Herbert Abraham

EC: Herbert Abraham. Okay. I, one of the questions as an outsider I've had is, how'd the Lebanese end up here?

HA: How did they end up here? Well, originally Joe Abraham was the founding Lebanese settler in this community. He had a brother named Useph Abraham and Ed Abraham. Ed Abraham was a well-known merchant, had one of the largest stores in Bristow for many, many years. During the Depression, he accumulated probably a hundred thousand dollars in outstanding accounts that his various customers owed to him. He was known as the poor man's friend, and he never turned a man down, regardless of the man's financial standing, who needed groceries. So Ed, during 00:01:00the depression days, as all others, went through a period when people could not pay their debts. They did not pay him, and he, in turn, could not pay many of the people who he purchased goods from that the bills were not to be paid until later in the fall after the crops were made. So Ed went out of business and Useph Abraham was here and was also in business in the oil business. He later went back to Lebanon. But the question as to how the Lebanese got started, Joe Abraham.

EC: Joe was the first one.

HA: Yes.

EC: Okay. How did he end up in Bristow?

HA: Well, he first settled in Oklahoma long before statehood. He was not a 00:02:00sooner. He was a boomer. A boomer was a fellow that was for statehood, and some of the rest of them didn't want statehood. His dad did want Oklahoma to become a state and was active with some of the early settlers. And the first governor of Oklahoma, Governor (Robert L.) Williams, I believe.

EC: Was, it was (Charles N.) Haskell?

HA: Was it Haskell or Williams?

EC: So, you know, you know more about...

HA: I, no, I'm, I'm not sure who it was there. But anyway, these fellas from Oklahoma City who were active in Oklahoma politics would come to Bristow and they always called on Joe Abraham. He was active in making Oklahoma a state, and he settled in Chandler to start with and was there, I believe, married in Chandler and then came to Bristow and was married to Fannie Abraham, who came 00:03:00from Lone Jack, Missouri.

EC: What business was he in?

HA: So how's that?

EC: What business was he in?

HA: Who's that?

EC: Joe. Joe, yeah.

HA: Joe was in the cotton business. He had a cotton oil mill, made cotton seed cake, had seven gins.

EC: I mean, when he, when he came to Bristow?

HA: Oh, when he first came to Bristow, he was a peddler. He came, he, when he first landed in New York City, he of course was not married, and just had enough money to pack a suitcase with various items that would be sold to people in outer lying districts. And he walked as a peddler from New York City to, to Philadelphia and, and some, and going out of New York, he, he just said he said, where's, which way is Philadelphia? And they showed him, he says, where's the 00:04:00railroad track? And they showed him the railroad track says, why are you going on the railroad tracks? He says, well, he says, I can't get lost. And he said, if I get, if I get tired of walking on the ties, I'll walk on the rails. So he went from New York City by foot and came west. And as he traveled, he made friends and he, he never lost a friend. He was always anxious to make a friend and had good merchandise that I bet many of the old timers around Chandler, some of 'em are still there now. And they said, well now one thing about Joe Abraham, he had good merchandise, and he would come with his pack and stay all night at our house. And finally got enough money to buy a horse and and a buggy. And he increased his stock of goods and and, and was quite a trader around Chandler for two or three years. And then he came to Bristow where he was married to Fannie 00:05:00Abraham and opened a, a small store here in Bristow. And he grew as Bristow grew and was instrumental in, in financing some of the first industries in Bristow, if you would call them industries. There was a glass plant here at one time. He opened a cigar factory here at one time and called it the Havana Tip. And he also owned the, bought the Bristow Gas Company from Claude Freeland, and I believe, Frank Barnes might have been an instrumental in it. And he accumulated a little money and would trade with the Indians and the local people. He invested his money in land. Land was cheap, of course, and the Indians were afraid that there wouldn't be enough white people to buy the land. And he was 00:06:00afraid there wouldn't be enough land for the white people. So he just bought land and, and accumulated five or six thousand acres of land during his lifetime. And was instrumental in opening the refinery. Wilcox later the Wilcox Refinery, but it was first the Continental Refinery. A man named (Leon) Thevenin, who was a Frenchman, knew something about refining and the Bristow refinery was open and he had a one fourth interest in it and later sold that interest. I think I mentioned that he opened a glass factory. And he had three strings of standard tools and drilled many gas wells around in the neighborhood of Bristow to supply gas to the Bristow Gas Company, which company was later sold to the, another company and then it became the Oklahoma Natural. And of course, his family was always instrumental in helping him along in the store. As 00:07:00children he would, he would teach us how to clerk and cut salt meat and sack sugar and rice and beans and, and dig, serve, gas service lines all over Bristow.

