History of the House

At the time of statehood (1906 or 07) records were created.  In order to create ownership for the Cherokees land was sometimes purchased from the settlers of Sooners.  This house and its 20 acre plot which touched the east side of the city of Fairland was passed to the government by virtue of a quit-claim deed by Al and Bessie Smith.  The abstract made no mention of a house being built but it is assumed that the house was there then, sitting on the highest point of the acreage and lined up with the streets and property lines of the town which was plotted in line with the Frisco railroad. There was road which had been built around 1870.  A town named Prairie City had been built on the west side of the river across from Wyandotte.  A ferry traveled back and forth and there was a school in Prairie City.  Fairland students sometimes walked along the tracks to go to school.   Prairie City did not flourish and was dissolved.  There are still some property stakes on some of the farmland there.  Some of the houses were moved into Fairland.

This property became part of the grant to a Cherokee girl (Nunnamaker I believe) and it was promptly sold to Frank Gaines.  Gaines had at one time possessed the unoccupied parts of the city. By the late 20’s (28 or 29) Gaines had moved most of his interests to Narcissa and became active in roadbed construction all over Missouri and part of Illinois.  This house and 20 aces became the property of Frank Gaines in about 1910 and he had kept ownership of it.  I asked a niece if her Uncle Frank had built the house and she said not but he had probably enclosed the back porch and put in the bathroom, a now antiquated accessory with a large pedestal bathtub and a lavatory with a date of 1902 underneath.  The floor joists were 24 inches apart which meant that the bathtub was sitting on two floor joists.  We installed new ones between the old which meant that there is only 12 inches of space which I had to crawl through.   In doing so I discovered the remains of a cistern  which had collected  rainwater from the roof of the house. 

The abstract was very weighty for the next 25 years and the Gaines Brothers almost never agreed on anything and often had to call in their mother to settle things.  The ownership of this property was thus bandied back and forth like a ping pong ball.  Ralph and Oka Montgomery bought it  in 1946.   There were still a few old iron pipes in the back which had probably once brought water from a windmill.