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I first began to study genealogy and family history while teaching at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo in the mid-1990s. I received a phone call from a distant cousin in Delphos Kansas whose name was Rhonda Doering and who had a simple question for me that I could not answer. She had come across a postcard sent by a Thomas Pounds in Lincoln County about 1907, and she started calling all the Poundses around Chandler, until someone referred her to me. I thought at first she was talking about my grandfather Tom Pounds, but the date was wrong. In 1907 he would still have been a child. Then the lights came on. I realized she was talking about my granddad’s grandfather (also named Thomas), a man I’d never heard of, though my great uncle Hank had, Hank with his fine intelligence who’d worked himself up from the status of orphan to become the chief engineer at a gas plant over toward Sapulpa. As happens to many such people, his children took no interest in his notes and documents on family history, and after his death everything he had collected disappeared. I making my own trail now, and I would be sure that everything I found would be preserved--including at an early but now undatable stage the Indian-Pioneer Papers.
For me to discover this great collection from the 1930s on the dusty back shelves of the Oklahoma Historical Society in OKCity was a marvelous event. (Just this week to my sorrow, however, I learned that some wannabe Trump blackguard entity has bought it up and we now have to pay a fee to see the books.) I first encountered this set of books—about 30 if I recall—on the dusty back shelves of the OHS in the early 1990s as I was beginning my studies in family history. I don’t know when the run of volumes was purchased, sometime within the last 3-4 years, all I know is they used to be free online or at the HS but that is no longer true. Scholars lose, bosses win. Anyway, below is a fine example of what we all have lost, written by a man named Ike Nicholson who writes like someone with a college education. Though the usual IPP interview reflected the helter-skelter conditions under which it was carried out and typed up by the interviewer, Nicholson’s is a thing of distinction. In reproducing it below, I have left in the few errors and typos, and the reader can see for themselves how few in number they are. This is a book-learned language, not the folk talking.
The degree of correctness in the writing contrasts with the situation Nicholson describes, which was probably general across the great state. The only people who understood what statehood meant were the men, and I do mean males, whom it benefited, the gents who wore black suits and starched white shirts. For all the rest, the common working class, it had no meaning. It was just another 4th-of-July-like occasion to carouse. Here is the interview, editorial apparatus and all.
Statehood Day Killings
by Ike Nicholson, b. 16 May 1863 Knoxville TN
father thomas M. Nicholson, b. TN d. Bartlesville ae 87
Ike m. Martha Bloodworth, 1/8 Cherokee, buried in White Rose Cemetery, Bartlesville.
Interview report written 18 May 1937 at 110 Theodore, Bartlesville OK
“A Killing on Statehood Day” [pp. 125ff.]
On November 16, 1907, the day Oklahoma became a State, there was plenty of excitement and a number of outlaws were in town.
Earnest Lewis was a former outlaw and was at that time operating a beer joint at Third Street and Keeler Avenue, where the Phillips No. 1 Service Station is now located. The Dalton boys were his friends and even Cole Younger who had been sent to prison for life was pardoned and had visited Lewis in Bartlesville.
Lewis had been bootlegging whiskey and Fred Keeler and George Williams, United States Marshals, who lost their commission on the night of Statehood, sent him word they would get him that night.
Bob Scamp was operating a restaurant in the front of the Lewis Saloon, and I took my meals with him. I had just finished eating a piece of pie when I saw Williams come in the back door of the saloon and heard him make the remark to Lewis, “Have you got my whiskey.” Lewis answered, No, but I have some damned good beer.” Lewis then told the bartender, “Get down, son, there is going to be shooting,” putting his hand on the bartender’s head pushed him down behind the counter.
I left the saloon at this time for I did not want to be in line of the bullets. I started for the Piaza Hotel across the street and about the time I got to the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the shootIng started, and I stood where I was until it was finished. I then went back to the front of the restaurant and tried to look in through the window but the house was so full of smoke I could hardly see anything inside. I went to the back far I was anxious to see the outcome. I saw Williams lying across a pile of cans, dead. I did not go inside from the rear but returned to the front where I could see Lewis lying on his back with his head to the east on the floor, dead. Meanwhile Bill Lewis, brother of Earnest, came to the scene and was placed under arrest to keep him from doing violence to some innocent party. They took Bill sway and soon Julia Lewis, wife of Earnest, arrived and they had a struggle to get her under control.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES. OF THE KILLING
When the shooting started, Williams had come in from the rear, and Fred Keeler entered the saloon from [p127] the front, at the same time. Williams shot at Lewis and missed, drilling a hole in the bar above Lewis’ head. About that time Keeler appeared on the scone and dropped to his knees at the end of the counter and opened fire on lewis. Lewis shot at Keeler and when he dropped to his knees, lewis thought he had killed him. He then turned his' attention to Williams and Lewis was killed by Keeler. Lewis had killed Williams and Keeler killed Lewis. Keeler was not arrested for this crime.
