Sarah A. Kelton Et Al., Choctaw By Blood.
Commission, Nos. 26 and 226. United States court, No. 130. M. Citizenship court, No. 105.
The blood relatives of claimants are on the finally approved tribal rolls as will appear from the affidavit of Bloomer Anderson hereto attached.
1896. Original application filed September 7, 1896, for enrollment of: Sarah A. Kelton, Bloomer Anderson, Julian Anderson, as Choctaws by blood. Bloomer and Julia are children of Sarah A. by her first husband. Answer filed by Choctaw Nation, and on December 1, 1896, commission denied application. No written decision. (Citizenship filed comm. vol. 1, p. 46, case No. 26.)
1897. Case appealed United States Court Central District Indian Territory and on September 9, 1897, the following persons were admitted: Sarah A. Kelton, Avon Kelton, Bloomer Anderson, Julia Anderson. (Certified copy decree hereto attached.)
1898. On September 15, 1898, Sarah A. Kelton appeared before commission at Pauls Valley and stated she was the mother of Bloomer and Julia Anderson, all admitted to Choctaw citizenship by decree of the United States court September 9, 1897, and testified she was one-quarter Choctaw and had lived for 11 years previous thereto at Sans Bois, Choctaw Nation. Her statements are corroborated by the testimony of other witnesses.
A marriage certificate on file shows that on January 4, 1892, Solomon McGilbrey, a Choctaw Indian and judge of Sans Bois County, Choctaw Nation, issued a marriage license to “Avon Kelton, a citizen of the United States, and Amelia Anderson, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation.” and it appears they were duly married according to Choctaw laws and customs by Judge McGilbrey. It appears from the record that Sarah A. Kelton was one-quarter Choctaw, but had never been enrolled on the tribal rolls.
It is alleged, and nowhere contradicted in the record, that Avon Kelton, citizen of the Choctaw Nation, by intermarriage with Sarah A. Kelton, voted in all elections and exercised all the rights and privileges of a native Choctaw.
By decree of the Choctaw-Chickasaw citizenship court of December 17, 1902, the above decree of the United States court was vacated and annulled in this as well as all other cases in which favorable judgment had been obtained in the United States courts. The case then went before the citizenship court and the claimants failed or refused to submit any additional testimony. The citizenship court excluded the record of the United States court as well as the record before the commission, thus leaving no evidence before the court, and on March 21, 1904, a decree was entered adjudging and decreeing Sarah A. and her husband, Avon Kelton, and her children Bloomer (or Blummer) and Julia Anderson not citizens of the Choctaw Nation.
Subsequently an application was filed with the commission by Bloomer Anderson for the enrollment of his minor child, Bessie H. Anderson, and on May 27, 1904, the application was rejected because the citizenship court had denied the claim of her father through whom she claimed.
Claimants entitled to enrollment: Sarah A. Kelton, Avon Kelton, Julia Anderson, Bloomer Anderson, Bessie Lee H. Anderson (born March 11, 1898; Bloomer Anderson’s minor child). (Exhibits attached.)
Respectfully submitted.
Ballinger & Lee.
Affidavit Of Sarah Amelia Kelton, Nee Mrs. James Anderson
Sarah Amelia Kelton, nee Mrs. James Anderson, after being duly sworn, on her oath deposes and says that William Bee, a full-blood Choctaw, roll No. 9136 of the final approved rolls of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Is a second cousin of hers, his mother being a sister of deponent’s grandmother; that Joseph James, a Choctaw by blood, roll No. 15879, and Jackson James, a Choctaw by blood, roll No. 9200, both being full-blood Indians and on the final approved roll of Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, are second cousins of affiant herein, their father being a brother of affiant’s grandmother; that the facts above set out are true and correct; that affiant is the mother of Bloomer Anderson.
Sarah Amelia Kelton
(Nee Mrs. James Anderson).
Subscribed and sworn to before me a notary public in and for Carter County Okla., on this 15th day of October 1910, at Ardmore.
[seal.] D. H. Dawson, Notary Public.
My commission expires August 8, 1914.
United States Of America,
Indian Territory, Central District, ss:
In the United States court in the Indian Territory, central district, at a term thereof begun and held at South McAlester, in the Indian Territory, on the 9th day of September, A. D. 1897.
Present: Hon. William H. H. Clayton, judge of said court. The following order was made and entered of record, to wit: Sarah A. Kelton et al. v. Choctaw Nation. No. 130.
Judgment
The above-entitled cause, coming on to be heard this the 9th day of September 1897, upon the report of the special master in chancery, T. N. Foster. Esq., which said report is by the court confirmed and approved, and exhibits therewith filed and the plaintiffs and defendant appearing by their respective attorneys, and it appearing by the said master’s report and the evidence filed in this cause that the allegations in the plaintiffs’ petition are true, and the court being fully advised in the premises, it is therefore by the court considered, ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the said plaintiffs, Sarah A. Kelton. Avon Kelton, Blum- mer Anderson, and Julia Anderson, be, and they are hereby, admitted to citizenship in the Choctaw Nation, and that their names be placed upon the rolls of the Choctaw citizens prepared or to be prepared by the United States Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians; that said commission Is hereby directed to place the names of the said Sarah A. Kelton, Avon Kelton, Blummer Anderson, and Julia Anderson upon said rolls; and the clerk of this court is hereby directed to furnish the said commission with a true and perfect copy of the Judgment, decree, and order; and that the plaintiffs have find recover of and from the defendant, the Choctaw Nation, all their costs herein laid out and expended.
The within is a true copy from the record of an order made by said court on the 9th day of September, A. D. 1897.
[seal.] E. J. Fannin, Clerk.
Indorsed: Nos. 26 and 226. No. 130. Sarah A. Kelton et al. v. Choctaw Nation. Copy of order of court.
This is to certify that I am the officer having custody of the records pertaining to the enrollment of the members of the Choctaw. Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Tribes of Indians and the distribution of the land of said tribes; and that the above and foregoing Is a true and correct copy of copy of the order of the United States court for central district, Indian Territory, entered on the 9th day of September, 1897, by Hon. William H. H. Clayton, judge, in the matter of Sarah A. Kelton v. Choctaw Nation, No. 130.
J. Geo. Wright, Commissioner to the Five Civilized Tribes.
By W. H. Angela Cleric in Charge of Choctaw Records.
Muskogee, Okla., October 31, 1910.
Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma
Notes About the Book:
Source: Five Civilized Tribes In Oklahoma, Reports of the Department of the Interior and Evidentiary Papers in support of S. 7625, a Bill for the Relief of Certain Members of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma, Sixty-second Congress, Third Session, Published 1913, by the Department of the Interior, United States.
Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr’d. Minimal editing has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual output. Several spellings have been used for the same tribe of Indians.
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