By J. M. Hall

© Karolyn Kay Garland 1997

Page # 29

Board of Foreign Missions asking if he would go as a missionary to Manilla, Phillipine Islands. After prayerful consideration he wired the Foreign Board in New York that he would go.

Our new church was not completed. Mr. Davidson preached one sermon in it before leaving. He was sorry to give up the Home Mission work in Tulsa. He wrote us from St. Louis that if he had more of a woman's temperament he would have cried when he left Tulsa, but he added "Woe unto me if I heed not the Heavenly vision." After getting the work well organized in Manilla he only lived about a year. He was our first Foreign Missionary from Tulsa First Presbyterian church.

PIONEER WOMEN

As we have seen, the good women who were here before 1890, were active in the life of Tulsa. It is impossible to remember or mention the names of all who had much to do with bringing about a moral atmosphere in the little village. Some of them and the years of their arrivals, follow:

Mrs. W. P. Haworth 1884
Mrs. S. J. Stonecipher, teacher - 1884
Miss Ida Stephens Haworth, teacher 1884
Mrs. Lilah D. Lindsay, teacher 1886
Miss Jennie Stringfield, teacher 1887
Miss Bettie Stringfield, teacher 1887
Miss Alice Stringfield, teacher 1888
Aunt Jane Perryman, Mission teacher in Creek Nation for many years, and her two daughters, Hettie and Nora.
Mrs. George Bullette 1882
Mother Egan and Celia Egan Short 1888
Mrs. R. M. Bynum 1886
Mrs. George W. Mowbray, Sr.1888
Mrs. C. U. Dorman 1888
Mrs. L. C. Pruitt and daughters, Myrtle Pruitt Stansbery, Etta Pruitt Devinna and Gussie Pruitt Armstrong - 1889
Mrs. Thomas Perryman, missionary teacher for many years in the Creek Nation.

FIRST MISSIONARY SOCIETY

The Hattie Graybill Home and Foreign Missionary society was organized in the home of Miss C. U. Dorman at the corner of Fourth and Main streets, September 17, 1889.

Miss Jennie Stringfield, one of the mission teachers acted as temporary chairman. Officers elected were Mrs. W. P. Haworth, wife of the pastor of the First Presbyterian church, president; Miss Jennie Stringfield, vice-president; Miss Bettie Stringfield, secretary, and Miss Juanita Hall, treasurer, Executive committee members were Mrs. C. U. Dorman, Mrs. 0. H. Haworth, Miss Alice Stringfield and the officers.

The name was given in honor of Mrs. Hattie Graybill, wife of the Reverend Graybill, missionary in old Mexico. She was also a daughter of Rev. R. M. Loughridge, who was a missionary in the Indian Territory for many years.

MISSION SCHOOL GROUNDS

In 1888 the women of the village called a meeting and invited the men. To the men they made this proposition:

They would buy the lumber and the posts to build a fence around the school grounds if the men would build the fence. The men accepted with alacrity.

Chief L. C. Perryman was elected captain to see that the men worked and the town's first building bee was on. Boards 1 by 6 and 16 feet long were used. The ground was staked off, beginning at the corner of Fourth and Main, running east to what is now Cincinnati avenue, south to Sixth street, west to Main and then north to the corner. It is history that much of the property so claimed for the mission school has been preserved in title for the present-day school system. Some years after that memorable fence-building party an Indian who had built a home here in 1886 laid claim to all of the school ground except the block where the building was located. A compromise was effected with him by which he agreed to take the two south blacks and relinquish any right he might have to the other two blocks.

All in all, between 1884 and 1899 the Presbyterian home mission board expended about $20,000 in maintaining the Tulsa school.

About 1893 four Indians succeeded in getting the Creek council to pass an act permitting them to operate a school in Tulsa. When they returned with this authority they wanted to take charge of the mission school. The early day citizens