Dapper and dressed for Sunday dinner, three young Chickasaw youth are captured in this circa 1900 picture provided by Betty Smith of Tuttle. From left are Will Talley, Calvin Cobb and Key Wolfe. Cobb and Wolfe are cousins to Minerva Cochran, pictured above. Family history says these young men were headed to the Chickasaw National School in Davis, Indian Territory, one of the boarding schools for First American youth. About 20 children boarded with Nelson Chigley, a prominent Chickasaw Nation leader. Among them were Montford Johnson Pikey, Thomas Benson Pikey and Minerva Pikey Cochran, children of Katie and Ben Pikey.
At the time, big First American families like the Pikey-Cochran clan got dressed up to go to church or “go visiting” on Sunday afternoons. Many of these families lived along busy Highway 4 – long before interstate highways moved traffic elsewhere — so they invited travelers, as well as family and friends, to join their Sunday afternoon feasts.
The Tuttle Then and Now gallery displayed at the First National Bank & Trust Co. in Tuttle was designed to commemorate the people and places that make Tuttle unique. FNBT has been an independent community bank serving central and southwest Oklahoma since 1892.