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 Chapter 1 The Early Years Both the paternal and the maternal forebears of Lucian King Truscott, Jr., came to the United States from the British Isles. His paternal great-grandfather, Thomas Truscott, was born in Cornwall, England, in 1796, and immigrated to America in 1821, settling near Springfield, Illinois, where he began farming .1 Thomas fathered two sons, James Joseph and George. James, born in 1832, became an attorney and married Margarit Jane Kirkland. Together they raised five children, the youngest of whom was Lucian King, who was born in Kane, Illinois, on October 5, 1864.2 Some years later the family moved to Arkansas, and then to Texas, ultimately settling in China Lake, north of Abilene, where he was elected county judge. In 1886 the citizens of China Lake honored Judge Truscott by changing the name of the town to Truscott. At about the age of thirteen or fourteen Lucian began working as a farm- and ranch hand, and then as a cowboy, participating in several cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas. He later enrolled in Missouri Medical College in St. Louis, graduating in 1891.3 Following his graduation, Doctor Truscott returned to Texas, where he established a practice in Benjamin, the county seat of Knox County.4 On April 2, 1891, in Paducah, Kentucky, Doctor Truscott married Maria Temple Tully, who was born in Illinois in 1866 and was a descendant of Irish immigrants .5 Tully’s father, John Cavan Tully, a prominent businessman in Paducah and an ordained pastor, performed the ceremony.6 The newlyweds moved to Chatfield, Texas, near Corsicana, where Doctor Truscott opened a practice and where they began raising their family. Chatfield lies approximately fifty miles southeast of Dallas and in 1891 had a population of approximately five hundred. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., was born there on January 9, 1895. Two sisters, Loretta and Patsy, were also born in Chatfield , in 1893 and 1896, respectively; a third sister, Dixie, was born in 1904, after 10 Dogface Soldier the family had relocated to the Oklahoma Territory.7 As the only physician in town, Truscott soon became a prominent and active member of the community , and his wife began teaching music at the Elizabeth Institute, a private preparatory school.8 Much of Doctor Truscott’s practice consisted of house calls, made in a horse-drawn buggy driven by Will Coleman, a young black man who lived with the Truscotts and worked as a handyman for them. He became a close friend of young Lucian, who would often accompany Will in the buggy as he ran errands for the family.9 In the winter of 1900–1901, the Truscott family moved to Remus, Oklahoma Territory, southeast of Oklahoma City, where Doctor Truscott set up his practice and purchased an eighty-acre farm.10 Young Lucian began his formal education in a one-room school in Remus, where his mother taught grades one through four in the rear of the room, grades five through eight meeting in the front of the room. While in Remus, Doctor Truscott “dabbled in race horses, and farms, disastrously . . . so in the fall of 1903 the family moved to Maud,” just a few miles east of Remus, then to Konawa, twelve miles to the south, then back to Maud, and finally back to Remus and the Orchard Farm. In 1908 the Truscott family moved once again, to Stella Township in the northeast corner of Cleveland County,11 where Lucian completed grade school and one year of high school. In the summer of 1911, at the age of sixteen, Lucian dropped out of high school and enrolled with his mother in the Summer Normal School in Norman to earn certification as a schoolteacher.12 At summer’s end Lucian had in hand his certification as a teacher, and,“only 16 at the time, he stretched his age to 18, applied for and ‘got’ a country school, six miles from Stella, and during the eight month term walked to [and] from school daily.”13 In the fall of 1912 Doctor Truscott relocated his practice to Edna, roughly sixty miles east of Oklahoma City, and the next year to Eufaula, about thirtyfive miles south of Muskogee. Lucian and his mother dutifully followed Doctor Truscott to the two towns, where in successive summers they completed Summer Normals. When in the fall of 1914 his father decided to move once again, this time to Onapa, young Lucian decided to remain in Eufaula, where he accepted...

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