Gaylord's ancestry was source of pride for him, and keeping the stories of his forefathers alive for future generations was a priority. With this in mind, he wrote the following narrative about his grandparents:

A Salute to Two Wonderful Pioneers: Sam and Rhoda Hanes

By Gaylord Hanes - July 1997

Sam was born in 1866 and given the name: Samuel Paxton Hanes. His birth was the first for the family after the return from the Civil War of his father, John Hanes.

The Hanes were of German extraction, and have been in America since the time of the Revolutionary War. The German name was Johannes. The Hanes settled in North Carolina and Virginia. John's father crossed the Appalachian Mountains and settled in Ohio.

John was bound to a trade (carpenter) at the age of 12, continuing until he was 21 year’s old. Upon being freed at age 21, he went to sea on one of the first ships that carried both sail and steam engine. After becoming proficient as a steam engineer, John became a railroad engineer.

Following a run-away engine wreck, John gave up engineering and bought land in eastern Kentucky. He built a mill powered by a water wheel to grind corn. He soon was grinding corn for many people in the area.

One of the principal sources of income for the region was to make the corn into whiskey, a product that had a ready market across the mountains in Virginia.

John also plied at carpentry to build houses. An addition source of income was the harvesting of logs in the Lickin River bottoms. These logs were pulled together by oxen teams.

When the spring floods came, the Lickin River overflowed and John and his sons, one of whom was Sam, would float the log rafts down the Lickin into the Ohio River. From there, the logs were floated to sawmills on the Ohio side of the Ohio River.

Sam made his first of ten annual log runs with his father when he was 13 years of age. After the logs were sold, they would return to Kentucky by train.

Rhoda Hanes was born in eastern Kentucky in 1868, as Rhoda Elizabeth Easterling. She was also of German descent from Revolutionary War times.

Rhoda's father was also in the Union Army during the Civil War. However, most of her uncles on both her mother's side and her father's side of the family served in the Confederate Army. Like many families in the border states, the families were divided forever.

Because of little opportunity in Kentucky and much family strife from sentiments about the war, Sam Hanes and his sister Belle; and Rhoda Easterling and her brother, Willie left Kentucky and settled in Gatesville, Texas in 1889.

Rhoda and Belle were good friends and both found jobs as maids. Sam and Willie took jobs as cowboys, since cattle ranching was the principle industry in Coryell County, Texas.

Sam became very proficient at bronc-busting and roping. Cattle at that time were all Texas longhorns. There were few fences in the area so cowboys spent many of their nights sleeping on the range.

Sam considered stampedes the greatest occupational hazard. Generally, stampedes would be at night. When cattle stampede, they stop at practically nothing. An entire herd can run right off a cliff. Often stampedes were caused by lightning from a thunderstorm.

Sam said that the most effective way to stop a stampede was to ride until you were in front of the herd, then the herd would follow your horse. By riding in a circle that became tighter and tighter, the herd would eventually turn into itself and stop running. Many a cowboy was trampled to death when his horse fell in front of the herd.

On July 4, 1894 Sam and Rhoda were married in Gatesville, Texas. Soon afterwards, Belle and Willie married. Therefore, children born to the two couples were double cousins.

The cowboy life of the eighteen hundreds was not satisfactory for a marriage. Therefore, Sam became a cotton farmer and rented land along the Leon River bottoms near Gatesville. Sam and Rhoda had three children while in Texas: Eva, John Clyde and Curtis Edward.

In 1899, Sam and Rhoda and their three small children set out for Oklahoma Territory to settle on their own land. This was before roads. They simply headed north across the prairie. Rhoda drove a covered wagon. Sam would ride ahead deciding on creek and river crossings and continuing to lap back to find Rhoda and lead her on.

The trip took 29 days. Curtis had recall of one event on the trip. He was 18 months of age. He always recalled Rhoda setting him on the branch of a tree. Rhoda said that the event did happen just before crossing the Red River into Oklahoma Territory.

Only a few miles north of the Red River, the U. S. Calvary intercepted Sam and Rhoda and accompanied them into Ft. Sill where they were detained for a time until the Comanche Indians and the Army made peace with one another again.

