Summary of findings:
- In spite of Wurth’s claims to the contrary, Oda Martin was not well-off, was probably not a runaway,
and was certainly not Cherokee. - Wurth’s family claims the famous Kaloma photo from 1914 was that of Oda Martin but we prove that it
couldn’t possibly have been Martin. - George Martin (Oda’s father) won land in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, and the family settled near
Choctaw, Oklahoma Territory for at least 5 years before selling this land, which proves beyond doubt
that this family was NOT Cherokee. - Re: Annie Tommy James, Wurth’s great-great-grandmother: She didn’t kill her husband by pouring a
melted bullet into his ear, which Wurth claims. The husband actually lived to the age of 77. - Annie James never owned an “Indian whorehouse.” Wurth actually came up with this idea by, believe it
or not, conflating a story about Frank Sinatra’s mother with that of Annie James. - We discuss exactly how the James/Wurth family came up with this “fever dream” about their having
Chickasaw ancestry: it’s a simple matter of association, common with Pretendians. Note: On 1/28/23, we updated the section on Annie James’s third husband to reflect more accurately
our most current knowledge on who he was. Note: On 2/5/23, we updated the Oda Edith Martin section to reflect the disagreement Merle and
Erika Wurth have over why Oda Martin left home. See the paragraph that begins, “While Wurth
states with utter certainty…”
Wurth’s great-grandmother Oda Edith Martin
Wurth’s 2017 interview in Next Best Book Blog states the following about Oda Martin:
She [Annie James] had also owned an Indian whorehouse (which is where her son [Earl Riggs] – who
was Apache and Chickasaw, met his wife [Oda Martin], a well-off Cherokee runaway who had ended up
working there).
Let’s take these claims one by one. Oda Martin was not well-off; this is yet another of Wurth’s tall tales; likely
Erika came up with this idea that Oda Martin’s family was well-off based solely on this photo of Oda as a young
child, which Wurth deems as “soooo fancy looking.” (Apparently Wurth can’t tell the difference between a
fake background and a real one.) We’ll only discuss her father George Martin’s work and wealth during the
time Oda was still living at home, since Wurth proclaims Oda Martin was “a well-off Cherokee runaway.”
When Oda Martin was five years old, her father was a farmer in Kansas, according to the 1900 census.
When she was a young teen, the 1910 census shows Oda as living with her parents, five siblings, and an uncle.
The entire family is listed as being white and living in Terre Haute, Indiana; the house doesn’t seem to be in
existence anymore.
In 1910, her father was a saloon keeper and her mother was a housewife. The saloon, which appears to have
been on the outskirts of Terre Haute at that time, was probably not profitable, especially when the father was
supporting a total of eight people. Saloons in the 1910s and 1920s in Indiana were in a tenuous situation, as this
article from the Indiana Historical Society makes clear. Prohibition would not take effect until 1920, but being a
saloon keeper in a conservative state was not a pathway to wealth.
While Wurth states with utter certainty that her great-grandmother Oda was “a…runaway,” her own mother Merle is far less certain. Why do Erika and Merle Wurth have conflicting stories about why Oda left home? Because Merle is telling what she knows, and Erika is exaggerating to make it seem like she has a more troubled background than she actually has. Being troubled, in her mind, makes her seem more Indian. Wurth always reverts to stereotypes because she can’t draw from the reality of having lived a Native life. We do know that Oda Edith Martin left her family home in Terre Haute sometime after the April 15, 1910
census and eventually ended up in Houston sometime before her February 10, 1912 marriage to Earl Riggs.
We also know that someone named “Edith Martin” was a domestic in Lafayette, Indiana, in 1911 (see here
for screenshot of this listing):
| Name | Edith Martin |
| Residence Year | 1911 |
| Street Address | 219 N 8th |
| Residence Place | Lafayette, Indiana, USA |
| Occupation | Domestic |
| Publication Title | Lafayette, Indiana, City Directory, 1911 |
Oda used the names “Oda” and “Edith” and even “Ada” interchangeably when younger, and later in life she
was exclusively called “Edith,” such as on this 1930 census.
