Gray Gaona

Dorothy Gray Gaona's third published work is a collection of history, genealogy, and family stories about the life, times, and family of Franklin Reed Mitchell (1869-1938).

Franklin was born near Fort Gibson in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma) just after the close of the Civil War. He was the son of a Scotch-Irish stowaway immigrant and the great-great-grandson of a full blooded Cherokee woman, Gosaduisga. Because of their Cherokee ancestry, Franklin and his eldest children were granted land in 1906 by the Dawes Commission. On that land in Adair County, Oklahoma, Franklin farmed and raised his family of seven children.

Franklin's life story is told in great detail, and the biographies of many of his descendants and extended family are also presented, many of them autobiographically written. The book contains 89 biographies of varying level of detail, as well as an extensively hyper-linked genealogy section at the end of the book.

The hyper-linked genealogy section allows the reader to easily jump between the biographies and the genealogy section, making navigation of the family "tree" easy, a feature not possible in a print edition.

As a bonus, external links are provided to web pages of individual graves of Mitchell relatives found in the book, as well as a "Virtual Cemetery" of those graves.

This book will benefit those wanting to know more about the early history of Adair County, Oklahoma, as well as genealogists, and of course the descendants of Franklin Reed Mitchell.