University of Virginia Library

29. Rackleff, Kate

August 31, 1937

Nannie Lee Burns,

Interviewer

Interview with Mrs. Kate Rackleff

Fairland, Oklahoma

My mother, Rebecca Neugin nee Ketcher, was the daughter of John Ketcher. I do not know the name of his wife. Both were full bloods. My mother was born in Georgia about 1829.

My mother, said to be the last survivor of those who came over the Trail of Tears, was about ten years old when they left Georgia.

They came in rude wagons drawn by oxen, each family furnishing its own transportation or at least my grandfather did and he loaded his wagon with provisions for his family for the trip. This left little room as he had a wife and six children of whom my mother was next to the youngest. They were compelled to have a little bedding. They left Georgia in the summer and did not reach this state till the next summer.

These people were brought through Tennessee and Southern Missouri, under soldiers commanded by General Winfield Scott. General Scott left these people under command of his assistant about the middle of the trip that he might attend the National Whig Convention, which was at that the contesting the nominations of Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison for President of the United States.

Mother started with a little pig that she named "Toby". When they started he was no larger than a large rat and each day at noon and at night mother would let him run around and watched him and she kept him till he was a large hog and he disappeared one day at the noon hour and she was never able to find him.

In those days there were no roads and few trails and very few bridges. Progress of travelers was slow and often times they would have to wait many days for the streams to run down before they could cross. Each family did its own cooking on the road. People then had no matches and they started a fire by rubbing two flint rocks together and catching the spark on a piece of dry spunk held directly underneath the rocks. Sometimes, they would have to rake away the snow and clear a place to build the fire. Travelers carried dry wood in the wagons to build their fires. The wagons were so heavily loaded and had traveled so many days that when they came to a hill the persons in the wagons would have to get out and walk up the hill. They did not ride much of the time but walked a good deal, not only to rest themselves but to save their teams.

Often, teams would give out and could go no farther and then those who were with that wagon would be divided up among the other wagons and hurried along. One day mother saw a team of oxen fall dead, hitched to their wagon. The party she was with were in a severe snowstorm on the way which caused much suffering. Many died from exposure on the trip and mother said that she thought that a third of those who started died on the way, although all of her family lived to reach the new country. Those who came over the Trail of Tears would not stop for sickness and would stop only long enough to dig a rude grave when any one died and then the bereaved family was forced to move right along.

Mother said that their food lasted them till they reached the Indian Territory but towards the last of the trip that they had little to eat and had to plan to make it last. It was indeed a pitiful band that finally reached the new home promised them for they had been a year on the road, food had become scarce, their clothes which were homemade were wearing out, many had died on the trail, some had lost their teams and wagons and had been placed with other families and there were small children in the band who had lost their parents.