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THE HISTORY OF VIOLET OKLAHOMA
© Pottawatomie County Oklahoma History




THE HISTORY OF VIOLET, OKLAHOMA


Violet, Oklahoma was established April 6, 1899 until September 29, 1906. The first postmaster was John Middleton. The town was named after some nearby springs.

Violet Springs sounds like the name of a peace loving community, but the town was just the opposite. Located less that one half mile from the border of Oklahoma Territory with the Seminole nation, Violet Springs was one of the "most wild and wooly"whiskey towns along that line.

Although the town was named Violet, the town was more commonly known and called "Violet Springs", named because of the many wild violets that grew around the prominent nearby springs. The town actually started in 1891 by a man named Perry, who was a cattleman and a homesteader near the town. A few months later, A. J. "Andy"Morrison opened the first saloon in the town and started one of the most lurid, sensational, border saloon-town epochs of pre-statehood Oklahoma Territory. Along with Keokuk Falls, Corner, and Youngs Crossing, Violet experienced lawlessness and crime that will be long remembered. M. F. Bates, an early day homesteader, started his own private family cemetery which still exists. He had an 80 acre apple orchard and 80 acres of peaches. E. B. Price had a blacksmith shop and E. B. Moore had the first drug store. The east edge of the Violet Cemetery was the border line of the Seminole nation, where Gov. John F. Brown of the Seminole nation had installed a barbed wire fence, eight strands high, from the Canadian River north to the N. Canadian River.

In 1899, a devastating fire almost destroyed the town. Every store in town burned. Aaron Braswell, Jesse West, John Hinsley, Jim Morrow, Tom Duncan, and Abe Ellis, a former Greek peddler, owned saloons in Violet. There were all sorts of daily gang fights, shoot-outs, and bacchic revelry that made lurid history during these frontier days.

Bill Manley owned a barber shop and Frank Morris had the first cotton gin, a Murray Gin, sawmill and grist mill. Alice {Morris} Morrison and Mrs. Ed Jones had a millinery shop in town for several years.

During the 1895 through 1905 period, the population of Violet Springs was about 600 people. The Masons, Modern Woodmen, Knights of Pythias, and IOOF were all active. A one-room school was built near Violet Springs but there was never a church building. On a few occasions, circuit riders held services in the school house.

© Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma History {Claremore, Okla.: Country Lane Press, 1987}.
Page 59.



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