Sarah Beatty Wilson of Lukfahta, 1835

SARAH BEATTY WILSON OF LUKFAHTA
1835
By Muriel H. Wright
Another among the rare descriptions of life on the frontier of
the Indian Territory more than one hundred years ago has come
to light in a recently discovered letter' written in 1835, by Sarah
Beatty Wilson. She is unknown in the history of Oklahoma yet here
was one who gave devotedly in the few months of her life in the
Indian Territory, -one who held her new home and the people she
found there in deep affection.
After her marriage in Pennsylvania in the autumn of 1834,
Sarah Beatty Wilson set out with her husband, the Reverend Henry
R. Wilson, on their wedding journey to the West by stagecoach,
steamboat and horseback, arriving in December, at Lukfahta,2 about
twelve miles west of Eagletown, Choctaw Nation.3 Mr. Wilson's
direct charge was Bok Tuklo Mission which he had established earlier
in year, several miles southwest of Lukfahta.4 Since the opening of
a new mission station always required several months of strenuous
labor before proper housing and living conditions were ready for
those in charge, the young couple made their home at Lukfahta.
An old history of the American Board Missions5 states briefly
that Mrs. Wilson (Sarah Beatty), born in Newton, Pennsylvania,
1 The original of this letter is in the Oklahoma Collection belonging to George
H. Shirk, of Oklahoma City.
2 The site of old Lukfahta (variously spelled Lukfata or Lukfoata) is about tw(
and one-half miles west of the City of Broken Bow, in McCurtain County. This was
a Choctaw settlement begun during the removal of the Choctaws to this country
(1832-34), the name "Lukfata" having been that of an ancient tribal village in what
is now Kemper County, Mississippi, located on the upper waters of the creek now
called Sucarnoochee. Lukfata (or Lukfahta) means "White Clay."  The name of
the settlement (in present McCurtain County, Oklahoma) was changed to Green-
field in 1836. A mission school under the auspices of the American Board of Foreign
Missions was opened at Lukfata in 1835, Miss Eunice Clough, of New Hampshire,
teacher (See reference, Ethel McMillan, "Women Teachers in Oklahoma, 1820-1860,"
The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. XXVII, No. 1 Spring, 1949, p. 19).
3 Eagle Town post office was established July 1, 1834, with the Reverend Loring
S. Williams as Postmaster (See reference George H. Shirk, "First Post Offices within
the Boundaries of Oklahoma," The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (Sum-
mer, 1948, p. 213). The Eagle Town post office was located on the west side of
the Mountain Fork River in the vicinity of present Eagletown on the east side of
the river, in McCurtain County.-Personal information from the late Peter J. Hudson
and other early citizens in this vicinity to M.H.W.
4 Bok Tuklo Mission was located on a double pronged creek, tributary to Little
River. The site was approximately in Sec. 2, T. 7 5., R. 23 E., and about nine miles
on an airline southwest of present Broken Bow, in McCurtain County. The name
Bok Tuklo is from the Choctaw words meaning "two creeks."
5 Joseph Tracy, "A History of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions," History of American Missions to the Heathen (Worcester: Published by

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