Historical records matching Robert Houston George, Sr.
view all 23
Immediate Family
-
wife -
-
-
daughter
-
daughter
-
daughter
-
son
-
-
daughter
-
-
-
father
About Robert Houston George, Sr.
What drove the pioneers? What inspired Americans to move from the comfort of the familiar and known to the unknown, to the frontier and beyond? Was it the promise of freedom and unbroken horizons? Was it desperate poverty, or fear? Was it wealth -- the vast fortunes that might come from staking a claim to America's edges? Whatever it was, Robert Houston George had it in spades. And it drove him on a journey across most of the Continental United States -- even as those states were still being mapped out.
Born and raised in Cooper county, Missouri, Robert George was the son of pioneers, some of the first settlers to this part of Missouri. The land was already settled, of course, by members of the Cherokee Nation. Life on the frontier among "the Indians" would become something of a theme for him.
At age 28, he married Margaret Jane Miller on December 9, 1849, in Platte, Missouri. She was just 17. The couple settled down to raise a family, which steadily swelled over the years. She would ultimately give birth to 10 children.
The family spent the 1850s and 60s in Texas -- few records exist from the literal Wild West -- before moving to Sugar Loaf, Arkansas, a sweet-sounding place indeed. The name of the land changed over time, as local communities developed: Fort Smith and Greenwood competed for the town seat of Sebastian County, and Tahlequah -- established as the seat of the Cherokee Nation following the Trail of Tears migration -- flourished.
But something must have been gnawing at Margaret, perhaps more than simple economic worries due to the hardscrabble life they lived on the frontier: In the mid 1880s, she began pursuing Indian Citizenship.
Cherokee Nation?
Well over 129 years later, it's hard to gauge the meaning to Margaret of the fifteen-year-long crusade (Court docket #314) she pursued, in which she claims that her father Andrew Miller was a Cherokee Indian by blood, who lived in the State of Tennessee among the Cherokee Nation. (Or to any of the thousands who applied for such citizenship, for that matter.) George and her family did live for years in Indian Territory, her father did live in Tennessee among the Cherokee, and some facts do align for her claim about her father. Yet after several appeals she was ultimately denied her application. What happened?
The work of the Dawes Commission was ultimately a failure for many reasons, but overreliance upon the Cherokee Rolls is surely one of them. The conclusion of the Commission in this case is just one example: "Upon consideration of the testimony offered by the claimants, I am of the opinion that Andrew Miller, the ancestor through whom these claimants trace their claim to Cherokee blood, was a Cherokee by blood, and I so find." The Commission then went on to deny the application, since Miller's name could not be found on early Cherokee Rolls.
In reality, Miller was of the same European descent as his father, and his wife Nancy was just another Virginian.
Robert Houston died February 2, 1899 in Wagoner, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory. Just where he was born, in a sense -- on the frontier.
view all 40
Robert Houston George, Sr.'s Timeline
| 1821 |
October 20, 1821
|
Boonville, Cooper, Missouri, United States
|
|
| 1851 |
1851
|
DeKalb County, Missouri, United States
|
|
| 1852 |
April 15, 1852
Age 65
|
Prairie Home, Cooper, Missouri
|