read each notice separately.
It’s apparent that by the beginning of 1915 all of the luck Tim had experienced in the early 1900’s, by winning the lotto, landing his mail carrier job, and marrying Mattie Cook, had completely run out. He was broke, completely humiliated, and his reputation was badly tarnished. Without much to salvage in Lawton, Tim initiated a transfer with the Post Office and moved the family to St. Louis in January 1915 (in advance of the property seizures) seeking a fresh start and greener pastures.
I will cover more about the St. Louis years in a future chapter. In the meantime, I’ll close out this chapter with an overview of the in-town locations where Tim Green owned (and lost) property. The image below is from the 1912 Sanborn Insurance Map. I’ve marked the city blocks in red that contained properties that Tim Green owned. Most of his properties sat near the St. Louis & San Francisco railroad. A faded thin red border near top the center of this image notes the town’s business district, which was not far away.
Bonus: News articles from The Lawton Daily News, Sept 16 and Sept 25, 1910 regarding the murder of Thomas B. Green, the other man listed in the first court filing that had property seized with Tim Green. Click on images to read full article.
Great sleuthing, especially digging into the legal notices. I tend to overlook the details in those, but will take more care from now on!