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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Poetess in the Family, Part Three.....Ruth Harvey Douglass

In this third installment of the stories and memories of Ruth Harvey Douglass you will read some more of the heartfelt poetry that Ruth wrote. Her "Canyons of Wyoming"   is particularly meaningful to all of us as most of our family has visited the old homestead areas near Albin and LaGrange, Wyoming and marveled at some of the beautiful scenic lands which Ruth recalled in her poetry.

She did such a good job of putting her memories down on paper and added many of the little details about her parents: James William Harvey and Fannie Lee Harvey that made them come to life from the pages. Her siblings: Elmer, Myrtle, James, Earl, and Mary all played important roles in her life and are fondly recalled in her memories. I hope everyone has enjoyed reading about a  little bit of the history of Wyoming as told through the recollections of Ruth.

Part three of  Ruth's memories and poetry:

‘Yesterday’

Could I but walk again the paths of yesterday
Would they be the same or would they have changed?
My childhood footsteps blown away or are they still there
Among the flowers as I ran along that day?
Would trail herds still come up the hill
From ranches near LaGrange or are these, too, dust?
Do saddles still hang on the old corral
And cowboys still sing in the bunkhouse there?
For these were the boys of the old frontier
Clayton and Henry and Sharkey, too.
A cowboy named Curley who was the best
At story telling…I see him yet.
Sixty years have passed since then, and things
Would not be the same for all are blown away
In the wind.

We had very few Christmases at our house but one year mother said we could get a tree, provided we got a pine tree as she didn’t like the smell of cedar.  So Earl and I went after a tree.  We then had nothing to trim it with, but Myrtle had sent a box and there were handkerchiefs for all, so we draped them over the bunches of needles.  For me she had made a sewing box out of cardboard covered with green flannel with needles and pins in the underside of the lid and a little pair of shears.  How pretty it was and very neatly made.  One other year she sent me a doll which I had until after I was married and the children broke it.  I don’t think our mother ever had time to make a gift with seven of us to look after.  One Christmas the folks gave me a sled.

I remember a time mother and I sat under a pine tree along the rim of the canyon and the wind sang in the tree tip.  My mother began to cry and I asked why and she told me she was sad…had to leave her home State of Iowa, her friends, her married daughter, and the grave in the cemetery in which our baby sister, Dora, had been placed.  She never did get to see that grave again.  She was so sad it’s no wonder I remember so well the sighing of the wind.
James William Harvey and Fannie Lee Harvey, the parents of Leila Ruth Harvey Douglass, our Poetess


Along about then, Elmer decided he wanted to buy a steam plow and do plowing for others to help pay for it.  He went to Denver and bought a large outfit which cost a lot of money.  He also had to hire extra help to run it.  Then the Andersons decided to buy their own as they had so much land under cultivation and they too, plowed for others so this cut the profit Elmer had counted on making.  He still owed quite a bit on it and soon came in danger of losing the whole thing so Ed came to the rescue and sold his place to finish paying for the steam plow.  That ended the time of the steam plow and last I knew, it was sitting in a field, a pile of rusted metal.

Once when the men were moving the big steam engine, John Adcock wouldn’t let them cross on any of his land, causing them to have to go along the edge of a deep canyon with danger to themselves as well as the machine.  When Mother found that out, she was mad and she said “you just wait.  He’ll want a favor some time”.  And sure enough, one day he came to get her to go help them with a new baby and sickness and my mother said “No”.  This was very unusual, for my mother went where ever she was needed and many babies were brought into this life by her and without any Doctor.

I don’t know if I have told of the wild flowers in the canyons.  There were harebells of blue, sego lilies, a sand cherry that was about the size of a man’s thumb.  They grew close to the ground and had blossoms like plums.  The cherries tasted like chokecherries, only sweeter.  Another flower grew about eighteen or twenty inches tall and had light green leaves which would stick onto your dress without a pin.  These flowers were white, a white poppy that you couldn’t pick due to the white milk that ran out of the stems and was very sticky.  One bank was covered with fern and we called it “Fern Bank”.  Mary and I used to sit there in the shade.  A turtledove had her nest close by. 
She never was there much only to lay an egg and hatch one bird, then that little bird hatched the rest of the eggs she had laid.  A modern day babysitter.  She never was afraid of us.  In draws where water would run after a rain, nearly always we could find yellow sweet peas.  There were ground cherries, too, but they always grew where you didn’t want them.  Once we had a very hard rain and hail, water ran deep in all the draws and into the canyons.  After several days I heard a loud noise and the edge of the canyon had caved off.  It was a good thing I wasn’t there looking over the edge.