After Lewis was pardoned from prison for the murder of a man, before he came to this country, he became a good Citizen. He had a kind, sympathetic heart and was a friend to the poor. Many whom he had befriended were his bitter enemies. Lewis was buried in the White Rose Cemetery in Bartlesville and the inscription on his Monument is "EARNEST LEWIS, KILLED BY F'RED KEELER, NOVEMBER 16, 1907." This inscription was chiseled off the monument several times but Mrs. Lewis had it put on again.
The first cemetery established in Bartlesville was the White Rose, and it bears a granite memorial tint very like the grave stone of a great entity, but the commemorated one in this case is the city itself. The monument reads as follows:
In 1898 the City of Bartlesville began plans to establish a city cemetery as outlying burial grounds were not readily accessible. Plans were finalized on February 24, 1899, which was later known as Union and finally White Rose. Early Cherokee Patents reserved ten acres for a cemetery in Bartlesville, Indian Territory. Additional Land, by gift and deed, has been added to the original ten acres to comprise over twenty acres.
Many burials occurred before official records were kept. Therefore the remains of many of the early city's dead lie in graves that are unmarked. A memorial stone was dedicated on Memorial Day 2000 in honor of the men and women buried here who have served in all branches of service for the United States of America. The first Memorial Day celebration to honor these service men and women was in 1900. Some of the early pioneers buried at White Rose have been honored by having the roads within the cemetery named for them. These were dedicated on Memorial Day 2001,
Here’s the memorial, not in all its rosy monumentality, but merely as a painted board in which the visitor discerns the pale ghosts of yesteryear's paint:
White Rose Cemetery Memorial
The painted sign does what it was meant to do, inviting the visitor to enter, and we
can’t ask more than that.
About Earnest Lewis and and supposed killer Fred Keeler a more than substantial amount is known thanks to the Bartlesville newspaper but no thanks at all to the accuracy of its pages. In reading these stories we have to read between the lines, for both Lewis and Keeler were Deputy U.S. Marshals and as such the papers could state nothing against them. Less than nothing, for if truth be told the people running the newspaper were the same as the men running Lewis and Keeler--they all had blood on their hands. Or so it would appear from Ike Nicholson’s account.
To may start with Lewis, who because of his marriage to Julia Ann Johnson has reams of matter printed about him but I give the reader this warning here and now at the outset. We have no reliable means of knowing the facts, for in this kind of investigation there are no facts, only spins given to the facts to distort them and mislead the reader, only bits of red-necked prose intended to mislead. There is no solution to this problem. The only honest witness we have is Ike Nicholson, who tries to be honest but is led astray
If we were to start with the most important character it would be Julia Ann Johnson (1870-1943) but such lorry-loads of stories have been written about her it behooves us to hold her until last, meanwhile noting that the standard histories like Wiki of her famous husband Emmett Dalton ignore her. And yet she is a strong person and led an eventful and fascinating life. To do her justice, we will start by listing the major events of her sojourn, and then move on to the stories--without trying to distinguish the legendary from the true for the excellent reason that it can’t be done. Even so, like any writer worth their salt, I vouch for the truth of the stories I tell.
Julia Ann Johnson
Julia Ann was born in Ballard County Kentucky and lived there for an indeterminate number of years, appearing next in the 1880 census for Grayson Texas. Next she appears in 1896 in the Cooweescoowee (now in Rogers County), named for a mythological bird, a sobriquet also born by the Cherokee Chief John Ross. In 1903 she married Earnest Lewis in Chautauqua Kansas and in 1903 Emmett Dalton in Bartlesville Oklahoma, spending the rest of her life with Dalton until she died in a Fresno hospital in 1943.
Julia Ann’s birth place is also give as Sutter County California, but personally I vote for Kentucky on the general principal that people born in Appalachia are more likely to be interesting than those born in California. Her life has been told in several versions, all that I have seen in a sentimental vein. For example, one called “ The Nighthawk Rider & the Daltons,” in which we learn nothing serious in the opening two paragraphs, which I omit. What follows is from a Bartlesville newspaper named The Call:
Pardoned From the Kansas Penitentiary, Where He Spent Sixteen Years
SPECIAL DISPATCH, TO THE CALL
BARTLESVILLE, Okla., Sept. 1
Julia first married Albert Whiteturkey, a prominent Delaware, so she could stay in Indian Territory since it was against the law for whites to live here unless they
were married into the tribe. Eight months later, Whiteturkey and Julia were divorced; shortly there after, she became acquainted with Bob Gilstrap, a Cherokee, and they were married and had a child, Jenny May Gilstrap.
