Several months ago, we received a large collection of memorabilia from the family of Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing. Among the items received was a red plaid lap blanket as well as a couple of photographs of Bob Wills with the blanket. I felt that there was a story behind the photographs but I did not have the details. As I researched the life and career of Bob Wills, I came across a passage written by Charles R. Townsend in the book “The Stars of Country Music: Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez” by Bill C. Malone and Judith McCulloh. Bob Wills suffered a debilitating stroke in 1969. By 1973, against the odds, he was able to sufficiently recover and made plans to join in one last recording session with the Texas Playboys. It was scheduled for December 3-4, 1973 in Dallas, Texas. The day before the recording session, all of the Texas Playboys came to the home of Bob and Betty Wills in Fort Worth for a jam session. As I read this, I realized that the two photographs I had were taken at this jam session. The photos show Bob Wills sitting in his wheelchair with the blanket on his lap surrounded by the musicians singing and playing. The next day, they all gathered for the first day of recording. That evening, Bob Wills suffered another stroke and slipped into a coma from which he never awoke. The next day, the Texas Playboys finished recording without him amid great sadness. The album was released in 1974 and was titled “Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys…For the Last Time.” Bob Wills passed away on May 15, 1975. His popularity remains strong even today.

While exploring the OHS Research Catalog online I discovered an old black and white photograph in the Frederick S. Barde Collection (82.89) captioned, “Indians - Osage - Cyprian Tayrien.” Cyprian, or “Cyp” as he was more commonly known, was my great-great-grandmother’s first cousin. Although you probably never heard of Cyp, he was well-known in the Bartlesville and Pawhuska, Oklahoma, areas prior to his death in 1922.

Born in Clay County, Missouri, in 1836, Cyp was the son of a French father and a French-Osage mother. Educated at the Osage Mission in St. Paul, Kansas, Cyp spoke English, Osage, and French, and served as a scout and interpreter in the Missouri Home Guard during the Civil War.He worked as a clerk, operated a trading post, farmed, and was one of the first mixed-bloods to serve on the Osage tribal Council. Cyp had three wives (he was twice widowed) and twelve children. After the Osage relocated from Kansas to what is now Osage County in 1871-72, Cyp settled along Sand Creek just southwest of present Bartlesville. It was in that vicinity where he and ten of his children received their Osage land allotments in 1906. Many of their descendants reside in that region today.

What makes Cyp’s life story so interesting are the “unusual and occult powers” he was known to have possessed. With a few softly spoken words and a wave of his hand Cyp—dubbed“Saint Patrick of the Osages”—could drive snakes from under buildings or from shocks of grain. He knew by intuition where strayed livestock could be found. Cyp healed snake bites and other ailments by simply passing his hand over the afflicted individual. A man claimed he conferred with Cyp about a woman who was ill and lived some miles distant. Cyp asked a few questions and sent the gentleman on his way, telling him “everything will be alright.”When the man returned to the lady’s residence, he saw her condition had improved.

How Cyp healed the sick and from where he received his foreknowledge is anyone’s guess (if you believe in such things). According to one of his grandchildren, Cyp acquired his powers from an old Osage medicine man. Cyp, however, said his skills were innate and quite common. In fact, he believed a person with similar abilities could be found in almost every family.

Cyprian Tayrien died October 18, 1922, and was interred in Bartlesville’s White Rose Mausoleum.

Image: #16581 from the Frederick S. Barde Collection

Ever heard of Picric acid? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most people have never heard of it, and neither had I until a few days ago. It’s a highly explosive chemical compound (the forerunner to TNT) that has been around for a couple of centuries and has been used primarily as munitions and fireworks.
Picric acid is actually a liquid that over time dries out and crystalizes. When it crystalizes it becomes highly unstable and VERY sensitive to shock and therefore handling it becomes dangerous.It also leaves a distinct bright yellow powdery residue that is easy to spot.

