Memorial Day Weekend II - Ninnekah History in Rose Hill Cemetery

As explained in the last post, we added Rose Hill Cemetery as a stop for our Memorial Day Weekend traditional trek.  Our destination?  The graves of Fred & Christel Kluver.  Our mission?  To put flowers on the graves for Memorial Day.  The result?  Well, we did the flowers (though not the ones I wanted - waited too late to buy this year) and we will continue to visit their graves on Memorial Day Weekend.  However, what happened as we were fulfilling our task served to change the atmosphere of the whole day and to throw Betsy into full-scale geeky history-loving mode that poor Rick had to deal with the rest of the day. (Yeah, and beyond that day.  Possibly forever!  :-) )

You see, as I was getting pictures I spotted something very close to Mrs. Kluver's grave out of the corner of my eye.  It was the name BEELER.  I had to look.  I made my way over and RIGHT THERE THEY WERE!!!  The graves of George & Georgia Beeler!!!!!


Rick was immediately thrown into the midst of a Ninnekah history lesson.  I told him just about everything I could remember about the Beelers.  I shall now regale you with the high points:

• George Beeler founded Ninnekah!!  
• Georgia was the first postmaster and she picked out the name which means 'Dark Waters' in Choctaw.  
• He turned down the roundhouse that the railroad wanted to put in, causing them to go to Chickasha and in turn for Chickasha to practically overnight become more important than Ninnekah.  
• They had a large residence of which there is a replica in the Ninnekah Historical Museum.

What particularly blows my mind is there they lay in eternal rest with very simple markers and a simple family marker that just says 'Beeler.'  No mention of them founding Ninnekah?  No mention that he is considered the first resident of Chickasha (more details on that tidbit I looked up later)?  It seems there should be something marking the grave!

The reason I know anything about the Beelers at all is because of Mrs. Craig.  She was my art teacher in 7th & 8th grade and my civics teacher in 8th grade.  She and the 8th grade class of 1990 started Heritage Day in Ninnekah and helped put in motion all kinds of things to preserve Ninnekah's history.  In 1992 Mrs. Craig complied a book of sorts of various pieces of Ninnekah history including brief biographies of prominent individuals, interviews with descendants, cemetery records, and more.  At the end of my 8th grade year (1994) the last assignment of the year was to read through this 'book,' and write a summary of it.  I LOVED IT!!!  I am looking at my report right now, which ends with 'I found this book very interesting, and wish I could get a copy!'  First off, I don't know what purpose that comma is supposed to serve and secondly, it doesn't seem to be an appropriate conclusion for a summary of a book.  Nevertheless it got me a copy!  Mummy took me out of school a bit early the last day of school (the same day we turned the reports in) to go visit Aunt Debbie who had just moved to Oklahoma City.  On our way out of the building Mrs. Craig stopped us and gave me one of the books.  I was far too shy back then to tell her how I appreciated that, but I can tell you without a doubt that I WAS ECSTATIC!  That is evidenced by the fact that I am looking at that book right now if nothing else.


Want to know more about Ninnekah?  Sadly, this article is about the best you will find online.  But don't worry.  We will talk more about Ninnekah and the Beelers later!!