EC: When did his brothers come?

HA: Well Ed came, I don't know exactly how many years after dad came, maybe five or six years, not very many years, and then, and Useph later came . And Ed married Nelly Campbell, a local native of Oklahoma. And--

EC: I don't know whether you said did, when did Joe come to Bristow?

HA: Well, he came to Bristow in about 1889, I believe, near that, near that time. And--

EC: Was there any, you know, there, there's some other Lebanese families that settled here. Was there any connection between them and Abraham's?

HA: Well, yes, Joe Abraham had a sister named Esthier (ph). And Esthier (ph) is the word that comes from Eastern Star, from the book of Esther out of the Bible. And many of father, my father's sisters were, had biblical names. One was named Hannah well known biblical name, and dad's name was Salim (ph), which is the Celtics of Jerusalem as Salem. And Salem was the, and the original king of that taught the king of Salem, the king of peace was Jerusalem, was that city when the original Abraham landed in, in the Holy Land.

EC: Well now let, let's see. I heard somebody told me that there was somebody 00:09:00else from the same village in Lebanon. I think it was, came to Bristow.

HA: There was a man named Bill Shibley who came later, quite later. Bill told me that he was an orphan boy and that dad's mother reared him. Bill was of course, mayor of Bristow, not long ago. And there's a Corey, a man named Frank Corey, was a Lebanese who was married to Joe's sister, Esthier (ph). Another man named George Joseph, the Joseph family is here now, had a boy named Paul Joseph. And Paul has a sister named Dolly Joseph. They're all Lebanese. And Useph Abraham had a boy named Don Abraham, and also a, a daughter named Jeanette. And Jeanette 00:10:00is here now recently from, from Lebanon, and her husband was killed in the recent war there. And a son, I believe, was killed or injured. And she's making, she's, she's here visiting now, and there were many other Lebanese families. The Elias's--

EC: Right.

HA: Was Elias was here, and Saab family named Saab.

EC: Was there any reason that they, what about Slyman?

HA: And Yes, Slyman was here. Deeb Slyman and Ella Slyman. Deeb Slyman was a well-known merchant for many, many years in Bristow and has a wife here now, Mrs. Slyman. She lives here in Bristow. She has recently returned from Lebanon 00:11:00where she was there. She went there to take care of her, of her sister, who was, who's now deceased. And then she returned here now. And there are many Slyman children. And there was a, another Slyman boy named George Slyman, who died early, and he had several children. I can't recall all of their names, and they're business people now in this area here now.

EC: Change the subject a little. What, what are some, what are the oldest buildings still standing in Bristow to your knowledge?

HA: Well, at the present, one of the oldest would be the the Rexall Drug Store. It was constructed, I believe, by Joe Abraham in 1903, and another rather old 00:12:00building next to it would be the Anthony Building that was constructed by Joe Abraham in 1912. And those are, 1903 is a rather old building.

EC: Yes. Yes. What about let's see, there's a Stone building there?

HA: There, yes. AH Stone, that's an old building. I, that's maybe have a, maybe it has a head marker on it tells the date. I don't know when it was constructed and I don't know whether AH Stone built that building or not.

EC: And let's see, what about the, the Episcopal, the old Episcopal church building? The Christian science...

HA: The old Episcopal church building on west seventh street, I believe. That's one of the oldest buildings, one of the oldest buildings in town, that still remains.

EC: What about Joe Abraham's house? When was that?

HA: Well, that house, the original, Abraham house was on the lot, just west of the present Stone house. And that was a two-story frame house. All of the family was born there, with the exception of Pauline, and she was born in the present Stone house. I think that was constructed around 1912. I, I, I'm not sure about that date.

EC: What about, did Joe get involved in any of the banks here?

HA: As a stockholder? I think he might have been a small stockholder in in the First State Bank at one time. I'm not sure about that. But he was not an active banker.

