Hunter's Home | |
Location | Park Hill, Oklahoma |
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Coordinates | 35°51′21″N94°57′32″W / 35.85583°N 94.95889°W Coordinates: 35°51′21″N94°57′32″W / 35.85583°N 94.95889°W |
Built | 1844–45 |
Architectural style | Federal |
NRHP reference No. | 70000530 [1] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | June 22, 1970 [2] |
Designated NHL | May 30, 1974 [3] |
The Hunter's Home, formerly known as the George M. Murrell Home, is a historic house museum at 19479 E Murrel Rd in Park Hill, near Tahlequah, Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation. Built in 1845, it is one of the few buildings to survive in Cherokee lands from the antebellum period between the Trail of Tears relocation of the Cherokee people and the American Civil War. It was a major social center of the elite among the Cherokee in the mid-nineteenth century. [4] It has been owned by the state since 1948, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
The mansion was built by George Michael Murrell, a wealthy white planter and merchant married to Minerva Ross, the niece of prominent Cherokee leader John Ross. [5] He called it Hunter's Home due to his fondness for the fox hunt. The Murrells came to Indian Territory about the time of the Trail of Tears (1839). They furnished their house with the latest in fashions. They held 42 enslaved people, whom they housed in nine cabins on the large property. [4]
During the American Civil War, the area surrounding Hunter's Home was frequently raided by forces loyal to both the Union and Confederacy. The home was spared destruction during this turbulent time and was the only local building to survive the conflict.
Cherokee Jennie Ross Cobb (1881–1959), one of the earliest Native American photographers, later lived in Hunter's Home and helped direct restoration of the house. [5] [6] The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974. [3]
The building was acquired by the state in 1948, and is operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society as a historic house museum. It has been furnished reflecting the period 1830s-1860s, including furnishings and artifacts from the Murrell family. The Daniel Cabin is a log cabin on the property; it is used for living history demonstrations of Cherokee life in the 1850s. In 2018 the name was officially changed from Murrell Home to Hunter's Home. [7]
Park Hill is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in southwestern Cherokee County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 3,909 at the 2010 census. It lies near Tahlequah, east of the junction of U.S. Route 62 and State Highway 82.
Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It is part of the Green Country region of Oklahoma and was established as a capital of the 19th-century Cherokee Nation in 1839, as part of the new settlement in Indian Territory after the Cherokee Native Americans were forced west from the American Southeast on the Trail of Tears.
Major Ridge, The Ridge was a Cherokee leader, a member of the tribal council, and a lawmaker. As a warrior, he fought in the Cherokee–American wars against American frontiersmen. Later, Major Ridge led the Cherokee in alliances with General Andrew Jackson and the United States in the Creek and Seminole wars of the early 19th century.
New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee Nation in the Southeast United States from 1825 until their forced removal in the late 1830s. New Echota is located in present-day Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, 3.68 miles north of Calhoun. It is south of Resaca, next to present day New Town, known to the Cherokee as Ꭴꮝꮤꮎꮅ, Ustanali. The site has been preserved as a state park and a historic site. It was designated in 1973 as a National Historic Landmark District.
Fort Smith National Historic Site is a National Historic Site located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, along the Arkansas River. The first fort at this site was established by the United States in 1817, before this area was established as part of Indian Territory. It was later replaced and the second fort was operated by the US until 1871. This site was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
Fort Gibson is a historic military site next to the modern city of Fort Gibson, in Muskogee County Oklahoma. It guarded the American frontier in Indian Territory from 1824 to 1888. When it was constructed, the fort was farther west than any other military post in the United States. It formed part of the north–south chain of forts that was intended to maintain peace on the frontier of the American West and to protect the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase. The fort succeeded in its peacekeeping mission for more than 50 years, as no massacres or battles occurred there.
The Cherokee Heritage Center is a non-profit historical society and museum campus that seeks to preserve the historical and cultural artifacts, language, and traditional crafts of the Cherokee. The Heritage center also hosts the central genealogy database and genealogy research center for the Cherokee People. The Heritage Center is located on the site of the mid-19th century Cherokee Seminary building in Park Hill, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tahlequah, and was constructed near the old structure. It is a unit of the Cherokee National Historical Society and is sponsored by the Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and other area tribes. The center was originally known as Tsa-La-Gi but is now known as the Cherokee Heritage Center.
The Cherokee National Capitol, now the Cherokee Nation Courthouse, is a historic tribal government building in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Completed in 1869, it served as the capitol building of the Cherokee Nation from 1869 to 1907, when Oklahoma became a state. It now serves as the site of the tribal supreme court and judicial branch. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 for its role in the Nation's history.