‘The Canyons of Wyoming’

The incredible stillness in the canyon depths is only broken by
The soft songs of unseen birds or a few pebbles, falling from some
crevice to the floor below.

Beneath the protection of overhanging ledges the ancient ones who
lived here so long ago walk again through these canyons.  Near
the spring of soft, cooling water the smoke from cooking fires
rose upward to mingle with the white clouds that drifted
overhead, proof that this quiet and peaceful place was once
populated with dreamers such as me.

I Love you, canyons of Wyoming…….

Over yonder butte black clouds form with distant lightning and thunder.
Sheets of rain are falling and prairies are running deep with water.
The distant roar tells that it is dashing down through the canyons
in its race to the floor below, only to disappear into the sand. 
As suddenly as they came, the storm clouds vanish
and the sun emerges to guild every blade of grass,
every pine tree with fairy jewels.  Birds sing again,
white clouds float across the sky to fade away into the distance.

I Love you, canyons of Wyoming…….

In the coolness of the evening, soft winds blow and a million
stars blossom in the skies…seems we merely need reach up to
touch them.  The call of a night bird and sounds of coyotes in
the far distance breaks the stillness.  Where once I roamed there
is now lonely emptiness and the stillness is only broken by my
memories.

I Love You, Canyons of Wyoming


We had quite a few horses by now…some good ones and some not so good.  One big black that was Elmer’s never could be counted on for he might do anything.  Once he rose up in the air and almost hit me as he came down.  He did hit a little fluffy duck of mother’s and that big old hoof flattened the duck out as thin as paper.  Old Dan broke his leg going through a deep snow drift and had to be shot.  Ed had a beautiful brown mare he was keeping to raise colts and someone stole her and we never did find her.  Ed had a horse named Frank, too, that we could ride or drive.  He never could be trusted either!  Elmer bought a big black stallion named Rex and we liked to watch him run in circles around Elmer on a long chain.  Earl didn’t have much of these things and left home to take a homestead near Slater, Wyoming where he got his start.  Ed also left and located near Earl.  Ed had married Helen Douglass and Earl married Hilda Larson.  Elmer married Lou Edminston.

I have, no doubt, missed many of the things that should be written about.  We could still find buffalo skulls on the prairies, we could tell the difference by the shape and the short horns.  There were no antelope or deer around by 1904 and the men used to go over north of “Old 66” to hunt them.

Uncle Pete killed a deer with a single shot Winchester rifle, 44 caliber, and he was probably a hundred yards away.  He missed the first shot and the deer ran over to the canyons southwest of where we lived.  Pete, Ed Anderson and his brother, followed it and killed it about a mile west of John McMann’s house.  The second shot hit the horn and the deer turned around and came right back by Uncle Pete, which gave him time to reload that single shot rifle and the third shot he got him right through the heart.  That was the last deer that was ever seen in the country around Albin.

I remember my Grandpa Lee. (1)  He was well known to the early residents of the Pine Bluffs area as he was one of the very earliest settlers and endured all of the harsh privations and hardships that always come to new countries.  He saw this section develop from a land of buffalo grass and roaming herds of cattle to a modern farming community with rural mail routes, telephones, truck transportation and so forth.  He came to Wyoming in 1889 and settled on a homestead twenty miles north of Pine Bluffs.

Grandpa raised a lot of chickens and he wouldn’t let Granny kill one.  If she got to eat one she killed it when he went to town and she put the feathers in a pail back of the stove and buried the head in the manure pile.  If Pete and grandma wanted a hen to cook, Pete would take the gun and yell “an old hen crowed”, and would run out and shot one, as Grandad said it was bad luck for a hen to crow.  A pretty sneaky way to get a chicken, wasn’t it?

