Trailblazing Women: Angie Debo, Historian, Part 1

Marshall, Oklahoma 1902

COOPER, William > COOPER, Amos > COOPER, John L > COOPER, Alfred James > COOPER, Lina m. Edward Debo > DEBO, Angie Elbertha

One might not have expected this girl, born in 1890 in Beattie, Kansas into a family of restless pioneers who barely scraped out a living from the earth in spots throughout the midwest would become a noted historian, but she did. Angie Debo, Oklahoma historian specializing in the Native American history, was the product of a mother whom she described as a "practical feminist," who believed a woman's role was not merely to help "her man," but to enjoy the fruits of their joint efforts equally. Strong words for a turn-of-the-20th century wife and mother. It led Angie Debo away from a path of marriage and children into the world of higher education where there were only a handful of opportunities for women.

Edward Debo and Lina Cooper

Lina, Angie's mother, was born in September of 1865 in Illinois. She was the oldest girl and second of seven children born to Alfred James Cooper and his wife Marian Angeline Willard. Alfred seemed not to have the best luck with farming, constantly coming up against nature and the economy of the time. In 1859, just two years after his marriage, he left his home in Illinois and walked west to California, in hopes of finding a fortune or some better fortune, at any rate. Apparently, he came back two years later, much thinner, but no richer. He and his wife and two kids headed to the land of rich northeast Iowa soil about 1867 and spent the next several years living in Buchanan County, Iowa. Then, it was on to Rooks County, Kansas in 1879. Lina's older brother, Alfred D. Cooper's children are highlighted here.

Lina didn't have a chance at an education as she was needed to help provide for the large family of seven children by caring for the youngest five and then was sent out to work as a child care helper to young mothers in town for fifty cents a day. The soddie they lived in was leaky and buggy. In 1883, the family was faced with, what was described in Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, as a "starving time." Things couldn't get much worse. Alfred then moved his family on to Beattie.

Lina met a young man in Beattie named Edward Debo. Peter Debo, his father, had benefited from Napolean Bonaparte's acquisition of much of the Prussian territory in the early 1800s. His family settled along the the Rhine. Post-Bonaparte, Peter bristled under the Prussian rule and headed to the United States in 1854. Once he got to Illinois, he married Edward's mother, Elizabeth Hoppmeier in Illinois. Edward was a very industrious young man and Lina an incredible industrious young woman and it would become a very good, long-lasting match once they married in 1889.

Angie & Edwin

Angie came along first, born on 30 Jan 1890 in Beattie, followed less than two years later by her beloved brother, Edwin, who was born 24 Aug 1891. Unlike many farm families, either by design or by circumstance, they limited their family to two children. The children benefited greatly from the extra attention and both would crave education and other opportunities that they may not have had were they two of a dozen children.

At the age of nine, her family decided to move south from Welcome, Kansas, where they had sold the railroad land they had purchased just a few years before at a tidy $900 profit, to the Oklahoma Territory, which was still booming even ten years after the land grab began in 1889. On 8 Nov 1899, when the Debo's and Lina's parents and some siblings arrived,  Oklahoma was still a rugged place, but there were established towns and farms that would perhaps cause them a little less work once they arrived. Edward moved the farm equipment along the route south and Lina drove the covered wagon.

"...the young girl, seated beside her mother, peered out of a covered wagon at the houses, a story and a half tall; their red barns; and the "green wheat stretching to the low horizon." Where, she wondered, were the Indians? She knew they lived in Oklahoma, but all she had seen so far during her family's travels from Welcome, Kansas, to this small town were homesteaders in frame or sod houses and an occasional rancher or cowboy.

Returning to his separate wagon, sagging with farm equipment, Edward signaled his wife to follow in hers, which was crammed with furniture, dishes, utensils, canned fruit, clothing, and a few precious books. After driving about five miles southward, the family arrived at their new home. It was, Angie, discovered, a one-room shack, probably twenty by twenty feet. The farmer who had patented the land in 1889 had sold out when property values increased beyond expectations. Like many others, he was seeking new profits farther west.

Spotting a tree near a creek, the two children climbed its branches looking for a place where their father could build a playhouse. Meanwhile, the parents unpacked the family's belongings and prepared the evening meal. In their mid-thirties, Edward and Lina Debo were starting over, but each brought to this venture resiliency forged from previous encounters with hardship."

Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, University of Oklahoma Press by Shirley A Leckie, 2000

There life in Oklahoma had begun. Next up, her rugged educational path.