Duchess & Sadie's Domain

Bayfield, Colorado - I suppose with just four days left to get your income taxes filed, your kitchen tables, desks have been lined with last years receipts, income papers, and other necessary deductible items. Maybe some keep a bottle of water and tylenol handy along with a calculator, pencil and notepad or computer. Do Not fret! If you do not get the taxes done by April 15th, then get the IRS extension form

We hear from some Southern Oklahomans that they finally received .04 inches of rain this weekend. We also read where wheat crops south of the I40 interstate are caught in a drought that some say is worse than the drought of 1920s. Their waving wheat crops are only six inches tall and turning brown, instead of of 19 inches and green.

How are the wheat fields in Northwest Oklahoma? The same? From what some have told me, the whole state is praying for some much needed rain right now. We hope it comes ASAP! BUT . . . it sounds like some wheat crops are beyond harvesting and not much for haying.

Don't forget to checkout Waynoka Historical Society's website and read what Sandie Olson says about Roots & Waynoka Historical Society. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

This Day In History (April 11)

America - On this day in history, April 11, 1951, president Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East. The Times headlines read: "Truman Relieves M'Arthur of All His Posts; Finds Him Unable to Back U.S.-U.N. Policies; Ridgway Named to Far Eastern Commands."

April 11, 1893, Dean Acheson, who advised four U.S. Presidents as Secretary of State and played an important role in the Cold War period, was born. Following his death on October 12, 1971, his obituary appeared in The Times.

On This Date: April 11 . . .
1689 - William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.

1814 - Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of France and was banished to the island of Elba.

1898 - President William McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war against Spain.

1899 - The treaty ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect.

1921 - Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax.

1945 - American soldiers liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

1951 - President Harry S. Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command in the Far East.

1979 - Idi Amin was deposed as president of Uganda as rebels and exiles backed by Tanzanian forces seized control of the capital, Kampala.

1980 - The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

NW Okie's Ancestrial Lineage

Bayfield, Colorado - [Sometime back Linda Hurt and Jeanine Baringer sent us some HURT information and photos. The photo on the left is one of those photos of the HURT men.]
5th Great Grandfather, Edward PARIS (1699-?), which we are still working to gather more information.

Have you been watching, keeping up with the NBC/Ancestry.com series Who Do You Think You Are? Each episode of the series gives you some hints to help find out more information about the lives of your ancestors and what their lives were like as immigrants and pioneers of the New World!

Did you know that Ancestry.com is featuring the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War by giving you access to search for your Civil War ancestors in millions of new records so you can discover the stories you will not find in the history books?

This week we are still looking to share some more family lineage on NW Okie's Maternal side of the PARIS/HURT family connections. The HURT (HURTOSCI) lineage married into my mother's family.

John James HURT born 16 May 1832, in Oujezdec, Kutna Hora, Caslov, Czechoslovakia (Bohemia), arriving in the New World (America) around 1876. John James HURT, I am told was a Doctor and his wife, Mary Anna Mrkvicka, was a nurse over in Czechoslovakia, before coming to America.

John James & Mary Anna HURT had the following children: Joseph P., Anna, Mary, James, John A., Barbara Carrie, Frank James, Antona, Anton Charles, Ben.

HURT/HURTOSCI Family Lineage:

John James HURT (1832 - 1915), 2nd great grandfather
Joseph P. HURT (1854 - 1936), 1st great grandfather;
Mary Barbara HURT (1893 - 1966), grandmother;
Vada Eileen PARIS (1916 - 1992), mother;
AND . . . Me, Linda Kay MCGILL, 3rd daughter of Vada Eileen PARIS & Gene M MCGILL.

You can view more of our HURT Legacy & HURT Ancestors by clicking these hyperlinks. We hope some of our research might help some distant relatives discover their ancestors through what we have come across. AND . . . help us add to and correct some of our ancestor's information with stories and photos.

Good Night, and Good Luck Searching Your Roots! View/Write Comments (count 1)   |   Receive updates (1 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Mattie Beal's Lucky Day

Wichita, Kansas - This was a late addition in last week's newsletter and we were not sure everyone got to read "Mattie Beal's Lucky Day." So . . . we have stuck it in this week's newsletter, also.