Leaving Ft. Sill, they continued to the northwest, crossing the Kiowa Reservation, travelling about 10 miles north of the reservation. The area was later designated Washita County. Sam leased land there and raised cotton for two years.

Sam did two other things: he scouted the Kiowa Reservation for a future home site, and he hauled freight with his wagon. He would haul freight for hire from the nearest railroad, which was in Oklahoma City, about 100 miles to the northeast.

One night returning from Oklahoma City, Sam's team stopped and would not go forward. Sam got down and lit a match. He could see that someone had dug a deep pit across the road.

That was the basement of the Washita County Court House. Fifty years later, Sam’s grandson (Gaylord) had his office in that very building where he served as County Agricultural Agent. That courthouse still serves Washita County today and still blocks the highway from west Texas to Oklahoma City.

The Kiowa Reservation was opened for settlement in 1901. Because of so much blood shed from land rushes, the federal government settled the Kiowa Reservation by holding a drawing at Ft. El Reno. Sam's name was drawn and he was allowed to choose his land.

He was fortunate to be able to receive his third choice of all that he had scouted the previous two years: SW 1/4 of Section 4, Township 7 North, Range 17 West. This was 160 acres located 5 miles north and 5 miles east of Hobart, Oklahoma.

Hobart was named after the serving Vice President of the United States. Nearby communities named after Kiowa Indian Chiefs were Comalti, Gotebo and Lone Wolf.

Sam and Rhoda arrived to claim their land. First, Sam established the four corners. Then he dug the wagon bows into the soil and covered them with the wagon sheet. They had their first home ever on their own land.

Later, when Sam was ready to build a permanent home, he laid out the house and barn location by the north star. When roads were built, the buildings were perfectly square.

This was prairie country, no trees, just a sea of grass for as far as one could see. Fuel for cooking and for heat was buffalo chips. This was another name for dung droppings from buffalo herds, and later from cattle. This is basically a grass product that burns very much like charcoal briquettes, gives off practically no odor and hardly any flame. And buffalo chips give considerable heat.

Rhoda and the three children lived under the wagon sheet while Sam freighted with his wagon to and from Oklahoma City. Eventually Sam saved enough money from freighting to buy a wagonload of lumber and cedar shingles. One wagonload would build a half dugout.

They dug a pit 4 foot deep, 12 feet wide and 16 feet long. The lumber was sufficient to build walls 4 feet high with a gable roof and a cellar-type door that covered the steps down to the floor. The total result was 8 foot walls, cool in the summer, warm in winter and wet floors after heavy rains!

Gaylord Lester Hanes, the fourth and last child, was born in 1905 in that half dugout.

Sam broke the sod and started farming part of the land as required. He grazed cattle on the balance of the land by fencing with barbed wire. Eventually, Sam worked 400 acres.

 

In 1907, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory along with "No Man's Land" (the federal title of a strip of land reaching from the northern border of Oklahoma Territory west to New Mexico) became a brand new state, "OKLAHOMA"!

Sam had three reasons for picking his land: (1). it had a spring; (2) It had deep fertile loam type soil; and (3) a part of the land was dissected by a canyon which contained beautiful blue-white dolomitic limestone, about 10 inches thick.

Sam would quarry and cut that stone by day and haul a wagonload most nights to the surrounding towns. Sam earned sufficient money from the stones to afford a nice stone house with walls 18 inches thick for his family.

In that home, Sam and Rhoda finished raising their four children and later, two grandchildren: Gaylord Lloyd and Roberta Jo Hanes.

About 1903, Willie and Belle Easterling moved from Gatesville to Oklahoma Territory. Since there was no land to homestead, they did the next best thing; they leased Indian land.

When the reservations were broken up for settlement, it was done as follows: each living Indian received a "head right". With each head right went 160 acres of land in the reservation. The Indians picked the best land along the creeks and rivers.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs then built a very nice house on each Indian farm. The Indians also received a monthly check for life, which they picked up at the Indian office in Anadarko.

