Oklahoma Indian Territory on-line

This week I read the post from Dick Eastman which included information about the Oklahoma Archives and their addition of wonderful information that has been added to their website.

www.okhistory.org/research

The gateway to Oklahoma newspapers is really nice. You can search and browse them for FREE.

In addition, they have added Territorial Incorporation records, covering the years 1890 to 1907.
This is great if you have anyone in your research data that may have owned or worked for a company in this area.  The incorporation of the business records should be listed here.


For those who are studying the general history of Oklahoma, there is a listing of the governors, counties and county seats to present time.  The state constitution is also listed.

Route 66 repositories in Oklahoma are also listed.

There are links for Oklahoma and all digital data on the web.  Just click and go, which include Oklahoma birth and death certificate resources.
Of course, it is not a free service.  Charges are about $15 to $40 depending on what you need.

I took a quick look at the Chronicles of Oklahoma   http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles

here is the lead-in to the section about the Italians that settled in Oklahoma during the territorial days of this area : In Indian Territory the majority of early-arriving Italians settled in the coal-mining counties of present eastern Oklahoma in the mid-1870s. In that decade, coal mines began operating in Pittsburg County, Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory. In need of cheap labor, the coal companies hired immigrants, primarily men, from southern and eastern Europe. They were primarily farmers and uniformly Catholic. The first northern Italians arrived in 1874, and the first southern Italians arrived in the late 1870s.

The article goes on to say that when the era of petroleum began to overtake the coal industry, many of these immigrants lost their jobs and headed to larger metropolitan areas, both in Oklahoma and further away to New York and Chicago, as well as other cities.

I am so glad that this State, which was once an area of little available archival information, now has a place on the web.  And, I look forward to seeing much more becoming available in this website.