In 1901, one lot in one town went to one very fortunate telephone operator. By then, the government had given up on the colorful but chaotic land runs in favor of a more orderly lottery system. Would be claimants registered with land officials, then waited to make their choices as names were drawn in order.

In the case of the sprawling comanche, Kiowa and Apache lands, among the very first names drawn was that of Mattie Beal. Until then, Mattie Beal had worked as an operator for the Wichita, Kansas, phone company. Once her own lucky number was called in the lottery, she lost any need ever to ask again, "Number, please!"

Instead, she selected a fine piece of property -- perhaps the most valuable in the whole region: a full quarter section, 160 acres, that sat right on the edge of the Lawton town site.

A year later, Mattie Beal and her newly acquired husband, Charles W. Payne, manager of Lawton's first lumberyard, built the city's first mansion, a fourteen-room structure that is today on the National Register of Historic Sites. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Grave of Dorothy Brewer

Oklahoma - An anonymous comment was left in the The OkieLegacy Ezine, Vol. 7, Iss. 26, Feature #426, concerning the "Grave of Dorothy Brewer."

Anonymous says, "Most Likely that is the grave of Dorothy Bell Brewer (nee James). She died in April of 1932. She had been married to George Brewer and she had several children including two (possibly three) young boys. The boys were adopted out after her death. At least one was adopted by a family with the last name PENICK." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

NW Oklahoma Sunsets

Eagle Chief Ranch, NW Oklahoma - The following slideshow are snapshots of sunsets in Northwest Oklahoma, as taken by our youngest son, Robert L. Wagner, 7 April 2011, at Eagle Chief Ranch, a few miles West and South of Alva, Woods County, Oklahoma.

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Captain William Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation

Plymouth Plantation, Plymouth Planta - Captain William Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation As hand written from William Bradford's collection of letters and writings concerning the history of the Plimoth Plantation. We skip to page 531, Appendix showing Passengers of the Mayflower that came over first, in the year 1620. These were the first beginners and the foundation of all the Plantations and Colonies in New England and their families.

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America In 1745

America - For those of you family genealogists who have traced some of your ancestors to the Highland County of Virginia, this is what the History of Highland County Virginia, by Oren Frederic Morton, Chapter IV, it says the following about "America In 1745 - "Relation of the Colonies to one another - Their Small Population - Industries Institutions - Character of the Colonials."

If you think about what all we have today (21th century) with broadband internet, television, postal mail delivered most every day (except on Sundays), telephones (cells & land lines), automobiles, airplanes, trains, spaceships, public schools and colleges in every community and state, . . . it makes you wonder sometimes how our ancestors survived and educated themselves back in 1745. We have come along way from what our ancestors of the mid-eighteenth century lived through.

"It comprised thirteen colonies, all owning a certain degree of allegiance to the British crown. Two of these, Pennsylvania and Delaware, were under the authority of the same governor. With this partial exception, the thirteen colonies were with respect to one another thirteen independent, English-speaking nations. Nine-tenths of the white people were of British origin, and their laws and institutions were consequently much alike. Nevertheless, each colony was jealous of its own rights and more or less distrustful of its neighbors.

"Georgia, the youngest of the colonies, had been established only thirteen years. Virginia, the first founded, was not so old by thirty years as is the settlement of the Bullpasture Valley today. The occupied area of the colonies extended a thousand miles along the coast. On an average it reached inland scarcely more than a hundred miles.

"By the terms of their charters, some of the colonial grants extended clear across the continent. But west of the Alleghanies no settlement had yet been made. The entire Mississippi Valley was claimed by the French, and in a slight degree had been colonized by them. To all intents and purposes, what is now Highland County lay directly on the frontier of the British domain.

"In all the british colonies there were not one-third as many people as there are now in the two Virginias. The growth was everywhere rapid, both by natural increase and immigration, yet large portions of the settled area were thinly occupied. Towns were very few and very small, and even villages were scarce except in the New England section.

