OklahomaHorses Magazine Sept 2022

September / October 2022 • OklahomaHorses 23 ple of years as a driver of a six-mule team, hauling troops and supplies. He tired of mule driving and returned to the plains to catch horses. When he heard the territory was to be thrown open to settlement in April 1889, Pendleton picked out the good bottom land farm” that he claimed in the 1889 land run. “The ’89ers came from the Kansas line on the north, but Pendleton rode his horse up from the south and be- came a Sooner by staking his homestead a bit sooner than regulations provided.” His descendants said, “He had been here so long that he knew what land he wanted to claim. He found the property — 160 acres — then got it legally during the first land run in 1889. He already had a legal right to be here. After the land run, he lived in a dugout for a while, then built his house. He named his spread the Locust Grove Farm, and in 1893, he married Mag- gie McGrath of Kingfisher. Their son was McGrath Pendleton.” Claiming Distinctions The Yukon Sun article said, “Pendleton claimed two distinctions. His was the only round barn in this part of the country, and he was the oldest breeder of registered red- polled cattle in Oklahoma,” raising them prior to the turn of the twentieth century. In a 1910 story in Sturm’s Oklahoma Magazine , Pendleton explained, “When I was down on the ’72 ranch, we sent up to the states and got two Red Poll bulls for the range. I looked them over and just thought that if all cattle were nice and red and had no horns, like these, they would be all right for me, so when I came up here I made up my mind to develop a herd of them just for my own satisfaction.” Pendleton also raised and sold Percheron draft horses and raised Tamworth hogs. “Many old timers remember his prize Tam- worth boar, ‘Diffendaffer,’ which weighed in at 1250 pounds and which for several years was judged the champion of all breeds in every state fair in which he was entered,” the newspaper said. In 1907, Pendleton built the first round barn in the Canadian County area, 86 feet in diameter and 55 feet high. A tornado blew off the roof, and the rest of the struc- ture deteriorated. So the family tore down the remains of the red barn. By redirecting the area’s water flow, Pend- leton landed in a muddy disagreement. One of the founders of the Frisco Railway, Civil War Union veteran Ishmael “Ish” Cutright, sued Pendleton over the water issue, and Cutright won. A December 1907 court document warned that Pendleton could no longer deflect the water, which ul- timately emptied into the North Canadian River, or in any manner place anything in the water or dig ditches or do anything that changed the natural flow of the water. Carving a Legacy With a Yukon address, Locust Grove Farm is now home to the fourth, fifth, and sixth generations of Oklahoma Pendle- tons. Shirley Pendleton Morse and her husband, Wayne Morse, Shirley’s brother Mike McGrath Pendleton and his wife, Jody Pendleton, and their daughter Mikah Pendleton Spicer and her husband, Preston Spicer, and their daughter Merrily Spicer all live on the farm, which has been designated as a Centennial Farm in Oklahoma. Howard Pendleton carved out the family’s legacy, arriving eight years prior to Oklahoma Territory’s first land run in 1889 and nine years prior to the Spencer brothers forging the town of Yukon circa 1890. Along with his daughter Mikah Pendleton Spicer, Mike McGrath Pendleton owns four horses. He described how his dad, Stanley Pendleton (Howard Pendleton’s grandson), “won a horse in a poker game. A quarter horse named Gypsy, she is no longer with us. But her fourth colt just died in 2021.” Howard Pendleton’s descendants gather at the Locust Grove Farm home he built near Yukon in about 1889 or 1890. Mike McGrath Pendleton and his wife, Jody Pendleton, now live in the house. Shown from left are Merrily Spicer, Preston Spicer, Mikah Pendleton Spicer, April Pendleton, Noah Pendleton, Ryan Pendleton, Jody Pendleton, Mike McGrath Pendleton, Shirley Pendleton Morse, Carey Morse Laverty, Matt Laverty, Gavin Laverty, Lydia Laverty, and Sophie Morse. Photo by Mikah Marie Photography LLC. Below, Gypsy poses in 1970. Howard Pendleton’s grandson won Gypsy in a poker game. Gypsy’s fourth colt died in 2021. Photo courtesy of the Pendleton family.