Map 15: Northern Texas
and southern Indian Territory

Claudie's birth certificate lists his father's birthplace as simply the Choctaw Nation, while his brother Will's birth certificate is more precise, giving Blue, Oklahoma, which was indeed in the lands of the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory.

The two probate birth certificates confirm that the mother, Frona Ann Maxwell, was born in Arkansas. While Claudie's lists her place of birth as Scotland, Arkansas, Will's lists her place of birth as Van Buren, Arkansas.

The family was farming land in the Celeste area of Hunt, Texas, which is northeast of Dallas, and due south of Blue, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). An area map and an article by an unknown author follow at the end of this chapter. The article comes from the website RootsWeb. It gives rather interesting information on life in the community before and after the turn of the 20th century.

Celeste, Texas

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Celeste, like many towns in Hunt County, was a product of railroad development. The townsite was platted in 1886 by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway [...] Celeste was named for the wife of a Santa Fe rail official. The two rail lines stimulated rapid growth. A Celeste post office opened in 1886, and a number of merchants moved their businesses from Kingston to Celeste. By 1888 three churches were holding services in the settlement. The population by the mid-1890s stood at 600, and the community maintained three gristmills and cotton gins, a bank, a weekly newspaper, and a graded public school. Celeste was incorporated in 1900 [...] By 1914 the community had two banks, three cotton gins, a water works, an ice factory, and a weekly newspaper, as well as some thirty-five other businesses. It reported a population of 1,022 by 1926. Its high school and two elementary schools registered 500 students. Some fifty business establishments, including two banks and a newspaper, were in operation. After the 1920s, however, the population of Celeste fell from 803 in 1933 to 518 in the mid-1960s; businesses correspondingly declined, from thirty to sixteen. After the 1960s the town revived [...]

[from: www.rootsweb.com/~txhunt/h_celeste.txt]