National Register Listing

Murrell Home

a.k.a. Hunter's Home

4 mi. S of Tahlequah, Park Hill, OK

In the decade and a half before the Civil War, the Murrell Home was an impressive symbol of Indian courage and vision in the face of adversity. Today, it stands as almost the last remaining original vestige of the graciousness, even grandeur that the Indians succeeded in transplanting, briefly, from their old home land in the Southeast to the raw frontier that was Indian Territory.

Here at the tragic end of the Trail of Tears, Cherokee leaders, sided for the most part by dedicated missionaries, attempted to rebuild their shattered culture. In 1836, the Rev. Samuel Austin Worcester established the Park Hill Mission hero on a pleasant elevation near the Illinois River. Almost immediately the settlement became the center of life in this section of the Cherokee Nation. Worcester built homes for the missionaries and teachers, a boarding hall, and a grist mill. In 1837 ho established the Park Hill Press and began publishing parts of the Bible, which he translated, using the talking leaves" syllabus devised by Sequoyah some years earlier in present-day Georgia. His press also produced many religious tracts, school books, and the Cherokee Almanac. (A Cherokee-owned press in nearby Tahlequah produced Oklahoma's first newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate, this in 1844).

By 1846 the Cherokee National Council, meeting in Tahlequah, authorized establishment of two seminaries, or high schools. The Female Seminary was built at Park Hill, the Male Seminary a little closer to Tahlequah. Both were three-story brick affairs with massive columns and broad galleries that betrayed the southern heritage of their builders. Both opened their doors on May 7, 1861.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1970.