5

A few days after their wedding, William and Martha traveled up the Mississippi River by steamboat to St. Louis, Missouri and then by train bypassing Alva because land was known to be more available and at a lower cost on the western edge of the Oklahoma Territory.

They stopped at Woodward, Oklahoma Territory. There they connected with a land agent who took them in a horse drawn runabout over the open prairie looking for a quarter section of land to establish a home. Finally after four days of traveling, the agent located an available property[4].

William and Martha took up this relinquished claim near Goodwin, six miles southeast of Shattuck and about 40 miles from Woodward. They paid Mr. and Mrs. Chris Pshigoda $1300 for the claim, which included the land, a sod house, 2 horses and a colt, 2 cows and a calf, 6 chickens and a wagon. Everything was included but the homesteader’s personal belongings.

William immediately filed a Homestead Claim in 1904 and subsequently completed the Land Patent in 1910.

The William and Martha Kirmse homestead was a mile as the crow flies from the town of Goodwin, Oklahoma and about six miles southeast of Shattuck[5]. They later also purchased an adjacent quarter section of land in Martha Kirmse’s name.

Notes

1. “Oklahoma Territory” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Territory.
2. Oklahoma Territory and the reduced Indian Territory Map. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Okterritory.png “Okterritory“. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
3. KIRMSE, WILHELM (WILLIAM) family biography, from “Pioneer Footprints Across Woods County 1893-1975” by the Cherokee Strip Volunteer League, 1976. p.138.
4. See Appendix: Wilhelm “William” Kirmse – Autobiography
5. Oklahoma Historical Society. Shattuck. http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SH010