Rhoda (Gunn) Colbert (1818 - 1876)

Born 16 Apr 1818 in Pontotoc, MS

Ancestors

Died 25 Jul 1876 at age 58 in Colbert, Bryan Co., OK.

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Biography

Rhoda Gunn was born in Pontotoc, MS 16 APR 1818. Rhoda died 25 JUL 1876 in Colbert, Panola Co., Chickasaw Nation, IT, at 58 years of age. Her body was interred JUL 1876 in Love Cemetery, nr Colbert, Bryan Co., OK.

She married three times. She married Oke-lah-na before 1832. She married Samuel A. Colbert before 1833. Samuel was born 14 NOV 1816. Samuel was the son of Maj. James Colbert and Susan (Susannah) James. Samuel died 27 AUG 1880 nr Nelson, Kiamitia Co., Choctaw Nation, IT, at 63 years of age.His body was interred AUG 1880 nr Nelson, Kiamitia Co., Choctaw Nation, IT. Samuel was separated from his wife, Rhoda Gunn in Chickasaw Nation, 31 MAR 1836.Samuel Colbert and Rhoda Gunn signed a separation agreement on 31 MAR 1836, with Rev, Thomas C. Stuart as arbitrator.

She married Joseph 'Joe' Brevard Potts before 1844 Joseph was born in AL, circa 1820. Joseph died 1862 in Panola Co., Chickasaw Nation, IT, at 42 years of age. He was listed as a resident in the census report in Indian Lands, West of AR, 1860.

Samuel A. Colbert and Rhoda Gunn had the following child:

1. Mary Susan Colbert was born in Chickasaw Nation before 1836. She married John M. Temple.

Rhoda Gunn and Joseph 'Joe' Brevard Potts had the following children:

1. Mary Potts.
2. Sarah 'Sallie' Adeline Potts was born 3 MAR 1844.
3. Judge John Taylor Potts was born 27 DEC 1846.
4. Joseph Brevard Potts III was born 3 FEB 1856.^[1]

Excerpted from History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians by Cushman, H. B. (Horatio Bardwell), b. 1822 Published 1899 page 511

James Gunn, whose name is commemorated in that of a town called Gunntown, situated in Lee county, Mississippi, was one among the six white men previously mentioned, who at an early day cast their lot of life among the Chickasaw people, preferring the happy freedom of that heroic nation of people to all that was offered among* their own race. James Gunn was a native Virginian, and also a fearless and indomitable loyalist, who stood for the crown in the troubled days of Charles the First and the Roundheads ; and when he revolution proved triumphant, and the rising glory, of these United States had been announced,, and also seemed summoned to take their position among the great nations of earth, the old royalist, disdaining the society of successful rebels, "bade an adieu forever to the home of his youth, and sought.a more congenial one among the true native sons and freemen of North America. He secured a wife among the wild forest flowers of the noted Chickasaw beauties of that long" ago, selecting one named Okashuah (Stinking Water); a name, though not of classic fame or enviable signification, it is reasonable to presume, yet did not detract from her merits as an amiable and devoted wife and mother in any particular whatever. They had only one daughter,, named Molly, who married a Cherokee warrior named Oxberry, and her oldest daughter by this marriage was named Elizabeth, who became the mother of Governor Cyrus Harris; and another of her daughters, by the same marriage, was, in 1890, living near Colbert Station, Chickasaw Nation, I. T., at the advanced age of ninety-six, and is known as. Grandma Alberson. Molly was also the mother of the celebrated Chickasaw beauty named-Rhoda. James Gunn died, in 1826 ; his age has not been preserved; but, it is said, he was a very old man at the time of his death.

Many young white sprigs who visited the Chickasaw" Nation with the view of speculation, when they saw Rhoda, the Chickasaw belle, the fairest rose that bloomed in the forests wild of that romantic age, felt their visions of lands, negroes, mules, cotton bales and speedy fortunes vanish- as mists before the morning surfy and though they sighed and wooed, gazed in meditative solitude at the moon and stars, and in hours of thoughtful mood gave birth to imaginative verse on the Chickasaw nymph,

"Whose glossy locks to shame might bring

"The plumage of the raven s wing,"

and in humble, yet loving, attitude, with promises many and fair, solicited her heart and hand, but twas all in vain. The inexorable Rhoda could not fancy those sprigs of white no bility, nor judge a single one of them as a better substitute for a husband than many of the Chickasaw youths who had never felt the blighting curse of avarice, noi; would sacrifice a friend at the shrine of its demands; therefore turned away from them and gave her youthful heart to one of her own race, Samuel Colbert, a son of Major James Colbert; the exodus of her people soon following her nuptial day, she, with them, bade a final adieu to the fair scenes of her joys and soon the loveliness of the forest flower passed from the memory of its former admirers as the evening star behind the western hills to be thought of "Never More." She became the mother of one daughter, but after living several years with her husband a final separation, from some unknown cause, took place between her and her husband. Several years after which she married a man by the name of Joseph Potts, who took a dose of strychnine through mistake for quinine, in 1862, while at the house of Governor Cyrus Harris, and died from its effects in half an hour. A son of Governor Harris found the vial of strychnine in the road a few rods from the house and brought it in, believing- it to be a vial of quinine some one had accidentally dropped, and hence the fatal and lamentable result. ^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20080708195443/http://www.chickasawhistory.com/colbert/i0001363.htm#i1363
2. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073559761#page/n522/mode/1up/search/Chickasaw