Granny had to use white pepper for if she used black pepper, Grandpa wouldn’t eat the food.  I many ways he was so unkind and so disagreeable but Granny was always so serene and happy…She never acted as though she heard what he said.  She had red hair and brown eyes.  She told me that in those early days the blizzards were so bad that they set posts on the way to the barn from the house and had a w ore on them so they could hold on to it to get from the house to the barn as they had to walk with their backs to the storm and couldn’t see where they were going.  The snow was so fine and the wind so fierce it would just take your breath.

The incident of the Grey wolf, as told to me by Granny Lee.  It was getting dark and there was a terrible blizzard outside.  Pete had gone to the barn t o feed the horses and on the way back to the house, a big grey wolf chased him clear to the door.*  As Pete dashed through the door, he slammed it shut on the wolf’s head.  In the excitement they never thought of the gun and Grandad was beating the wolf on the head with a stick of stove wood.  The wolf finally jerked loose and got away.  Considering this happened in the year 1889, it could have been possible and I have no reason to doubt Granny Lee’s word.  At that time they were living in a dugout on one of the Anderson places before they filed on the homestead.
*(Earl Harvey, Ruth’s brother, said the wolf chased the dog to the door, not Uncle Pete).

A trip to Aunt Mary Jackson’s house at Bayard, Nebraska.

As mother had not seen her sister for so long, the family decided to go visit them.  All of us were packed into Grandpa Lee’s covered wagon with Granny sitting right in the middle of the wagon bed.  Grandpa and Pete were on the seat, so mother, Mary and I were filling g in the rest of the spaces along with food and extra cots to sleep on.  It must haven been late in the fall…November or December, because it was cold.  Of course, Grandad had his usual nit so was feeling pretty spry.  We were warm in the wagon but cramped.

We drove all day and when we came to Pumpkin Creek it was frozen over and Grandad yelled, “Look Out, Old Maude is going to Jump”!  She did and when the wheels hit the ice they broke through and a cot fell over and hit Mary on the ear and she let out a blood curdling yell.  We stayed all night with some people and it was so cold that the telephone wires sang all night and I didn’t sleep much.  We all slept on the floor.

We went through a range of hills and a place called “Wright’s Gap.”  Only one wagon could go through at a time, so Pete walked through to see if the other side was clear before we started through.  Mary and I walked and the tracks through the sandstone were worn down until they were hub deep by so many wagons going through for so many years.

I can’t remember much more about the trip, although we did see frozen wild pumpkin vines along the creek and the prairie grass was the color of dead grass and clean as though it had been swept with a broom.  We spent Christmas with them and all of us went to the Church to hear the program and see the tree.   No gifts were on the tree but each got a mosquito-bar sock of treats, some were red and some were green.

Aunt Mary had quite a few children so we had a lot of fun.  Going at that time of the year was pretty risky but we got home without any trouble.  I can’t remember all of the Jackson children's names but there was J.D., Grace, Daphne, and Merle.  J.D. passed away many years ago and as far as I know, all live around Bayard except a baby, Helen, who was born after we were there and she lives in California.  Grace married a Robert Cleveland.  She also taught school for several years.  These children always loved us and all came that could, when Mother and Father passed away, showing a bond of relationship that can’t be equaled.  J.D. was only named J.D., so in later years he named himself John David.  He said he didn’t see why anyone would name a baby just two initials…J.D..

About 1906 Wad and Mary Robinson came from Iowa to homestead and they were friends of our Grandparents so they lived with them until they had a place.  Wad was a great hand to pretend he was sick so he could lie in bed.   He was always asking his wife to bake him a hot apple pie before he got up.  Wad and Mary had a parrot called “Teddy” and they left him with our Grandparents a lot.  He said a lot of things like ‘Teddy wants a strawberry” or a cracker.  Took a bath and washed his feed in his water cup.  Once when the men went to town and came home, Pete said, “Do you know what we forgot?  We forgot the tobacco.”  And Teddy started that silly laugh of his and repeated “They forgot the tobacco.”