Creek National Capitol, also known as Creek Council House, is a building in downtown Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in the United States. It was capitol of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from 1878 until 1907. They had established their capital at Okmulgee in 1867, after the American Civil War.
Sequoyah's Cabin is a log cabin and historic site off Oklahoma State Highway 101 near Akins, Oklahoma. It was the home between 1829 and 1844 of the Cherokee Indian Sequoyah, who in 1821 created a written language for the Cherokee Nation. The cabin and surrounding park was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and is now owned by the Cherokee Nation.
Chieftains Museum, also known as the Major Ridge Home, is a two-story white frame house built around a log house of 1792 in Cherokee country. It was the home of the Cherokee leader Major Ridge. He was notable for his role in negotiating and signing the Treaty of New Echota of 1835, which ceded the remainder of Cherokee lands in the Southeast to the United States. He was part of a minority group known as the Treaty Party, who believed that relocation was inevitable and wanted to negotiate the best deal with the United States for their people.
The John Ross House is a historic house at Lake Avenue and Spring Street in Rossville, Georgia. It was the home of the long-serving Cherokee Nation leader John Ross from 1830 to 1838, after his lands and fine home near the Coosa River had been taken by the state. Ross (1790-1866) led the Cherokee for many years, notably opposing the Cherokee Removal, which he was unable to stop. His house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973.
Sharon Irla is a Cherokee artist, enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. A self-taught artist, Irla began entering competitive art shows in 2003. Her collective body of works span the fields of painting, murals, graphics, photography, and custom picture frames with Southeastern Woodlands / Mississippian motifs. The majority of her awarded works are oil-on-canvas portraits of Cherokee women in both contemporary and historical settings.
Ross's Landing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the last site of the Cherokee's 61-year occupation of Chattanooga and is considered to be the embarkation point of the Cherokee removal on the Trail of Tears. Ross's Landing Riverfront Park memorializes the location, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears, refers to the forced relocation between 1836 and 1839 of an estimated 16,000 members of the Cherokee Nation and 1,000–2,000 of their slaves; from their lands in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama to the Indian Territory in the then Western United States, and the resultant deaths along the way and at the end of the movement of an estimated 4,000 Cherokee and unknown number of slaves, although no records of these deaths have ever materialized. Many scholars believe these Indians absconded from the removal rather than died.
Goingsnake, also spelled Going Snake; in Cherokee, I-na-du-na-i) (Cherokee) was a respected warrior, gifted orator, and prominent political leader of his people. He was born in the vicinity of present-day Nottely Lake, Georgia, then part of the large Cherokee territory.
The Hair Conrad Cabin is a historic log cabin in Bradley County, Tennessee, United States, and the oldest residential structure in the county.
Cherokee Plantation is a historic house in Fort Payne, Alabama. The house was built in 1790 as a two-story log cabin by Andrew Ross, a judge on the Cherokee Supreme Court and brother of Principal Chief John Ross. In 1834 a second log cabin was built connected to the rear of the original cabin, and a third was built to the northeast, separated by a breezeway. Ross, being one-eighth Cherokee, was forced to leave his home in 1838 under the provisions of the Treaty of New Echota, of which Ross was a signatory; a portion of the Cherokee Trail of Tears passes in front of the house.
Jennie Ross Cobb is the first known Native American woman photographer in the United States. She began taking pictures of her Cherokee community in the late 19th century. The Oklahoma Historical Society used her photos of the Murrell Home to restore that building, which is now a museum. Trained as a teacher, Cobb worked as a florist in Texas before returning to Oklahoma to spearhead the restoration of the Murrell Home.
Mary Jane "Mollie" Ross was born in Tennessee to the most prominent Cherokee family of the nineteenth century. The Ross family led the Cherokee Nation through some of its most tumultuous historical events, including the Trail of Tears and the American Civil War. Ross was the daughter of Lewis Ross (1796-1871) and Francis "Fannie" (Holt) Ross (1789-1860). Her paternal uncle John Ross was principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 until his death in 1866. Her father, Lewis Ross, was a merchant, planter, and Treasurer of the Cherokee Nation. She had the following ten siblings: Minerva A., John McDonald, Araminta, Robert Daniel, Amanda Melvina, Henry Clay, Sarah, Helen, Jack Spears, and Sarah Elizabeth Ross. Born to affluence and a would-be domestic life of leisure, Ross excelled in her studies, was a talented musician, contributed to the support and aid of Cherokee orphans after the Civil War, and endured a life uprooted by the forced removal of the Cherokee people on the Trail of Tears, followed by the hardships of the Civil War. Upon her husband's death, Ross took up the work of authoring and editing large portions of his biography which she submitted for publication to the Library of Congress.