As an amateur historian and self-style genealogist, writing features for this publication about our history and the people that made it possible, I sometimes marvel at the wealth of information at our fingertips today thanks to the internet and modern technology.
When following family histories, it's rare that we ever get back any further than the mid 1700s. But a happenstance occurrence, fueled on the basis of an old headstone date in a local cemetery, took us down the rabbit hole on Wednesday to the point that we have made a connection that verifiably stretches all the way back to 1220 BC.
The journey all started with a death notice in a copy of the Muldrow Sun from January 30th 1928. Having noticed a headstone for Norman Seymour Drake while on one of my recent Cemetery excursions to the Sallisaw Cemetery, and noting the date of birth and death, Idecided to look further into the background of the subject.
Drake was born in 1829 in Rochester, New York, and was the son of Amassa and Camellia (Squyre) Drake. That fact dated his parent's birth in the late 18th century and, equipped with that knowledge, we were able to go down a six-hour rabbit hole that kept us up until the wee hours of Thursday morning.
Norman Drake, in and of himself, was a fascinating creature.
As part of a wealthy family, he was educated by private tutors until he later entered Harvard, where he graduated just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Joining the Naval Academy at Annapolis, he was commissioned as a commander upon completing the naval training course and was active in the capture of Mobile and important battles at Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely.
Drake finished out his military career doing guard duty in New Orleans and after the war, he returned to his home in the east where he remained until 1880.
At the age of 51, Drake and his family headed west, and they first settled in Van Buren in the spring of 1880. Drake spent little time in Crawford County before moving to Sequoyah County where he made his home near early-day pioneer families such as the Qusenbury and Wheeler clans.
In 1893, now 52 years old, Drake married Emeline Patton who was the daughter of William Patton a member of distinguished Native American family that moved to the territory from Georgia years before on the Trail ofTears.
After their marriage, he took his bride, who was 25 at the time, to the McKey settlement where they lived for a time but they eventually made their permanent home in Sallisaw.
The couple had three children, Emma, born in 189, Raymond, born in 1900 and Seymour (no birthdate available)
.
When Norman Drake died in 1928, the couple had been married for almost 35 years.
Drake was a member of the McKey Masonic Lodge for over 40 years. When he died in 1928 he was thought to be one of the oldest living residents in Indian Territory.
At his funeral, the pallbearers, both the casket-toting kind and the honorary kind, consisted of a dozen men who also had deeply rooted histories in the county.
An interesting sidebar to the funeral services is that Drake, like generations of families before him, was a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian. A member at the First Presbyterian Church in Sallisaw for over 50 years, when Drake died his own minister wasn't available to conduct the services so the Reverend J.W. Brown, pastor of the First Methodist Church, was called to fill in.
While the circumstances of his coming to Arkansas and Oklahoma at what back then was considered an advanced age, as well as his background in the military and is Harvard degree makes Drake's life interesting enough when you start tracing back his ancestral line it really gets interesting..
After locating an official ancestral lineage on the Drake family we were amazed at the wealth of information of ancestors with the last name Drake stretching back from before the t
birth of Jesus.
With each click on the ancestor chart, the history of the Drake family became more and more poignant. Backtracking through the Revolutionary War, the Indian wars, the founding of America, and into French, English and Scottish history, the Drake limb of the family tree led back an astonishing array of years.
As we continued to follow the path it led us through the great wars of Asia Minor and beyond 1200 years before the birth of Jesus. In fact, according to the family lineage Drake ancestors could have well been in the Holy Land during Biblical times, walking the same streets as Jesus and the prophets.
Along the way, the line includes kings, barons, emperors, and dozens of historical and controversial figures. Even in the few generations preceding the life of Norman Drake, the family members were generally wealthy and prestigious to both their communties and the times. Although not in Norman Drake's direct line, Emperor Charlemagne even makes an appearance in the branches of the family tree.
Our quest on everything Drake-related finally ran out of gas at 4:17 a.m this morning when we reached the end of the ancestral line, at least as it's recorded in history.
Although some researchers claim the line back extends back even further, those sources start taking major leaps in connecting the dots, with one "so-called" genealogist ending the line with what is clearly a mythical figure created by Greek philosophers.
Simply stated, the story of the Drake family is worthy of treatment similar to what Alex Haley accomplished with "Roots". And the line continues today through the numerous offspring of thousands of ancestors from the past.
And people want to know why I get excited walking through cemeteries.
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