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The Rock Springs community grew along a one and a half mile strip of road, with the community dwellings located on both sides of the road. George Miller donated land for a church (Rock Spring's AME Church), school (District #36) and cemetery adjacent to each other. These facilities were located at about mid-point of the community's main road. Between its founding, in 1891, and 1935, the community grew to about 30 families. The last resident departed Rock Springs before the end of WWII. The cemetery database okcemeteries.net gives the following introduction to Rock Springs Cemetery, located north of Chandler Lincoln County, Oklahoma. There are many unreadable stones in this very old cemetery, which is located 1/2 mile south of 3400/840 intersection. There is no sign, but the cemetery is visible from the road on the east side, with the eleven field stones, two unreadable squared stones, and one funeral-home marker.
George Washington Miller was the patriarch of an important African-American family in Lincoln County. His mother Hagar Miller (1811-1899) is buried in Rock Spring, the oldest recorded burial, his grand-daughter Ethel M. Berry Gray, born in 1930, lived in Chandler underneath the 9th Street Viaduct until her death in Oklahoma City in 2017. At one time, a member of the Lincoln County Historical Society she had the kind of perfect memory that would make her a "Living Cultural Treasure" had she lived in Japan, which has a faithful respect for the past in its full detail, not the kind of helter-skelter homage paid to the dead in the United States. Oh yes, he was a famous guy.
George Miller married Mary Emaline Kell in 1870 in Coryell. Texas, and they had six children that are known—not by names on markers but by the statistics available data archives like Amazon.com. Here are their names and the children’s with their dates:
Mary Miller Standifer (1871–1964)
Lugenia Miller (1872–1872)
Hattie Miller Beaver (1872–1918)
George Miller (1874– )
Mattie Miller (1874–1964)
Smith Miller (1877– )
Elizabeth Miller (1879–1939)
Fannie Miller (1883– )
Lula Miller Henderson (1884–1967)
Felix Miller (1886–1969)
Susie Lillie Miller Clark (1890–1976)
Harrison Miller (1890–1904)
Aaron Miller (1892–1965)
Minnie H Miller (1895–1971)
Washington married Mary Emaline Knell Four of the kids were born in the old family home: Ethel, Raymond Louis Berry, Marion L. Berry, and Joe Louis Berry, while the rest were born in Lincoln County near the Miller home not far from Rock Springs Cemetery. Felix Miller was a handsome man, below a photoshopped portrait based on one in the Chandler News for Apr 1904. He was secretary of a civic organization that met every Tuesday night at the Postoffice at Lowe, a long vanished community near Oak Grove, which continues an afterlife in the stories of people like my dad Archie Pounds and William Goble, who have stories to tell about how it functioned as a train stop on the old Katy railway.
Rocky Point School District No. 94
Rocky Point School was located two miles east and two and one half miles north of Prague in section 10, North Creek Township. The school house was a one room frame building with windows on each side to let in light and for cooling in the summer. The building was heated in cold weather by a large wood burning stove set up in the center of the room
First records available were in 1908, which was just before my family moved into the district. At that time the director of the school board was G. T.Nash, Clerk was John Kaiser, and the Treasurer was R. J. Neely. There were sixty-eight students enrolled with Clark Curry as teacher. The school was valued at $750 at that time.
School enrollment was between sixty and eighty most years. In 1917, the number was sixty. There was only one teachers until 1913-1914, when they tried the experiment of having two teachers in one room. After that the school became a one-teacher school for several years. Teachers changed almost every year. Among those who taught in that building were: Mr. Curry, Mr. Eaton, Miss Stevens, F. B. Lawless, F. N. Newhouse, Fred Hopkins, Ina Heatley, Grace Kennedy, Nora Jenkins and Mayme Shearer.
Among those who served one or more terms on the school board were G. T. Nash, R. J. Neely, John Kaiser, Ike Duggan, W. A White, T. Jennings. The school served as a community center also. Church, Sunday School, prayer meetings, singings, singing schools, Red Cross meetings and other gatherings used the school.
In 1918 the school house was destroyed by a tornado. At that time there was usually two months of school in the summer. Then there was a beak of two or three months of school in the summer so the children could help with cotton picking and other harvesting. It was just before harvest was over that the school house was destroyed.
It was almost spring before the new building was ready. It was also one room to begin with, but with cloak rooms and a hallway. Later it was divided by folding doors and used as two rooms when there were to teachers. When there was only one teacher the doors could be folded back to make one large room.
The first teacher in the new building was Lizzie Watts. Later teachers were: Cyce Bass, Reverend Haley, Fred Hopkins, Grace Thompson, Earl Geren, Elta White, Frances Nash, Ola Gist, Blanche Fisher, Alda Bailey, Gladys Kennedy, Mr. and Mrs. C. A.Johnson, Gladys Vanhooser, Felty Wallis, August Franks, Noreen Scarborough, and Mr. Hathaway.
Some school board members after the new building was built were G.T. Nash, R. T. Tower, Ben Neely, W. A. White, J. Johnson, Sam Gist, Harrison Roller, August Opela, Joseph Sekera, Mr. Wilson, Bart Kaiser, William Nolan, Clarence McGuire.
School was discontinued at Rocky Point in 1947. Some of the district was made part of District 93, but most of it became a part of Prague School District No. 103 and the children taken to school by bus. —LCOH
We will say farewell to Ethel in a folk song, that is, with music, by such invoking the total resolution of cosmic discord known as harmony, otherwise named the music of the spheres. It is but a folk song that Stephen Foster borrowed from that endless river of black music that flows, starting in the South, but today played by radio stations across the whole country.
Nellie Gray
There's a low, green valley, on the old Kentucky shore.
Where I've whiled many happy hours away,
A-sitting and a-singing by the little cottage door,
Where lived my darling Nelly Gray.
Chorus
Oh! my poor Nelly Gray, they have taken you away,
And I'll never see my darling any more;
I'm sitting by the river and I'm weeping all the day.
For you've gone from the old Kentucky shore.
When the moon had climbed the mountain and the stars were shining too.
Then I'd take my darling Nelly Gray,
And we'd float down the river in my little red canoe,
While my banjo sweetly I would play.
One night I went to see her, but "She's gone!" the neighbors say.
The white man bound her with his chain;
They have taken her to Georgia for to wear her life away,
As she toils in the cotton and the cane.
My canoe is under water, and my banjo is unstrung;
I'm tired of living any more;
My eyes shall look downward, and my song shall be unsung
While I stay on the old Kentucky shore.
My eyes are getting blinded, and I cannot see my way.
Hark! there's somebody knocking at the door.
Oh! I hear the angels calling, and I see my Nelly Gray.
Farewell to the old Kentucky shore.
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