Bridges in the USA

Married: Anna Isabel (Dunning) Smith on 19 Jan 1917 Carthage, Jasper County, MO

John worked for the Rock Island Railroad when he was young. He could tell you every whistle stop along the route from Kansas City to Willow Springs. During the Great Depression, most of his family moved back to the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Oklahoma. The tribe wanted John to move back also, because he had a good job with the railroad. John declined saying that he could take care of his family better by himself.

John was a staunch Republican. He said that he only ever voted for one Democrat in his life, and that ended up being a mistake. During the Great Depression, that Democrat was climbing on John's grain bins and saying that he had too much sorghum in his grain. He told John that the government was going to come confiscate the grain. John got his gun and told the man that if he didn't get off his land he was going to shoot him off the grain bin. The Democrat said that he would come back with officers, and John said that he had 10 children and his wife there, that all of them could shoot, and would shoot anything or anyone he told them too. He said that the grain was for his family to eat. The Democrat did not return.

Early in their marriage, John and Anna moved to North Dakota to try to farm the land owned by her father. A record of the land patent is on the web at Land Patent <http://www.glorecords .blm.gov/PatentSearch/Detail.asp?PatentDocClassCode=SER&Accession=NDMTAA+033216&Index=1&QryID =38047>. The land patent shows the acreage was on the US Indian Reservation. John was known to have said that the land was so poor “you couldn't even grow black-eyed peas” on it. This, plus the birth places of his children, and Census records show that the family moved around every few years.

John told his children “don't tell anyone you are part Indian”, therefore most of the informa tion to determine the Indian heritage is unverifiable. It was thought that the records were burned in a fire on the Cherokee Reservation in Oklahoma. The reason Cherokee was hinted at was because of a story within the family that our ancestors had been on “The Trail of Tears” . I can find no record of any of the family living on the Cherokee Reservation, but Navajoe (where his family lived when his father tracked the bank robbers) is just outside the Kiowa/Co manche Oklahoma Reservation. See the attached document about Navajoe, Oklahoma. This does not mean that our ancestors were not on The Trail of Tears because tribes other than the Cherokee were forced on this march as well. John Thomas' wife was supposed to be Blackfoot, but the property for Fountain Brown Dunning is on the Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Fountain Brown's wife, Clementine O'Dell Rhea, was Sioux by adoption. Her mother was Arikara from the Nebraska/Iowa area. I found this by tracing stories told within the family. Clementine would go to the Custer National Battlefield Monument because her uncle was a guide for George Armstr ong Custer. Of the 39 scouts that rode with the 7th Cavalry, only the 6 Arikara scouts did not turn back before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Clenny would tell everyone in the family that her uncle's name was on the monument. At that time there were only 6 Indian Scout names on the monument. All were Arikara. I think I have been able to figure out which of the scouts was our ancestor by looking at the pictures of each of them. More than one member of our family looks like Bloody Knife and none have even a passing resemblance to any of the other scouts.