[Information taken from the book "Leaders and Leading Men of the Indian Territory, Choctaw and Chickasaw", by H. F. O’Beirne, vol. 1. Publisher is: American Publishers’ Association, Chicago, IL, printed in the year 1891. Page 247]

SANFORD MINOR MEAD

The son of Tyra Landers Mead, of Carroll county, Georgia. The subject of our sketch was born in 1848, and came to Panola county, Chickasaw Nation, with his widowed mother in 1868, settling within six miles of Colbert Station. In 1872 he married a Chickasaw named Eliza Hote, who survived but a few years, after which, in 1878, he married Rose, daughter of Dick Cobb, of Panola, by whom he had one son named Walter Bradford, who is now nine years of age. In 1881, after the death of his wife which occurred shortly after the birth of her son, Mr. Mead married Frances Kemp, daughter of the illustrious Joel Kemp by whom he has three children, Martha Frances, Minor and Landers. The subject of this sketch opened a farm on Island Bayou in 1873. He has now one hundred acres of land under cultivation, and is owner of what is known as the Carpenter Bluff Ferry, on Red River.

Mr. Mead has kept himself completely aloof from politics, never having held any office save that of school trustee for Bloomfield Academy. When he first came to the Territory, Panola county was little more than a wilderness, there being few farms which contained over ten acres of land, the fullbloods at that time contenting themselves with two acres of corn and nothing more. There were but four plank houses in the county, and the settlers were forced to cross the river into Texas to have their corn ground into meal. Corn was the chief article of trade, and Mr. Mead traded grain for the first cast iron plow that was ever used in the Nation, the primitive implement being a rude iron blade manufactured by the blacksmith. Buggies were unknown at the time, and the wagons were cast-off iron axle government schooners fitted only for four-horse teams. During the early days the Indian people used to dry leaves of the sumack in lieu of tobacco, and invariably inhaled the smoke. To this habit Mr. Mead traces back the pulmonary diseases which are yearly carrying off the aborigines.

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