FOUNDING

Samuel Newton and his wife, Mary, were among the earliest missionaries to the Cherokee in this area. They worked at a mission station named Forks of the Illinois which had been established in 1830 on the east side of the Illinois River close to the mouth of the Barren Fork. The spot was so unhealthy that Mary and their small daughter died. In 1837 the mission was moved three miles west to Campbell Springs. Newton named the area Park Hill because it reminded him of the estates of noblemen in England.

PARK HILL MISSION AND PRESS

Park Hill soon became the site of a thriving mission. Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester, who had been a missionary and printer among the Cherokee in the East, came west to continue his work. He set up the printing press at Union Mission, but its buildings were dilapidated and the location inconvenient to the Cherokee. Worcester chose Park Hill as the permanent site for his mission, and construction began in the summer of 1836. He and his family moved there soon afterwards. In June of 1837 he set up the printing press a mile further to the west of Newton's school in a meadow overlooking the Park Hill valley. That same summer he established a church with nineteen members. Major George Lowrey soon became deacon and retained that post until his death in 1852. By 1938 the mission school had been moved up to the meadow with Samuel Newton as the teacher. Other teachers there in the 1830s were Esther Smith from Harrisburg, New York, and Sarah Ann Palmer.

At the mission printing office, Worcester continued the work he had begun in the East, printing literature to educate and Christianize the Cherokee. Elias Boudinot, former editor of the Cherokee Advocate, helped with translating and printing until his death in 1839. Stephen Foreman replaced him as translator. With their help, Worcester translated and printed most of the Bible in Cherokee. John F. Wheeler was the first printer, later replaced by John Candy. The press turned out textbooks, the Cherokee Almanac, religious tracts, and volumes of Cherokee hymnals.

A brick church building was completed at the mission by 1854. Cherokee Chief John Ross and merchant and planter, George M. Murrell, donated much of the money to buy the church bell.

The Park Hill Mission and Press came to an end with the Civil War. Reverend Charles Torrey came to help run the mission when Worcester became an invalid after a serious accident. Torrey became supervisor after Worcester's death in 1859. Shortly before the War began, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions decided to close the mission because of the troubles the impending war was bringing to the region. They also believed the Cherokees were no longer a heathen people and did not require the help of missionaries.

(Source: Anna Eddings, Murrell Home, Oklahoma Historical Society)

SEHON CHAPEL

Sehon Chapel was built in 1856 to meet a pressing religious need. At that time there was no Methodist Church at Park Hill nor any at Tahlequah. The Methodists of Tahlequah held occasional services on the lower floor of the old Masonic Hall, which was built in 1852 and stood on the alley between Muskogee Avenue and College Avenue in the block south of Keetoowah Street. Quite a few well-to-do people of Park Hill, of the Methodist persuasion, had no church closer than Riley's Chapel. Then, too, the girls at the Female Seminary had no convenient place to attend church.

Consequently, Chief John Ross, George Murrell, and Archibald Campbell decided to build a church to meet these needs. The bricks used in the building were burned near the building site. The church stood on an eminence overlooking the beautiful Park Hill valley, about a half mile east of the Female Seminary. It was a well-built and imposing structure with a bell to call the worshipers to service. The Seminary girls attended services here regularly. It had a gallery at one end for the use of the negro slaves. It presented a beautiful and attractive appearance.

This Chapel was named after Bishop Edward W. Sehon, a member of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Nashville, Tennessee. Bishop Sehon made a number of visits to points in the Indian Territory in the forties and fifties. He came to Park Hill and visited many of the people there, including Chief John Ross and George Murrell. His last visit was in 1853. When he returned to Nashville he wrote to a friend and referred to Tahlequah as a "beautiful little town of three hundred and fifty inhabitants." The people of Park Hill were very fond of Bishop Sehon and wished to honor him by naming the church "Sehon Chapel." At that time a good many people lived at Park Hill and the surrounding communities. A number of prominent early preachers filled this pulpit through the years. This church was frequently filled to capacity.

Services were discontinued at the Chapel during the Civil War. Some of the soldiers pillaged it and used it for sleeping quarters. It was reopened after the war but the attendance was not the same any more. The war destroyed much of Park Hill, and many of the people had moved away. The last pastor to serve the Chapel was the Reverend M.L. Butler. He received this appointment in 1882 and served here for four years. He found the church building in a bad state of repair, the heating inadequate, and the attendance had declined. Services were officially discontinued in the Fall of 1885. After the Chapel was closed the pastor continued to preach to the girls at the Seminary. In 1888 the building was torn down and the bricks were brought to Tahlequah and used to build the Methodist Church here.

The new building was erected on College Avenue just across from the present Sequoyah Elementary School. It was rebuilt mainly as it was at Park Hill except the gallery was left out. The negro slaves had been given their freedom long before this, and the gallery was no longer necessary. The building was used here as the regular Methodist Church from 1888 to 1910, when a new church was built at the corner of Delaware Street and Cherokee Avenue. In 1938, the Board of Education sold it to the Church of Christ, who used it as their regular house of worship until they built their new and more elaborate place of worship in 1967. The Chapel was then torn down and destroyed.

(Source: T.L. Ballenger, History of the First United Methodist Church of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Tahlequah: Markoma Press, 1968.)

CHEROKEE FEMALE SEMINARY

Park Hill was also home of the Cherokee Female Seminary, a symbol of the tribe's commitment to education. Chief John Ross held ceremonies in 1847 to lay the cornerstones for the Male and Female Seminaries, which would be located in Tahlequah and Park Hill, respectively. Both were opened in 1851. These public educational institutions, equivalent of high schools, held students to high academic standards. Teachers were recruited from such places as Mount Holyoke School in Massachusetts and brought to the Cherokee Nation to teach Cherokee children. Daily regimens at the school including studies of Latin, math, science, rhetoric, composition, geography, philosophy, and religion. Church attendance was mandatory.

In 1887 the Female Seminary burned, creating a huge loss for the tribe. However, the Cherokee Nation was determined to rebuild. Since much of Park Hill had been destroyed during the Civil War, it was decided that Tahlequah should be the new home of the school. In 1889, a new building was dedicated on the north side of town. The seminary continued as an entity until 1909, when the state purchased the building. Subsequently, it was chosen as the site for the new Northeastern State Normal School, which has now evolved into Northeastern State University. Today, the building, known as Seminary Hall, is an icon of the NSU campus. The first Female Seminary is located at the present site of the Cherokee Heritage Center, where three brick columns salvaged from the building stand to commemorate this prestigious institution.

(Source: C.W. "Dub" West, Tahlequah and the Cherokee Nation, Muskogee: Muskogee Publishing Co., 1978; Odie Faulk & Billy M. Jones, Tahlequah, NSU, and the Cherokees, Tahlequah: Northeastern State Univ. Educational Foundation, 1984.)

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