Why on earth would a museum have explosive chemicals, like picric acid in their collections? Simple answer- they don’t know about it. We sure didn’t! Evidently it’s way more common than I would have thought. It wasn’t until a week ago that I learned about picric acid and its explosive properties from reading several emails on the American Association of Museums Registrars’ Listserv (RC-AAM). Someone send out an email inquiry regarding procedures when disposing of hazardous chemicals. A response mentioned the dangers of picric acid -a substance many people have never heard of, but VERY common in early and mid-20th century first aid kits. You see, medical gauze used to be soaked in picric acid to treat, most commonly, burns (interesting tidbit- picric acid gauze was used in the treatment of burn victims from the infamous Hindenburg disaster).

An example of a first aid kit that may have included picric

After that initial email there were email responses DAILY reporting the discovery of picric acid in museum collections around the country and that bomb squads had to be called out to collect and detonate the picric acid infused items. In one case a whole city block was evacuated and a robot was sent in to collect ONE object. In another case an item contained so much picric acid it was enough to blow the museum worker’s hand off! So, as you can see, it’s a very serious hazard to collections and to people!

After reading those emails over the weekend, I thought I would take the cautious route and so I did a database search first thing on Monday morning and discovered 5 objects in our own collection that possibly contained picric acid. These items were all early 20th century first aid kit components: 3 packs of picric acid soaked gauze, 1 box that stored the soaked gauze, and 1 empty tin. After consulting with the museum Deputy Director/Collections Manager, Jeff Briley, I pulled the objects the next day and inspected them. I isolated the 3 packs of gauze and inspected the box. The box had the distinct yellow powdery residue of picric acid on the insides. The metal tin did not show any signs of acid residue, but under Jeff’s advice it was thoroughly swabbed to make sure. We further inspected the associated first aid kit the items came from to make sure there was nothing else of concern. Thankfully there wasn’t. He called his contact at the Oklahoma City Police Department Bomb Squad to ask if they would collect the pieces for disposal. They agreed and said they would be at our facility 7am the next morning with a robot.
Bright and early the next morning we had the police department, fire department, an ambulance, and the bomb squad standing by. At the employee entrance, the bomb squad began staging their maneuver to retrieve the items. Instead of a robot (which I was actually hoping to see - I had Wall-E pictured in my head), they had a guy dressed in a big suit (think the Halo video game suit but twice the size) carrying a long pole. He went in to retrieve the items in a bucket from the fire safe and came back out and carried the bucket around (and down some stairs!) to the containment wagon. They used a small crane to hoist the bucket of items into the containment wagon and then gave the all clear. Whew.

Our disposal of the picric acid infused items went very smoothly thanks to the expertise of the OCPD Bomb Squad. Museums don’t simply dispose of items without very clear reasoning and procedure is always followed to ensure public trust and ethical behavior is maintained. Sometimes there are extreme situations (like hazardous chemicals!) that speed up the disposal process to ensure a safe environment for the collection, the staff, and the public. Hazardous and unstable chemicals are simply not safe to have in museum collections.

This blog brought to you by Karen Whitecotton, Curator of Collections, Oklahoma History Center
Special thanks to:

OKC Area First Responders:
Oklahoma City Area EMSA
Oklahoma City Police Department Bomb Squad
Oklahoma City Fire Department Hazardous Materials Unit
Oklahoma City Police Department Patrol Squad

RC-AAM Listserv, especially:
Judy Coombes, Manger of Registration, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Evelyn Montgomery, Curator of Exhibits & Collections, Dallas Heritage Village
Doug Nishimura, Image Permanence Institute
David Ryan, Registrar, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum

Oklahoma History Center Staff:
Jeff Briley, Deputy Director, Oklahoma History Center
Richard Lloyd, Security, OHC
Sherry Massey, Senior Registrar, OHS
Dan Provo, Director, Oklahoma History Center
Mike Scanlan, Head of Security, OHC

February is recognized as Black History month, but is also the month where we honor the Presidents of the United States. Everyone knows that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both have birthdays in February, but what few people know is that there were three Presidents who either lived or visited Oklahoma before it was a state. It must be noted that all three were not campaigning for the office at the time of their visit or residency. Can you name the three future Presidents?

