In the coming weeks, this article will be presenting the history of the founding fathers of Marshall County. The men responsible for making Marshall County what it is today.
One of the early pioneers, and important figures in what is now known as Marshall County, Oklahoma was Richard Catesby Wiggs.
Wiggs was born in Lexington, Ky. on February 17, 1838. When he was about 10 years old, his family moved to Pettis, Mo. Then by 1860, his family had moved to Grayson County, Texas where Wiggs was living with his parents and siblings. Wiggs was a tall man for the time, measuring at 6 feet tall, with dark hair and hazel eyes.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Wiggs enlisted in the Confederate Army on October 2, 1861, at Camp Reeves, near Sherman, Texas. There, he assisted in the formation of Company C of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry, the first company formed in Grayson County. The Eleventh Texas Cavalry was also referred to Young’s Regiment. Within a few months, Wiggs was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant. On August 10, 1863, he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant.
The 11th Texas Cavalry the was first sent to the In- dian Territory, where it was engaged at Chustenahlah (in what is now Osage County, Oklahoma) on December 26, 1861. After the battle, the regiment was dispatched into Arkansas for the winter. On March 6 and 7, 1862, the regiment was engaged at the battle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn Tavern, Arks. Afterwards, the Eleventh Texas Cavalry served as part of the rear guard for the army.
Disease proved to be a much tougher adversary initially than Union Army as typhoid, pneumonia, and measles thinned the ranks of Young's regiment. After a tough winter with many deaths and discharges due to disease, the regiment was dismounted at Jacksonport, Arks., and placed in the Texas Brigade. The brigade contained the Tenth, Eleventh, Fourteenth, and Thirty-second Texas Cavalry regiments, dismounted, Mc- Cray's Arkansas Regiment, and Douglas's Texas Battery. In April, soon after the battle of Shiloh, the regiment was sent to Corinth, Mississippi.
On May 8, 1862, in response to the new Confederate Conscription Act, the regiment was reorganized into the newly christened Army of Tennessee, under the command of Gen. Braxton Bragg. The unit commenced a forward movement into Tennessee and then into Kentucky. On August 30, 1862, the brigade fought at Richmond, Kentucky. Desperately outnumbered, the Texans and Arkansans nearly destroyed the Federal army, leaving the ground strewn with dead and wounded. The Southern army, styled the Army of Kentucky under the command of Edmund Kirby Smith, captured 4,303 Union soldiers and numerous weapons and other supplies. The regiment suffered an unknown number of casualties at Richmond, however. At least three were killed, seven wounded, and nineteen became prisoner of war.
Afterward, the regiment withdrew into Tennessee.
On December 31, 1862, Wiggs’s regiment spear-headed the initial charge at the battle of Murfreesboro. The Confederates quickly surprised and overran the Federal positions, capturing men and artillery. The Eleventh Texas Cavalry suffered heavy losses, officially reported as eight killed, eighty-nine wounded, and eighteen missing. Thereafter, the Eleventh Texas Cavalry was remounted and transferred to the Cavalry Corps on January 23, 1863. Under the command of Joe Wheeler, the Eleventh Texas Cavalry were led on several raids through Tennessee and Kentucky. Following those raids, they fought at the battle of Chickamauga on September 19–20, 1863.
The regiment passed a hard fall and winter of 1863–64 near Knoxville in East Tennessee, an area known for its Union sentiment and bushwhacking. Two large Federal cavalry raids result- ed in many of the members of the Eleventh Texas being captured. Company-grade officers were particularly hard-hit, At least forty-two other members of the regiment were captured during the winter of 1863–64. It was during this time that Wiggs was severely wounded on October 25, 1863. He was hospitalized in Georgia from that time until at least February or March of 1864.
From April to September 1864, the Eleventh Texas Cavalry participated in the defense of Atlanta side-by-side with the Eighth Texas Cavalry, also known as Terry's Texas Rangers. Following the Atlanta campaign, the Eleventh pursued Sherman on his trail of devastation through Georgia and the Carolinas. The surrender of the Army of Tennessee occurred at Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865. However, most of the members of the cavalry corps refused to surrender. Instead, many joined President Jefferson Davis, and others tried to make it to the Trans-Mississippi to continue the fight there. Most of the members of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry did not surrender. Instead, they left North Carolina in small groups and simply returned to Texas. However, Wiggs was not among those who left for Texas at that time.
On May 16, 1865, at Columbus, Mississippi, a detachment of Second Lt. A. C. Bailey and seven enlisted men from Company C, in- cluding Wiggs, surrendered and were captured in what is believed to be the last
ing the regiment. Wiggs was now a prisoner of war. He was part of this last group to surrender to the Union Army. On that day, Wiggs signed surrender papers stating “I, the undersigned, R. C. Wiggs, 1st Lt, Co. “C” do solemnly swear that I will not bear arms against the United States of America, or give any information, or do any military duty whatever, until regularly exchanged as a prisoner of war.”
The war was over. It is not clear from his Civil War records, but somewhere it began being reported that Wiggs was a Captain in the Confederate Army. None of his official Civil War records that are available reflect his promotion to Captain. In fact, his surrender papers clearly list him as a 1st Lieutenant, but nonetheless, he was immortalized as a Captain. Books and essays regarding the 11th Texas Cavalry and Wiggs obituaries all state he was a Captain.
After his release by the Union Army, Wiggs returned to Grayson County, Texas and his family home. Soon thereafter, he married a young woman named Elizabeth Warner. By that union, Richard and Elizabeth had two sons, William Warner Wiggs born in 1866 and Hugh Bulford Wiggs born in 1869. Shortly after the birth of their second child, Elizabeth died.