Granny Lee used to tell me many things about their lives and the trip they made to the Jackson Hole Country from Iowa in a covered wagon in 1895. (1)  I was but one year old.  She spoke of Fort Laramie as ‘old’ then.  I have been to Fort Laramie several times and I even attended a dance there in “Old Bedlam.”  All of my poems seem to be around these things in the past and when I realize that Earl, who is 80, and I am now74, are all that are left in the the golden chain of our family, I am really sad and lonesome.  Many, many of my days are spent in quiet thinking and my love of letters to and from friends.  Also, I think of the many, many who should be living today, for they were not old when they went away.

Ruth Harvey Douglass
1969


 There will be one last chapter to "Poetess In the Family.....Ruth Harvey Douglass" to follow next week.

Poetess In the Family, Ruth Harvey Douglass- part one: here
Poetess In the Family, Ruth Harvey Douglass- part two: here
Poetess In the Family, Ruth Harvey Douglass- part four: here

(1) Hannah and Milton Lee's story is told in "Hannah Lee's Overland Journal"  , a three part article which may be found here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

All stories, poetry and photographs in this series are owned and copyrighted© by the Harvey and Hopkins families and may not be reprinted without the permission of the family. Contact clchopkins[at]gmail[dot]com








Thursday, March 17, 2011

One Lovely Blog Award

Those Old Memories is proud to have been once again recognized by another great blogger! Cheryl Palmer of  Heritage Happens blog has awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award. Thanks to Cheryl for including me in her selection. I am always humbled when another blogger chooses to honor my blog.

There are rules for accepting the award, they are as follows:
1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who granted the award and their blog link. 
2. Pass the award on to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.
   3. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

The blogs that I have chosen to pass this on to are some new ones I have found and really like, a few that have been around awhile, and a couple that are not well known in the genealogy world but are blogs that I enjoy reading and fit nicely in the world of genealogy and history.

They are in no particular order, but one on the list which I just found is Just Another History Blog. I think he might be a great regular addition to the genealogy world of blogs! 


Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Poetess in The Family, Part Two.....Ruth Harvey Douglass

In honor of Women's History Month, I have chosen to write about Ruth Harvey Douglass. She wrote a wonderful memoir of her family and without it our family would not have the privilege of knowing as much as we do about our ancestors. Ruth left us all a great legacy in the form of her story and beautiful poetry. I hope everyone enjoys reading about her memories of family and Wyoming!
Harvey family picnic on Horse Creek near Albin, Wyoming -taken before 1915

Poetess In The Family, part 2:

My mother’s people always gave us advice as to where things should be, as to directions.  I remember they said the barn must be northwest of the house for fear of sparks from the house chimney would blow over and set it afire.   Our caves and chickens must be where they were less likely to be covered with drifts in times of blizzards or blowing snow.  The wood pile and any posts we may have extra must be stacked on end or stacked real high.

We had a big wood pile and it lasted a long time.  I remember in fixing the cave in the fall our father had it all done except the door and it began to snow.  He got a little panicky and said he guessed he ‘Got caught with his pants down’.  It was only a short storm and soon melted away.  In summer when we saw the rain over by the buttes, we all ran to fill the baskets and boxes with dry wood so we could keep the fires going.  We even enjoyed using the axe now and then.

As I remember, ants by the hundreds found their way into the house from the wood pile and once they got into mother’s fresh gingerbread and she had to throw the whole thing away.  We were never hungry for dessert for she always had a gallon crock of cookies or the big stone churn full of doughnuts.  If she tried to hide them our brother, Ed, would smell them out anywhere they were and his eyes were always bright with pleasure when he found them.  I remember his daughter Kathryn’s son, Roger, has those same bright eyes that express love and mischief.

‘Childhood’

I know of a beautiful hillside, sunny, green and still,
A canyon, deep, that lies below it…above it rises a hill.
A hill that is dark with cedars and bright with summer’s glow
And where a path is leading…to the cool spring below.

Along the edge of the canyon the cedars their shadows throw
The leaning tree branches quiver…above its deep repose.
And there where the sandstone whitens, the prairie winds blow free
The early days of my childhood remain these memories for me.

The splendors of the hills and valleys among the cedars dark and tall
The mourning doves nest on the hillside, the purple haze over it all.
I remember them all in my dreaming as I roam these hills so free,
The sego lilies were blooming with silken petals for me.

