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1. Did there really used to be a Ponca City polo team?

Yes! E. W. Marland brought the sports of fox hunting and polo to Oklahoma. The little red foxes they hunted are not indigenous to this part of the country; Mr. Marland had them brought in from Pennsylvania. There are many of them living in this region now, and they are all descendants of a “Marland” fox that got away. Marland hired a “master of the hounds” to direct the hunters in the proper way of conducting themselves during a fox hunt. To become a part of the “Horsey Set” became the elite thing to do in Ponca City.

Polo was also introduced to Ponca City by Marland. He organized a team and set up three different polo fields for practice and for competition. George Marland was very active on the Ponca City polo team and was quite a good player as well.

2. How did the City of Ponca City come to own the Marland Mansion?

Even though Mr. and Mrs. Marland had to move from the Mansion in the early 1930s, they retained ownership while he served in Congress and as governor of Oklahoma. They opened the mansion for parties and special events, and E.W. used it as his campaign headquarters whenever he ran for office.

Six months before he died, Mr. Marland sold the complex to an order of monks, the Discalced Carmelite Fathers. He kept the chauffeur's cottage and the surrounding land and left both to Lydie in his will. The Discalced Carmelite Fathers established a college of philosophy at the mansion in 1941 and were cloistered there until 1948. They then sold the complex to the Sisters of St. Felix for $50,000.

The Felician sisters renamed the estate Assumption Villa, and operated a nunnery and high school at the mansion. The nuns themselves lived in the mansion on the upper level. They built the chapel and the administration building. They also built Angela Hall as a private high school; in the 1960s, they added a dormitory.

In 1975, the Felician sisters announced that they were planning to sell the mansion and surrounding property and move to New Mexico. Conoco offered to pay half of the purchase price if the City of Ponca City would pay the other half. A one-cent sales tax was proposed by the city to fund its part. Lydie Marland returned to Ponca City during this time and wrote a letter to the citizens, asking them to support the sales tax and to save the mansion. The sales tax issue did pass, and the City of Ponca City became the owner of the Marland Estate, including the mansion and all of the other buildings on the 30-acre complex. The total purchase price was $1.4 million.

3. Did Lydie Marland really destroy her statue?

The statue of Lydie originally stood on the north vista. It was visible from the breakfast room doors. When the monks removed the statue, it stayed in the crate next to Lydie’s cottage for several years. In the early 1950s, when she was preparing to leave town, she paid a man to take it away and destroy it. She died thinking he had followed those instructions. After her death in 1987 and after the death of the man she had paid to destroy the statue, the mansion received a letter from one of his family members. It said the man had not completely destroyed the statue. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do that, so he buried it. After a long search, it was located. It was in pieces but was put back together and restored by a local monument company. Lydie’s statue now stands in the lobby of the mansion, alongside the statue of her brother George. Replicas now stand in the gardens where the originals were once located.