By T.S. Akers
Among the Five Tribes, there are surnames of note. Some of those names carry much the same weight today as they did in the nineteenth century. One can hardly discuss the Cherokee Nation without mentioning John Ross. And then there are Indian surnames that have faded into history. One of those family names that has nearly been forgotten is that of Coodey. For the brethren of Eufaula Lodge No. 1, AF&AM, a member of the Coodey family, Joseph McDonald in particular, should always be remembered.
To properly place Joseph McDonald Coodey in time, an accounting of his genealogy should be considered. His Cherokee lineage begins with a Cherokee woman named Ghi-goo-ie. Later known as Peggy, she was born about 1727 in what is today North Carolina. Ghi-goo-ie married William Shorey, a native of Scotland, in 1740. The couple’s daughter Annie Shorey, born in 1750 in what is now Alabama, married John McDonald in 1769. John and Annie’s daughter Mary McDonald was born in 1770 and married Daniel Ross of Scotland in 1786. Daniel and Mary had eight children, including John Ross in 1790, who later rose to fame. One of the siblings was Jane "Jennie" Ross, born in 1787, who married Joseph Coodey in 1805. Joseph Coodey was originally from Virginia and had made his home in Tennessee. He and Jennie Ross had nine children, of which two were sons: William Shorey Coodey born in 1806 and Joseph McDonald Coodey born in 1827.[1]
As can be discerned, the Coodey brothers were nephews of John Ross, who served as Principal Chief of the Cherokees from 1828 to 1866. Ross was a mentor to the eldest Coodey brother William Shorey, who in 1831 was part of a delegation sent to Washington, D.C., to present grievances against the state of Georgia for allowing white settlers to move onto Cherokee land.[2] William Shorey went on to draft the Cherokee constitution in 1839 and was then elected president of the National Committee, an advisory group to the chief.[3] William Shorey died at Washington, D.C., in 1849, again serving as part of a Cherokee delegation. He was laid to rest in Congressional Cemetery with Masonic honors.[4] He may have become a Freemason in Tennessee or Tahlequah; the former being where John Ross had joined the Fraternity.
The Coodey Family arrived in the Indian Territory in 1834. Their residence was situated with a Cherokee settlement located six miles east of Fort Gibson on the south side of Bayou Menard. There, Joseph Coodey the elder operated a grist mill. When Sequoyah died in 1843, Coodey took over his salt works on Lee’s Creek, operating it under the name J. Coodey and Son.[5] Advertising in the Cherokee Advocate in 1846, the salt works boasted that 3,000 bushels of salt were on hand for immediate shipment. The salt works ended up not being profitable and the Coodey’s sold it in 1848.[6]
Joseph McDonald Coodey was just seven years old when he made the journey west with his family. To provide for his children’s education, the elder Coodey employed a private tutor by the name of McLane. Joseph McDonald eventually went into the mercantile business, first as a clerk for his uncle Lewis Ross in the Grand Saline area. The two later operated the firm of Ross & Coodey at the Creek Agency near Fern Mountain on the Arkansas River. Ross retired from the mercantile operation shortly before the Civil War and Joseph McDonald became the sole proprietor. Joseph McDonald married Mary Rebecca Thornberry, a sister to the wife of prominent Muscogee citizen George W. Stidham, in 1857.[7] At the onset of the Civil War, most of the residents of the Creek Agency abandoned the settlement, taking refuge either in Texas or the southern portion of the Indian Territory. Joseph McDonald chose to close his store at this time and took his wife and two children to Texas. He then returned to the Indian Territory to fight for the Confederacy.[8]
When Cherokee Lodge No. 21 was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Arkansas in 1848, the lodge’s first Junior Warden was the elder Joseph Coodey.[9] He served that lodge as Worshipful Master in 1850.[10] It was likely in this lodge at Tahlequah that Joseph McDonald Coodey took the degrees of Freemasonry. With his mercantile operation apparently thriving at the Creek Agency, Joseph McDonald became one of the men responsible for bringing Freemasonry to that community. It is believed that Rev. Calvin M. Slover, George W. Stidham, and Joseph McDonald Coodey personally travelled to Little Rock, Arkansas, to obtain a dispensation to form a lodge at the Creek Agency. Muscogee Lodge No. 93 was duly chartered there on the 9th of November in 1855. The first Worshipful Master was George W. Stidham, with William Whitfield as Senior Warden, and Albert Barnwell as Junior Warden.[11] In 1859 the elder Joseph Coodey died at the age of 80.[12] At the time the Civil War began, Joseph McDonald was serving as Senior Warden of Muscogee Lodge. As people began to flee the Creek Agency, Joseph McDonald took his family south to Texas. He also took the lodge charter with him to preserve it; either carrying it with him throughout the war or storing it with his family in Texas.[13] Owing to Joseph McDonald’s efforts, the original Muscogee Lodge No. 93 charter survives to this day and is the only original Indian Territory charter that does.
