This post card shows the layout of the original Fort. Over the years building were built and demolished as needed in the nearby vicinity.

Clicking on this map will take you to a nice readable version with labels showing the layout of the fort and surrounding buildings.

Clicking on this letter will take you to the full size readable version of the proclamation in 1863 renaming Fort Gibson to Fort Blunt during the Civil War by Colonel William A. Phillips.

St. Joseph Center of Arkansas, Inc. (SJCA) signed a 50 year lease with the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock to be stewards of this precious piece of property as well as determine future uses for the structure that served so many so faithfully since 1910. This action came after the building, owned by the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock, was to be sold in 2008 due to high costs of overhead and lack of funding and use. It was a practical decision that had to be made, but the heart and spirit moved SJCA, a group of committed Catholics, to ask for it to be given a second chance.

Your help is needed TODAY. Through a wonderfully generous donation by an anonymous donor in 2009, St. Joseph Center of Arkansas was gifted $110,000 (average yearly operational costs) to keep the facility open during the feasibility study, which is still underway. During this time, the organization has kept the doors open to continue serving the community.

The business plan is due to the Diocese in September, but in order to continue the current missions your generous donation is needed to keep the doors open. Can you please help us? Read how in this first issue of our newsletter.

Please consider a gift to this worthwhile effort. Here’s how:

Secure online paypal donations accepted:
http://www.sjcark.bbnow.org/donate.php

Mail check or money order (payable to “SJCA”) to:
St. Joseph Home
Attn: Sandy DeCoursey
6800 Camp Robinson Rd.
North Little Rock, AR 72118

St. Joseph’s Orphanage:” http://www.arkansasties.com/Pulaski/Structures2/StJosephOrphanage/StJoseph.htm

History of the Judge Franklin Faulkner Home
by Tom F. and Echo Rider
November 15, 1986

This log cabin is part of the home of Judge Franklin Faulkiner. (He signed his name Falkner.)

It was moved to the present location from a site about one and one-half miles southwest of Atkins, Oklahoma, or five (5) miles northeast of Sallisaw, Oklahoma. This cabin was typical of the early day settlers. It was erected by Faulkner before the Civil War and moved to the present location by the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce in May, 1957, to celebrate Oklahoma’s 50th birthday.

In 1982, the dog trot and another log room were added. John and Lahoma Ross donated the logs from an old log house on their farm located six (6) miles east of Sallisaw on Miller Ridge Road. The gables, floor and rafters are from the side-room of the Tom Blair home, located north of Sequoyah’s Home.

Mr. Faulkner, a white man, came to Indian Territory in the 1830′s as a teamster over the “Trail of Tears”. Faulkner was married to four wives: Aursakie Potts, Nancy Pettit, a woman named Brewer and Nancy Choate Garvin, his last wife. Being married to Cherokee women, he received rights as a Cherokee citizen.

He became a leader of the Cherokees and served as Judge of the Sequoyah District, Cherokee Nation, from 1871 to 1885, except for two (2) years.

At the request of Tom F. and Echo Rider, the Sallisaw Champber of Commerce deeded the Faulkner Home to the Sequoyah County Historical Society in June 1977. Later, Tom F. and Echo Rider leased from the state of Oklahoma their right-of-way, beginning at the Coors Building and extending east to Cherry Street, for the Sequoyah Historical Society. This plot was leased for $1.00 for the term of the least – twenty-five (25) years.

The Society appointed a restoration Committee, which consisted of four members: Tom F. and Echo Rider, Alfred and Janelle Fullbright. This committee worked deligently to restore the home to its original state. The home was placed on the National Registry of Historical Places on the 23rd day of March 1980. In 1981, another member was added to the committee, Irma Crawford.

The Sequoyah County Historical Society gave all the property, the Faulkner Home, the Blair Home and the land lease to the Fourteen Flags Heritage Club, April 8, 1986. Since that time, club member Steve Foster has added a viewing area and window shutters to the cabin. Club member Hank Dehnhardt built a display case in the drog trot.

The following biography Julius Madison Worley was posted at the museum and for the life of me, I can’t remember which building it was posted on.

Julius Madison Worley was born in North Carolina in 1834. He moved to Ellijay Ga. in early 1850′s. He left Georgia and made the land run of 1889 in Oklahoma. His homestead was one mile east of what is now Tinker Field in central Oklahoma. He died in 1917 and is buried in Worley Cemetery on the homestead. He was the great grandfather of Flossie Jones, a charter member of Fourteen Flags Heritage Club. His son, who was Flossies grandfather, moved from Georgia to what is now Adair Co., Ok in 1905. He was a Baptist minister, farmer and owned and operated a water powered grist mill near Wauhillau, Ok., later known as Goldies Old Watermill.

Lattimore Log Cabin, located the 14 Flags Museum in downtown Sallisaw, Oklahoma.

Information posted on the front of the cabin reads:

The Lattimore Log Cabin was built by Samuel Lattimore about 1835 after he arrived in the area during the “Trail of Tears.” It was located one mile south of Roland on old Highway 64.  The cabin has a long and colorful history. Originally it was a two story log house and during the Civil War, both Union and Confederate soldiers were quartered there at different times. It was  also used as a stage stop for many years. On the east side of the cabin there is a notched hole  in one of the logs that was used to fire rifles to ward off enemies. The cabin was moved to this location in 1989.

The museum is located behind the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce building on U.S. Highway 64.

“The 14 Flags Heritage Club is commemorating the great Cherokee Nation by the official opening of the Blair Log Cabin which houses the Trail of Tears Interpretative Center,” Echo Rider, club co-founder, said.

The club members moved the remains of the Blair Home’s original logs to reconstruct the Blair Home at the museum, Rider said.

“When Sequoyah departed Sequoyah County he left a set of house logs dressed for another room for his own cabin. In 1855, Sequoyah’s widow sold Sequoyah’s home and the logs to George Blair, a Cherokee that arrived on the Trail of Tears,” Rider said.

“The Blair Home was a two-room cabin with a dogtrot and an additional room,” Rider said.

Rider said the Trail of Tears was the removal of 16,000 Cherokees from North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee in the late 1830s.

“Tears flowed down their cheeks as they came,” Rider said.

“This trip from their native homeland has since become known as the Trail of Tears, NUNAHI-DUNA-PLO-HILU, The Trail Where They Cried,” Rider said.

“In 1838 the U.S. Army began the implementation of the Treaty of New Echota, a policy to remove American Indians from their homelands in the southern Appalachian Mountains in order to facilitate settlement by whites,” Rider said.

“The Cherokees where driven from their homes into stockades throughout Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, and then moved to internment camps in southern Tennessee,” Rider said.

“From that point detachments of Cherokees were forcibly move over water and land routes to Indian Territory,” Rider said.

“About 16,000 men, women, and children made the sorrowful journey. A journey made under adverse conditions and accompanied by a high rate of illness and death,” Rider said.

http://sequoyahcountytimes.com/bookmark/641147-Members-dedicate-interpretative-center