May 11, 1845--December 12, 1927
Samuel Houston Mayes, son of Samuel and Nancy Adair Mayes, born near Muddy Springs, in old Flint District, in the Cherokee Nation, May 11, 1845, and died at Pryor, in Mayes County, Oklahoma, at noon, on December 12, 1927. Funeral services at the First Methodist Episcopal
Church South, and buried under the auspices of the local Masonic lodge. A charter member Muskogee Knight Templars, and at his death an honorary member. His eleven brothers and one sister all lived to reach their majority (except Noel), towit: George Washington Mayes, John Thompson Mayes, James A. Mayes, Joel Bryan Mayes, Francis Asbury Mayes, Walter Adair Mayes, William Henry Harrison Mayes (Tip), Rachel Mayes (who married Cullough McNair), Noel Mayes, Wiley Beam Mayes and Richard Taylor Mayes.
His father, born in east Tennessee, married in the Cherokee Country in Georgia, and emigrated to the Cherokee Nation West in 1837, settling at Muddy Springs, about three miles from the present town of Stilwell, at which afterwards was a school operated by the Cherokee Government, and at that place a Methodist camp ground. The following persons taught at this school: William Penn Adair, William Fields, Joel B. Mayes, Sophia Vann, a man from Arkansas by the name of Bartlett, a Yankee from New England by the name of Edison, another Yankee from New England by the name of Gilbert, Mrs. Carrie Bushyhead Qaurrels and Warren Adair. He and his brothers were educated at this school and at the Cherokee Male Academy, near Tahlequah.
He was elected and served as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1895 to 1899, and as sheriff of Coo-wee-scoo-wee district from 1881 to 1885, and as a member of the Cherokee Senate from 1885 until he was elected Principal Chief. At the age of 19 he enlisted in the Confederate Army in Company “K” of which Ben Carter was Captain, Dick Carter First Lieutenant, Johnson Fields, Second Lieutenant, Ketcher Tehee, Third Lieutenant, Second Cherokee Regiment of which Clem Vann was Colonel, Joe Thompson, Lieutenant Colonel, and James Bell, Major. After the close of the Civil War he attended school a short time in Rush County, Texas.