Evan and Marynell were married on February 1st, 1900. Their putting up this little house, the house that became a home for those who lived there, who made it their primary place to be day in and day out, was a work of love and obligation to its builders.
The builders were the owners, the people who saw and needed this piece of property to make the farm, to keep the living creatures who were milling idly about the place, were kept in corrals, pieces of trees laid out and put together in square patches. A barn or two or three were eventually added.
Evan operated the hand driven plow, that the pair of mules pulled, and cut their garden as well as their piece of land for harvest.
The house was portioned into a room with a wood burning heater, a bedroom big enough for a couple of handmade beds, and a kitchen with water outside, and a stack of short lumber to operate the stove.
The roof began with dove tail lumber for shingles, and eventually was covered with tin for the water. The concrete cellar entry was one that came after one of the storms blowing out of the southwest made its way across the state, and into Marynell's life came the need for protection.
The oak trees still surround the place, it's insides long gone. The window of the kitchen still looks out at the play area of the kids who were raised and then gone. Over the 60 years that they stayed here, the children that they raised, the land that kept them safe and fed, is but now a shell of their memories.
Ralph Peck
Photography by Ralph E Peck
Four miles east, a mile and a half south, and two double back roads from Chelsea, Oklahoma
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