In 1911, Martin would have been 16, old enough to make her way to a near-by Lafayette (87 miles away)
in order to get out of her parent’s overcrowded home. At some point before 1912, she left this position to make
her way to Texas; she had probably accumulated enough funds working as a domestic for a one-way train ticket
to Houston (train tickets in 1911 were expensive). Why she went to Houston is a mystery, but her father was
born in Belmont, Texas, a tiny unincorporated community between San Antonio and Houston. All of George
Martin’s siblings were also born in Texas. Oda’s father probably had family in Houston, and likely Oda Martin
went to live with one of them.
In fact, Merle Wurth states that Oda was “close to her mom,” so she would not “run away” from her mother
(and she does return to Terre Haute in her twenties, probably in order to be closer to her mother). Once again,
Erika Wurth chooses drama over facts when describing her family.
The Kaloma picture
One of the more amusing discoveries we made is that Erika Wurth and her mother Merle
Wurth fervently believe that a picture of a WW I pin-up was, in fact, the mysterious Oda Martin. We heard that
Erika Wurth has a copy of this photo in her office at WSU and shows it off as being her great-grandmother;
however, we have been unable to verify this rumor. What we do know is that Merle Wurth has a copy of this
photo that hangs on the wall of her home, and she insists it is the original.
This photo is of a young, half-nude, dark-haired woman and has a copyright date on it of 1914. A reverse
search on this picture shows that it is the famous “Kaloma” photo.
This photo was widely used as a WWI pin-up, according to Jeremy Rowe (see paragraph 5), who wrote a
lengthy article about the origins of this photo. A 1994 book about Josie Earp, the common-law wife of outlaw
Wyatt Earp, used this photo for its cover, although it is clearly not Josie Earp. Earp was born in 1861, and this
photo was very likely taken in 1913, the year before it was copyrighted, when Earp would have been 52. In
addition, the woman in the Kaloma photo simply doesn’t look like Josie Earp.
Others claim the photo is of Evelyn Nesbitt, and the mysterious Kaloma does look somewhat similar to
Nesbitt; however, the best argument we’ve seen for the identity of the young woman comes from a YouTube
channel named “Obsolete Oddity,” which makes an excellent case for the woman behind this photo being the
silent screen actress Virginia Pearson. In some of the photos shown on this YouTube video, Pearson looks
exactly like Kaloma. It also makes sense that the woman in the photo was an actor, since a well-known actor
would have access to better photographers, clothing, and photography studios likely based in NYC or Los
Angeles.
A reverse image search on the Kaloma photo using TinEye shows at least 152 recent sightings of this photo
on the internet. This photo is also available on Ebay for prices ranging from $24.95 to $749.95. One of the photos
that keeps popping up when doing a simple internet search on “Kaloma” is a rendition American psychedelic
artist Alton Kelley did for the 1960’s psychedelic band Vanilla Fudge (See also here.) For a photo that is over
100 years old, it’s had remarkable longevity.
Erika’s mother Merle Wurth strongly believes this photo is that of her grandmother (and Erika’s great-
grandmother) Oda Edith Martin. But this seems highly doubtful.
First of all, people romanticize their family backgrounds; this comes from a desperate desire for some
people to “be” something more than what they are. (This desire seems to be a particular trait of Pretendians.)
And Oda Martin is the most mysterious person in this cast of Wurth characters. Making her into a beautiful,
sexy, famous WW I pin-up model seems to redeem the fact that she abandoned her young daughter Marguerite.
But let’s keep going. Oda Martin married Earl Riggs on Feb. 10, 1912, in Houston, Texas. She gave birth
to her only child Marguerite Riggs on January 9, 1913, so she would have been pregnant for most of 1912, and
post-partum for much of 1913. And after her daughter was born, it is doubtful she would be in the state of mind
to pose half-nude for this photo. In addition, she would have been busy with a newborn for the year after her
daughter’s birth.
We do know from the Houston City Directory of 1915 that “Ada Riggs” was employed as a clerk at SH
Kress and Co. and was living at 2505 Franklin, Houston, Texas. It’s clear that “Ada” Riggs is Oda, because
Oda’s husband Earl W. Riggs is also listed as living at the same address. In taking on the SH Kress clerk position,
Oda was attempting to add to the finances of her household at that time. Since nude modeling was probably a
much higher paying and more exciting job than being a clerk, if Oda had truly been the person in this photo, she
would have stayed with modeling in order to make better money.
