My date of birth was November 30, 1933, Thanksgiving Day, sixty-five years ago this past November. My parents were Theodore Roosevelt Wilburn and Madeline Barbara McDonald Wilburn. Memphis Tennessee was my hometown until I retired and moved to Texas in 1995. From my youth I have known of my Indian ancestry - both parents having Cherokee blood. My daughter, Terri Muse, and I have been chasing our Cherokee roots for several years and until recently had not found any of my relatives' listed on the Dawes roll. Now we have found four blood relatives' names listed there - two for each of my parents. We are still working on our genealogy to determine that the names in the Dawes roll were my relatives. One sure record we do have is the paper cutout of the hands of Nancy Jane Martindale. It has been identified to me as a Cherokee symbolic record of my ancestors, the subject matter of my poem, Little Two-Hands, Talking, and My Cherokee Rosetta Stone.

Theodore (Ted) Carlton Wilburn
Aka Yonah Tsalagi..