{"id":1460,"slug":"hunters-home-park-hill-oklahoma","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Hunter's Home is the only antebellum plantation house left in Oklahoma — the Greek Revival mansion George Murrell built in Park Hill in the Cherokee Nation in 1844, on the land his wife's family had been removed to. Murrell was a Virginia merchant who married Minerva Ross — the niece of Principal Chief John Ross — and came west with the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. The house he built in Indian Territory was the Virginia plantation transplanted: the columns, the springhouse, the slave cabins, the whole form of the South reproduced on the frontier the Cherokee were exiled to.","The house was the Cherokee elite's social center — the Murrells entertained the nation's leadership and the Fort Gibson officers, and the plantation ran on the enslaved labor the Cherokee planters, like their white counterparts, kept. The Ross family's faction led the Nation; the Murrells' house was the place where the Cherokee aristocracy's world was enacted in the style of the class they'd been removed from.","The Civil War split the Nation the way it split the country — Ross was Union, Stand Watie was Confederate, and both sides burned the leaders' houses. Hunter's Home survived — one of the few in Indian Territory that neither faction torched, the house that was the Ross family's by marriage and the Murrell family's by blood, standing through the war that destroyed the world it was built in.","Hunter's Home is the archive's Cherokee file — the plantation house in the Nation that survived the Trail of Tears and the Civil War, the Greek Revival on the frontier that was built by a man who'd married into the chief's family and chose removal over separation, the only one of its kind left in Oklahoma."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Hunter's Home is the archive's removal file — the plantation house built in the Cherokee Nation after the Trail of Tears, the only antebellum plantation surviving in Oklahoma, the house that outlasted the war that burned the other chiefs' homes on both sides.","A plantation that survived the removal keeps its columns — the file's suggestion being that Hunter's Home's hold is the transplant: the Virginia form built on the land the Cherokee were sent to, in the house that was the Nation's elite society and survived the war that destroyed the world it represented."]}],"name":"Hunter’s Home","aliases":["George M. Murrell Home","Murrell Home"],"type":"HISTORIC_PLANTATION","type_label":"Historic Plantation","cats":["HAUNTED_PLACE"],"groups":["dark-history","hauntings"],"desc":"Historic plantation in Park Hill; research record.","full_desc":"Hunter’s Home is a historic plantation in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Historic plantation in Park Hill; research record. Built in 1845, the house was Minerva Murrell’s home within an 800-acre Cherokee Nation plantation. Local lore holds that The historical society documents site-specific legends presented by reenactors.","address":"19479 East Murrell Home Road","city":"Park Hill","county":null,"state":"Oklahoma","postal":"74451","region":"South","lat":35.834444,"lon":-94.972077,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":"https://www.okhistory.org/sites/visit-hunters-home","phone":"918-456-2751","year_built":1845,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Current owner page supersedes still-indexed legacy $7 adult rate. Past virtual ghost event does not establish current ghost-tour availability.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":66.9,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.8,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":689,"type":"HAUNTING","description":"The historical society documents site-specific legends presented by reenactors. The site in Park Hill, Oklahoma gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. 'Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost…' carries the account. The haunting claim is now part of the site's identity, filed alongside the documented history.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.65,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost Stories during October","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/about/pressrelease?id=1377","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Built in 1845, the house was Minerva Murrell’s home within an 800-acre Cherokee Nation plantation. A documented history gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that spine. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. 'Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost…' documents the entry. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost Stories during October","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/about/pressrelease?id=1377","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The historical society documents site-specific legends presented by reenactors. Hunter’s Home in Park Hill, Oklahoma carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The retelling is the record now — the legend metabolized the facts long ago.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost Stories during October","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/about/pressrelease?id=1377","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}}],"entities":[],"events":[{"name":"Hunter’s Home virtual ghost-story program","type":"FOLKLORE_INTERPRETATION","date_start":"2021-10-01","date_end":"2021-11-03","description":"During the pandemic autumn of 2021, the Oklahoma Historical Society moved Hunter's Home's annual ghost storytelling online — prerecorded films plus an October 22 after-dark tour replacing the usual candlelit crowd at the 1844 plantation house, the only surviving pre-Civil War plantation home in Oklahoma and one of the oldest buildings in the state.","evidence":"FOLKLORE_INTERPRETATION","source":{"name":"Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost Stories during October","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/about/pressrelease?id=1377","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"opening_hours":"Tuesday–Saturday, 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m.; listed 2026 holiday closures apply.","admission_fee":"Adult $10; senior 62+ $8; student 6–18 $5; children 5 and under free; family up to six $30.","reservation_requirement":"Reservations accepted for groups of ten or more.","photography_policy":"Drone use requires written facility-director approval.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-14T10:36:20+00:00","source":{"name":"Plan Your Visit — Hunter’s Home","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/sites/visit-hunters-home","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Hunter’s Home in Park Hill to Present Virtual Ghost Stories during October","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/about/pressrelease?id=1377","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2},{"name":"Plan Your Visit — Hunter’s Home","url":"https://www.okhistory.org/sites/visit-hunters-home","publisher":"Oklahoma Historical Society","type":"HISTORICAL_SOCIETY","authority":2}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Murrell Home","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murrell_Home","desc":"Historic house in Oklahoma, United States","extract":"The Hunter's Home, formerly known as the George M. Murrell Home, is a historic house museum at 19479 E Murrel Rd in Park Hill, near Tahlequah, Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation.  Built in 1845, it is one of the few buildings to survive in Cherokee lands from the antebellum period between the Trail of Tears relocation of the Cherokee people and the American Civil War.  It was a major social center of the elite among the Cherokee in the mid-nineteenth century.  It has been owned by the state since 1948, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.","img":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Murrell_home.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","score":104,"lat":35.85583333,"lon":-94.95888889},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":2}}