Furthermore, Merle and Erika Wurth have been unable to substantiate claims to this photo past their family
folklore. Their belief about this Kaloma photo is a microcosm of many fanciful stories we’ve heard about
Pretendians: if a family member tells you that you have an “Indian Princess” in your family tree, for example,
well, it must be true. No need to check for yourself.
To recap Merle Wurth: her family said this was a photo of Oda Martin. That’s their proof that Oda
was an Indian.
The George Martin family and the Oklahoma Land Theft Run of 1889
We noticed on the 1900 census for George Edwin Martin (Oda Martin’s father) that several of the children
had been born in Oklahoma during the 1890s. We also noticed that Oda Martin’s death certificate states she was
born in “Chocta,” Oklahoma, which is a misspelling of “Choctaw.” Choctaw is a town in Oklahoma Territory,
about 10 miles east of Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Territory was an area set aside for whites–while Indian
Territory in Oklahoma was an area set aside for Natives. (And before we get into specifics, note that this family
was listed as white on the 1900 census. And Oda is listed as white on her death certificate.)
This realization that several Martin children had been born in Oklahoma Territory, an area set aside for
whites, gave us pause for thought. So we dug deeper.
Further research showed that the George E. Martin family was living in Oklahoma in 1890 because Martin
was listed in Smith’s First Directory of Oklahoma Territory, which was a census listing people living in
Oklahoma Territory in 1890. This led us to believe that the family had possibly moved to Oklahoma Territory
the prior year in order to be involved in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889.
Bingo. We found George E. Martin in the 1889 Land Run records:
An article about the 1889 Land Run from Indian Country Today (ICT) contextualizes the runs (there were seven
runs in all, but the one in 1889 was the most well-known):
The Dawes Severalty Act introduced private land ownership to Natives, allowed the government to
consolidate them on smaller tracts of land and slashed millions of acres from tribal land. After reservations
were divided into allotments, any remaining land was declared surplus and opened up for white settlement.
Under the Homestead Act of 1862, settlers who stayed on their claims for five years could own the land,
free and clear.
The Land Runs were for white settlers. This family wanted land, so if they were truly Cherokee, as Erika Wurth
asserts, then why didn’t they enroll and obtain their land through being Cherokee? The answer is simple: They
were white, so they couldn’t enroll. The Land Runs were the only way they could get land in Oklahoma Territory.
Erika Wurth and her family are not of Cherokee descent. This land record proves that. They were white
settlers on stolen Native lands. By the time of the 1900 census, they were back in Kansas, the owners of a farm
they bought after settling their 160 acres in Oklahoma Territory and selling them.
Furthermore, we looked (of course) at all Dawes records related to the name “Martin” and saw none related
to this family.
Annie Tommy “Mary” James
Now we come to one of the more impressive characters in this cohort of Wurth ancestors, Annie James
(1863-1938). In an interview with The Next Best Blog (2017), Wurth says:
What’s always killed me about this is that my grandmother’s grandmother [Annie James] had had an
arranged marriage, and she had hated her much much older husband so much, that she had stripped a
bullet, melted it, and poured into his ear while he was sleeping, which killed him. She had also owned
an Indian whorehouse (which is where her son – who was Apache and Chickasaw, met his wife, a
well-off Cherokee runaway who had ended up working there).
There’s really no way of telling whether or not Annie James had any arranged marriages or if this is yet another
one of Wurth’s exaggerations, although we suspect the latter. We do know she married John Riggs in Bracketville,
Texas when she was 17 or 18 (1881). John Riggs was about 29, which is hardly “much much older.”
We believe this “much much older man” is Albert Coffin, who was her second husband. He was 15 years
older than Annie James (one of the few times we’ve found Erika Wurth to be truthful about her family
background), and we believe the record of censuses and various directory listings show they had a troubled
marriage.
The 1900 census shows the two as married and living together in San Antonio, Texas, but by the time of the
1910 census, Annie is listing herself as a widow. Except she isn’t a widow. While Albert Coffin disappeared from
the censuses in 1910 and 1920, we know from his gravestone that he was alive until 1925.
So the marriage seems to be troubled. But this story of Annie’s “much, much older husband” getting a
melted bullet poured into his ear, which she says caused his death, seems to be entirely made up.
