s, after serving and organizing Ebenezer church
at Lehigh the previous year, located at Lukfata in the fall of 1903, and
has been the local teacher and regular supply of the church, since that
date, a period of eleven years.

XLIII

PARSON CHARLES W. STEWART

DOAKSVILLE, 1823-1896.

"A soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb,
Who did not fear to own his cause,
Or blush to speak His name."

This pioneer circuit rider of the Choctaw Freedmen came forth from a
period of slavery, to the Choctaw Indians in the wilds of Indian
Territory, that covered the first 42 years of his life. His home was
afterwards located near the Kiamichi river, seven miles west of
Doaksville. He grew to manhood and always lived in an unimproved,
sparsely settled timber country in an obscure and inaccessible corner of
the world.

Taking John the Baptist, as his ideal of a good christian worker, he
became the leading herald of the gospel message to his people, first in
the valley of the Kiamichi, and then going forth in every direction in
the larger valley of Red river, he established a monthly circuit of
preaching stations, that included the most thickly settled neighborhoods
of the colored people in the territory, now included in Choctaw and
McCurtain counties. Like John, he seems never to have sat before a
camera long enough to leave the world his portrait, and, though serving
faithfully as a minister more than 25 years he never enjoyed the
privilege and pleasure of attending a meeting of the General Assembly.

Judging him, however, by the results of his work, the circle of churches
established and acceptably served for an unusually long period of years,
and the number of talented young men, whom he discovered, in the
communities visited, and enthused with the longing desire and ambition
to become leaders of their race especially useful and efficient teachers
and preachers of the gospel, he proved himself worthy to be rated as one
of the most aggressive and successful of the early leaders of his race.

"A man he was to all the country dear,
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor ever changed, nor wished to change his place."

PERIOD OF SLAVERY, 1823-1866

Charles W. Stewart was a native of Alabama, and, at the age of ten in
1833, was transported with the Choctaws, to whom as a slave he belonged,
to the southeastern part of Indian Territory. John Homer was then his
master, and he