Bertha Lee Coker was born June 23, 1899, in Tiawah, Cooweescoowee District, Cherokee Nation. She died September 25, 1970, in Tulsa, Oklahoma — and married Elwood Wadsworth King on March 29, 1919, in Rogers County.
One of Bertha’s daughters was my maternal grandmother — Luella King Leerskov.
Bertha’s parents were David Nicklas Coker, born February 25, 1868, in Cherokee Nation, died March 18, 1932, in Rogers County — son of Dempsey Fields Coker and Elizabeth Sigman. David married Katherine Hartz.
REVEREND DEMPSEY FIELDS COKER (1825–1881)
Dempsey served as both a Councilor and a Solicitor for the Cooweescoowee District during the late 1870s — a legislator and prosecuting attorney enforcing Cherokee law in Cherokee courts. He was also a Baptist minister, living in Tiawah, Indian Territory, near modern-day Claremore. He carried both the legal and spiritual weight of his community through the Reconstruction era — a Cherokee citizen shaping Cherokee governance in the years after the Civil War.
TIAWAH AND THE COOWEESCOOWEE DISTRICT
Tiawah sat in the Cooweescoowee District — the largest administrative district of the historic Cherokee Nation, with its courthouse near modern-day Claremore. The district covered what’s now Rogers, Mayes, Nowata, Washington, and parts of Tulsa and Osage counties. This is the land my family comes from — and it’s still Cherokee Nation and UKB jurisdictional territory today.
GENEALOGY IS SOVEREIGNTY WORK
Every name, every date, every district on this tree is proof of who we are and where we’ve always been.
Cherokee 411 — Unfiltered. Independent. Cherokee.