I feel the canyons breathing with each breeze that falls
And the mystery all around me and peace is over all.
So when comes the autumn and snow their glory crowns
In memory I seek that hillside, far from the noisy towns.

And where the spring is flowing, from every care beguiled,
I gaze at the endless distance with the eyes of a little child.
Blessed are the memories that none can take away,
Memories sweet and tender of childhood’s happy day.

And of these memories that in later years we read,
They lie along our pathway, in the flowers and the seed.
So I love these hills and canyons, the cedars on the hill,
These memories I shall take with me...wherever that I will.

When Ed was twenty-one he filed o 160 acres about a mile an a half south of us.  He only lived there long enough to prove up on it.  That was in 1912.  When he did batch there, his friends called him ‘Scuts’ Harvey due to the good biscuits he always made, but home seemed best and he always came back.

We children attended a log school about a mile and a half away.  Our teacher’s name was Maud Sinon and her home was over on Horse Creek.  There were several other children too, Paul and Ralph Smith, Sylvia and Otto Anderson, and later a family by the name of Shake moved into the neighborhood.  They had three children, Russell, Elmer and Sarah.  Russell was so smart in arithmetic he got better grades than any of the others.  There was a family by the name of Miller who lived in the canyons but they didn’t go to our school.  We liked to go visit them as they had several children and Mrs. Miller would always make us some things she called ‘Doughgodies’ which were either bread dough or biscuit dough fried in deep fat.  Both were rolled into thin cakes before frying.  The Anderson family was large…Albin, Charlie, Elliott, Arvid, Sylvia and Otto.  Alvin was an invalid and was the postmaster of Albin, Wyoming for many years.  Andersons had lots of horses and cattle and nearly every Sunday they had a rodeo and we all went to see the boys ride.

John McMann married a widow who had several children..Fred, Fern, Blanche and Neta.  Other families were Cunningham, Rabou, Chindler, Welch, Edwards, Irvine, George and Joe McCann, Hermina Green, Adcock, Draper and Lige Rundell.  Some new ones came by the name of Conley.  Mrs. Conley was Mrs. Smith’s sister.  The Gallio Post office was named after Mr. Conley.

As the years passed, Elmer had a well drilled on his place and built a grout house.  Our father built us a four room house and made a cistern that had water piped from Elmer’s windmill so we then had water close at hand.  A log barn was built too, which had a straw roof.  A coal house and new chicken house and two granaries were built.  We raised large gardens to can and fill the new pantry that mother had.  Father sent to the John A. Salzer  Seed Company in La Crosse, Wisconsin for our seed and some new oat seed to plant called ‘Salzer’s White National’.  The yield that year of this new seed brought people all over to buy their seed, but father wanted all he had raised for seed for himself so he told them all where they could order it.  We raised flint corn as father didn’t think eastern corn would ripen.  We children wanted to raise some popcorn but he didn’t think it would do anything either. 

I well remember the year mother went back to Iowa to be with our married sister, Myrtle, who was ill.  That summer my father and I raised 400 chickens and he was so proud of me as I learned  to make pies and bread nearly as good as mother’s.  I think I was about 12 or 13 years old.  He would buy canned pumpkin at Albin and I would make pies of it.

I think they were mostly custard as I made too many pies for that amount of pumpkin.  Both of us girls could kill and dress a chicken by the time we were 12.

Once my parents went to Pine Bluffs and were caught in a bad rain and hail storm on the way home.  It was getting dark and they were wet and cold.  I had supper ready of fried chicken and hot biscuits when they came in and my mother said she had never eaten such a good meal.  Of course, that made me very proud, too!  Fried chicken does not taste so good today after being fried in these synthetic fats.  Nothing will ever smell as flavorful as hot lard.

When my mother made hominy from the corn we raised, she didn’t use lye but used Arm & Hammer baking soda, three tablespoons of soda to a gallon of shelled corn.  This was washed many times to loosen the hulls and remove the soda.  When it was finished it was nice and white.