Albert Coffin lived until 1925, dying at the age of 77. If Annie had killed Albert, there would have been
an inquest and Annie likely would have been charged with this murder, since she would have been the first
person suspected in the death. There is zero evidence that Annie murdered Albert; and she was never charged,
never went to trial, and was never in prison. This is just another one of Erika Wurth’s outrageous stories,
seemingly designed to make her family look like outlaws, which is similar to the way she presents herself in
interviews. For Erika Wurth, it’s all about the branding.
We also know that Annie married DK Williams after Albert Coffin’s death, and before her own death in
1938. Note: “DK” may stand for “Don’t Know” on the death certificate linked above, but Annie James’s third
husband is so mysterious that he may be lost to history. What we do know is that James’s third husband was
not the “Frank Williams” that Wurth’s family claims. We thoroughly researched the Frank Williams listed
in Edith Youts’s publicly available family tree, and found no connection to James. Note that Wurth’s family
has been remarkably inept in researching their family. (Wurth’s family tends to rely on Edith Youts’s family
tree, but it is shot through with a number of glaring mistakes.) However, if we find we made a mistake re:
this person, we will post a retraction.
The “Indian Whorehouse”
Finally we come to the most maddening claim that Wurth makes, that her great-great-grandmother Annie
James owned an “Indian whorehouse,” where Annie’s son Earl Riggs met Oda Martin.
Oda Martin landed in Houston sometime before 1912, as stated previously. She married Earl Riggs in
February 1912, so if Wurth’s comments about her great-grandmother and the “whorehouse” are true–that Oda
Martin met Earl Riggs while working in the “Indian whorehouse” that Annie James owned–then Annie James’s
address during this time would indicate where this “whorehouse” was.
In 1912, Annie James was listed as “Mrs. Annie Coffin” and was living at 1019 Washington, Houston,
Texas. Earl Riggs, her son, lived at the same address. Our research on 1019 Washington shows that the family
who owned this home would rent out space in it. Apparently they had both a room for rent or a cottage of five
rooms for rent. Because Annie and her son Earl lived together, we believe they lived in the five-room cottage,
possibly only renting out a couple of rooms in the cottage, and Oda Edith Martin probably lived there, as well,
at least in 1912. 1019 Washington was in what is now known as the Old Sixth Ward, an area of storefronts,
churches, schools, lodges, and Victorian homes. The home at this address no longer exists, but it was a home,
obviously not a brothel.
This article from the Texas State Historical Association outlines the history of prostitution in Houston,
mentioning that Houston’s red light district was in the Fourth Ward, where the “Happy Hollow” area was a
raucous mess, causing a formal designation for a red light district before Oda Martin ever set foot in Houston:
Additionally, in 1908 the city council formally designated a new location for a red-light district, just west
of town. By 1910 the federal census showed that the prostitutes had left the central business district and
moved to the “reserved” area known as the “Reservation” in the Hardcastle section of Freedmen’s Town
in the southwestern section of the Fourth Ward.
But we think we know the origins of the Wurth “whorehouse” declaration. Wurth’s family, as per her
aunt Edith Youts, believe that Frank Sinatra’s mother Dolly Sinatra owned a brothel in a neighborhood close to
where Annie James once worked as the proprietor of The Mansion House in Houston.
edithyouts 8 years ago
“…Tommie went by first names Tommie, Annie, and Mary Ann. She married, Riggs, Coffin, Williams
etc! She was proprietress of Mansion House in Houston. Hmmm? That was only a few blocks away
from the house of prostituion of Frank Sinatras mother. More to come later on this colorful woman.”
(See here for a screenshot of this comment.)
Annie James was indeed the proprietor of The Mansion House in 1917, located at 1413 Franklin.
We didn’t attempt to verify whether Dolly Sinatra ever owned a house of prostitution in Houston, because
it doesn’t really matter; however, given Erika Wurth’s tall tale telling and affinity for drama, we believe Erika
Wurth simply conflated the Dolly Sinatra story with Annie James, so she could convince her mostly white
interviewers, editors, agents, and book publishers that she was truly Native and had this “terrible, tragic” family
background. Except it’s a lie.
Note that The Mansion House was considered a high quality place circa 1912, and when it advertised for
help, it insisted on having only white people staff the place. Clearly Annie James was white.
John Thomas James, Catherine Smyth, and Franklin, Tennessee
But we have one more family to discuss, and this will throw Erika Wurth’s bloviating bullshit claims of
Chickasaw ancestry out the window.
