ABSTRACT
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie’s father, Charley Guthrie, was born in Bell County in South Texas. In 1897 his family moved north to the Indian Territory, which would become Oklahoma, the country’s forty-sixth state, a decade later. Th e federal government was giving 160 acres of formerly Indian land to anyone with Indian blood, and luckily Charley’s stepmother was one-eighth Creek. Charley preferred to work in a store rather than farm, and while employed in J. B. Wilson’s store in Castle he met the Kansas-born Nora Belle Tanner. Th ey were married in 1904 and shared many interests, including music, with Nora doing the singing and her husband playing the guitar and banjo. Charley soon plunged into local politics, and when elected district court clerk in 1907 the family moved to the nearby town of Okemah, where selling real estate quickly led to a decent income. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, their third child, was born on July 14, 1912, twelve days aft er the Democratic Party nominated Woodrow Wilson as its candidate for president (he would be elected in November). Charley was a conservative Democrat and no friend of the radical movement gaining steam in Oklahoma the year Eugene V. Debs was the Socialist Party candidate for president.