EC: How did, how did the Depression affect?

HA: How did the what?

EC: How, how did the Depression affect your family?

HA: Well, Joe Abraham died in 1927 and the, and the Depression struck at, at the time when, if I may say so, that I had to take over.

EC: Right.

HA: Which was and I had probated the estate myself. And ,we, as other people, we were land poor. We, in a sense, we were broke. We went for five years without paying our taxes. Many, many people in Oklahoma went for five years without paying any ad valorem tax. There was a moratorium on the payment of taxes with the starting of the moratorium on the World War debts, which were saddled on Germany. And Germany could not pay and did not pay. And with the moratorium on the war debts, we were headed, well, heading into the depression days. So with the closing of the banks there just wasn't any money. We operated with scrip, 00:15:00with the Chamber of Commerce was our bank. Our bank was a Chamber of Commerce we operated with scrip, and we were short of money. We had vacant buildings. I had no money to pay insurance, no money to pay taxes, no money to pay repairs. Nobody had very much money. Bales of cotton lined the street at $25 a bale. You couldn't get enough money to pick the cotton out of a bale of cotton after you'd picked it and put those bands of steel around it. Cotton was cheap. Corn was 30 and 25 cents, 17 and a half cents a bushel. It was in the fields in Iowa as everybody knows, the depression days, if you know anything about it, it was cheap corn, and the wheat were lined up at at the export points in New Orleans and they piled it on, on the ground there. They couldn't even find boats to take 00:16:00it out, and there was so much wheat. Train loads of wheat would line up there and they'd pile it on the ground, no place to put it. And hamburgers were three large hamburgers for a quarter. And many places, hamburgers, 5 cents a piece, a smaller hamburgers. So you say, how did depression affect us? Just like it did everybody else. We didn't have any money. We were broke.

EC: In thinking about just your memory as a child, mainly. Are there any particular things about life as a child in Bristow that stands out?

HA: Oh, yes. We used to go to the Star Theater for 5 cents, and that was to start with, the kids here didn't know what a picture was. We didn't know what a a moving picture was at all, and most of us were afraid to even have our 00:17:00pictures taken. We were afraid of the little red canary or the little blue and green canary, so we went to the picture show for 5 cents. We bought all of the popcorn we wanted for 5 cents, and we sat on the front row, all the kids. And the first the first 10 or 15 seats were just filled with kids. And we could buy watermelons for a nickel a piece, and ice cream cones, milkshakes, haircuts a quarter. And we as children, we had everything we needed and a lot more. We had donkeys. Rode horses. There were blacksmith shops on the corner of, of fifth and main street by Bill Smith. He was the blacksmith with the large hands. And we'd stop there and watch the sparks fly across the floor, and it was a real honest to goodness town. The children went to Sunday school. There was a little church 00:18:00on east ninth street, and Brother Hooker Groom was the preacher, and he was an old style hell, fire and brimstone preacher. He had us all going to the hotspot every once in a while. And so we had our, we, we were just a, a, a wonderful hometown community. And everybody was friendly and they kept their word.

EC: What thing back, let me just ask you, when were you born?

HA: Oh, I was born in 1901 on December 8th.

EC: Do you remember the Ku Klux Klan being in Bristow?

HA: I remember when Jack Walton was governor of Oklahoma and the Ku Klux Klan was rather rampant, and I knew some of the Klansmen in those days and many of 00:19:00them were leading citizens in our community, and I was not interested enough nor old enough to be deeply interested in the Klan's work or what it did. But I do remember the Klan and I remember seeing Klansman.

EC: I, I, I didn't know if it ever caused any ruckus.

HA: I also remember that we, that one time, when Joe Abraham was to build a cotton gin in Shamrock, Shamrock was a new oil town, and he received a letter from somebody. We don't know whether it was from the Klu Klux Klan or who it was from. But he did receive a letter and had me to read the letter to him. He could not read, but he could write his name, Fannie's name, so dad, on the front porch of the Old Stone House, handed me the letter and asked me to read it. I read it, 00:20:00and it said that you got to discontinue building the cotton gin in Shamrock, that we don't need a gin in this community. And if you do, something will happen. Well, I don't recall exactly what the words were, but I do know that dad was very much concerned over that letter. I don't know whether that was the Ku Klux Klan's letter or not. I don't think it was. I think it was somebody who did not want the gin constructed over there because of competitive reasons, because of the gin that was located probably over in Cushing.