Edith Youts suggests the original claim of Chickasaw ancestry came from either Annie or her parents. So
we’ll take a look at her parents. (We’ll address Youts’s DNA comment in Part 3.)
Annie James’s parents are John Thomas James (1820-1880) and Jane C. Smythe/Smythe (1832-1891). Her
father John T. James was born in Tennessee; Jane Catherine Smith/Smythe was born in Illinois, but not much
is known about her. Both were white, according to the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses. So where did this
idea that the family was Chickasaw come from?
The idea didn’t come from John T. James’s parents: James G. James (1795-abt. 1835), born in Hamilton
Parish, Fauquier County, Virginia; and Mary Morrow Foster (1795-1825), born in Hamilton, Ohio. They
married in 1817 in Patrick County, Virginia. They are listed as white on the 1820 census.
What caught our eye, though, is that Annie’s father John T. James was born in Franklin, Tennessee in 1820,
which is about 20 miles southwest of Nashville. (The family moved shortly after John James was born, to
Owen, Indiana–just in time for the 1820 census.) While we have no way of knowing how long this family was
in Franklin, Tennessee, we believe this place ignited that family’s imagination–because Franklin, TN is about
15 miles northeast of the original lands of the Chickasaw Nation, about a day’s ride by horse or wagon.
We believe we found the origin of the James/Wurth family’s fever dream about having Chickasaw
ancestry. It’s a simple matter of association, common with Pretendians. Somehow the James family finding
themselves 15 miles away from the border of the Chickasaw Nation, during a time when the Nation would be
in the news–either traditional news printed in newspapers or news spread by word of mouth by fearful whites–
was enough for this white family to somehow come up with the idea that they were Chickasaw.
Since the beginning of the 1800s, U.S. politicians had been talking about expelling Natives from their
homelands in the Southeast, and the tribes were keenly aware of this, but the U.S government wasn’t yet
systematic in its approach. But that land lust would only grow and grow.
In 1820, the Chickasaw Nation faced pressure from white settlers’ ruthless desire for more and more land.
Before Jackson, the whites attempted grossly unfair treaties with the Nation, forcing the Nation to cede their
lands, including one created in Franklin, TN, in 1830 that was never ratified. Soon Andrew Jackson would be
elected president (1829), and the Nation would be forced onto the Trail of Tears. It really doesn’t get more real
and desperate than that.
Note that the area outside the Chickasaw Nation was for whites. Whites were not allowed to settle within
the borders of the Nation, although some succeeded. But the most important idea here is that Chickasaws had
to stay within the confines of the Nation, because the world outside the Nation was hostile to them and
determined to take away the last vestige of land they had. Native also feared for their lives if they traveled away
from their lands, given the whites’ hostility.
Maybe the James family co-opted Chickasaw identity because it was sympathetic to the Chickasaws, but
more likely they saw the Nation as an enemy sitting on fertile lands that should belong to whites. But the
James/Wurth family did their own encroachment, by stealing an identity and a culture that didn’t belong to
them, and Erika Wurth participated willingly in this theft.
Next: Performing Identity: Erika Wurth’s Tall Tales, Part 3
We will publish Part 3 of this story on Monday, January 30, 2023. We’ll cover the
following:
A response to Wurth’s Twitter comment.
How ‘bout that Ph.D., Erika? We’ll discuss Erika Wurth’s Ph.D. from the University of Colorado
and how she didn’t use any of the research skills she supposedly learned in her Ph.D. program when covering
her “Native” family. We’ll show her lackadaisical attitude with an interesting screenshot.
Yet she’s profited greatly from claiming this “Native” background, her primary motivation for “playing
Indian.” We’ll discuss what we’ve discovered re: how much she’s profited ($$$) from being a Pretendian. We also discuss how Wurth games the system, and the way academia and publishers allow this
gaming.
Wurth uses anti-Native tropes in her writing, and her interviewers don’t question her.
If Wurth is so “Native,” as she claims, why didn’t her ancestors enroll? She likes to say that it’s because they
were “urban Indians.” We’ll cover this, which will lead right into our next point.
Wurth’s aunt Edith Youts wrote about the family’s Native DNA, and we’ll show screenshots of her comments.
We’ll contextualize what Native DNA means.
Finally, representation matters. We’ll unpack why Wurth’s farce hurts Natives and even hurts whites when
they cling to their new-found “Native” darling.
Link to Part 3.
