TJ Auxier

Thomas Jefferson Auxier
1857-1930

Through the blackness of the prairie night, the wagon slowly rumbled on toward the faint light of a lantern suspended from a pole, the only sign of the tiny dugout in the side of a canyon. Seated in the wagon with her husband and brother-in-law, Barbara Ellen Banner Auxier held Arminta, her 10 month-old baby, in her arms. No one will ever know the thoughts that must have gone through the mind of the young mother, wife of Thomas Jefferson Auxier, as she was about to begin a new life in the Oklahoma Territory.

Like so many other early settlers, the Auxier came to the new country as a family. Four brothers, Bill, Sam, Thomas and George, filed around 1894 on adjoining homesteads in the northeast corner of Washita county, five miles south of the future town of Weatherford, Oklahoma.

Ella Auxier and her baby made the trip by train to El Reno, Oklahoma. Her husband, Thomas Jefferson Auxier, following a day later with the family's possessions on a freight train. Tom's brother Bill met them there and helped reassemble the wagon and load it. Then came a four day trip through the unbroken prairie over unmarked trails and across the treacherous Canadian River to a dugout home and a primitive new live.

Thomas Auxier's homestead of 160 acres was one mile west and five miles south of present day Weatherford. His brother Sam arrived that summer to stake out a claim two miles north and, later, George settled just west of Sam.

It was late autumn when the Auxiers arrived and it was necessary for them to live in the dugout all winter, as did most other settlers. It was a sometimes lonely life. When Thomas Auxier found it necessary to make the long trip to El Reno for supplies, Ella would be left alone for days with only the baby for company.

On one such absence of the father, during a cold snowy day, an Indian, clad only in a breechcloth entered the dugout. Terribly frightened, the young mother slowly made her way between the unannounced visitor and the baby sleeping on a bed. However, the Indian warmed himself at the fire, grunted something that may have been his thanks, and left as silently as he had come.

Thomas' brother, Sam, a carpenter, helped his brother build a two room house which was said to be the first within a radius of 10 miles. Thomas had dug a well and before long had broken and fenced 40 acres to meet requirements for "proving up" his claim. Thomas Jefferson Auxier's first crop of cotton made a profit of 60 cents.

written Joyce Mabry Carney
published May 10, 1973 - The Weatherford Daily News

Thomas Jefferson Auxier married Barbara Ellen Banner on February 28, 1892. They were the parents of six children.

Nancy Arminta Auxier who married (1.) Ed Dozier (2.) Samuel Phelps
Samuel Morgan Auxier who married Amy Leedy
Vera Ethel Auxier who married 1. Samuel Wilks 2. Estel Parkhurst
George William Auxier who married Leta Duncan
Mary Belle Auxier who married who married Ernest Perry Mabry

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