EC: Mm-hmm. What what effect did the oil was the oil boom, the biggest boom to hit?

HA: Oh yes. The oil boom definitely was the biggest boom that ever hit this town.

EC: What kind of effect did it have you just remember as a...

HA: Well to start with, there were no paved streets in Bristow and it didn't have large trucks in those days when the boom first started and the mud was over 00:21:00ankle deep and you even walking across the street. We didn't know what jaywalking was. We just walked and they parked cars in the middle of the street. And there were all kinds of teamsters. They, they had wonderful horses and, and, and they would haul most of the oil field equipment, the pipe and the tanks and the tools were hauled by horses. Am Frierson (Ambrose Frierson), a well-known citizen now, deceased, was one of the early truckers in this community, and he did well in trucking. Later became an oil man and his family now has oil. But the oil boom definitely was paramount in Bristow's history. It started with a discovery of some shallow wells in the Layton sand and later found some 00:22:00production in the Jones sand and later Bartlesville and deeper down to the Dutcher and then Wilcox sand. And there have been a few Arbuckle tests made in around Bristow, but very few here over in around the Drumright area. There's been some Arbuckle production, but the, the field spread from primarily it, it hit, it hit around Drumright and Shamrock in that area, big, first, and the Jones family here, that would be RL Jones and M Jones and BB Jones and, and Boots Jones, the fam, the Jones family, which is probably the best known family in Bristow. They, they owned a large interest in the, in the Midcontinent field over around Drumright. And later liquidated their interests, and they were 00:23:00settled here in Bristow, but the, the refinery was the result of oil. And we have a, a deep gas storage facility that the Oklahoma Natural Gas Company has now, maintained south of Depew, stores gas in the summer. Of course, we use it in the winter and there's many, many structures still around Bristow that are being drilled today.

EC: What, What did you do as a kid, you know, teenager? What was the typical, what'd you do for fun? What kind of life did you lead, you know, kind of thing that...

HA: Well, we first, we.

EC: Kind of thing you wouldn't wanna tell your kids about?

HA: Well, we did--we did a lot of things in those days that a lot of kids do now. We had horses. Some of us started out with jennies. We started out just like other kids. We had skates and later a tricycle and later a bicycle, and 00:24:00later came the automobile. And, and we had horses and, and skating rinks. We did everything that all the kids do today and a lot more, too. We played Go Sheepy Go, and sometimes we'd go and didn't come back.

EC: I was, I was thinking somebody told me that you, about some bootlegger that used to live here.

HA: Oh, you,

EC: Was bootlegging.

HA: Oh, bootlegging was, next to the oil industry, was the biggest industry in town. Bootlegging was a way that many, many families, families I'm speaking now, and some of their children, the children of the old-time bootleggers, I don't know whether I should mention any names or not, but we had some bootleggers that were considered probably among some of the best liked citizens. I started to say 00:25:00best respected, but they were respected bootleggers. Some of 'em took more preachers fishing than anybody else in town. They were, and these, some of the bootleggers didn't drink. They followed it as a business and paid the federal tax. And the, and the state officers, and the county officers didn't do too much towards stopping them because they, if they if they knew anything about it, they didn't try to stop it.

EC: Have there been any famous old crimes or trials or scandals or anything that made the news, newspapers or something in Bristow? I know you had your share of run of the mill assault and battery and that kind of thing, but I, has there been any famous events?

HA: I don't , I don't recall. There used to be some, some bank robbers around here. Brandon (Roy Brandon) was one and Pretty Boy Floyd used to come through 00:26:00town. I've seen him standing in the highway down here. And there's probably others that I, I, I, I would remember if their names were suggested. Bristow was not a hideout, but there were some well-known, I would say, criminals who passed through here and stayed here at times.

EC: During the oil boom, I have heard there were, oh, there was a dance hall or something back of a drug store. I was thinking when the oil boom came, you had oil field workers who were just here to, to work and spend their money and have fun.

