Frankly Speaking

Heiliger's book is replete with dialogue among the characters. This raises the general question of direct discourse in historical accoun...

One deputy U.S. marshal killed in Indian Territory was James Harris "Jim" Guy, a Chickasaw Indian, published poet, nephew of Cyrus...

In May 1979, Heiliger sent a form letter to several "Family and Friends of Aunt Meta," requesting information about her. "We ...

Although never published, a book about the life of Meta Chestnutt Sager has already been written. As early as the 1940s, Eva Heiliger, Sager...

On May 30, 1885, a young man named Lincoln Sprole murdered Ben Clark and his eighteen-year-old son, Alex. The murderer and his victims worke...

When Meta Chestnutt was growing up, her brother, Isaac, teased her for being so tall and thin. He said she looked a bean pole and started ca...

Belle Starr, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1886 One well-known story from post-war I. T. featured Belle Starr, the infamous "bandit queen....

The story of lawlessness in America stems in part from the delayed arrival of law and order. The history of Indian Territory and early Oklah...

In a brief retrospective piece she wrote near the end of her life, Meta Chestnutt Sager spoke about her thirty years of work as an education...

By her own account, Meta Chestnutt "was born on a plantation near Kinston" in "Lenoir County, North Carolina, September 8, 18...

Naturally, the language of well-known hymns made its way into the common speech of people who sang them. For example, in his series "On...

Two more hymns indicate that the language of "spreading the Lord's Table" remained current among the Churches of Christ and Ch...