THIS PAGE CREATED FEBRUARY 2002 AND UPDATED SEPT 2012

KATIE ANN TYE KLINGAMAN BIRTH Katie Ann was born in Springfield, Missouri on October 11, 1874 to Lucy Jane Tye, daughter of Susan Ann Tye and Henry Harrison Tye and to John Henry Tye, son of Sabra Hart and Wiley Tye. There were eight siblings but three died in infancy.

MARRIAGE Katie had married a man by the name of Stevens in Oklahoma City while quite young. He pushed her from a wagon in a fit of anger and she lost the little boy she was carrying. They were then divorced. Katie and Jacob Franklin Klingaman were married on May 31, 1896 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Jacob was about 39 at this time and she was 21. Jacob had a teenaged daughter, Nellie Elizabeth Klingaman, who lived with him and Katie some of the early years of their marriage.

CHILDREN: Jacob and Katie had the following children:

Bennie F. Klingaman was born February 28, 1898 in Oklahoma and died within the first few months of his life.

Lottie "Lois" Klingaman was born March 28, 1901 in Oklahama Territory. She married Mitchell Charles Rye and they had no children. Lois was born with a crippled foot that was not repaired properly. The left foot and leg were smaller than her other one so she learned to walk with two different sized shoes and usually had a high heel to lift up her crippled foot to a longer length. Through the early years of her life she wore a leg brace. She and Mitchell lived and worked in Oklahoma City until they retired about 1950 and moved to a farm near Waldron, Arkansas in Scott County. Several years after she was widowed, in about 1983 she joined her sister and family by moving to Sedona, Arizona. She was a very strong and determined personality and was an avid gardener. For several years she raised Pekingnese Dogs and always had one or two Pekes in her household. She kept her good mind until her death which came from a stroke as she came within a few week's of her 100th birthday. She managed to live alone until weeks before the end of her life with the help of friends and neighbors even though she was confined most of the time to a wheel chair due to a hip fracture in 1986. She died in Arizona in 2001. Her ashes are in the Kolb Cemetery at Spencer, Oklahoma.

Floyd was born about 1903 and died in 1906. Floyd had been sick with whooping cough and was having trouble breathing. He was taken by the family to Colorado from their home in Oklahoma City. They travelled by wagon the summer of 1906. They heard that Colorado's climate might help him. They stayed in Littleton with some relatives of Jacob's. But Floyd died while they were there and is buried in Littleton.

Ina "Marie" Klingaman was born August 7, 1907 in Oklahoma City. She married Julius I. Puente and Edward Mandel Berger. She had four children. She died December 23, 1993 in Sedona, Arizona and her ashes are scattered there. Click on her name to read her more extensive biography.

LOCATIONS Katie lived in Missouri during her early years. Her parents were thought to have been in the Springfield/Joplin area around the time of her birth and later they were living in Phelps County, at Rolla, Missouri at least by the mid 1870's. She might have started school there. Then by 1880 Katie with her family had a moved to Seymour, Baylor County Texas. They may first have had a short stay in Comanche County and then moved on to Seymour. There is a small book of poetry that belonged to Katie as a girl. Inside the front cover she writes that this little book of poems has been presented to her by her "professor" C. F. Rogers, in Comanche County, Texas. The book, published in 1880 is for the memorization of poems for children in grade school. Katie's grandmother, Sabra Hart Tye, a widow, was living in Charleston, Illinois but about 1880 she and her grown son George also moved to Seymour, Baylor County, Texas.

The reason for this Texas move is still undetermined but the family remained there for a number of years. There may have been cousins or other family members already there. However, In 1890 or so Katie's father, John Henry staked land in the newly opened Oklahoma Territory and the Tyes moved there. So by the time Katie was about six or seven she became a Texan and remained so until she was about sixteen or seventeen. She must have finished her schooling before coming to Oklahoma. There is a letter written on her 21st birthday October 11, 1896 from Delphos, Oklahoma re. the guests at her birthday dinner. Delphos was the name of a postoffice and little store that her husband, Jacob "Frank" erected on his acreage in Hartzell Township of Oklahoma County. The rest of her life was spent in Oklahoma City where her "Frank" had built a house for her each time she had a daughter. These two houses were at fourth and Stiles, Street in what is now about the center of the city.

DEATH Katie died on May, 3, 1910 a few days after falling from a chair while wall papering one of the rental houses that she and Frank owned. After she fell she began to suffer from internal injuries and her skin blackened before she died. She had been in a hurry to get this house ready for tenants before she left for a trip to St. Louis, Missouri. This trip was planned to take Lois, her nine year old daughter, to a hospital for crippled children as soon as school was out for the summer. Lois' deformed foot and leg was to be given care there and Katie was planning to rent a place to stay for the weeks or months of the therapy. Lois was taken there anyway, perhaps by her father, and stayed alone for the treatments. Katie is buried in the Kolb cemetery at Spencer, Oklahoma, now a suburb of Oklahoma City.

FURTHER NOTES will be added as new information is found.

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