Grandpa Vanderpool: U.S. Marshal?
By Myra Vanderpool Gormley © 2018
It is not surprising that some, perhaps many, of our family legends turn out to be less than accurate. And, that’s being kind.
My paternal grandmother told the story about grandfather being a U.S. Marshal in Indian Territory and how in the early days of their marriage, which took place in 1906, she would ride with him when he went to deliver warrants. I never thought to ask her what else he did in his job.
Imagine my surprise when I found him in 1900 Creek Nation of Indian Territory census listed as a 23-year-old livery stable hand. Of course, he was still single and living with his parents, so I reasoned the marshal job must have come a bit later.
However, the 1910 federal enumeration, showing him with grandmother, their eldest daughter and my father, lists his occupation as “night watch” [sic] and the industry given as “night watch” [sic]. In 1910, they were living in the State of Oklahoma, which no longer was Indian Territory. Oklahoma having become a state on November 16, 1907. However, a “night watch[man]” was certainly no U.S. Marshal.
Did grandmother lie?
Grandpa registered for the World War I draft on 12 September 1918, still living in Eufaula, McIntosh County, Oklahoma where he and grandmother had resided since 1906. He gave his occupation as: “Eng. Tender” and employer as Osage Cotton Oil Co. He died less than a year later from heart problems and the Spanish flu.
I called my sister, who as a few years older, often knew or remembered stories I didn’t. She said grandmother had always claimed that he was a marshal. Sis dug out a 1970 newspaper story in which grandmother told the same story about grandfather being a “United States Marshal, and that she rode with him in a one-horse buggy to different places to serve papers.”
I checked all the sources available in an attempt to prove his occupation, but they all turned out negative. Indian Territory was a pretty wild place in the early 1900s and there were many deputy U.S. marshals, but none of them were my grandfather and he was not listed as a U.S. Marshal either.
Reluctantly, I gave up the quest, thinking my grandmother, who didn’t know where she was born in Tennessee, just might have been confused — to be polite.
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John R. Vanderpool and wife,
Molly Kimbro and two oldest children,
Edna and John.
ca 1910
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Then one day while searching old newspapers online I found a listing of the “United States Officials” in the Eufaula (Creek Nation, Indian Territory) Directory of May 10, 1907. There was my grandfather: John Vanderpool, Constable. It finally made sense. The city’s constable was under the U.S. government at that time because since 1 March 1889, the U.S. District Court for Indian Territory had had jurisdiction. While a small-town constable is not the same as a U.S. marshal or deputy marshal, his job, would have been similar — in a much smaller jurisdiction in Indian Territory.
Constable Vanderpool is mentioned in a small newspaper story in 1907 when Newman Boone, who had shot and killed Jackson McGilbra, surrendered to him. Boone was brought to Eufaula and then taken on to Muskogee to await a hearing.
I thought I had solved the mystery about grandpa’s occupation — finally. Then I found a notice in newspaper, dated 22 May 1908, wherein grandpa opened an “up-to-date skating rink in the Mills Building, lower floor, on Foley Avenue” in Eufaula. The town’s former constable was now a “skating rink proprietor.”
I wonder why there are no family legends about that?
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