As more and more veterans of World War II military service pass away, we are receiving donations of items pertaining to their service including uniforms, insignia, documents, and footlockers. I recently accessioned a footlocker and its contents that were found in a house in Duncan, Oklahoma. The donor, Craig Lowe, had purchased the house from the family of Gabriel W. Ostroot and the footlocker had been left behind. It was an incredible collection of memorabilia. Lt. Gabriel W. Ostroot served with the 63rd Infantry Regiment, 6th Infantry Division during World War II. Inside his footlocker were multiple guide books for the South Seas islands, East Indies, Solomon Islands, and New Guinea as well as maps for those areas. Other items included officer’s pay receipts, Japanese currency, collar insignia, and a certificate from the United States Navy Domain of the Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Raging Main acknowledging that Gabriel W. Ostroot had been initiated into the “Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep” in the South Sea Islands. This certificate was awarded when crossing the equator for the first time.

The ultimate find in this footlocker was the photograph album documenting Ostroot’s entire military service career. It begins with photos taken at basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and shows young men laughing and joking. From basic training, the photographs transition to military maneuvers held in Louisiana. The next series of photographs were taken in the South Pacific and include images of natives in New Guinea. The album concludes with photographs taken in Luzon, the Philippines. These images are the most graphic and show dead Japanese soldiers and destroyed tanks.

The stark reality of viewing these young recruits becoming battle weary soldiers was dramatic and very moving. I hope you will join me in giving thanks to these brave men who defended our country.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln in November, 1860, a chain of events that had been brewing since the Missouri Compromise was passed by Congress in 1820 began. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. This unorthodox and unprecedented action could have been halted by lame duck President James Buchanan. However, Buchanan chose to do nothing which ultimately led other Cotton Belt states to follow suit early in 1861.

While doing regular upkeep on the Indian collections housed within the Oklahoma Museum of History, I discovered something that had been forgotten for many years. Stored on one of our shelving units was a rolled canvas tipi that no one had seen for many decades. This tipi is known as the Tipi with Battle Pictures. The tradition and history embodied by this tipi can be traced ultimately to 1833 when Tohausen or Little Bluff became the sole leader of the Kiowa people. The tipi is easily distinguished by the way it is decorated. The northern half of the tipi is decorated with sketches depicting the war honors of the best Kiowa warriors. The southern half is decorated with alternating yellow and black stripes. The center back of the tipi features a vertical series of tomahawks to mark the war honors of Heart Eater. The front, above the door, features a series of feathered lances to symbolize the war honors of Sitting on a Tree. At the very top is a depiction of two Kiowa warriors besieged but successfully defending themselves against multiple Osage warriors. To say the least, this tipi is visually remarkable. Part of this tipi design was given to Tohausen in 1845 by the Cheyenne chief Nah-ko-se-vast. The yellow stripes represented Nah-ko-se-vast’s war honors. Tohausen added the alternating black stripes to represent his own war exploits and then invited his society brothers to add the other decorations. This overall design was subsequently put on a new tipi every year while Tohausen lived. When he passed in 1866, his name and the tipi design went to his son, Tohausen II. Perhaps because of the hard times that he lived in, Tohausen II only renewed the tipi and its design periodically. By the turn of the century the tipi had become a memory. Two of Tohausen II’s sons changed this situation. These two sons, Haungooah and Olhetoint, made plans to construct and decorate a new Tipi with Battle Pictures in 1916. As a part of this plan, two nephews with natural artistic talent were invited to help in the new tipi’s decoration. These two boys, one of them sixteen-year old Stephen Mopope and the other James Auchiah, would contribute to the sketches on the northern half. Later in their lives both of these boys would be part of the Kiowa Five, a group of Kiowa artists that initiated contemporary American Indian art. Haungooah, known in the art world as Silverhorn, contributed several sketches to the same design. Others who might have drawn their war honors include names that should be familiar to those familiar with Oklahoma history: Gotebo, Big Tree, and Sankedoty. Ironically, this 1916 version of the Tipi with Battle Pictures also figures prominently in another Oklahoma Historical Society venture. This is the recent acquisition and conservation of the silent film ‘Daughter of Dawn’. In fact, the tipi in our collections was authenticated using photo stills from the movie. So not only does OHS have the once lost and thought destroyed ‘Daughter of Dawn’ film, but OHS has also had within its collections the once lost and thought destroyed Tipi with Battle Pictures.

