BRYAN COUNTY HISTORY: Finchtown- A Community under Water
Bryan County Genealogy Library
There has always been a bit of confusion about Finchtown, a community that ceased to exist when Lake Texoma was filled. Sources say that a post office named Finch was established two miles northwest of Colbert in 1898, also briefly known as Finchville, and in 1901 was permanently changed to Platter.
Finchtown, just northwest of Platter where a ferry crossed the Washita, was founded in 1870 by Ode Finch, a Chickasaw. J. M. Finch, a descendent of Ode, celebrated his sixty-third anniversary in 1963 and told the Democrat that he and his bride, Vada, got married on the Finchtown Ferry boat in 1900. In 1905 the newspaper in nearby Woodville reported: “Work has begun and is progressing nicely on the road to the Finchtown Ferry and it will not be long before we will begin to reap the reward for our labor.” Mr. Bowen was in charge of the ferry.
BRYAN COUNTY HISTORY: Connecting to the world
Bryan County Genealogy Library
Alexander Graham Bell gifted the world with the invention of the telephone at about the same time many communities in Native American Territory were becoming “civilized” enough to need one. By 1886 there was a commercial telephone line from Tahlequah to Fort Gibson to Muskogee. A few years later Guthrie and Oklahoma City constructed small exchanges. 1897 saw Arkansas Valley Telephone company connecting towns throughout the state. In 1902 it became the Pioneer Telephone Company, and in 1905 joined the Bell System. By 1912 the Pioneer company had 115 exchanges in Oklahoma, with 114,975 miles of aerial wire and 19,480 miles of underground wire.