Welcome to the Pottawatomie County, OKGenWeb! This site is a proud member of OKGenWeb and The USGenWeb® Project, dedicated to providing free genealogical resources. We hope you will find information in this site that will help you learn more about your Pottawatomie County family history.
If you live in Pottawatomie County, or have family history in Woodward County, please consider adopting this site, or contributing your family history to help make this a valuable resource for future family researchers. Contact the State Coordinator today to find out how you can help!
Pottawatomie County was carved out of land originally given to the Creek and Seminole after their forced removal from Georgia and Florida. After the Civil War, the Creek and Seminole were forced to cede their lands back to the federal government, and the area of Pottawatomie County was used to resettle the Iowa, Sac and Fox, Absentee Shawnee, Potawatomi and Kickapoo tribes.
See ITGenWeb Indian Territories and Indian Agencies for more information, and visit the ITGenWeb Library Tribes Headquartered in Oklahoma resource for for links to all the official tribal websites.
Non-Indian settlement began on September 22, 1891 when all the tribes except the Kickapoo agreed to land allotment, where communal reservation land was divided and allotted to individual members of the tribes. The remaining land was opened to settlement.
During the land run, Pottawatomie County was organized as County "B" with Tecumseh as the county seat. In 1892, the voters of the county elected to rename County "B" as Pottawatomie County after the Potawatomi Indians.
In 1895, the Kickapoo gave up their land rights and their land was given away to white settlers in the last land run in Oklahoma.
In 1930, Shawnee, now bigger in size than Tecumseh, was approved by the voters to become the new county seat.
Tecumseh, originally the County Seat, lost to the fast growing community of Shawnee. Incidentally, Shawnee was also in competition for the State Capitol. City leaders even went so far as to build a governor's house.
The oil and railroad industries were vital to the development of some Pottawatomie County towns and to the decline of others. Agriculture, however, remains a mainstay of the County's economy. Pottawatomie County has two institutions of higher education, Oklahoma Baptist University and St. Gregory's University.
Learn more about the history of Woodward County in Wikipedia.
County Seat: Shawnee
County Government
County Courthouse
District Court: 325 N. Broadway Ave., Shawnee, OK 74801, 405-273-3624
See Places for towns past and present.
Page updated:
State Coordinator: Linda K. Lewis
Asst State Coordinator: Rebecca Maloney
Designed by Templates in Time