According to newspaper accounts, it wasn't long before Julia began seeing Frank Lenno, a Delaware. Things came to a head in December, 1889, when Bob Gilstrap and Frank Lenno met in the main store on Delaware. Lenno had no shells, and Bob told him to get some, then as he came out Bob shot through the door at Lenno. When the smoke cleared, Gilstrap was dead and Lenno badly wounded. Julia evidently lost interest in Lenno when Emmett Dalton came to town for they renewed their old friendship.
At the time, Emmett and his brothers, Grat and Bob, were deputy marshals with Bob acting as Chief of the Osage Police in Pawhuska. On September 6, 1890, a warrant was issued for their arrests for stealing horses. No longer able to masquerade in the name of the law, they turned to robbing trains and banks. But they got too big for their britches and tried to rob two banks at one time in Coffeyville, Kansas, on October 5, 1892. Bob and Grat Dalton and two sidekicks died in the bloodbath that left Emmett with 20 bullet holes in his body. Although he swore he didn't fire a shot, he was given a life sentence.
Julia managed to have his sentence reduced to 15 years, but unable to stand that long of a separation she married a third time to Robert Ernest Lewis in 1901. Lewis, who ran a bar near the Santa Fe station, knew his joint could not operate after Statehood Day because of prohibition laws which would come into effect. Lewis often bragged that he would get even with George Williams and Fred Keeler for a past run-in and that he would do it on the day that Oklahoma became a state, that being the day that these two men would no longer be deputies of the Cherokee Nation. The deputies thought Lewis was all bluff. On the night before state.hood, Williams and Keeler went to the Lewis-Killion bar and as they were ordering a drink, Lewis brought out his gun and emptied it at them. The deputies whipped out their guns and fired back. George Williams was downed with one of the first shots and after he fell he fired the shot that killed Lewis. Williams expired a few minutes later [actually not!]. Fred Keeler was arrested but later released as he had fired in self-defense.
While this was going on, Julia was out in the Osage, dressed as a man, riding with an Osage by the name of Lightfoot, raiding and looting. It has been said that she was responsible for the capture of numerous criminals, but they were turned in only because they got in the way of Julia Johnson Whiteturkey Gilstrap Lewis and her own plans for heaping her great disdain on the authorized representatives of law and order. When she heard of Lewis' killing she came riding in town and after going straight to the place where the inquest was being held she threatened the coroner with a gun. She buried her husband in the White Rose Cemetery and placed a marker at the grave with the inaccurate inscription, "Killed by Fred Keeler."
She then turned her wrath on Jess Leach, the editor of the Bartlesville Enterprise, for she thought he had made an editorial comment in the newspaper which was derogatory to the character of Julia's late husband. With her blacksnake whip in hand, Julia proceeded to dance the editor around the street.
When Emmett Dalton was given a pardon he resumed his courtship with Julia and on August 31, 1908, they were married in Bartlesville. The couple returned to their home on Cheyenne Street where they lived for a while before moving to California where they both died.
Emmett wrote a book about his experiences as an outlaw just before his death on July 13, 1937. So ended the career of the Nighthawk Rider, a genteel lady whose desire for the wild life led her into marriage with four men only to have three of them shot down.
Melinda Cohenour adds to our information here in an essay called “My Strange Relationship with Julia Ann Johnson,”which takes us back inside the Bartlesville saloon fight that we were about to examine earlier. (This material is copyrighted but I access it under the provision of “fair use”for scholarly purposes.)
Julia married Robert Gilstrap, who is characterized by all as a gunslinger and outlaw who was ambushed and killed by a Lenape (Katie says a Delaware) Indian outlaw named Frank Leno. Katie claims to have been in the Bartlesville store with her husband and baby when the shop-owner warned there would be trouble, that Leno was "laying for Gilstrap". She says her husband spirited her baby from the store and she hid behind a barrel before Gilstrap arrived and was killed by a single shot without warning by Leno. At least one account I found indicated the killing was occasioned by the dalliance by Julia with Leno who may or may not have killed Gilstrap at her suggestion. Katie Whiteturkey Day was about 74 years of age when interviewed and it is possible her memories may have been affected by her advanced age, although I have found newspaper accounts of the killing of Gilstrap and subsequent trial of Leno.
