The Renaissance Neighborhood History Project

  Part I:   Rosemont Heights Rosemont Heights was one of the earliest divisions or ‘additions’ of land that was graded, platted with lots for sale in what is now as the Renaissance Neighborhood.   It was platted in 1911.   Originally Muscogee Creek land, it was allotted to Mary Jane Perryman in the early 1900's.   Mary Jane  would have been about 17 years old in 1911.  She  had married young and by 1911 she and her first husband, John Robert Harkness, already had three children.   It would be very interesting to know how much she was paid for the property when purchased by a Mr. John P. Given.  According to her niece, Wavel Ashbaugh, interviewed in 2015 by Voices of Oklahoma, Native people were often taken advantage of with complex land contracts and white settlers"...didn't pay very much for it...".   The present-day boundaries of Rosemont Heights are Delaware Avenue to South Florence Avenue and Thirteenth Street to Fifte...

The Renaissance Neighborhood History project originally set out to learn about the homes built here.  We have a range of classic bungalows, adorable gingerbread brick cottages and some magnificent Tudors and four squares.  However, a long the way I found that our neighborhood was the original land allotment two Muscogee woman. Sisters.   I then set out to learn as much as I could about both of them. One question I had was, did they live on their land?   If so where?    This post is about  one of them.   Her name is Addie Perryman. Her land made up the West side our neighborhood.  You can read about her sister, Mary Jane, here .  Addie Perryman About 1899, Age 14 In my search to learn about Addie and her land I discovered bits and pieces about her life.   Newspaper articles, documents tucked into property abstracts and a few surviving court records tell of tragedies, trauma and trials.   Trials as in ordeals but also literal cov...