A few months after Daniel died, a memorable event occurred at Electa’s house. A group of church leaders from across the United States visited. They were headed to an important meeting near Tahlequah (tah lee kwah), Oklahoma. At this meeting, they were going to discuss sending missionaries into a huge area of land that stretched to the west of Indian Territory. The missionaries would teach the Indians there about Christianity.
A few days before the meeting, 60 people filled Electa’s house for a church service. It was Sunday, October 20, 1844. There were Indians, African Americans, and white people. Many of them were traveling to the meeting in Tahlequah.
Missionaries often had to travel long distances to faraway places.
One of Electa’s guests was Bishop Thomas Morris. Later, Bishop Morris wrote about the visit in his diary. He said Electa was smart and well educated. He said being a Christian was important to her.
Although he didn’t mention such a conversation in his diary, it’s possible that Bishop Morris and Electa talked about slavery. It was an important topic of conversation at the time. Owning African American slaves was legal then in the United States. Disagreement over slavery would eventually lead to the Civil War in 1861. Already in 1844, many people thought that slavery should end.
In May 1844, a few months before Bishop Morris visited Electa, the leaders of his church, known as the Methodist Episcopal (i pis kuh puhl) Church, had argued about slavery. Church leaders who lived in the northern part of the United States said slavery was wrong. Church leaders who lived in the southern United States said that it was all right to own slaves. The southerners got angry. They voted to secede from the northern church. They created their own church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South.
Bishop Thomas Morris believed that slavery was wrong. He stayed with the northern church. For nearly 100 years after this, there were separate northern and southern Methodist Episcopal churches.
Bishop Thomas Morris
Many Cherokee Indians were at the meeting in Tahlequah, too. Tahlequah was the capitol of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. Soon, the Cherokee Nation would become very important to Electa.
On Christmas Day in 1845, Electa married a Cherokee Indian named John Walker Candy. Their wedding was near Seneca, Missouri, where Electa had lived with Daniel Adams.
John was born in Tennessee around 1806. Like Electa, he went to boarding school. He had also been married once before. He had 4 daughters. His first wife, Mary Ann Watie, had died in 1844.
Mary Ann came from a very important Cherokee family. Her brother, Elias Boudinot, was the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper. It was the very first Indian newspaper in the US. The Cherokee Phoenix was bilingual, printed in both English and Cherokee. It was first published in Georgia in 1828. John Walker Candy had worked at the Cherokee Phoenix as a printer.
The front page of the Cherokee Phoenix. The newspaper was printed in both Cherokee and English.
Mary Ann’s family played a big role in bringing the Cherokees to Indian Territory. In 1835, her brother Elias, cousin John Ridge, and uncle Major Ridge signed a treaty. The treaty said that the Cherokee Indians would move from Georgia to Indian Territory. Other Cherokee Indians signed the treaty, too.
However, most of the tribe did not want to leave Georgia. The treaty made them angry. But once it was signed, they had to go. In the winter of 1838–1839, the Cherokee set out for Indian Territory. Their new home was far away and the winter was harsh. Thousands of Cherokee Indians died while walking to Indian Territory. Their journey became known as the Cherokee Trail of Tears.
After they arrived in Indian Territory, many Cherokee remained angry about the treaty. They wanted revenge. They set out to kill those who had signed the treaty in 1835. In 1839, Mary Ann’s brother, cousin, and uncle were killed. Many others who had signed the treaty were killed, too.
Meanwhile, John kept busy working as a printer. In Indian Territory, he worked for a second newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate. He also printed sections of the Bible that were translated into Cherokee, as well as Cherokee almanacs, hymn books, school books, and Bible story books. He even printed books in other Indian languages, such as Choctaw (chok taw) and Muskogee (muh skoh gee). One of his biggest projects, in 1842, was printing 1,000 copies of the constitution and laws of the Cherokee Nation.
When John Walker Candy was working as a printer, the job was much tougher than today. There were no computers in the 1800s.
To form a word, a printer picked tiny metal letters out of a wooden box. The letters, called type, were made of lead. Lining them up to create words was called composing type. Once the words were composed, they were coated in ink and pressed onto paper to make a printed page. The whole process was done on a machine called a printing press. There was no electricity. Printing presses were powered by steam engines or operated by hand.
Printers working on the Cherokee Advocate
John’s job was even tougher because the Cherokee Phoenix and the Cherokee Advocate were printed in both English and Cherokee. Often, articles that appeared in the newspaper first had to be translated from English into Cherokee. John helped with the translating.
Reading in their own language was something new for the Cherokee. An alphabet, with 86 letters, was created in the 1820s by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah. Before this, the Cherokee had a spoken language but no written one.
Once they had a written language, the Cherokee Indians were able to start a newspaper and print books and other things. Having printed words kept them informed. For the first time, the Cherokee were able to publish their views on important topics, such as the Trail of Tears.
For a few years after John and Electa were married, what we know about her life comes entirely from what we know about him. Electa doesn’t seem to have worked as a teacher. She was probably busy raising her 3 sons and 4 stepdaughters. We know that John and Electa spent some of this time in Arkansas, just outside of Indian Territory. They may also have lived in Missouri and in Indian Territory, where John worked as a printer. And for a little while, they lived in Texas.
In 1846, the Cherokee Indians were still fighting among themselves. “I think there is now to be no end to bloodshed,” John wrote to Mary Ann’s brother Stand Watie on April 10 of that year. The families of those who had signed the 1835 treaty, forcing the Cherokee to move to Indian Territory, were still in danger. This included John, Electa, and their 7 children.
John and Electa decided that Indian Territory was not a safe place for their family. They would to move to Texas. There the family would be safe. They were not alone. Other Cherokee families fled to Texas, too.
In Texas, there was sadness. John’s youngest daughter, 7-year-old Sarah Jane, died there in 1846.
A new treaty signed in 1846 settled the fighting among the different groups of Cherokee. Soon after this, John and Electa returned to Indian Territory.
In 1847, John was back working as a printer. He worked in Tahlequah and in what today is Park Hill, Oklahoma. In 1852, he was elected to Tahlequah’s first town council.
Then, once again, Electa’s life changed.
A printing press