No one has ever been able to duplicate her sugar cookies.   We either had too much flour or not enough flour.  Would you like to try them?  Take two cups of white sugar and one cup of butter and cream well.  Now add two eggs, one cup of milk, two teaspoons of KC baking powder and one teaspoon of nutmeg.  Add flour to make soft dough.  Roll out a portion, sprinkle with sugar and press into dough lightly with the rolling pin.  Cut and bake.  I hope you are able to get the right amount of flour as I have never been able to.

My mother’s baked beans did not taste like these do today.  She took one quart of great northern or navy beans and soaked them over night.  These were put into a large granite pan with a lid.  Slices of salt pork were added with salt, pepper and molasses.  They were placed into the oven and cooked all day at a moderate temperature.  Sometimes she added a little dry mustard but never tomatoes in any form.

‘Summer’

When as a child I followed my father
Behind the horses and a walking plow
Turning the good earth into long furrows.
The myriads of blackbirds eating each worm turned,
The smell of freshly cut hay in the fields
And the cry of a curlew high overhead.
The dozens of meadowlarks sitting on the barbed wire fence
Singing in the morning when the sun was red in the east.
Fresh Beef, covered, hanging at the top of the windmill
Curing in the pure mountain air.
Rest periods in the afternoons lying on
The floor listening to our elders talk.
My mother’s plans for the evening meal
Frying chicken and hot biscuits from the oven.
Our old cat with kittens hidden in the hollow log of the barn
Which she later carried to the house.
Ripe golden grain being harvested,
The whir of machinery threshing
And the smell of grains being hauled away
Twenty miles t o the nearest town.
Butchering day when father expected
All of us to help prepare those five
Big hogs for the winter.
All these, and more, are my memories
Of the sweetness of summer.

Our first plow was a walking plow and father drove the team of horses and one of the boys held the plow in the soil.  We had a mowing machine too.  When father bought our binder and cultivator in Pine Bluffs they said we must be rich for he paid cash for them.  Also, a story got around that mother had cut class and real silverware that she used every day, which wasn’t true for it was only pressed glass and 1847 Rogers Brothers silver.  We used what we called black-handled knives and forks for every day which we kept bright by polishing with brick dust.  We had a white tablecloth but used either red or blue checked ones for everyday and mostly ate on the oil cloth which covered the boards on that home made table at all times.  It was always exciting times when threshing time came with all the good things to eat and extra men there to help in return for our men helping them.  Once mother had chicken and noodles which the men called shoestring dumplings!  Mother did not cut her noodles like we do today.  She rolled them out and dried them and then rolled it up again into a long roll and cut it in thin strips, and when unrolled they were long and narrow and just as hard to eat as spaghetti.

I think Mr. Cunningham had one of the first threshers.  The first machine was run by horses which went round and round in a circle.  Later he bought a steam engine.  There were always about six men with hay racks who brought in the sheaves of grain from the fields and two men stood in the front of the separator to cut the binder twine on the sheaves as they were run through the machine.

Our only hay for a long time was the wild needle grass on the prairies but this was not so good for the stock, due to the needles, so my father started raising more oats for the horses and cows and then raised some millet for the chickens.  Barley along with the corn was raised for the hogs.  Mary and I loved to help father pick corn and worked along side with the men.  A Doctor in later asked me if I had worked in the fields and I said yes, not because we had to but because we wanted to.  I think we girls did everything in those years that was to be done.  We could ride horses, chop wood, make soap, and milk cows.  We picked the chokecherries for mother to make jelly of and she didn’t have much luck with it.  She did make tomato preserves though, out of canned tomatoes.  A number 2-1/2 can of tomatoes, three cups of sugar and stick cinnamon cooking would bring the wild bees from the canyons, but we never did find their tree.

Our little dog, Coaly, (because he was so black) was so cute.  If he decided to visit our grandparents he would go by himself, which was about two and a half miles and we could see him going up a path through the hills.  We only had to say, “Let’s go to the canyons, Coaly”, and he would taker off with his tail in the air.  We wouldn’t see him again until we were at the spring as he had his own special way of going.  When we got back home, there he was but his tail was not carried high over his back…it was dragging.  Coaly was really Ed’s dog.

