Peter Mades and the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush

by Bob Brail

Early on the morning of April 22, 1889, nearly fifty thousand people awoke with great excitement. These individuals surrounded the Unassigned Lands, known popularly as the Oklahoma Lands, in the center of what is now the state of Oklahoma. Massed along the 300 mile border of the Unassigned Lands, the enthusiastic, hopeful crowds were kept from jumping the gun by hundreds of U. S. soldiers. These folks were waiting for the chance of a lifetime, the opportunity to claim 160 acres of free land in what became known as the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush. Finally the moment all were waiting for arrived. A signal was given by bugle, rifle, or cannon, and the rush was on, “a tumultuous avalanche of wagons and horsemen surging forward all in one breathtaking instant,” hurrying to stake their claims. Somewhere in those throngs of people raced Peter Mades of Hamburg, Missouri.

Peter Mades was born in 1845 to George Mades, a farmer who also made boots and shoes, and Catharine Schneider Mades, both German immigrants, in Hamburg just five years after the village had been founded; Peter was the third of their eight children. He and his older brothers grew to adulthood at the dawning of the Civil War and, like so many other young men from that era, they would all become soldiers. The Madeses were Unionists, so Peter enlisted in the 49^th Missouri Infantry in August, 1864, for an enlistment bounty of $100, along with older brothers, Philip and Henry; Peter's enlistment papers describe him as a dark complexioned, black haired, and grey eyed farmer who stood five and one half feet tall. The Madeses would participate in the defense of Jefferson City during the Sterling Price raid and would later serve in Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama. They would be discharged after one year of service. Earlier in the war, Peter had served in the Cottleville Home Guards in 1861 and the Enrolled Missouri Militia in 1863.

For a few years after the war, Peter Mades would farm but his interests eventually became mercantile. In 1869, a dry goods store operator named Louis Schaefer from Columbia, Illinois, bought a flour mill in Hamburg. Schaefer, whose wife had recently died, moved his four children to Hamburg, along with his store stock and his employee Henry Seib, to operate both the flour mill and a general store. Schaeffer almost immediately experienced financial problems and his mill venture failed. By 1870 his four children, including sixteen year old Emilie, were lodging with Peter's brother, Henry, and his wife Margaret in Hamburg. By this time Henry Seib had left Hamburg to help on his sister's farm. In spring of 1870, Peter Mades wrote to Seib and suggested that they become partners and buy out Louis Schaefer's store. Seib agreed, and he and Mades became partners. In the 1870 census, taken in June, Mades indicates his occupation is “merchant.”

More significant changes occurred in Peter Mades' life in the years that followed. One of the two Schaefer girls staying with the Madeses soon attracted the attention of Mades, and he and Emilie Schaefer were married in 1872. Their first of eventually four children was born in 1873.

Unfortunately, Seib and Mades' store did not do well, so in 1873 they ceased their partnership and split $700. Seib, who married Peter's sister Caroline in 1873, continued to operate the store.

The Madeses, however, moved to Mechanicsville in 1874. This village was relatively new, founded and platted by Fortunatus Castlio in the decade following Civil War. The Madeses would purchase three of the town's forty-five lots in 1874, including the two lots upon which the Howell Institute would later be built, and operated a general store selling drygoods and clothing in a building that had previously housed a store for several years. Mades bought an additional lot in 1875. Besides running his store, Mades served as the Mechanicsville postmaster from 1874 until 1878, probably operating the post office out of his store. For reasons that are no longer known, Mades sold all four lots on June 7, 1878. By 1880 he had left storekeeping and returned with his family to the Hamburg area and resumed farming. He continued to farm for most of that decade.

