Eastern Oklahoma Library System would like to hear from local historians and families who have history, stories, and photographs to share. Please fill out the simple form below and someone will reach out to you.
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ONLINE GENEALOGY RESOURCES
Quick Links:
Genealogy/History Online Resources
Access the Online Catalog with the EOLS App
Search the catalog, reserve items, see upcoming events, and more, with the EOLS Library App, for IOS and Android.
Ancestry Library Edition
With 7 billion genealogical records from across the globe and millions of family trees, this is the world’s largest online family history resource. Available Only Within the Library. (Need assistance? Visit the Genealogy Department.)
Chronicling America - Historic American Newspapers
Search America’s historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Dawes Rolls Online
Search the Dawes Rolls to trace your ancestry to one of the Five Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole.
FamilySearch
FamilySearch Affiliate Library: The Muskogee Public Library is an affiliate to the FamilySearch Library. You are able to access 40% more (400 million) images in our library than you can working from home. Additional Records Available Only Within the Library. (Need assistance? Visit the Genealogy Department.)
fold3
Access historical military records, including stories, photos, and personal documents, using fold3 for free with your library card. At home? Log in with your library card number here.
Heritage Quest
Revolutionary War, Civil War, and US Congressional Serial Set, US Census reports, birth, death, and marriage records.
HistoryGeo.com
Covers 21 states and over 9 million records, including original landowners, antique maps and atlases. Available Only Within the Library. (Need assistance? Visit the Genealogy Department.)
Oklahoma Digital Prairie
More than 100 years of history, including documents, photographs, newspapers, reports, pamphlets, posters, maps, high school yearbooks up to the 90s, and audio/visual content.
ProQuest Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
Website offers historical articles, pamphlets, diaries, and correspondence from time periods in U.S. history marked by the opposition African Americans have faced on the road to freedom.
The Gateway to Oklahoma History
The Oklahoma Historical Society has created a video full of tips and tricks to search for photographs, newspapers, maps, documents, books, and other resources on The Gateway. You can view the video here.
The Oklahoman Historical Archive and Current Collection
Research Oklahoma City history through The Oklahoman Collection from 1901 through current, including full newspaper pages, full-text articles and content only published online. Library Card Required.
Tribal Treaties Database—Oklahoma State University
The Tribal Treaties Database provides an easy-to-use portal to access treaties, agreements, and other historical documents that have shaped relationships between tribal nations and the United States.
Voices of Oklahoma
Dedicated to the preservation of the oral history of Oklahoma, voices and stories of famous Oklahomans and ordinary citizens are captured forever in their own words in these far-ranging interviews.
NOTABLE PEOPLE FROM NE OK'S HISTORICAL ALL-BLACK TOWNS
In Sequoyah County, the former town of Mabelle was named for Mabelle Mitchell, daughter of a well-known black resident, according to authors Paul F. Lambert, Kenny A. Franks, and Bob Burke in Historic Oklahoma. An Illustrated History, a publication of the Oklahoma Heritage Association.
Also in Sequoyah County, Hooks Foreman was an American baseball catcher and Zack Foreman was a pitcher in the historic Negro Leagues—both who hailed from the former town of Foreman.
John Hope Franklin and D.C. Minner hailed from historic all-black town Rentiesville in McIntosh County. Franklin, an accomplished historian, was the author of From Slavery to Freedom, a much-respected book about his 1947 study of the African American experience.
Minner was a bluesman who played guitar for blues greats such as Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Lowell Fulson, before opening a blues club in Rentiesville in 1988. Inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, today the Dusk ‘Til Dawn Blues Festival is held each autumn in his honor.
William H. Twine was an early activist, and avid supporter of Oklahoma’s settlement of All-Black Towns. A newspaper publisher in Muskogee and founder of Taft, Oklahoma, (then Twine, Oklahoma), Twine wrote about his grit and determination to see the area as a safe haven for African Americans: “Some of us have made our last move and we propose to stand our ground where we have our homes and our investments until hell freezes over and then fight the devils on ice… [T]he Indian Territory is the last stand the Negro of America can make as pioneer and we propose to let it go down that the stand was made here.” Copies of the Muskogee Cimeter, the first he created in Muskogee, can be viewed at The Gateway to Oklahoma History.
NE OKLAHOMA'S ROSENWALD SCHOOLS
Funding for better schools for African Americans began with the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1917. Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company then, started the initiative with limited funding for construction of schools in Alabama in 1913.
Oklahoma had 198 Rosenwald Schools, including Brush Hill, Cathay, Gallilee, Huttonville, Separate Consolidated School (Warrior), Rentiesvielle County Manual Training, and Vernon in McIntosh County.
Muskogee county had two: New Hope and Simmons U.G. Sequoyah County had Foreman, Roland Separate, Separate U.G. District, and Separate Vian schools.
Explore local history books
- The Formation of the State of Oklahoma 1803-1906 (1917) by Roy Gittinger
Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State (1941) from the WPA - Bad news for outlaws : the remarkable life of Bass Reeves, deputy U.S. marshall by Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux
- Muskogee (2011) by Roger Bell
- McIntosh County memories; people, places, events by C.W. “Dub” West
- A History of Sallisaw’s Colored Town by Earl Strebeck
- The Cherokee Freedmen: from Emancipation to American Citizenship by Daniel F. Littlefield
- compiled by W.B. Richards
- compiled by W.B. Richards
- by O.C. Seely
- A History of Oklahoma (1908) by Joseph B. Thoburn and Isaac Mason Holcomb
Check out these great websites to discover family connections as well as the stories of Green Country’s people, places and events.
LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS
AWARD-WINNING BOOKS
Don’t have a library card yet? No problem! To have immediate access to the library’s collection, complete this form to obtain a temporary, 30-day, digital card. To get your permanent card, please visit your local library.
LEARN MORE ABOUT BLACK HISTORY IN NE OKLAHOMA
Black Americans were a significant influence in the growth of Indian Territory—especially Northeastern Oklahoma. This area of the state has the distinction of being the home of the majority of the more than 50 All-Black towns initially settled by Freedmen of area tribes—then by African Americans who came from the south during the land run of 1889. These towns were established from 1865 to 1920 and only 13 remain.
Counties and towns in this area have a wealth of interesting Black History to explore. For example, Muskogee was the home to a thriving Black Wall Street and famous lawman Bass Reeves; McIntosh County had seven Rosenwald Schools. But there is much more history to be found about the region in the Eastern Oklahoma Library District’s collection. There are a large selection of historical resources, including books, of course, at www.eols.org/catalog. Other great resources in online databases include ProQuest “Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges and Triumphs in the Pursuit of Equality,” NewspaperArchive to search historical Oklahoma newspapers, and Voices of Oklahoma—all and more available at www.eols.org/research.
