Towns had to have a name when they started – otherwise, you’d ride clean through and never know that you’d been there. Some places are obvious. McAlester, Oklahoma, for example; named for J. J. McAlester who set up a trading post that became a general mercantile. He married the daughter of the Choctaw chief and earned his right to stay in the territory.
When the railroad came through and the post office needed a sign, they agreed that McAlester ought to work.
Some of the towns are named for memories. The Creek Nation gave some of its Georgia land to that state and it became a county which they named for the Coweta branch of the tribe. After the removal of the southeastern nations to the west, part of Indian Territory was called the Coweta District, and the important business was conducted at a structure on Coweta Creek. When a town grew up around it, it was only natural to call it Coweta.
Bixby?
Different story.
Luckily, a book landed on the counter today that ‘splains all about it. About the time Coweta was beginning to acquire a population for its name, a group of political appointees was gathered in the Territory doing the paperwork before a proposed bid for statehood. They called it the Dawes Commission.
The politics of it is a story told elsewhere, but that group of men determined the future of much of the area land. They were making allotments, and some of those were collected together to form townships. The area near the Arkansas River bend had a number of families living there, and you might recognize some of the names from county signage. The Haikey family (Haikey Creek), the Perrymans, Berryhills, Bruners, Childresses, and others wanted to make an official town designation and to do that, they had to get the approval of the Dawes Commission.
Like anything else, if you’re on the good side of the decision-makers, it helps get a favorable ruling. Tams Bixby was an Ohio fellow – by way of Missouri – who had been appointed to work with Charles Dawes. When the application listed Bixby as the proposed name of the new town, Mr. B was flattered. In fact, Bixby was flattered enough that he stuck around and made a name for himself to go along with the town’s sign.
Some of you will have heard KBIX radio in Muskogee (although you have to be pretty close to the transmitter…). The BIX in the call-letters alludes to Tams Bixby. He also ran the Muskogee Phoenix newspaper. Back in the 1970s, when Citizens Security Bank of Bixby celebrated its 50th Anniversary, they published a small book that noted Mr. Bixby’s son had been – until recently – still running the media corporation in Muskogee, but was building a home in Minnesota.
The stories were the work of Burkett Wamsley, who included a lot of names of his fellow residents in compiling Ad Libs to Bixby History. Those of you whose families have been in the Bixby community for a while might have been recorded for history in his book.
Have a look, when you –
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!