The event that became known as the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run had its beginning in the Homestead Act of 1862 which promised 160 acres of public land absolutely free to anyone who would claim and live on the land for five years, farming a required minimum number of acres. The Unassigned Lands, which were surrounded by tribal lands, had been intended as a reservation area for the Plains Indians and other tribes. However, the American government would once again disregard its promises to Native Americans and, on March 23, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison authorized settlement of the nearly two million acres of the Unassigned Lands under the Homestead Act. All or portions of the modern counties of Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne were included. When Harrison did this, “[t]radesmen, professional men, common laborers, capitalists, and politicians alike looked to the cornucopia of opportunity offered by settlement of the long-withheld lands of Indian Territory.” The new rail stations at Guthrie, Edmond, Oklahoma (City), Verbeck, and Norman were especially attractive locations. The rush to Oklahoma Territory began.

Two regiments of U. S. cavalry were brought to Oklahoma Territory to assist the government in its preparation for April 22. The soldiers assisted in surveying land and dividing them into 160 acre tracts. Each tract was clearly marked with cornerstones to minimize controversies about boundaries. The troops would also patrol the Unassigned Lands in the few days before April 22, making sure that no one arrived early and was hiding within the area in order to have an advantage. Anyone who arrived before noon on April 22 would lose the right to participate; these individuals who arrived too soon were called “sooners.” Those who made the run on April 22 were called “'89ers.”

The soldiers also helped keep order in the groups of settlers who began to mass at the Kansas border towns, a few miles north of the Unassigned Lands, although there were far too few soldiers to deal with the tens of thousands of settlers. The railroad towns of Arkansas City and Caldwell, just thirty miles apart, were the most popular places. Troops were also stationed near Kingfisher and at Fort Reno. Purcell was the major gathering point on the southern border, but the soldiers from Fort Sill only arrived on April 21, so people had a month to crowd the perimeter. Although camaderie among the '89ers quickly developed, gambling, drunkenness, and brawling were problems the soldiers dealt with. At Caldwell, “on the day before the opening, Easter Sunday, they played baseball, held foot races, and conducted religious services.”

Early on April 22 the masses of '89ers crowded at the border, ready to make a run for the land. One historian describes what happened at noon when the starting signal sounded: “Some said the earth literally shook the instant following the bugler's notes. Thousands of horses and wagons raced forward. The first train belched black smoke and began moving. Knowing that not all who wanted land would have a horse or wagon, the government had ordered trains to be available to carry prospective settlers into Oklahoma. The trains were ordered to go exactly 15 miles per hour, which was estimated to be the approximate speed of the average horse. Noise, dust, and confusion abounded as approximately 50,000 men, women, and children rushed for only 12,000 available tracts of land.” Many family members stayed behind to await word of whether or not their father, brother, or husband had been able to stake his claim. Once the '89er arrived at the section of land he wanted, he used the cornerstone markers that the surveyors and soldiers had planted to determine the range and township of his claim. He would then plant a stake which bore his name and the location of the claim. Many then rushed to a land office to register the claim. Others quickly improvised “improvements” such as digging a well or putting up a tent. By late afternoon, new towns were forming as thousands of '89ers gathered. One reporter who witnessed the day's events wrote, “Unlike Rome, the city of Guthrie was built in a day.” Another individual put it this way: “[I]t seemed that in little more than an afternoon an entire society had simply sprung from the earth.”

Peter Mades was part of this new society. It is not known when Mades made the 500 mile trip from Hamburg to the Unassigned Lands. However, it is known that his daughter Katie was born only seventeen days before the Land Rush occurred; Mades may have already left for Oklahoma Territory before she was born. It also is not known with full certainty if anyone from Hamburg accompanied him, but the fact that his father-in-law Louis Schaefer, his brother-in-law Frederick Schaefer, and another brother-in-law John Rieffer also staked claims that day on tracts near Mades' claim makes it highly likely that the four men, all from the Hamburg area, travelled together. Because their claims were within three miles of the Edmond train depot, it seems likely the men took the train from the north, jumping off and racing for their claims when the train pulled into the Edmond station. What is known with certainty is that by day's end that Mades, his father-in-law, and Frederick Schaefer had staked claims in the central portion of Lincoln Township, and John Rieffer in the northeast portion of nearby Britton Township. Their wives and children would follow. In the 1890 Oklahoma State Census Peter and Emilie, along with their children Dora, Louis, and Katie, are farming in Lincoln Township. In the next few years, the local Edmond newspaper noted the “finest stalks of corn” grown by Mades and his thoroughbred boar he had shipped to Edmond from Missouri. On December 24, 1894, Mades filed notice in court that he was offering proof of his 1889 claim, making the land his.