"Boston had 15,000 people, Philadelphia had 12,000, and New York only about 10,000, or substantially the same number as is found in Staunton today. The only other places of size were Salem, Newport, Norfolk, and Charleston. The negroes were scarcely one-fifth of the population, and not 20,000 of them were to be found north of Maryland. The estimated population in 1745 is as follows: New Hampshire 26,000; Pennsylvania and Delaware 125,000; Massachusetts 168,000; Rhode Island 29,000; Maryland 120,000; Connecticut 84,000; Virginia 237,000; New York 71,000; North Carolina 65,000; New Jersey 58,000; South Carolina 56,000; Georgia 6,000. ToTal 1,045,000.

"Roads being bad and bridges few, there was no journeying by land when it was possible to travel by rowboat or sailing vessel on the bays and rivers. The active commerce with England and the West Indies required several hundred of the small ships of that day. There was no intercourse with South America, Africa was known only along its coast, Australia was uncolonized, and the lands east of Russia or beyond our own Mississippi were little else than blank space on the map. The great Pacific was less known than is the Arctic today, and nearly every sea was infested with pirate vessels. The traveler was still suspected of being a liar and sometimes he was.

"In the cities and towns and along the navigable waters, the houses of people esteemed well-to-do were substantially built and quite roomy, yet within they would seem less cozily furnished than the better class of homes in any American village of the present century. Away from the coast, the log house was almost the only dwelling.

"Farming was the one great industry, and it was carried on in a crude, laborious, and wasteful way. The Middle and Southern colonies contributed the greater share of the agricultural exports. Tobacco, the leading staple of Maryland and Virginia, afforded a surplus of 70,000 hogsheads. 200 ships were engaged in this service, and the revenue it yielded to the British treasury was more than a million dollars yearly.

"By reason of their climate and soil, the New England colonies turned their very active attention to commerce and fishing. As for manufacture, this branch of industry was severely handicapped by British jealousy. England wished to use the colonial domain as a market for the products of its own workshops.

"In all America there were but three colleges: Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary. Outside of New England there was no system of public schools, and illiteracy was common. Yet in every colony were not a few persons who were well versed in the higher education of that day. It was little else than a classical training, and it conduced to a style of discourse that was heavy, stilted, and full of Greek and Latin names and allusions.

"The men of best education were the ministers and lawyers. The daily newspaper was yet in the future. The very few weeklies were in size about like our Sunday School papers. The mails were few, slow, and irregular, and the frontier settlement did well if it received its letters once a month.

"Religion was free only in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Elsewhere a state church was supported by general taxation, and all people were expected to attend a certain number of times in the course of the year. In Virginia this church was the Episcopalian, known also as the Church of England.

"It was a very dark age with respect to medical knowledge. Hygiene was little understood or practiced. Quacks were numerous, and in the South physicians were held in low esteem. As to legal procedure, its methods are always conservative, and even yet they have undergone no radical change. With respect to society, it was colored by aristocratic ideas more than is the case at present. Even when the Federal Government went into operation in 1789, only one person in twenty-five was a qualified voter.

"Taverns were in every county, and they always kept liquor, the use of which was general. Southern taverns were poor, but the traveler was sure of free entertainment in the homes of the planters. The travelers visit was an appreciated break in the sameness of life in a sparsely settled county.

"The life of every community was very local in its spirit and sympathies and was comparatively sluggish in its movement. This was because of the slowness and difficulty of travel, the meager amount of general news in the journals of the day, and the prejudice shown toward the stranger. Each neighborhood was a little world in itself. It was interested in little else than its own petty affairs, and was rather content in its narrowness.The differences between the colonies were due in part to denominational options and in part to social and economic conditions. But as yet an immense majority of the people were of English derivation, and whether Cavalier, Puritan, Quaker, or Catholic, their English ancestors had lived side by side as actual neighbors.

"In all the colonies there was a considerable though unequal sprinkling of Irish, Welch, and French. The French were exclusively Huguenots, but unlike the Hollanders and Germans, and even unlike the French Catholics of Canada, they did not perpetuate their mother tongue. Neither were the few Swedes of Pennsylvania and Delaware very long in becoming amalgamated with their English neighbors. The same fact was far less true of the Hollanders of New York, a colony not founded by the English.