Since the Indians were not farmers and did not like houses. They built their own shelters on their land and leased the house and farmland to white farmers who missed out on the homesteads.

The whites and the Indians had considerable mutual respect. Schools were built and Indian and white children attended school together. There was considerable intermarriage between these races. Many leaders in Oklahoma over the years have been of mixed blood.

Willie and Belle leased Caddo Indian land near Ft. Cobb, which was 40 miles east of Sam and Rhoda's home. They had one son named Williard, and Williard had one son named Leonard. Williard and Leonard have always been cattle ranchers between Ft. Cobb and Apache.

Rhoda was always a hard working industrious woman. She had some milk cows that produced butter, and chickens for egg production. She would take butter and eggs to Hobart, a distance of 10 miles each way, twice weekly.

She was particularly fond of one high-spirited team of horses. Sam would hold the horses by their bridles until Rhoda was seated in her buggy. When Sam turned them loose, the horses would rear up on their hind legs in unison and lunge forward in perfect harmony, pulling her buggy at a run for the full ten miles.

Rhoda would leave the horses at the livery stable while she bartered and shopped. Then the livery stable operator would hold the team for her until she had the reins in hand and was properly seated and braced. Rhoda would tell him to “let ’em go,” and hit was 10 miles and a cloud of dust until they stopped at their own barn.

Sam and Rhoda were smart and always looking for ways to do things better. For example, Sam laid out his land in terraces in 1914. This was 35 years before the Soil Conservation Service was developed. He read in a magazine how terraces were done in Switzerland.

Those terraces still work perfectly to this day. The native Indians were always interested in what he was doing. When one saw the terraces, he said, "You make water walk."

Sam and Rhoda's oldest child Eva married Terry Parten and had a son named Marvin. Marvin was a track star in High School and he went to Oklahoma University on a track scholarship. Eva became a nurse and eventually was Head of Nursing at Hobart General Hospital. Marvin retired as Postmaster at Hobart.

The second child, John Clyde studied business at the University of Chicago. He owned a restaurant in downtown Oklahoma City most of his life. As well as I can determine, the Alfred P. Murrah federal Building in Oklahoma City that was destroyed by a bomb in 1995 was built on the same tract of land where the Hanes Cafe stood for many years.

The third child, Curtis Edward studied business at Oklahoma City Business College. After Sam suffered a severe financial reversal in 1929 from his cattle feeding operation, Curtis came home to help his father. They finally paid off all the debts by 1939.

At the start of World War II, Curtis joined the U.S. Navy and served 3 1/2 years in the Pacific. His first action was at Guadalcanal. He received several battle stars after that and lost the sight of one eye while serving his country.

But Curtis came home with sufficient good health to farm and raise cattle. When he retired he replanted the homestead to native grass.

It now appears much as it did when Sam and Rhoda put their wagon bows in that ground. However, tornados through the years have destroyed all the buildings on the land. Only one wall of the old stone house is left standing.

The fourth child was Gaylord Lester. He was always interested in electrical devices. He built the first radio he ever heard. He was somewhat of an inventor and received many commendations from the U. S. Air Force, where he worked as a civilian employee most of his Life. He retired in Mobile. Alabama.

He fathered two children, Gaylord Lloyd and Roberta Jo Hanes.

So much could be written about the life and times of Sam and Rhoda Hanes. The 1929 depression that devastated the entire nation caused ruin and havoc to people everywhere.

But while others were going bankrupt and jumping off buildings, Sam never considered any alternative but to pay the bank loan off. He and Rhoda tightened their belts and, with the help of Curtis, paid the debt in full … ten years of hard work.

Sam was highly respected in the community. He was elected to the first school board and served on the board for many years afterwards. He was elected Commissioner of Roads and directed the construction of roads and bridges for a 36 square mile area.

He was elected to the Board of Directors for the first Cooperative Cotton Gin, the first Coop Grain Elevator and the first Gas and Oil Cooperative. This Coop was located in Rocky, Oklahoma, 7 miles northwest of the homestead. Since no one had ever owned the land before Sam, the U. S. Patent Office issued a patent to the land signed by the President of the United States.