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Correspondence from Emeline J. Smith

Letter of Sept. 5, 1907
Letter of Sept. 5, 1907

Mt. Vernon, Alabama
Sept. 5, 1907

Mr. Nathan Bickford
Washington DC

Dear Sir

Please let me know whether any application was accepted or not and let me know if all my children made claim under the Choctaw name. I was a way from home when my children made application so I didn’t know that they had named the Choctaw as our tribe it was a bad mistake on their part but they didn’t know for all the Indian blood that we claim to was through my Grandmother Rachel Brashears, nee Durant, and she was Cherokee Indian but my children didn’t know it they know the Choctaws for there is some of them here yet,

So please try and fix up their claims for we are truthfully and honestly entitled to it I have Cherokee Indian blood in me and it looks to me that my children ought to have and if my claim is accepted theirs ought to be but you ought to know better than I do, how am I to know when my claim is accepted or how much it will be you don’t let me know anything though I will have to trust you now

So please let me hear something and oblige

Yours respectfully
Mrs. Emeline J. Smith

Letter is hand written

 

Letter of Jan. 28, 1908
Letter of Jan. 28, 1908

Mount Vernon, Ala
Jan. 28, 1908

Mr. Gurere (Guion?)  Miller
Washington DC
Dear Sir

Replying to yours of the 14th I will say. My father was born about 1790 My father resided in Demopolis, Ala in 1835. I do not know why my father was not enrolled.

I never knew any thing about it. Neither my parents nor myself were slaves.

Neither my parents nor myself were members of no other tribe.

Don’t know where my grandparents were born.

My grandmother on my fathers side resided in Demopolis, Ala in 1835.

Yours truly
Mrs Emeline J. Smith

 

Letter of July 18, 1908
Letter of July 18, 1908

Mt. Vernon Ala
July 18, 1908

Special Commissioner, Court of Claims
Washington DC
Hon Sir

Yours of the 9th inst just received and in answer will say as near as I can recollect my father was living in Jennings Co. Ala in 1835-6, near Demopolis, Ala and he was living at Mt. Vernon, Ala, Mobile Co, in 1846, and his mother my grandmother was living in Sumter Co. Ala, in 1835-6 and 1846 but I don’t recollect her Post Office and if they were recognized members of the tribe I do not know they were verry wealthy slave owners but were made very poor by the civil war.

Yours respectfully
Emeline Jane Smith

 

 


Surnames:
Smith,

Topics:
Choctaw,

Collection:
Wells, Dr. Samuel James. Choctaw Mixed Bloods and the Advent of Removal. University of Southern Mississippi. 1987. © Dr. Samuel James Wells, 1987. Used by permission.

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