Distractions Bring New Projects

I have often heard people say that they want to stay focused on one line of their family first before going in another direction by searching another line. The intention is to stay focused and not be distracted.

HOWEVER---sometimes those distractions can lead you down fascinating less traveled roads, and they themselves open up new doors.

For example----one of my areas of research is Indian Territory as my ancestors come from what is now Oklahoma, but at that time, Indian Territory. I found a set of documents at the National Archives called Claims of Loyal Creeks. Well, among the many Freedmen from Indian Territory, there were many Creek Freedmen. I decided just to look at the list to see if there were any Freedmen listed. Well there were, and one name caught my attention and I looked at it briefly and found it amusing. The man’s name was Sugar Tooth George. I found it different and then continued to look at the list. The first 300 names out of 1100, were Freedmen, so I copied the list, particularly because many were also soldiers—black soldiers who served in the Indian Home Guards in the Civil War.

It turned out that my gentleman with the unusual name was a Sgt in the war, and I decided to see if I could locate a pension file. There was one, so I ordered it, if no other reason, just to find out something about the man with the funny name. Well I was amazed!! What history!!!! This man was a leader in the Creek Nation. He was among a group of black leaders who spoke the Muscogee language, had amassed significant wealth, served on the tribal council and on and on! I had never h eard of him, yet he had lived a mere 30 miles from where I had grown up! Since that time, I have located his gravesite in an abandoned and vandalized cemetery in Muskogee and see his name every where. He was superintendant of a school for Black Creek and Black Seminoles and served on the the Tribal council in two houses. His history is so rich and yet he is a man virtually forgotten and ignored on his own soil.

Sugar George as he is called in many records was a distraction---but he has emerged as one of my favorite people in the community that I research. No known photo of him has surfaced yet---but I am so happy that the distraction took me down a path of little known history about a fascinating man!