Well, we did it! Just two months shy of our first year we made 10,000 views!
The level of community support and outreach we’ve been blessed to receive is truly overwhelming. We started out being a place to learn about our town’s businesses, but we’ve since evolved into a massive historical collection and educational organization. We’ve received dozens of donated stories, photos and even physical objects from Talihina History!
Our most important project to date has been preserving the lost histories of Talihina such as the Freedmen Academy, the Lost Cemetery and the Talihina Baseball Team. These things are all too old to simply ask people about, some parts of these histories are getting on to be 130 years old. But we still search!
This photo shows one of Talihinas earliest baseball teams, featuring members of the Wade family who were descendants of the great “Long Haired Aristocrat” Choctaw Chief Wade. The O’Bryans, family of Talihinas very first mayor, the Ganns and Taylor’s who’s stores still stand today. On the back left, Earl Welch who would later become a Supreme Court Justice of Oklahoma.
These are the hard histories to find, and really what we’re working for every day. This truly personal notes that make Talihina incredible. This ball team most likely played on the existing baseball field that was made by none other than Leo Thomas, later a Choctaw veteran of Wolrd War 1 and early aristocrat of our town.
One photo, and even though it’s captioned, we work to pull out as much history as we can to educate people just how amazing a single photo of Talihina can be.
