Hulbert Tales and Trails
by Gloria Youngdeer
Story as given
by Solomon (Sol) Holland
March 16, 1937
I was born in 1870 in Cherokee County, five miles west of Hulbert, I.T. My father, Bass Holland died in 1913. He was a Whitmire but belonged to the Hollands. The Hollands lived near Chouteau on the Grand River. They went to the Choctaw Nation on the Red River during the Civil War. The Holland boys fought on the Rebel side. After the Civil War my father settled on Flowers Creek, about three or four miles from Fort Gibson. After father lived there awhile he moved to a place about two miles west of Hulbert.
My mother died when I was about four years old. I drifted from one place to another until I was about nineteen. I spent most of my boyhood days with Tom French and his wife. I worked as a ranch hand doing first one thing then another, at the French ranch at Falls City. My sister, Charlotte Holland, cooked for Mrs. French at her boarding house in Fort Gibson and I spent a lot of time at Fort Gibson. When I was fifteen or sixteen I went to Chouteau and stayed about three years.
My mother was Violet Alberty, an Indian. Mother's sister, Charlotte Alberty Boirch, is on the rolls as a Cherokee. I got an allotment of 61 acres through my father. At nineteen, I married Sarah Paris. She got an allotment of 60 acres through her grandfather.
There was a man named John Irms, a freedman who had an allotment where part of Melvin now is. Ben Hulbert owned the site of old Hulbert (just west and across the creek of the present Hulbert). Judge Pitchford and a few more men that had formed a company, wanted to buy Ben Hulbert's place, with the view in mind of making the town. They knew that the railroad was going to be put through there. They could not agree with Hulbert on a price, so they had to look for another site. Judge Pitchford sent for me to come to Tahlequah and told me that he wanted me to make a deal for a town site at one of three points which he named. He gave me twelve or fifteen hundred dollars, I am not sure just which amount it was, to trade for a town site.
I bought John Irms' tract of land and gave him seventy five dollars to bind the deal, but when I went back to get a bill of sale, he backed out. I lost the seventy five dollars that I had paid him, as he would not return it. I went down below him and bought a tract of land adjoining his place and where part of Melvin now is. I gave Pitchford a bill of sale for the land, which was eighty acres. I was to get so many lots, I think it was four, and was also supposed to get some money. I didn't realize at the time it was a money making scheme. Pitchford, Frank Pack and a man named Foster had the railroad put a depot on their land which I had bought. That was the way Melvin started. Then a man by the name of King bought a tract of land from Gabe Rogers and started a town site where Hulbert now is. He froze out Foster and Pitchford.
In the old days John Irms had a rum and gambling house. This place was patronized by the roughest class and all races, Indians, Negroes and whites. It was a pretty tough place until 1919.
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