After the withdrawal of the federal army from the Indian Territory in the spring of 1861, the Confederacy sent Albert Pike into the Indian nations to negotiate treaties of alliance. He had represented the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Muscogees in legal claims against the federal government, which made him someone the Five Tribes were familiar with.[14] Pike began his negotiations that summer and was met with immediate success amongst all but the Cherokees. It was not until October that a treaty was signed with the Cherokee Nation, which like the other treaties called for the Cherokees to raise a regiment of cavalry for Confederate service.[15] Some Cherokees sympathetic to the Confederate cause had already begun organizing a regiment that summer. After delivering his family to Texas, Joseph McDonald Coodey returned to the Indian Territory and enlisted in the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles on the 12th of July as a lieutenant in Company I. The regiment was then commanded by Colonel John Drew and was mustered into Confederate service that December.[16] The majority of the regiment had deserted by 1862 and those who remained were reorganized as the 1st Cherokee Mounted Volunteers under the command of Colonel Stand Watie.[17] Coodey’s company was transferred to the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Volunteers in February of 1863.[18] During his service with the Confederacy, Coodey would have participated in the Battles of Pea Ridge and Honey Springs.[19] He likely took part in one of Watie’s more fantastical raids, the capture of the federal supply train, consisting of over 300 wagons, at Cabin Creek in September of 1864.[20]
Before Joseph McDonald Coodey could return to Texas to collect his family, his wife Mary Rebecca passed away in 1866. Coodey then made his residence at North Fork Town on the Texas Road, where he married Mary M. Hardage of the Muscogee Nation in 1867. From this marriage, three additional children were born.[21] Coodey returned to the mercantile business at North Fork Town, which was also referred to as Old Town and Micco. There he formed a partnership with David B. Whitlow, who was a cooper.[22] When the Katy Railroad crossed the Indian Territory in 1872 and bypassed North Fork Town, a group of men from the community induced Robert S. Stevens, construction supervisor, to locate a depot north of the Canadian River in exchange for $1,000. The men who put up the necessary funds included Coodey, Whitlow, and George W. Stidham, all of whom were Masons. It was then that the town of Eufaula was born and situated three miles to the west of North Fork Town.[23] As people began to move into the new town, Coodey & Whitlow were the first to reopen their store, located west of the railroad tracks.[24] This would become Front Street, Eufaula’s original commercial thoroughfare.
It has been said that Muscogee Lodge No. 93 resumed operation at North Fork Town immediately following the Civil War on the second floor of George W. Stidham’s store.[25] The community’s population at the time was around fifty people.[26] The residents of North Fork Town also included four Freemasons, Joseph M. Coodey, George W. Stidham, David B. Whitlow, and Rev. Henry F. Buckner.[27] What is more probable is that those four men began meeting as Masons again after the development of Eufaula in 1872. As all the lodge members had dispersed from the Creek Agency, where the charter was originally established, the four men may not have been aware that the Grand Lodge of Arkansas had suspended their charter in 1867 for failing to respond to the grand lodge’s notice.[28] In 1874 these Masons now located at Eufaula chose to set their affairs straight with the Grand Lodge of Arkansas. This was likely brought about by the desire to form a Grand Lodge of the Indian Territory, a movement spearheaded by Granville McPherson at Caddo Lodge No. 311. That lodge had been chartered at Caddo in 1873.[29] The brethren of Muscogee Lodge settled their debt for dues in arrears with Arkansas, but their original lodge number had been re-issued and a new charter was granted to them as Muscogee Lodge No. 90 on the 1st of April, 1874.[30]
When the convention was held at Caddo to form the Grand Lodge of the Indian Territory, Joseph McDonald Coodey was not in attendance. His proxy as Senior Warden was carried by Rev. Calvin M. Slover. As the sun set on the 5th of October, 1874, Muscogee Lodge came to be known as Muscogee Lodge No. 1 under the newly established grand jurisdiction.[31] The following year, the annual communication was held at Eufaula and that occasion marked the beginning of Coodey’s service to the new grand lodge. In addition to presiding over his lodge as Worshipful Master in 1875, Coodey was elected Junior Grand Warden that September.[32] Coodey was never carried forward as a grand officer, even though he was again elected Junior Grand Warden in 1879.[33] Whilst serving Muscogee Lodge as Master or a Warden during this period, Coodey was also appointed District Deputy Grand Master in 1878.[34] With the exception of the year 1879, he remained in that role until his passing.[35]
Joseph McDonald Coodey passed away at Eufaula on the 19th of November, 1882, at the age of 55.[36] He was laid to rest on a gentle rise north of town, land that Coodey had given the community to be used as a cemetery.[37] In time, Coodey’s friends George W. Stidham and David B. Whitlow would occupy plots not far from his own. Upon his passing, Muscogee Lodge offered the following resolution for Coodey:
In Memoriam
Whereas, The Great Creator has been pleased to remove our worthy and well beloved brother, Jos. McD. Coodey from the curses and troubles of a transitory existence to the rest and joys of a blessed immortality, therefore be it
Resolved, That we, the members of Muscogee Lodge No. 1, deem it proper and becoming to notice the death of our highly esteemed brother and co-laborer who departed this life Nov. 19, 1882.
Resolved, That we do hereby bear record of his death and testimony of his piety as a follower of Christ, of his zeal and fidelity as a member of this Lodge, and of his worth in all his public and private relations in life.
Resolved, That we extend our heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved family of our brother, in this, their irreparable loss and that we wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days.
Resolved, That a copy of this memorial be sent to the Indian Journal, Cherokee Advocate, and Indian Chieftain with request that they publish the same, and also that a copy be spread upon the records of this lodge.
R.C. McGee,
I.G. Vore,
M.G. Butler,
Committee[38]
