By Jonita Mullins
Many towns throughout the American West got their start as refueling stations for the railroads. When the proposed route of a new railroad line was learned, enterprising businessmen flocked to that line.
The early-day railroads needed stations every few miles to ensure they could refuel as needed and could take on freight and passengers, which was, of course, their primary source of revenue.
Boynton was one of those rail station towns that sprang up in Muskogee County on part of the Frisco Railroad system. Before the rail line was even completed, the Boynton townsite was being platted, lots were sold and homes and businesses were being built. The Boynton post office was established in 1902, and the town was named for E.W. Boynton, the chief engineer for the railroad.
Some 10 years earlier, the historically black town of Lee had established a post office just to the north of where Boynton would be built. It was named for David E. Lee, an attorney and secretary for Judge H.C. Reed, a Creek freedman who served as a judge for the Creek Nation.
When the new railroad came through and started the town of Boynton, the citizens of Lee decided it would be advantageous to be located on the rail line. So they picked up the town and moved it a few miles southeast to Boynton. They literally transported the buildings from Lee to Boynton’s Kenefick Street. Seltzer’s Drug Store and Citizen’s Dry Goods Store were just a couple of the black-owned businesses operating in early Boynton.
The town received an influx of jobs, a growth in population and general prosperity when oil was discovered in the vicinity. At one time, Boynton could claim the Transcontinental Oil Refinery with a capacity of 10,000 barrels per day as well as the Francis Vitrified Brick Company, which produced 200,000 paving bricks per day.
It also had two banks, a drug store, a hotel, good schools, a post office, grain mill, two cotton gins, five or six churches and a dozen or more stores. Boynton grew until the oil played out in the 1930s, and then it saw a steady decline in its population.
But in its beginnings, Boynton was a prosperous little town and it boasted some very fine homes. One was built by Franklin Miller in 1901. Miller was a real estate agent who came to Indian Territory with the Missouri Pacific Railroad. He settled in Boynton and went into banking, becoming the cashier for the First National Bank of Boynton.
Miller built a three-story, 12-room cedar home of such excellent craftsmanship that 100 years later, the house was as sound as the day it was built and a gracious reminder of Boynton’s prosperous past.
Reach Jonita Mullins at jonita@netscape.com.