HA: Well, there was a, there was an old, a place we called the Palm Confectionery that at one time was operated by, I believe, we called him, his 00:27:00name was Ralph Corey, he's now deceased, Punk Corey . He was a great baseball player in our estimation. And that I might mention that Bristow had some outstanding baseball players, Hammond Vickers and Punk Corey and Smooch Jones. And, and many of those fellas were considered just topnotch baseball players. And we had a baseball team that was a, a topnotch team and we'd go to baseball games on Sunday and this drugstore, what you mentioned, where they would dance, used to dance down in the Palm Confectionery area some. And there was another drugstore where they used to dance up here on North Main Street near the city hall. There was a dance hall back there at one time. I don't recall too much about those dance halls.

EC: Yeah. What about politics? Have there been any interesting politics in Bristow? Anybody? I know they had the elections all the time, but any of 'em real hotly contested?

HA: Well the, as I recall, at one time, Bristow had the streets filled with the political groups. And the question was, well, where were we going to have the the county seat? Would it be in Bristow or Sapulpa? So there was a real hot election, and of course Sapulpa won, but Bristow was in the big middle of that, and we, of course won the county seat here. And Bill Cheatham at one time was a candidate for Congress here and Judge CO (Charles Oliver) Beaver, both of whom were Democrats. He was a candidate at one time for Congress, and I believe that 00:29:00Ed Mackensen, the present editor of the Bristow Paper, was a candidate for Congress.

EC: Well just let your memory run. What are some of the things that you know, you remember about Bristow that maybe nobody else knows or kind of things that stand out in your mind about life in Bristow?

HA: Well, as I recall it, on Saturday you could walk up Main Street and see nearly all of the farmers that lived within trading area of Bristow. And most I knew most of the farmers because I had weighed cotton at the cotton gins for dad. And, also, we had a number of farms and just my business to know them, and 00:30:00I knew the farmers and, and we, we would visit and stop and, and take out time to talk. And it was a lot of sociability among the people in those days. And the many of the Indians would come to town, the Bigponds and the Tigers and and many others would come in and some of them would get rather drunk and there was a jail that we had to build 'em outta cement and put some steel bars on it. And I don't know whether the jail house is still here or not. It was down in the area of where Wells Grocery store is now. May have been torn down. And it's those Indians would get in there and they'd, hoot we, we saw all kinds of, of Indian 00:31:00regalia in the early days. Drive out on the country roads and the trees were rather large and more or less independent. They were, there was not a lot of, of running blackjack in the early days. The grass blue stem, big blue stem, little blue stem, and various prairie grasses would, would grow and get rather tall. And when the fires came through, well, the fires were hot enough to kill out the undergrowth under those trees, which is not, which is there now a lot of the areas that you see that are completely covered with with a dense blackjack growth and other kinds of trees there. To start with, that was not that way. The cause of the blackjack growth and the running, running blackjacks and so forth 00:32:00was overgrazing. Many of the, of the farms would have a pasture and there just wasn't enough grass. Farms were, were small and the tenants would over graze and where the overgrazing, we didn't have the fires. No fires. Then the acorns would fall and the sprout and the fires kept down the this tremendous growth in the early days, but we, we've got a growth now that we have to brush beat (ph).

EC: Has cattle been important in Bristow's economy?

HA: Cattle probably today is is going, is is one of the big industries of this community. You can believe it or not, but within two miles of Bristow, I can show you an 80-acre tract of ground that now has, believe it, 200 head of cattle 00:33:00and the man who has the cattle paid over $2,000 rent. He doesn't. Now I can show this to you as seeing is believing and the, the grass that are, that are being grown there, and it would be fescue, sericea and big and little yellow hop and, of course, native Bermuda grass and the other native grasses and [undecipherable] at the, when one crop is grazed down, another one comes on. And then there's some, some cheat grass from what we call wild oats here. That it's it's, it's unbelievable as to what the, the carrying capacity of this land for grazing purposes, if we have enough rainfall and with proper tillage, deep 00:34:00tillage, we can catch the rain through the season and retain that rain. And that is being done by the ranchers out here today.

EC: Well, is, is this something fairly new?

HA: This is fairly new. This is, this is as brand new as it can be. And there there isn't any question about it. The future for this area is absolutely fabulous.

EC: Well, now, am I correct Bristow started out with cotton as its main crop?

HA: That's probably correct.