Jennie Mae Gilstrap was presented as the child of this marriage, although rumor has it she was the illegitimate child of Julia's sister, Lucy Ann Johnson. (Lucy Ann is also rumored to have been the "wife" or mistress of Bob Dalton, another of the Dalton Gang cousins of mine.) Jennie Mae's true parentage is not known although she is listed on the US Native American Enrollment Cards (1898-1914) as "Indian by blood". This would rely upon her being the biological daughter of Robert Gilstrap, who was half Cherokee, his mother being Sarah Jane "Jennie" Blythe of the Rogers clan. (This, by the way, lends credence to Robert being the father, since it was a common practice to name the children after the grandparents, thus the given name of Jennie. We have not yet established whether or not the Gilstrap line itself was of native American descent although they traveled to the Indian Territory and intermarried with Cherokees often.) Jennie would have been about two years of age when Robert Gilstrap was murdered 24 December 1889.
Robert Gilstrap was the son of Andrew Jackson "Jack" Gilstrap, son of Peter Gilstrap, son of Richard Gilstrap by Mary Truitt who was Richard's first wife. My line descends from Richard's second wife, Nancy Ann Wright. Thus, Robert Gilstrap was my 2nd cousin, 3x removed. He died on his 27th birthday, Christmas Eve, as he arrived at the local trading store to do his Christmas shopping.
Julia next married Robert Ernest "Killer" Lewis, a known outlaw who ran a saloon known as the Uno Bar. He was selling two-percent beer, believing he could circumvent the "no alcohol" law in the Territory because of the dilute content. He had a long history of trouble with the law and engaged two Deputy US Marshals, Keeler and Williams, in gunfire when they entered his bar with the intent of closing it down. He killed Williams and was then shot down by Deputy Keeler. Julia apparently inherited the Uno joint and is reputed to have continued to operate it for some time.
Next in line was Emmett Dalton. When and where Julia and Emmett Dalton first met remains shrouded in mystery, as well. They constructed a romantic tale of having met when Julia was "playing the organ, like an angel, in the little church" where Emmett fell instantly in love. Now, from the history of this girl and her sister, it is highly unlikely this ever happened! They expanded the tale to include Julia waiting for years for Emmett to be pardoned and released from prison. If, in fact, the rumors that sister Lucy Ann Johnson and brother Bob Dalton were secretly married, it is possible Julia knew Emmett before the infamous shoot-out that left the Dalton Gang decimated. At any rate, they enjoyed a number of years notoriety and, even, respectability during the Hollywood era preceding Emmett's death.
Little is known of Roy Johnson Dalton other than the fact he is listed on Census records as residing in the home of Emmett and Julia as a son.
An additional essay provides the following account, which leads us back to the bar fight in Bartlesville and introduces Julia Ann’s gravestone, of which I provide an image at the end.
Julia Ann and her sister left their parental home and headed to the Indian Territory when yet teenagers. They were involved with some of the most colorful characters in Western lore and quite romantic tales have been woven concerning the girls, themselves. Julia Dalton was married first in 1886 at the age of 16 to a full-blood Delaware Indian called Albert Whiteturkey. There exists an interview with a Katie Whiteturkey Day (Ka-tel-mah) Albert's younger sister, who indicates their marriage lasted eight years, but the marriage length was closer to eight months, since Julia married Robert Gilstrap in 1887. It was ended by "Indian divorce" meaning Albert tired of Julia, packed his things and left her.
Next, Julia married Robert Gilstrap, who is characterized by all as a gunslinger and outlaw who was ambushed and killed by a Lenape (Katie says a Delaware) Indian outlaw named Frank Leno.
Julia next married Robert Ernest "Killer" Lewis, a known outlaw who ran a saloon known as the Uno Bar. He was selling two-percent beer, believing the could circumvent the "no alcohol" law in the Territory because of the dilute
content. He had a long history of trouble with the law and engaged two Deputy US Marshals, Keeler and Williams, in gunfire when they entered his bar with the intent of closing it down. He killed Williams and was then shot down by Deputy Keeler. Julia apparently inherited the Uno joint and is reputed to have continued to operate it for some time.
FAG shows her w/ s simple stone and bio: Born Julia Johnson in Missouri, she was the childhood sweetheart of outlaw Emmett Dalton and later his wife. Though she was married to a saloon keeper named Robert Lewis until his death, she stood by Dalton during his outlaw years, and waited 14 years for him while he served time in prison for his crimes. After Dalton was pardoned by Kansas Governor E. W. Hoch in 1907, he married Julia and they settled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Dalton was employed as a special police officer. They later moved to California and worked together as respectable building contractors, until Dalton's death in Hollywood, California. Julia remarried and died six years later at the age of 73 in Fresno, California.
