Historians have a penchant for focusing on the icons and dramatic events of the past, inadvertently bypassing the vast majority of us whose personal histories typically remain within family lore or genealogies. But these less sensational stories, stories of the everyday lives of the majority, serve to give history and its effects on us, breadth and depth. Such is the interesting story of Andrew Ross Nave, a Cherokee merchant and son-in-law of Cherokee Chief John Ross as the result of his marriage to Jane Ross Meigs. Jane or Jennie as she was better known married Return Jonathan Meigs, IV in 1838 and the couple migrated from Georgia to Indian Territory. Meigs and Chief Ross opened a retail store in Park Hill shortly thereafter, but in 1850 Return Meigs caught the “California Gold Rush Fever,” sold his interest in the store and joined a party leaving from what later would become Adair County. Unfortunately, he became ill and died about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah. Meigs left Jennie with four children and within a year, she married 28 year old Andrew Nave. Whether out of gratitude or good business, Chief Ross offered him a partnership to essentially run his Park Hill store and, as a result, Nave became a merchant. Soon after, they collaborated in opening a second store in Tahlequah.
The 1850s in Cherokee Indian Territory are frequently described as “the golden years” in the history of the nation. The wounds created by the signing of the treaty in 1835 appeared to be healing, the leadership had developed a workable government and most of those who had suffered through the Trail of Tears had resolved the depredations and become established. Businessmen were focused on wholesale and retail issues and, as the decade evolved, Nave became engrossed in purchasing, transporting and selling his wares. The supply point for Park Hill and Tahlequah was Phillips Landing on the Arkansas River, later known as Van Buren. In order to stock his stores, Nave ordered goods from distant suppliers as far away as New York and Boston or closer to home at Independence or Springfield, Missouri.
Of course, goods purchased from Missouri came by wagon over the Military Road that had been opened in 1843. But merchandise that was shipped to Van Buren by steamboat was entirely at the mercy of the undependable depth of the Arkansas River. Sam C. Hanby, a merchant of Van Buren, wrote Nave on January 31, 1859, “Bless your soul, nary a bag of coffee to be had in Van Buren…river continues to be low.” On February 14th he sadly reported that the steamer Dardenelle had sunk near Pine Bluff with 1200 bags of coffee.
Shipping merchandise wasn’t the only problem facing Nave, during August of 1861 after Indian Territory had committed to fight for the South, another Van Buren wholesaler informed him that “we aren’t doing much in the way of business, all we see now is Confederate currency or Louisiana money.” By early 1862, Van Buren merchants were complaining because they had to pay about twice as much for goods in the eastern markets in Confederate currency as they did if they paid in gold.
Although rising prices and availability of goods were increasingly becoming issues for Nave, he was confronted with an even greater one after Union troops defeated the Confederates at Locust Grove on July 2nd. A few days later Yankees appeared at Park Hill and arrested John Ross. This was followed by the defection of nearly 600 of Colonel Drew’s troops from the Confederacy to the Union, not a good situation for the son-in-law and mercantile partner of Chief John Ross.
By 1863, and since Park Hill was not of military importance to the Union, it became a -volatile caldron, alternately at the mercy of Union or Confederate sympathizers. Murders became a common occurrence. On October 28, the inevitable occurred and Andrew Ross Nave was killed, a victim of Confederate troops commanded by Colonel Stand Watie. Nave was buried in the Ross Cemetery at Park Hill. It is unclear what plans were in place for his wife Jennie, but she managed to escape with the children and spent the remainder of the war years in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She eventually returned to Tahlequah, died in 1894, and is also buried in the Ross Cemetery.
Military commander’s document details of each battle, the myriad of government activities are closely monitored and records preserved, but the lives and activities of most of us frequently “fall through the cracks” of history. Andrew Nave is one of those, but still his life, like ours, is also one worth remembering as part of the Echoes From The Past.