Pearl McCutcheon has seen many changes during her life.

McCutcheon, 86, spent her early youth north of Webbers Falls. The main forms of transportation were horseback or a wagon pulled by horses.

“I remember the freedom you had outdoors, all the animals, and all the friendly neighbors,” she said. “We had a tire swing, and we made stilts. We played baseball and basketball. We went out to the school house sometimes, or a group would come over for a fish fry, and we would play ball in the field.”

They were too far from a church to go for services, but they made up for that, too.

“Preachers came to the school house, and we had revivals under the brush arbor,” she said.

When it was time for school, McCutcheon said she was eager to go.

“I was so excited,” she said. “My sister had gone the year before, and she told me about all the things they had done and learned.”

The country school only went to eighth grade, McCutcheon said, and then the students took a test to go to high school in town. When she was in seventh grade, she persuaded the school to let her take the test a year early, and she passed it. Her mother made arrangements for her to live in town with a doctor’s family and trade room and board for her ability to attend high school. She also worked in the doctor’s office after school and on Saturday.

She graduated in 1939 and was married to Julius McCutcheon soon after that in 1941. World War II was heating up, and the entire family moved to California where Julius worked in the shipyards.

“When the war was over, I told him, ‘Let’s take our children and go back to God’s country,’” she said.

Back in Muskogee, McCutcheon waited until her youngest child was in high school and she entered college. By the time her youngest was in college, McCutcheon had started teaching. Her teaching career lasted 20 years.

During that time, she and her husband had been buying houses to rent out.

Marriage

and children

Born just north of Webbers Falls on her father’s Cherokee allotment, Pearl McCutcheon’s father, John Sevier, was a farmer. Maude, her mother, was a housekeeper.