When the filings were made, about sixty had dropped out of the first five hundred and even more out of the second five hundred, evidently thinking they were not likely to get enough for the relinquishment to pay them for their trouble and original investment, since it cost them a first payment of two hundred and six dollars on the purchase price of six dollars per acre and a locating fee of twenty-five dollars, and in some cases the first expense reached three hundred dollars. If the relinquishment was not sold before the six months allowed for establishing residence expired, it was necessary to establish residence making sufficient improvement for that purpose, or lose the money invested.

Out of the first four thousand numbers some two thousand had filed, and practically half of this number had contracted to sell their relinquishments. The buyers had deposited the amount to be paid in some bank to the credit of the claimant, to be turned over when the purchaser had secured filing on the land, the bank acting as agent between the parties to the transaction.

I shall long remember October 1, 190— in Megory—called the "Magic City," and claiming a population of three thousand, but probably not exceeding one thousand, five hundred actual inhabitants, though filled with transients from the beginning of the rush a year before, and had at no time during this period less than two thousand, five hundred persons in the town.

My bride-to-be and my grandmother had received numbers 138 and 139 which would likely be called to file the second day, while my sister received 170. On the afternoon of the second, Orlean, and my grandmother, who had raised a family in the days of slavery, and was then about seventy-seven years of age, were called, and came out of the land office a few minutes later with their blue papers, receipts for the two hundred six dollars, first payment and fees, which I had given the agent before they entered the land office. Their agent went into the land office with them to see that they got a straight filing, which they received. My sister, however, was not called that day and the next day being Sunday, she would not be called until the following Monday.