Over the first half of this year, we had an exhibit of toys. I have a soft spot in my heart for toys and had a wonderful time putting the exhibit together. So many of today’s toys are made of plastic but there was a time when metal was the preferred material for toys.

One of the metal toys in the exhibit was the “Corner Grocer.” The center panel has lithograph print of the interior of a grocery store and it is flanked with shelves which swing out. The shelves contain miniature canned and boxed goods. There is also a sales counter complete with scales, telephone, and a roll of butcher paper. Wolverine Supply and Manufacturing of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, made this toy beginning in the 1920s.

Another metal toy in the exhibit was the Play Steel Colonial Dollhouse. The lithograph of the interior and exterior was done by the National Can Corporation of New York in the 1940s. The house features a living room and dining/kitchen on the first floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor.

I spent many hours playing with similar toys during my childhood and these two toys brought back many happy memories for me.

Cataloguing artifacts always interests me. Even the most ordinary object can open a door to an unexpected place. Consider the humble car tag. In the museum’s collection of nearly 200 auto license plates dating from 1913 into the 1990s there’s not much to learn beyond the state’s history of legislative actions regarding vehicle registration.

We have two license plates that give a glimpse of a far greater story. They were issued in the early 1980s to ex-POWs, both Oklahoma veterans who served in World War II. The accession files have only the most basic details about either man: service branch, rank, death date, burial place. One mentions time in a Japanese POW camp, but nothing more. That seems to be typical of so many personal war records from that era—just the facts, no detail. The widows of these veterans donated the plates as historical references but nothing of their stories. Unwilling to leave the files bare, I used the facts at hand to unlock the door of public record.

US Army Enlistment Records show that Claude W. Box of Creek County enlisted in Oklahoma City on March 11, 1941. PFC Box is found on a 59th Coastal Artillery Personnel Roster dated March 31, 1942 compiled by the Corregidor Historic Society. The island fortress of Corregidor was surrendered to Japanese forces on May 6, 1942, one month after the fall of Bataan. Well over 10,000 Allied prisoners were captured and scattered across the Philippines and Asia. WWII Prisoners of War Records list S/Sgt. Box among those liberated from Tokyo POW Camp (Shinjuku) Tokyo Bay Area 35-140 three and half years later. Claude Box processed out of the Army October 1, 1945. His widow stated that he died November 1, 1984 and is buried in Mannford, Creek County, Oklahoma.

The second license plate was issued to Elvis A. McCoy, Miami, Oklahoma. The 381st Bombardment Group War Diary lists Cpl. McCoy with a combat crew assigned to the 532nd Bomb Squadron on September 1, 1944. This crew flew B-17 bombing missions over Germany and France from Ridgewell Air Field, County Essex, England. A 532nd Squadron War Diary entry for December 11, 1944 describes that day’s mission over Mannheim, Germany. It reports that subsequent flak (ground-to-air fire) in the target area downed the plane and lists the names of the crew missing in action. T/Sgt McCoy is listed as one of two POWs; six other crewmen and the pilot were killed. McCoy is named among POWs held at Stalag Luft I, Barth, Germany. His last report date with the Army Air Corps was June 1945. His last residence is listed as Miami, Oklahoma and date of death as August 1, 1988.

Box and McCoy not only answered the call, but served above and beyond with sacrifices that can only be guessed at. First person accounts of men and women in similar circumstances paint very grim pictures. It is interesting that these two stories illustrate the two happiest days in WWII history. POW liberation in 1945 coincided with V-E Day on May 8 with Germany’s surrender, and V-J Day on September 2 with Japan’s surrender. That year also saw these men turn 23.

The accession files show that two widows of veterans gave us just a couple of car tags. The details show they gave us so much more.

Violet McCoy Collection, 1988.175