Julia Ann Johnson’s stone
The next personages in our Statehood Day lineup will take us to the dark side of the street, the opposite of the kindly but unjustly neglected Julia Ann who seems always to have walked in sunlight. The next two men, Fred Keller and George Williams, seem to have walked in darkness--strictly bad asses in the ugliest sense of the term according to Ike Nicholson, who once again is confused.
Fred Keller was born in Indiana in 1866, and while Keller is his correct name the Bartlesville newspapers always call him Keeler, for reasons that I cannot name. In that town his cohort is George Williams, and that too is consistent as though the two men were Siamese twins joined at the waist and never to be severed until some unknown date after Statehood Day. In Bartlesville their exploits always involve the two of them together. Although Ike Nicholson informs his readers that Keeler killed Williams and Williams killed Keeler, in fact neither of those statements is true.
We first pickup Keeler in the 1880 census at the age of 14 where he is listed as a stepson and a farm laborer. Next we find him in 1900 at the age of thirty-four in a town called Marum in Woodward County where he is a herder of cattle. By this time he should have been well into the life of crime that characterizes him in Niocholson’s narrative, but of course events of this kind are never listed in the census, and let that statement stand for all further references to that decennial event which gives only the dry vital stats. Next we find him still in Woodward County in 1901 and then in Bartlesville in August 1907, where he is reported to be making a fight FOB Monte Carlo. (No explanation for “FOB” is given. It could mean the fob for a key but that word doesn’t fit the syntax.) The only permanently interesting in here is the reference to Pussyfoot Johnson. The paper states that Keller and his sidekick Johnson were “jailed after the raid,” charged with “carrying whiskey into Kansas,” thereby letting alert readers know that the charge was true, the newspaper account to the contrary notwithstanding.
That’s called reading a newspaper against the grain, which we will have to do continually in what follows to make sense of anything. The one exception is the first-person account by Ike Nicholson, who clearly is an honest man though usually confused by his memory of the events that he eye-witnessed thirty years earlier. This time he gets the central fact completely wrong: “Lewis had been bootlegging whiskey and Fred Keeler and George Williams, United States Marshals, who lost their commission on the night of statehood sent him word they would get him that night.” In Nicholson’s description of the fight that follows only one fact still stands: there was a confrontation of some kind though none of the men Nicholson numbers among the dead in fact went to the land beyond to meet their maker.
The reference to Pussyfoot Johnson requires a substantial annotation. He was a revenue agent active in bringing about prohibition, who in my 2022 Whiskey Towns of Oklahoma 1889-1907 I described as follows:
Newspapers in Muskogee, Oklahoma referred to Johnson as "the gent with the panther tread," which led to "Pussyfoot." Johnson said that he wore rubber heels on his shoes. In 1906 Johnson's temperance activities earned him governmental notice and he was appointed special agent of the Department of the Interior to enforce laws in Indian Territory and Oklahoma. He was chief agent of the United States Indian Service from July 1908 until September 1911 and secured more than 4,400 convictions through a practice of sweeping into gambling saloons and other disorderly places. Saloon keepers affected by Johnson's raids banded together to offer a $3,000 reward for his death. Upon learning of the reward, Johnson changed to nighttime raids and destroyed most of the raided establishments.
Born in Coventry, New York, Johnson was educated at the University of Nebraska. Following college, he stayed in Lincoln, Nebraska and worked at The Lincoln Daily News before becoming manager of the Nebraska News Bureau. He posed as an anti-Prohibitionist to
obtain information from brewery and saloon owners and then published what he had learned that was detrimental to the "wet" cause. Retiring from public life in 1930, he returned to his family farm in Chenango County, New York, where he died in 1945. He looks nearly as white as George Wallace but the census listed him as colored.
Two more newspaper stories are more to the point--or rather add to the haystack of the not-to-be credited--and thus I feel it behooves me to no longer try the readers patience with analysis. I will merely mention their titles and let the reader do the research. Not least
among them is Earnest Lewis. Nicholson gives this description: “Earnest Lewis was a former outlaw and was at that time operating a beer joint at Third Street and 'Keeler
Avenue, where: the Phillips No. I service Station is now located. The Dalton boys were his friends and even Cole Younger who had been sent to prison for life was pardoned and had visited Lewis in Bartlesville.” Nothing in that statement can be verified. Of course the Dalton and Younger gangs were around but the facts of their lives are lost in the clouds of rumor that covers their paths.
With that, dear reader, we have reached an end to this survey of the Statehood Day killings. Not much can be said about those momentous events except that they did not happen. The rest, as they say, is history.
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