"In 1745 England was, therefore, in a very broad sense the mother-country of the colonies. Not only their language, but their laws and usages were derived fromEngland. And yet the causes which have made the American a very different person from the Englishman had begun to operate with the coming of the first immigrant ships.

So . . . let us compare our modern conveniences of today (21th century) with what our ancestors had (or did not have) back in 1745. As some might say, "We have come along, baby!" . . . From what our ancestors of the mid-eighteenth century lived with and without! View/Write Comments (count 1)   |   Receive updates (1 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Pioneers & Sub-Pioneers of Highland County Virginia

Highland County , Virginia - The History of Highland County Virginia in Section VI, page 256, has an outline sketch of pioneer families and sub-pioneer families (whatever sub-pioneer meant). It showed pioneer families and each surname was followed by particulars, as far as their information permitted. Such as, given name of settler; his residence before coming here; the year in which was found the first mention of his being here; the place of his settlement; the section of the county in which his descendants in the male line were chiefly or wholly found. A very few names were omitted owing to a want of precise information. See the Google books link below.



If you can't view the "iframe" view, then try this link: History of Highland County Virginia - Outline Sketch of Pioneer and Sub-Pioneer Families View/Write Comments (count 1)   |   Receive updates (1 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Roots & Waynoka Historical Society

Waynoka, Oklahoma - Sandie Olson (Email: waynokahs@hotmail.com), with the Waynoka Historical Society sent us the following message and a link to the Waynoka OK website. We found this photo on the left in one of our earlier OkieLegacy Ezine volumes.

Sandie says, "One of the fascinating things that we get to do at the Waynoka Historical Society is assist families in researching their history. Recent visitors were from Wisconsin, California and Texas who had come to see the site of the Modar family's home south of the Cimarron River. One of the ancestors had worked at Monfort Drug in Waynoka. The historical society has a photo of Monfort Drug at the north end of Main Street in downtown Waynoka. It might be safe to say that there is no one living who remembers Monforts in Waynoka, but many of your readers, including me, remember Monforts in Alva.

"Other recent visitors were related to one of Waynoka's first mayors, "Butch" Hays, and also the Fox family north of Waynoka and Mr. Herren who had a poultry or produce business in Waynoka. One of their early Waynoka relatives had been a Harvey Girl.

"We are looking forward to the Cherokee Strip Museum Board of Directors tour on Saturday morning, and the Enid genealogy group on Saturday afternoon. Later this month, at the conclusion of the annual meeting of the Oklahoma Historical Society in Enid, there will be a bus tour from Enid to Waynoka. We welcome groups and individuals to visit us. For information, call 580-824-5871 or email waynokahs@hotmail.com." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Ace The War Dog

Stillwater, Oklahoma - This is a very interesting World War II story that Dale Talkington shares with us this week. It concerns an Australian Shepard named "Ace." "Ace the War Dog." A World War II pilot with ties to Oklahoma State University made good on a promise he made 54 years ago to a combat comrade.

The website goes onto say that, "Retired Major Lorren Perdue was in Stillwater Friday, October 19, 2007, to honor his former flying companion, a black Australian shepherd named Ace. Ace died in November 1953. Perdue was allowed to bury him under the wind tee at the Stillwater airport terminal with a plaque and an American flag to fly and mark the site.

In 1943, Perdue rescued Ace, a puppy sick with distemper, from an airstrip in Nadzab, New Guinea. After the puppy was cured by a physician with the 66th Troop Carrier Squadron. Perdue used an Army K-training manual to train Ace to be a flying war dog, following both voice and hand signals.

Ace took to the airplane like some dogs like taking rides in pickup trucks. Ace of Perdue's right-hand man. Ace also became the mascot of his squadron and rode with Perdue on missions over New Guinea as they dropped paratroopers or supplies to troops fighting in the jungles and bring back the wounded and dead.

You can read more of Ace the War Dog story by clicking this link. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe