Guest: Why a surprise in the chicken coop leads to unanswered questions about a lawsuit

Growing up we’d often travel from my grandmother’s small-town home to Five Mile Corner to look around the family farm.

It’s been more than 20 years since we last visited, but the experience is clear in my head because of what unfolded on the site one day.

There wasn’t much to see around the farm. All the familiar buildings and structures were long gone, except for an old, delipidated chicken coop.

We opened what was left of the coop’s door and, of course, found the place dark and smelly.

Mounds of chicken feed were scattered across the floor, probably left there as feed bags were split open. A racoon scampered from a dark corner and startled us. Guess it had had enough to eat over the years.

At one end, we counted a couple of dozen stacked cardboard boxes, although most were falling apart from moisture and wind damage.

A partially opened box revealed an unending stash of paper, and a quick glance indicated the pieces were legal filings and lawsuit documents. Many of the pieces were stamped with the name of my grandfather’s law firm, which had closed decades earlier when he died.

We loaded up the boxes, and I took them to my garage in eastern Oklahoma, where they remained for years.

I finally found enough hours over several months to finish a thorough search through the boxes. Mostly I looked for answers to why these boxes interested me and where they came from.

Perhaps I was looking for papers that would reveal more about my grandfather and confirm stories family members had shared over the years.

The contents included copies of court filings related to oilfield leases, lawsuits about land disputes and settlements that dated to the oil boon days in a growing Wewoka. Some interesting papers were darkened, curled up photostatic copies of tribal rolls and other handwritten court legal work docketed in the 1930s.

This experience had turned into a real life history lesson on early day Wewoka. While the boxes offered little personal family history, they revealed the archaic, old-style handwritten process of shepherding law cases.

Meanwhile, deep in one box I began to pull separate piles of documents that related to the same legal battle, one that had existed in the Oklahoma courts.

The papers told a story of the unknown heirs of Echolle Harjo, a Seminole Native on the rolls.

I’m not an attorney, but my news reporter instincts told me this lawsuit was a hot mess over many years. Some say the case that began in Seminole County eventually landed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

Throughout this labor-intensive paper sorting, I still hoped to solve the mystery of who put the boxes into the chicken coop, when it happened and, for heaven’s sake, why?

Over time, the paperwork and boxes began to deteriorate, tear into pieces and fall apart. Eventually, I could not hold any of these treasures in my hands anymore.

It was obvious my grandfather had been one of the attorneys on the case. Yet, no one in the family remembered anything about this paper dump.

That bothered me. Was the material worth storing or saving? Or did someone simply junk the boxes to be done with them? Why a chicken coop?

Once, I spoke with an attorney seeking some details on the Harjo case, and I searched the internet for specifics of the lawsuit. There was little to nail down, really.

Fast forward to today, decades after the paper sorting. I still wonder about the lawsuit and its importance to the law firm. There was no way to piece together who placed the boxes in the chicken coop or find out what it all means. It was quite a surprising find in the chicken coop that day.

This adventure is similar to many deadend searches one has on a lifelong journey researching ancestry. Many questions remain. The mystery continues.

Andrea Chancellor has more than 20 years in newspaper and magazine journalism and 20 years in public relations.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: A surprise in a chicken coop leads to unanswered questions