Only a few weeks before Mades filed the notice, the controversial matter of Louis Schaefer's will had been settled in court. Schaefer had died at his home on February 12, 1890, less than ten months after staking his claim. The day before he died, in the presence of three witnesses at Peter Mades' home, he had written his will, leaving all of his property to his daughter Emilie, Peter's wife. Emilie's sister, Henrietta Rieffer; her brother, Frederick Schaefer; and Emilie's other sister, Lena Brockman, objected to the will and filed a petition in court. After several witnesses testified, the three siblings withdrew their petition, and the land went to Emilie and Peter.

Peter Mades would do well in the coming years. Around 1895 Mades once again began a business venture, this time selling real estate in Edmond. At least as early as 1897, he and an Ohioan named George Wahl had formed a partnership as “land agents.” This partnership lasted at least through the turn of the century and possibly longer. Apparently Mades did quite well financially as a realtor, building a significant addition to the Mades home in 1899, and in 1904 taking three months to travel with his nephew George Schaefer from Hamburg through Missouri and Illinois, including a six-day stay at the World's Fair in St. Louis. In approximately 1895 Mades became involved in local politics, serving as a delegate in county Republican primaries and being active in the Edmond Republican Club. By 1889 he was serving on the Edmond city council.

Beginning in 1907, however, the patterns of Mades' life changed. Perhaps it was due to his wife's illness; the Edmond newspaper stated on January 24, that “Mrs. Peter Mades is seriously ill” in an Oklahoma City hospital. In May, Mades resigned his seat on the Edmond city council, sold the Mades home in Edmond, and “purchased a fine residence” in Oklahoma City at 1109 East 9th Street. The newspaper noted that Peter and Emilie Mades “have always been held in the highest esteem.” By early 1908 Mades had retired. For reasons that are not known, the Madeses would move to Visalia, California, by 1910 to live with Peter's older brother Philip and his family. The census taken that year indicates that Peter Mades had no job, but was living off his own income, apparently so well off that he did not need to work. Later that year, on December 28, Emilie Mades died. Mades would survive his wife only two weeks, dying on January 27, 1911, at the age of sixty-seven. He was buried in Oklahoma City.

Peter Mades lived a life of change and the risk that always accompanies change. Like his immigrant parents, Mades was not afraid of new ventures, some far from his birthplace. And like so many other young men of his era who were part of great movements of people like the California Gold Rush and the Homestead Act, Peter Mades was caught up in the excitement and promise of the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush, and his participation in that event changed his life in many ways.

Sources: 1875 Atlas Map of St. Charles County; 49thmissouri.com; “Built in a Day: The Oklahoma Land Rush (National Park Service); Crow's Nest (Thetntstory.org); Emails from Doug Mades; Federal Censuses; Findagrave.com; Fold3.com; “Land Run of 1889” (Okhistory.org); Oklahoma Historical Society Historic Newspapers (gateway.okhistory.org); Oklahoma City Deaths (Okhistory.org); Oklahoma Territory Census for 1890 (Okhistory.org); Peter Mades' G. A. R. Application (Oklahoma Historical Society); Soldiers' Records (s1.sos.mo.gov/records) U. S. City Directories, 1822-1995 (Ancestryheritagequest.com) U. S. Land Patents Homesteads, Oklahoma County, Indian Territory, Land Run of April 22, 1889 (Okhistory.org).