About the same time the Gaddie family moved to their farm near Duncan, we find the Johnson family leaving Texas where the weather turned dry and the grass became scarce and the Johnsons drove their cattle to Indian Territory looking for grass, and they found that grass near Duncan, Oklahoma.
They stayed in Oklahoma about four years and during that time at least two of the boys were busy at things other than sitting around watching cattle grow. Andrew had married a girl named Mary, and Will had met this pretty little freckle faced girl from Kentucky.
So then, as you can see, here in farming and cattle country near Duncan is where the Johnsons met up with the Gaddies. This is where a schoolteaching cowboy named Will met a country farmer's daughter named Emma Lee. This is where the falling in love took place. And this is where Will married Emma in the fall of 1896. She was 18, he was 22. They were my parents.
After living in Oklahoma that four years, Grandpa Johnson went back to Texas looking for land to buy. He found what he wanted and bought 1,000 acres of unimproved land in Jones County about three miles southeast of Hamlin. Then he went back to Oklahoma to get the family.
So by the time Grandpa Johnson was ready to start his journey back to Texas with his family, the family had increased by two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren. Will and Emma had a son, Frank, six weeks old. Andrew and Mary had a daughter, Ruth, only three weeks old. Some thought that Ruth was too young to make the trip in the cold of winter. But they all came through in wagons and drove their cattle. That was in January of 1898.
In later years Mama told me that she thought she would have frozen to death if it had not been for Frank in her lap to help keep her warm. The trip took two weeks in the dead of winter and it rained every day of the trip.
Since there were no improvements on the Johnson land, they all rented other farms for a year or two while they made improvements. Papa and Mama rented and farmed one year in Fisher County. Much of the well water in that county tastes so strongly of gypsum that people have to haul their drinking water from the better wells. So, the story is told that when they were driving their covered wagon to Fisher County, they stopped and asked a man, "How far is it to Fisher County?"
The man said, "You are still about ten miles away."
"How can we tell when we get there?"
"You will see farmers hauling water in barrels in wagons."