Stone Gardens - A Simple Life- From Middle Tennessee to pre-statehood Oklahoma - John Milton Cantrell

John Milton Cantrell

John Milton Cantrell lived a life shaped by rural America, spanning the mid-19th century through the Great Depression. Born on June 16, 1854, in Jackson County, Tennessee, he grew up in a farming family amid the fertile field and ghollows of Middle Tennessee.

His parents, John Cantrell and Barbara Gentry, had established their household there by the 1850s. John Sr. was born around 1818 in Tennessee, while Barbara, born about 1823, also hailed from the state. They appeared in the 1850 census in Jackson County and by 1860 had moved to nearby Putnam County, where they raised their family on land typical of small-scale Southern agriculture.

As the youngest or in the household, young John Milton contributed to farm chores from an early age. Details on his siblings are sparse, but the family unit reflected the era's patterns of self-sufficiency and close-knit ties.

Barbara passed away in 1881, leaving a void in the family structure.I n his early adulthood, John Milton married Mary Elizabeth Manning, born December 5, 1851, in Tennessee. Mary's family had its own deep roots in the region; her father, John Howard Manning Sr., born in 1825, served in the Civil War era before his death in 1863.

Her mother, Mariah Mathews Bertram, born in 1832, remarried after being widowed and lived until 1910. Mary had siblings including Mary Jane Manning Bertram and John Howard Manning Jr., as well as half-siblings from her mother's second marriage, such as Lucetta Clementine Bertram Denney and Joel Mason Bertram.

The couple started their family in Tennessee, with their first children arriving in the late 1870s. Silas Samuel, born in 1876, became a farmer like his father. Mary Leoma "Oma," born in 1877, later married into the Hall family. Dayton Cleveland "DC," arriving in 1881, lived a long life until 1973. Icy Linder, born in 1883, married into the Lynn family and passed in 1960. Levi Landon, born in 1889, outlived many siblings until 1972.

James Milton, born in 1893, carried on the family name until 1975. Zula Pearl, the youngest listed, born in 1896, married into the Bingham family and died in 1981.

Sometime after the birth of their children in Tennessee, the Cantrells joined the westward expansion that defined many Southern families in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They settled in what became Oklahoma, likely drawn by opportunities in the newly opened lands of Indian Territory.

By the early 1900s, they were in the area around Kinta in Haskell County, a region known for its coal mining and agriculture. John Milton worked as a farmer, supporting his large family through crop cultivation and possibly livestock. Census records from the period show him heading a household in rural Oklahoma, with children gradually establishing their own homes nearby.

The family endured the challenges of frontier life, including economic shifts and the Dust Bowl's approach. Mary Elizabeth outlived her husband, passing on February 26, 1937, in Kinta. John Milton died in 1936 at age 82 in Vinita, Craig Count while receiving medical care there.

. Today, John Milton Cantrell rests in San Bois Cemetery near Kinta, Haskell County, a historic site tied to the Choctaw Nation's early days, where his grave marker stands as a quiet testament to a life of earlty Indian Territory pioneering y and family heritage