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Note: The family has used both spellings: Burk and Burke as surnames. According to the book by Greever, Hockett, Verbal, and Stevenson "Some Descendants of John Burk (1656-1699) Middlesex County, VA" (Iberian Publishing Company. 1999), "Jefferson Davis Burk, born Aug. 2, 1861 (church record); died in 1938 in Tillman Co., OK; married Mar. 31, 1884, Emma Alice Balfour, died in 1941 in OK at age 77.... A write-up of J.D. Burke by grandson Edward C. Burke provides the following information (book unidentified): J.D. Burke settled in Oklahoma on Dec. 12, 1901 when he was 46 and his wife, Emma, was 36, and that he had gone to IL at age 21 (c1882). They had 9 children, 3 of whom died in infancy. In the journey to OK, they left in 1900, crossed the Mississippi River at Quincy, IL, traveled to Kansas City, MO, then south across Kansas to Cherokee, OK where Emma's first cousins lived. There they rented a house until their final move to the new land which J.D. had drawn his claim in July 1901 at a price of $2.50/acre for 160 acres.... Jefferson D. moved his family into a sod home until a wooden house was built.
A granddaughter remembers that "J.D." had an extensive library, that a picture of Abraham Lincoln hung in his house, and that he was a pioneer in farm technology. A recollection during the 1930's depression was that this family, in those hard times, was pleased that it had the money to pay taxes."
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