Silsainey Jones
Submitted by: Marie Tekubie, Oakland California, February 1997
Silsainey Jones, born in 1883 or 1886, was an original enrollee of the Choctaw Nation. She was one of six children born to Nancy
McClure (also an original enrollee) and Logan Jones, both full blood
Choctaws. She had four sisters, Artimissa, Rennis, Silway, and Roseanna,
and one brother, Robinson Jones. A census card in 1896 shows her as being
13 years old at that time and married with a five-month-old son, Ellis
Taylor. Her husband was Battice Taylor; he was 19 years old. Silsainey was
married four more times after she and Battice Taylor divorced. Her second
marriage to Vinson Going produced five children: Lodie, Freeman, Robinson,
Eden, and Florence; this marriage also ended in divorce. With husband #3
Silas Watson, she had two more children. They were Walter Jesse and Edna,
who married James Levi Tekubie sometime in the mid 1930's. Edna and James
had four children: Faye Tekubie Roman, twins Ronald and Donald Tekubie,
and myself, Wanonda Marie Tekubie. Silas Watson, also an original
enrollee, died in 1918 while he and Silsainey were married. Silsainey
married two more times after that. Five children were born of her fourth
marriage to Wilburn Johnson. They were Joe, Leo, Nathan, Edith, and
Wilburn. Her fifth and last marriage to Reed Ward lasted until her death
in 1954; they adopted a daughter, Bertha Mae Ward Tonihka. As of this
date, February 1997. Leo Johnson is Silsainey's only surviving child.
Grandma and her family moved from Smithville to Idabel, Oklahoma sometime
around 1920 into a house on property she bought in the southeastern part
of town. When my mother Edna married James Tekubie, Silsainey bought them
a home two houses from hers and there we lived until our mother died at
the age of 24 after giving birth to the twins in 1941. Although we lived
only two houses away, my sister, brothers and I went to live with our
grandma Silsainey in the "big house" as it was called. Father moved away
and later remarried and our house was rented out from then on. The house
we moved into was not the original one that grandma had purchased; that
house had been torn down (for some reason of which I have no knowledge)
and a new brick one built in its place. The new house had four bedrooms,
two tiled bathrooms, a living room with a fireplace, formal dining room
with French doors, a kitchen with an enclosed fireplace used only for
burning trash, a pantry (between the kitchen and dining room), and a
kitchenette. There were seven entrances into the house, four of them in
front, one in back and one on each side of the house. The main front
entrance had a foyer leading into the living room; a hallway led from
there to the bedrooms, the dining room, kitchen, and to a side entrance. A
sidewalk led up to the front porch and all the way around the house.
Grandma liked flowers so they were planted along the sidewalk and on both
sides of the house. In the basement were five rooms; a boiler-room, a coal
room, a laundry room, a small room for storing grandma's canned goods and
a larger main room with a table along one side of its wall which was used
probably just for storing things. The chute from upstairs to the laundry
room was fascination to us kids because it resembled a slide. Once one of
the e boys (I don't remember just who) decided it would be fun to slide
down the chute. Halfway down his shirt caught on something and he was
stuck there! He finally got out, with or without help I'm not sure, and
never tried that again. I was always tempted to try it myself, but never
had the never to actually do it. For years Silsainey had a full time cook
and other help but by the end of the 40's all her own children except the
adopted daughter were grown, married, and living in their own homes (which
she provided) so us grandchildren, and any nieces and nephews who came to
stay began to do most of the chores. Grandmother also began doing a lot of
the cooking herself with help from the older kids. She prepared a lot of
the traditional Choctaw dishes and her vegetable garden provided us with
lots of good things to eat; she canned many of the vegetables too. My
favorites were beets and canned peaches, which I mispronounced as
"pinches". Near the chicken yard was a fig tree that produced really sweet
figs. Grandma also sewed, embroidered, knitted, crocheted and made quilts.
