located about three miles northeast of the present town
of Grant, His first marriage occurred, while he was serving Homer. The
wedding of one of Homer's daughters occurred a few years later, and his
wife was assigned to serve in the home of the newly married daughter.
She located in a distant part of the reservation, and he was thus
deprived of his first wife, Charlotte Homer.

Charles Stewart, a white man, keeping store at Doaksville, soon
afterwards became his owner, and his previous name, "Homer" was then
changed to "Stewart", after the name of his new master. About the year
1860, Samson Folsom, a Choctaw who lived eight miles southeast of old
Goodland, became his new and last owner.

PERIOD OF FREEDOM, 1866-1896

He began to hold religious meetings as early as 1856, when he belonged
to Stewart, and lived at Doaksville. Mrs. Stewart, who had been a
missionary teacher, encouraged him to learn to read and furnished him
with books for that purpose. Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, pastor of the Choctaw
church, gave him the instruction in the Bible, that fitted him for the
work of the ministry, and accorded to him the privilege of holding
meetings in the church, for his people, on occasional Sabbath
afternoons.

He was accorded ordination by the Presbytery of Indian (southern) in the
fall of 1870, and was then officially assigned the pastoral care of the
congregations he had previously developed at Doaksville and its
vicinity, and at Wheelock, or Oak Hill. He greatly appreciated the
recognitions accorded to him by the Presbytery, which had previously
given him a license to preach; and he endeavored to magnify his office,
as an evangelist, by going to the "regions beyond," as fast as the door
of opportunity opened for him. During the early sixties he gathered new
congregations for worship at his home on the Folsom farm and in the
Horse Prairie neighborhood. The Oak Hill appointment was established
soon after he was accorded his freedom.

During the year 1883, the evangelistic work among the Freedmen in Indian
Territory, was voluntarily transferred by the Southern to the Northern
Presbyterian church, with the conviction the latter was better prepared
to successfully prosecute it. At the time of this transfer Charles W.
Stewart was enrolled as an ordained minister and designated as the
Stated Supply of the following organized churches: Beaver Dam, Hebron,
New Hope, Oak Hill and St. Paul. During the next two years three more of