Richard and his two sons remained in Grayson County until 1874 when they moved to Indian Territory and settled along the Glasses Creek, just north of present- day Oakland. Shortly after his arrival in Indian Territory, Wiggs met Georgia Ann Allen a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. They married on the 13th day of October 1875. Sadly, just over a year later, on November 7, 1876, Georgia Ann died while attempting to deliver the couple’s first child who also died. In April 1886, he mar- ried a young woman named Josie Lawson. Richard and Josie had one daughter, Mary Edna Wiggs.
In 1888, Congress passed a law declaring that Indian women who married white men became United States citizens. This new law then became a means for white men who married Indian women to attempt to gain citizenship in Indian Tribes. Due to his marriage to Georgia Ann Allen, Richard Wiggs sought citizenship in the Chickasaw Nation. In 1896, Wiggs filed an application with the Dawes Commission for citizenship in the Chickasaw Nation along with his wife Josie, a white, non- Indian and their daughter Mary Edna who was born on
saw Nation objected and filed a response denying the requested Citizenship. The Dawes Commission none-the-less granted Wiggs’s application and granted him, Josie and Mary Edna Chickasaw citizenship. The Chickasaw Nation appealed the matter to the Federal District Court to attempt to overturn the Dawes Commission ruling, but the Federal Court ruled in Wiggs’s favor. Thereafter, the Chickasaw Nation ap- pealed to the United States Supreme Court. In the case of “The Chickasaw Nation vs. Richard C. Wiggs, and the Dawes Commission, the United States Supreme Court found in Wiggs’s fa- vor and upheld the finding of the Dawes Commission. Wiggs was now a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, along with his wife Josie and their daughter Mary Edna. This ruling along had a far-reach- ing effect upon the Indian tribes as it established the legal means for non-Indians who married Indians to be- come tribal members through intermarriage.
After gaining citizenship in the Chickasaw Nation Wiggs was twice elected Sheriff of Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation. He also served as a member of the Chickasaw Legislature. And he served multiple terms as the Clerk of Pickens County.
Despite his heroics in the Civil War, his precedent setting court case, and his election to various Chickasaw Nation elected positions, Richard Catesby Wiggs’s most memorable accomplish- ment is that in 1874, he founded a little settlement surrounded by a forest of oak trees along Glasses Creek that he named Oak Land after the forest oak trees surrounding the community. From these oak trees, the first homes and stores were built. Wiggs then established a farm and ranch that covered approximately 2000 acres. On that land, he grew corn and cotton and grazed cattle. From this, he established a large farming and ranching business.
The town of Oak Land eventually became the county seat for Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation.
Oak Land was the first town to be established and to have a commissioned Post Office in what is now Marshall County. The post office was commissioned on July 20, 1881. When the post office was commissioned, the name was then officially changed to Oakland.
After several years of farming and ranching, in 1882, Wiggs opened the Wiggs Hotel in Oakland. It was reported that Wiggs and it was popular with travelers and with people of “distinguished character. Wiggs. also dug the first public water well for his town. In 1884, the first store was opened by Ed Sacra. In 1895, the first newspaper in Marshall County was established in Oakland by Jess Grinstead, the son of the first post- master, William Grinstead. This paper would later move to Madill and be renamed the Madill Record. Shortly thereafter, Ed Dillingham established a large general store and dry goods. Dillingham was later honored with a street named for him. The first church in the county was built in Oakland. The church was built by a combination of Methodists and members of the Church of Christ. The church building also served as the town schoolhouse. At that time, the school was a “subscription” school that charged tuition. The cost was one dollar a month for grades one and two, a dollar and fifty cents for grades three and four, and two dollars for all grades above fourth. The desks for the school were made from the oak trees surrounding the town and they were split logs with peg legs.
By 1890, the town began to hit its peak. At that time, Oakland had a large two-story rock building that housed stores downstairs, and offices for doctors and lawyers upstairs. The town also had several restaurants, two drug stores, grocery stores, dry goods stores and two dairies. And at one time, there were three cotton gins in Oakland.
In 1900, the Frisco Railroad began planning a line from Sapulpa to Denison, Texas. Most everyone believed the line would run through Oakland, but the railroad was unable to purchase a right-of-way through the town and established the line two miles east. This caused most of the businesses operating in Oakland to move to be closer to the railroad. The town of Madill was then formed, and most of the residents of Oakland moved to the new town.
Wiggs passed from this life on the 7th day of June 1904, leaving behind his wife Josie, and three children. Two by his first wife and one by Josie. He also left a legacy that lives to this day. He is buried in the Madill Cemetery.
His obituary was written by Judge Isaac Overton Lewis, (one of the founders of Madill) and it appeared in the Madill News, newspaper on June 17, 1904. In that obituary, Judge Lewis said this about Wiggs...
Captain Wiggs was well known throughout the Chickasaw nation. He was a man of the highest and noblest traits of character. To know him was to love and respect him...In his official positions as well as in his private life he had the entire confidence and esteem of the full-blood Indian as well as all other citizens because in his dealings with all he followed that golden rule of conduct “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.” He was truly loyal in all his relations in life-loyal to his family, his friends and his government... Several years ago Captain Wiggs united with the Chris- tian Church and died in that faith. A good man has gone from us. His bereaved wife and children are heart bro- ken, but let them not sorrow, for “We shall meet him over there.” “Behold, I shew to you a mystery; we shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For the corruptible must put on the incorruption, and this mortal must put on immorality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortal- ity, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is writ- ten, “O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”