“We’re Moving.”

Although the seeds of the tree originated in two very different soils, the British Isles and Italy, they took root and were grafted together in the dusty plains of Oklahoma where I was born. And though our scrappy familial tree bore much brave fruit, of which I am justifiably proud, its roots are inextricably entangled with the traumatic history of American westward expansionism.

In the mid 1700s, white settlers began to migrate from the original thirteen colonies across the Appalachian Mountains toward the Mississippi River.  The native peoples of these lands were increasingly viewed as “an obstacle to be conquered or pushed further westward” and commonly referred to as “the Indian problem.” (1).  At that time, all land west of the Mississippi River was considered Indian Territory, but unfortunately the land was never officially designated as a U.S. territory nor granted the associated protection. 

For 100 years, various treaties and acts of Congress brutally removed tribes from their land until it dwindled to what is now the state of Oklahoma.  Though the land had originally been considered uninhabitable, the skill and tenacity of the native people proved otherwise. By the end of the Civil War, it was considered some of the most valuable “unsettled” land. 

 The final assault on tribal land was initiated in 1886, when the western half of Indian Territory was ceded to the US.  Three years later Congress laid the legal grounds for opening the remaining two-million-acres of Indian Territory to white settlement.  President Harrison almost immediately issued a proclamation that on April 22nd a “Land Run” would open tracts within Indian Territory to white settlers under the direction of U.S. Troops. 

Roughly 50,000 people, mostly men, on horseback, in wagons, or on foot, lined up on the borders surrounding Indian Territory.  At high noon, “draught stricken families from the Texas panhandle, trades people, professionals, common laborers, capitalists and politicians, and a few hardy women” all waited at various points of entry for the starting signal by gunshot, trumpet, or cannon fire.  The result was “a tumultuous avalanche of wagons and horsemen surging forward all in one breath taking start.” (2)

My maternal great-great grandmother, Mary Lyon, was among that throng. 

At 41 years old, she seized this opportunity for a better future for herself and her 16-year-old daughter Ella. Mary Lyon packed a small horse drawn surrey with all their belongings, deposited her sickly and sporadically employed husband with his mother in Missouri, and forged her way to Indian Territory.  Amid the chaos of much better equipped wagons, and despite “sooners” who jumped the starting gun, Mary claimed 650 acres of land in what is now Oklahoma City.  Only one third of the “racers” were successful in claiming land. (3)

 Various entrepreneurial ventures, including the establishment of a food and coffee service for workers coming in on the new railway from Kansas, enabled Mary to build a small homestead and provide her daughter with an education.  Her unusual single-handed success impressed the first Governor of the newly formed State of Oklahoma so much that he designated her as the first “Field Matron” to the Comanche, Apache, and Arapaho tribes. 

Mary taught them how to read and write and became so deeply attached to the people of the local Muskogee Creek tribes that she invited them to continue burying family on part of the land she acquired, keeping it holy and eventually returning the land to them. Her love of these people and belief in the power of education was passed downward to her daughter and the generations that followed.  Mary’s daughter Ella, as well as my grandmother Laura Jane (Ella’s daughter) and my mother, Ella Margaret, all became teachers of, and advocates for, tribal, settler, and immigrant children. 

In her late teens, my grandmother met and married David Bennett, a dashing young man from Kilwinning, Scotland.  His working-class family crossed the Atlantic with all their possessions in the hold of the crowded ship.  My 97-year-old mother still talks about opening the drawers and doors of furniture in the house where her father was raised, and “smelling Scotland.” The aroma of her memory is most likely a bitter-sweet blend of damp ship and family lore shared around the dinner table after church each Sunday. 

The life they left behind was difficult, but so was the reality of the American dream without completed educations or financial reserves.

Self-conscious of his heavy Scottish brogue, my grandfather found the classroom intimidating and soon opted to work in the coal mines along with his older brothers from sunrise to sunset.  Their only sister never married, sacrificing any personal life to cook, clean, and care for her parents and brothers.  The Great Depression increased the burden of life and left many immigrants, including my grandfather, unemployed. 

Despite a lack of formal education, he had a natural curiosity and sharp analytical mind.  When the electrical grid finally reached rural Oklahoma toward the end of the depression, he taught himself how to run wires and, though not a licensed electrician, earned a decent income converting neighbors’ homes from gas lights to electric.  He also ran and maintained the movie projector for the local theater, satisfying his appetite for tinkering and for cowboy movies. He passed in his early sixties from invasive cancer that his doctors attributed to his years in the coal mines.

 My father’s Italian family came to America around the turn of the century.

My father’s father, Pasquale Gallo, immigrated from Italy via Ellis Island in New York. Rather than staying in the urban metropolis, he and other relatives pursued a new life in small New England towns like Swansea and Dedham, Massachusetts.  Perhaps this was because they came from the tiny mountain village of Centrache, Calabria where anyone with the same last name was certainly a relative. To this day there are barely 400 residents in the town.

World War II brought the paths of the two very different immigrant families together.   My father wanted to be a fighter pilot but was barely old enough to enlist.  Adept in math and science, he was instead trained and served as a flight engineer in the Army Air Core based in Ardmore, Oklahoma.  After the war, he stayed in Oklahoma to take advantage of the GI Bill’s guarantee of a free college education. He met my mom at East Central State College where he studied mathematics, and she studied art education. After graduating and marrying, they became teachers in a small town near Oklahoma City, about two hours from my mom’s family . 

Before my older brother and I were born, they spent summers with my dad’s family in Massachusetts so that he could get a master’s degree in Educational Administration at Boston University.  After several years as the principal of our local school system, he took an engineering position with the Kerr-McGee oil company.  This led to a more lucrative position with a small family owned engineering company in Massachusetts and the opportunity to live near his family.

It was on my fourth birthday that we moved to the Boston area.  

I was too young to understand what my parents meant by the declaration “we’re moving,” but I clearly remember the endless cross-country road trip in a pale yellow chevy with white fins and sparkling chrome accents, my older brother sullen beside me in the back seat, and a box of lifesavers on my lap; each sugary rainbow wrapped roll was tucked tightly against another and intended to sooth my waning symptoms of strep throat. 

I also surprisingly remember what we left behind: our cozy 1950’s brick bungalow on a cull-de-sac whose people and boundaries defined my young world; the dark, musty, cramped neighborhood storm shelter and the wild tornados from which it gave refuge; the crimson sunsets over nearby oil fields where pumps nodded up and down like the heads of grazing ponies; and the fireflies and sparklers that lit up the back yard in July while fresh blackberry pie cooled in the kitchen. 

I’ve often wondered if I would have retained such early memories if we had not left.  Was it the leaving, the change of physical location, people, and culture, that archived my life’s earliest treasures? Perhaps because I was born with migrating blood in my veins, I continue to learn that changing location; whether it be permanently or only for a few weeks, days, or hours; can be transformative.  It can open the mind and heart to new ways of doing and seeing things while illuminating the merits and flaws of what was left behind.

Citation (1) Dianna Everett, “Indian Territory,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=IN018. Published January 15, 2010 © Oklahoma Historical Society

Citation (2) Stan Hoig, “Land Run of 1889,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=LA014. Published January 15, 2010© Oklahoma Historical Society

Citation (3) Bob L. Blackburn and Elizabeth M.B. “Discover Oklahoma: Museum, trail tell story of 1889 Land Run,” The Oklahoman. Published April29, 2018