We younger girls were responsible for most of the house cleaning. On
Saturday's Grandpa would take down the chandeliers in the living room,
dining room, and grandma's bedroom and under his supervision we would wash
each piece by hand. We would wash all the blinds in the house too, and
that house had windows! On school days we vacuumed the living room and
hallway, washed the breakfast dishes, swept and mopped the kitchen, dining
room and pantry before grandpa took us to school. Grandma went hunting
with Grandpa during deer season and went fishing at least once a week. We
ate a lot of fish back then. I remember going fishing with her just twice
in my life. Once she took my sister Faye and me with her and Grandpa. I
was in hog heaven because we seldom went anywhere without the whole family
along. Grandma took Fay and me out on the river with her in her boat; just
offshore she told us to row to where she wanted to fish. We did or tired
to and shortly were back on land because we had rowed us right into a big
bush! The other time we went fishing with her everyone went. Some of us
went in Grandma's car and some in Grandpa's car. We stayed all day at the
river (maybe Mt. Fork) and I caught the biggest fish that day. I was
happy. Grandma understood and spoke very little English but I wasn't aware
of that until much later in life because I never had any problem
understanding her. She always had someone with her to interpret whenever
she needed to communicate with anyone in English; and I think signing her
name was the extent of her writing ability. Nevertheless, she was the head
of the family. Her older children spoke or at least understood Choctaw,
but for whatever reason us younger ones did not learn to speak or
understand our Choctaw language. She couldn't drive either but then she
didn't need to because there was always someone to drive for her. She and
Grandpa Reed each had their own are, and every year would trade their cars
in for new ones. Grandmother provided her own children with cars and homes
when they married and once she bought six cars in one day! This was told
to me by the car salesman himself many years after Grandmother had died
and I had moved away and returned. I was working as a waitress in a
restaurant then (around 1965-66) when this car salesman came in and
learned who my grandmother was, he told me about the cars. He said one day
word came to the car dealership where he was a salesman that Silsainey
wanted to buy a car so six cars were taken to her house and lined up on
the lawn for her to look over. He was beside himself when she bought all
six. I imagine that was the talk of the town for some time. It certainly
made a lasting impression on him. There wasn't a telephone or television
in the home despite her wealth, perhaps because she didn't consider them
as necessary things to have (movies were in this class too), but there was
a piano, a Victrola, and a radio. Uncle Jesse was the piano player in the
family although my sister Faye could play some too, and aunt Bert (Bertha
Mae Ward Tonihka) took piano lesson for a while but never did learn to
play well. Sometimes when people came to visit, Grandma would call someone
to the piano and gather up four of the many kids who were around and make
us sing one of her favorite Christian hymns for them. Grandma had been
taking the family to Dallas for sometime during the summer to a gospel
singing school there so I imagine she thought we could sing. She always
looked pleased though so perhaps we did well enough to not embarrass her.
When we went to Dallas we stayed at a motel that had housekeeping cabins
and a large house with a yard. Grandma always rented the house and two of
the cabins for the family. Grandma invited a well-known gospel-singing
quartet to her home in Idabel when she learned they would be in the area
and they accepted. When they came to Idabel Grandma made a big fire
outside and roasted corn in the ashes and they all ate outdoors. I don't
remember what else they had. I just remember the men standing around
eating roasted corn while Grandma was seated next to a table. Once we
spent a summer in Hot Springs, Arkansas so she cold take the hot mineral
baths for her health. We stayed at a motel then too. I don't recall much
of that summer but I do recall getting sick from drinking to much apple
cider and eating too many sweets. Grandma seldom let us eat store bought
sweets. She preferred to bake those things herself and she was good at
that too. To this day, I have not tasted strawberry short cake as good as
she made. She would also bake king size cookies for us, sometimes that
weren't too sweet but were so good. In Hot Springs though, one of her
nephews, Perry Jones, would talk her into letting him take us kids
sightseeing and he would fill us up on apple cider and candy, which
Grandma had instructed him not to do. When we got sick from all the sweets
and apple cider that was the end of our sight seeing trips with him. I
think she sent him back home to Idabel. Grandma did not take kindly to
anyone who did not follow her instructions. Even though Grandma was a
wealthy woman (reportedly the wealthiest Indian woman in McCurtain County)
her sisters and brother were not. They lived in rural areas (Smithville
and Eagletown) in homes without electricity, running water, and indoor
bathrooms. They did not own cars either. Instead they used horses and
wagons like most Indians still did back then. Grandma may not have shared
her wealth with them, but she visited them often and raised some of their
children in her own home during her lifetime. I always looked forward to
visiting Aunt Rena (her sister Rennie) in Eagletown because she had a big
peach orchard and a water well in the front yard. The front yard was dirt
but Aunt Rena was always sweeping it clean of loose dirt so that it was as
hard as a regular floor. Sometimes we would get a ride in her wagon but
this was usually after we had been climbing all over it and generally
making a nuisances of ourselves until someone would hitch it up to the
horse and take us for a ride down the road and back. These are just a few
of memories I have of my Grandma, Silsainey Jones Ward. After her death in
1954 I finished my education in a boarding school (Chilocco Indian School)
and moved away from Idabel in 1958. Though she was a strict disciplinarian
Silsainey was, in my eyes then and now, a strong, kind, generous, loving
human being. She did the best she could for us in the best way she knew
how.
