The story of Tennessee's father Garrett Lane as told in the Pioneer Papers of Oklahoma
- Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Tennessee Almira Lane JAMES was born on the Cherokee Neuter Strip, four miles up from the mouth of Shoal Creek near Baxter Spring, Kansas, February 16, 1849, at her Grandfather, David M. Harlan's home.
My mother was Jane M. HARLAN, a Cherokee.
My father, Garrett LANE of English and French descent. They came with the Cherokee here from North Carolina, I think, and to the best of my knowledge were married near Maysville. When I was two months old, my father left my mother and a sister, two years old with my grandfather and in the Spring of 1849 started wagon-train overland to California. I am told that the people who composed this company had been gathering along waiting till the grass was old enough to feed their oxen, cows were taken along with the oxen. The trip took all summer and they reached California that fall, that is my father did but I had two uncles who died of fever on the way and were buried on the plains. My father with his Partner Ed Crutchfield, a half-breed Cherokee, worked two years together and then my father fell in the mime and was killed by the fall. My father's Partner made a division of their earning and mother received half of it but my sister and I did not get ours till we were twenty-one years old. It (our money) was handled by various public administrators and finally I was paid by a public administrator of Missouri after I was married. I only received $130.00 or $135.00.
Garrett's father and mother are unknown. Little else is known about him except that he died while mining gold in California.
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