Rare Black History Facts – Day 4

Who is Sarah Rector?

Sarah Rector became an Oil Baroness, at the early age of 10.
In September, 1913, The Kansas City Star reported: “Millions to a Negro Girl – Sarah Rector, 10-Year Old, Has Income of $300 A Day From Oil,” and The Savannah Tribune ran: “Oil Well Produces Neat Income – Negro Girl’s $112,000 A Year.”

In 1914 and 1915, the Salt Lake Telegram, The Oregonian and American Magazine profiled the “bewildered little ten year-old girl” and told of how she inherited her “big income” but still wore tattered dresses and slept each night in a big armchair beside her six siblings in a two-room prairie house in Muskogee, Oklahoma. By the early 1920s, many newspapers covered the court battles involving white men seeking to become Rector’s guardian to gain control over her estate.

She was one of a group of Creek freedman children who were given land allotments by the U.S. government as part of the Treaty of 1866. Sarah Rector will forever be a proud part of our African American history.