109 - Alabama Watson - Luther, OK
Posted by: 
hamquilter
N 35° 40.011 W 097° 10.075
14S E 665822 N 3948544
Alabama Watson is one of four centenarians found at Tillman Cemetery.
Waymark Code: WMENJZ
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 06/19/2012
Views: 9
Tillman cemetery is located along historic Route 66, one and a half miles east of Luther Road on the north side of the road. This is primarily a black cemetery, and many of the headstones are merely rocks with no names or dates. The oldest date we found was 1913, with only three headstones from back in the "teens". The most recent date we found was 1999, although at the time of our visit, two men were working at one site, pouring concrete.
In the far southeast corner of the cemetery, we found the headstone for Alabama Watson. We had to blink several times and re-calculate to confirm - she was 109 at the time of her death. Born in 1838 in Selma, Alabama, she most certainly was born into slavery.
** Alabama Watson was born the same year that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was born.
** 1838 was also the year that the Cherokee Tribe was forcibly moved westward in what became known as the Trail of Tears.
** She was an infant when John D. Rockerfeller and cavalry officer, George Custer were born.
** Watson was five when the mass migration westward began, on the Oregon Trail.
** In 1844 when Alabama was six, Samuel Morse sent the first telegram from the U.S. Capitol to Baltimore with the message: “What hath God wrought.”
** I845 when Alabama was seven, President John Tyler signed the bill annexing Texas.
** Alabama was eight when gold was first discovered at John Sutter's sawmill in northern California, which set off the California Gold Rush.
** She was 27 in 1865 when the 13th Amendment freed the slaves.
** Alabama Watson saw the Civil War, World War I and II, and died two years after the bombing of Hiroshima.
What stories she could tell. Her headstone reads: ALABAMA WATSON / Apr. 25, 1838 Selma, Alabama / Sept. 15, 1947 Luther, Okla.
Location of Headstone: Tillman Cemetery
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