EC: And somewhere in there, peanuts got important.

HA: Later they came with peanuts and then tried to, after the peanuts, sap the soil. They tried to put on a cover crop, but very few people did that. And excessive fertilization was used that shoots the soil and allows the plant to extract from the soil the native food values and nutrients faster than should be 00:35:00done. But grazing is quite different. And the peanut was taken out, the whole plant was taken out, and no humus was left in the soil. But today, with grazing and fertilization and proper cultivation, we have a deeper root system. So we've got humus in the soil. Humus is the item that holds the water. And then the, the extra growth on top of the soil keeps the soil cool and the sun doesn't extract by capillary attraction that the water that we can catch. So you can go out here today and find just dozens of farms. I can take you to dozens of farms that are carrying cattle today. And with the price of cows you can get well over, well over $500 for a nice, good sized cow and some of them up to, to 650 just for the 00:36:00cow and, and many times 750 for a cow and a calf. Depends of course, on the size, but you can go out here and just see these little small herds that are in the making. You can see that the future of this area is is agriculture. It's industry. We have new industries around our town. Now we have the, the lock plant is here, and there's some prefabricated house materials are being manufactured near Bristow. We have the future of this community is absolutely settled. We have homes being constructed out here by, by the dozen set there equal to homes anywhere in the country. And these people have good jobs and they're competent. They know how to do things, and they are doing things and they're working everywhere, and they're, they're independent free-thinking people. It's different from the original tenant farmer who followed the oil boom 00:37:00communities. Quite different. The first farmer was an itinerant and he was a worker, and he worked some in the oil fields, maybe pump a little, do this and do that. But today most of these people who are settled around Bristow live in, in houses that are just far superior to the houses in Bristow. It would make the houses of Bristow look shanty to go out and see these wonderful new, fabulous homes that surround this community.

EC: Change the subject again. Was there a black community here all along?

HA: Oh yes. We had Lincoln Heights, which was on up by the standpipe on the, the west side of town. And that was the original colored community. And we had some wonderful colored citizens in this area. We still have them. And the colored 00:38:00community later, it was moved to the east side of Bristow and we call it the East Side now on East 12th Street and East 11th Street. And there are many old original families that are still here and there.

EC: Who are some do by name, do you think?

HA: Well, the Wilsons would be an original family and the man that was janitor up school for so long. He was ill here a while back, Shoals, and then there's another colored family that I'm having a little difficulty recalling his name, but he, he worked for Joe Abraham as one of the, one of Joe Abraham's cotton samplers. He cut samples and worked with dad and, Willis, we called him. His 00:39:00first name is Willis. I can't recall his last name now. I may think of it in a minute. And then [indecipherable] Sanders is one of the earliest farmers here. And Jake Roberts was a, was a family. The Roberts lived up north of town up here. They still live in this area some Roberts. And then Combs. Roland Combs had a, a son that teaches school. He was lived out around Slick, would come to town. He has a daughter who was a school teacher, and this Chuck Farmer and Alfonso Farmer, a Farmer family, and any number of them, they're still around here.

EC: What about Indians? Did Indians, full bloods, I suppose, live in Bristow, or did they stay out from town?

HA: Very few Indians stayed, lived in Bristow. A few, Jay Clinton, lived here at 00:40:00one time, and then there was a a member of the Tiger family that lived here. And not too many Indians lived in the city of Bristow.

EC: Was there prejudice or discrimination against Indians?

HA: Never. Has there been any prejudice or discrimination against an Indian nor a Negro in this community. Yeah, I know, nor any other nationality. Never have I known of any prejudice.

EC: Mm-hmm. What about the school system here? Has it been adequate all along compared to other schools?

HA: Yes, we, we've had a wonderful school system and I believe we've got the best school system today that we've ever had. We have a superintendent who's active. He's forward thinking. He's brought us a brand new school system. And 00:41:00they've got a wonderful new school building here, two of them. And, primarily, I think we can give him credit for that. We have an outstanding school system.

EC: Well, you and your brother and sisters all went to school here.

HA: Yes, we all went to school here.

EC: And you have good memories of it because

HA: Oh yes.

EC: Overall.

HA: Oh, yes. At Bristow has always had a top-grade school.

EC: Well, let me think what I--