The fall of 1905 we saw the first and only trail herd go through to Pine Bluffs from the ranches on Horse Creek.  They camped at night on section five, which joined ours.  We could hear them at night and one of the drovers told my father that was the half-way place.  They must have watered at the spring as they couldn’t get any water at our place.  There was a way to get a wagon through the canyons to the spring, so they must have come up that way.  

Nora Cunningham used to drive a two-wheeled sulky around the country and she often stopped to talk to Mary.  I remember once there was a cowboy who was talking to them and I asked who he was and she said “That’s Henry Greiser”.  He later won the championship in Cheyenne at the Frontier Days Rodeo.  To me, he looked handsome in his chaps and kerchief.  In later years I met him again and we became good friends.  He was then a foreman on a ranch north of Cheyenne.

I remember too, when Bill Carlisle robbed the train near Cheyenne.

Mary and I never did get to go to Cheyenne to see the Frontier Days Show until later on in life, but Neta and Fern Raymond always went every year.  Fern didn’t ride but Neta was always on a horse about every day.  Mary and I both rode horses but we didn’t have time to spend away from the work at home as they did.  I remember that Mary would rather clean than cook.

Mary and I didn’t go to High School.  A Dr. Marshall in Pine Bluffs offered to take us into their home as they had no children and our father could pay for our keep with meat and vegetables but mother wouldn’t let us go.  We went to barn dances all over the country, driving a team of horses to the wagon.  Ed and Earl always went with us.  Many times we were caught in snow storms and the snow got quite deep.
Sisters: Ruth, Mary and Myrtle Harvey, taken before 1915


To be continued.......

Poetess in the Family, Ruth Harvey Douglass- part one: here
Poetess in the Family, Ruth Harvey Douglass- part three: here
Poetess in the Family, Ruth Harvey Douglass- part four: here

All stories, poetry and photographs in this series are owned and copyrighted © by the Harvey and Hopkins families and may not be reprinted without the permission of the family. Contact clchopkins[at]gmail[dot]com

Friday, March 4, 2011

Fearless Females: Marriage Records of Pearl and Chet Moore

Page from funeral book of Pearl Moore Zehrung

Framed wedding scroll of O.C. Moore and Pearl Zehrung

MOORE FAMILY: Oswin, Pearl, and daughter Stella, 1907
The date was November 23, 1905. Oswin Chester Moore and Pearl Mae Zehrung were united in marriage in Alliance, Nebraska. Grandma and Grandpa Moore left behind them a rich legacy as to strong family ties but little is known about the day of their marriage. They were probably married in the parsonage as was the practice many times during that time frame. We also do not have an actual known wedding picture of our Grandparents but the one with their baby daughter Stella Moore would have been taken just a couple years later so it is the closest to a wedding photo that we have.

The beautiful 18 x 24 framed wedding scroll is the only real paper evidence. It hangs on the wall in my living room and I  value it as one of my most valuable possessions.  In all the family records I have, I do not have their official record from the court house for some reason so that is one that I must go find. This prompt did serve a purpose to alert me to the fact that the record was not in my papers or on the computer so it is another thing to add to the "to do list".

Grandma Pearl was really a home maker and Mother to three girls and did not have a lot of outside interests beyond her family. She was a wonderful cook who passed that passion down to her girls and their children. She was a life long member of the Royal Neighbors and the Methodist Church and her interest in the Royal Neighbors organization also passed along to her three children who maintained a standing with the Royal Neighbors and one who actively worked with them for years as a book keeper and group promoter. Grandma and Grandpa liked to attend area dances during the early years of Alliance and they enjoyed playing cards with close friends.

I was less than a year old when Grandma Pearl passed away at the age of sixty-six in the year 1953. She was a hard worker and devoted the last years of her life to taking care of Grandpa when he became ill, eventually bedridden and he then passed away a short time before her.

Wonderful pictures, heirlooms and stories of Grandma have survived so those things have helped to bring her to life for me and I proudly carry many of her characteristics and especially her looks!  Attending to her final resting place has been my privilege since I was a small girl.

In memory of Pearl Mae Zehrung Moore

Fearless Females blog prompts suggested by The Accidental Genealogist, Lisa Alzo