This is probably as good a time as any to talk about my comings and goings with
the Bluejacket family in the last couple of years. In the summer of 1998,
the price of crude oil was lowering towards $8.00 a barrel. In Oklahoma,
the cost to bring one barrel to the surface is about $14.00. Even a grade
school student can recognize that he or she does not want to seek a career in an
industry that has reverse economics. My only work as a consultant so far
that year had been for the Oklahoma Geological Survey - the government has
money!
Years before, in 1981, my grandmother Gertrude Hinshaw had passed away at 101
years of age. At her funeral in Vinita, OK, her last of six children,
George Robert Hinshaw of San Diego, gave me copies of material from Beulah
Virginia (Bluejacket) Slack on the genealogy of the Bluejacket family. I
perused the stuff but was more interested in my career, which at that time was
Vice-President and Director of Magic Circle Energy Corporation. I did note
that Marmaduke Van Swearingen was listed as Blue Jacket, an ancestor. The
whole works went into a file at home.
Lacking any real good reason not to do something worthwhile in 1998, I got out
the Bluejacket genealogical material and started to look at my family history.
Within a very short time+, I found that there were serious complications
regarding the Marmaduke tale. Further researching led me to Robert Van
Trees. He was then searching for material on Donald Bluejacket, an acquaintance
of his military days and had given me some Marmaduke tale material. I was
stumbling around but had developed an address book of living Bluejackets.
I sent out some 50 letters to Bluejacket addresses in trying to help Robert and
got one phone call and one e-mail message for my efforts. The phone call
was from Joseph David Bluejacket of Edmond OK and the message from Susan
Bluejacket, a divorcee in Houston TX. The latter was interested only in
persevering her daughters Bluejacket history.
Joe was retired and we conversed quite a bit and mostly, his historical family
material was just confusing to him. He had a son that attended Blue Jacket
Outdoor Drama but he also was confused with the family history. At that time he
thought that they were down from James, not George as all of us are.
I visited Delbert Slack in Nowata in the late fall of 1998, just after Virginia
had passed away and he let me look through her records. There I found the
computer Bluejacket genealogy printout of John (Jack) William Kincaid and his
address. Lo and behold, the address was within a mile and a half of my
house in Norman! I called and found that John had passed away but his wife
Katherine Roberta (Hightower) Kincaid invited me over and let me borrow some
material to copy. Of most importance was the original typed Bluejacket
Genealogy manuscript done by Norma Lee (Gore) Luallen and contributed to by Lois
(Cissy) (Greenfeather) Nowlin, John Kincaid, Viola Jean (Lafalier) Meek and
Virginia Slack. Jean Meek is the only survivor and lives in Cardin OK.
Even though the Bluejacket Genealogy of theirs has no mention of Marmaduke
Van Swearingen, my first contact with Jean in 1999 revealed that she still
believed the Marmaduke tale. She is now converted as are most of the
Bluejacket family. Katherine Kincaid was a close cousin to Norma Lee and
told me that Norma Lee was convinced early on that the Marmaduke tale was false.
Delbert Slack had told me that Virginia's take was also that the tale was false.
Recently, I found that there was another contributor, Marylen (McKenzie)
Williams of Tulsa and we are to meet on July 25 next.
Robert Van Trees then got me in touch with Vaughn Allan Pedersen and we have
been working on Bluejackets regularly.
Toward the end of 1998, I begin working on a history of the wandering Shawnee
from their Scioto villages in the decade of Blue Jacket's birth in the early
1740's until 1894, when the town of Bluejacket, Indian Territory was
incorporated. I am using the experiences of the Bluejacket family as the
focal point of this history. Getting Marmaduke out of this mix has gone on
since the start of my endeavor and just keeps popping up and keeps popping up.
Over Christmas of 1998, our daughter and youngest child, Deborah Ann Hinshaw,
came through moving from Monterrey CA to Herndon VA. She and Patty
attacked the cedar chest and Deb found some letters that my Grandfather George
Austin Hinshaw had given me in 1963 in Vinita. She looked at the lot and
came rushing to me - I had not previously looked at them, just had Patty put
them away. Turns out that there are 28 of them from my
great-grandfather, John Perkins Hinshaw, to his sister and mother while he was
in the Union Army in the Civil War and thereafter when he moved west to Kansas
and Missouri - from 1862 thru 1882. Several were in the original stamped
envelopes. Although I left them out, I continued Bluejacketing it.
In February of 1999, I had a fairly massive hemorrhage in my right eye and
almost concurrently began fogging up in the left eye - diabetic problems.
Panicking, I began transcribing the Hinshaw letters, finding a video book reader
at the Norman Public Library. In June, the laser gun had me on the mend
and I had about half of the letters done. I started back on Bluejacket.
The price of oil began rising in the summer and fall of 1999 and my starving
clients began appearing out of the woodwork. By December, I had a full
time project developing drilling locations in West Cote Blanche Bay Field in
south Louisiana. During late 1999, Van Trees began working on a project to
study DNA from the Bluejackt and Swearigen families to seek out the truth of
Marmaduke. I helped him find Bluejacket donors.
In the spring of this year, I was still totally involved with West Cote Blanche
Bay but found that Blue Jacket Outdoor Drama was nominated to the Library of
Congress Local Legacies Project as an example of American history. I
became involved, again with Van Trees and Vaughn Pedersen, to try and save
Bluejacket family heritage from being totally trashed in the halls of a great
American Institution, the Library of Congress. Other Bluejacket bloods
joined the fight and during last spring, the DNA results became known.
Putting all of our forces together we have a great fight going and hopefully
will be successful in putting the true history of Chief Blue Jacket, last
principle War Chief of the Shawnee Tribe in its proper place in the archives of
the world.
I finished the West Cote Blanche Bay project last week and am back working on
the history. Other eye problems have arisen but the laser is back at work and
hopefully I can continue un-abated.
