"Sarah Rector" (March 3,1902-July 22,1967)

She received international attention at the age of eleven when the Kansas City Star in 1913 publicized the headline,""Millions to a Negro Girl." From that moment Sarah's life became a cauldron of misfortation,legal and financial maneuvering,and public speculation.She was born to Sarah & Rose Rector in a two-room cabin near Twine,Oklahoma on Muscogee Creek Native American allotment land.Joseph & Sarah had enslaved Creek ancestry,and both of their daddies fought with the Union Armyduring the Civil War.When Oklahoma statehood became imminent in 1907,the Dawes Allotment Act divided among the Creeks and their former slaves with a termination date of 1906.Sarah's parents,Sarah herself,her brother,Joe,Jr.,and sister Rebecca all receive land.Lands granted to former slaves were usually the rocky lands of poorer agricultural quality.Sarah's allotment of 160 acres was valued at $ 556.50.Primarily to generate enough revenue to pay the $30 annual tax bill,in February 1911 Sarah's daddy leased her allotment to the Devonian oil Company of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.In 1913,her fortunes changed when wildcat oil driller B.B.Jones produced a "gusher" that brought in 2500 barrels a day.She now receive an income of $ 300.00 per day.Ounce this wealth,was made known,Sarah's guardianship was switched from her parents to a white man named T.J.Porter,an individual personally known to the Rectors.Multiple new wells were also productive,and Sarah's allotment subsequently became part of the famed Cushing-Drumright Field in Oklahoma.In the month of October 1913 she received $11,457.
Once her identity became public,she receive numerous requests for loans,money gifts,and even marriage proposals from four Germans even though she was 12.In 1914 The Chicago Defender published an article claiming that her her estate was being mismanaged by grafters and her "ignorant"parents,and that she was uneducated,dressed in rags,and lived in an unsanitary shanty.National African American leaders such as Booker T.Washington and W.E.B.DuBois became concerned about her welfare.None of the allegations were true.Sarah and her siblings went to school in Taft,an all-African American town closer than Twine,they lived in a modern five-room cottage,and they owned an automobile.That same year,Sarah enrolled in the Children's House,a boarding school for teenagers at Tuskegee University in Alabama.
When Sarah turned 18,she left Tuskegee and her entire family moved with her to Kansas City Missouri.By this point Sarah,who now owned stocks and bonds,a boarding house and a bakery and the Busy Bee Café in Muskogee Oklahoma,as well as 2,00 acres of prime river bottomland,was a millionaire.
They family moved into what would be known as the Rector Manison.Legal wrangling over Sarah's estate and some mismanagement continued until she was twenty.That year she married Kenneth Campbell,and the couple had three sons,Kenneth,Jr.,Leonard,and Clarence.Much was publicized about her "extravagant"  spending on luxuries.Sarah marriage to Kenneth ended in 1930,and in 1934she married William Crawford.When she died her wealth was diminished,but still she had some working oil wells and real estate holdings.She is buried in Taft Cemetery,Oklahoma.