Duchess of Weaselskin

Bayfield, Colorado - We know that some states and communities have canceled their fireworks displays because of the dryness and fire danger this 4th of July 2011.

So . . . We would like to share our Southwest Colorado fireworks from Vallecito Reservoir with our readers. We did not record all of the fireworks tonight, but did get some interesting pieces that the crowd seemed to enjoy and cheer over. See below.



Sadie and this Duchess Pug stayed safely inside away from the booming fireworks here in southwest Colorado Rockies. We hope you all had a great, safe 4th of July celebrations in your neck of the woods!

Good Night! Good Luck! AND . . . Happy Independence Day! View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

This Day In History (July 4th)

America - On this day, July 4th, the United States celebrated its Bicentennial. In 1776, the continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Go to article.

On This Day, July 4th:

• 1872 - Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, was born. Following his death on Jan. 5, 1933, his obituary appeared in The Times. Go to obituary
• 1802 - The U.S. Military Academy opened at West Point, N.Y.
• 1804 - Author Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Mass.
• 1826 - Death claimed the second and third presidents of the United States: John Adams died at age 90 in Braintree, Mass., while Thomas Jefferson died at 83 at Monticello, his home near Charlottesville, Va.
• 1831 - James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, died at age 73 in New York City.
• 1845 - American writer Henry David Thoreau began a two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.
• 1939 - Baseball player Lou Gehrig, afflicted with a fatal illness, bid a tearful farewell at Yankee Stadium in New York, telling fans, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
• 1946 - The Philippines became independent.
• 1958 - Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was appointed auxilliary bishop of Krakow in his native Poland.
• 1966 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law.

NW Okie's Ancestry Corner

Bayfield, Colorado - [Identities of the 1909 Guthrie baseball team in photo on the left: backrow, left to right: Herman Leuttke (captain), Clare Patterson, Bill McGill, Norman Price, Clyde Geist, Thomas Reed; Middle row: Red Davis, Tony Anderson, Howard Price (manager), Ted Waring, Milton Pokorney; Seated: Floyd Willis, Jesse Clifton, Clarence Nelson.]

On this weekend as we celebrate Independence Day with our special comfort foods across American, we remember an old saying from our youth that went something like this, "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. They go together in the good 'ole USA." Do you remember what year that advertisement came out?

Back then, Mom really did make apple pie from scratch in the kitchen. Grandpa and Dad played ball in the yard with the kids, and everyone ate a hot dog or two at the ballpark. AND . . . there seemed to be a Chevy parked curbside, as Americans were living what seemed to be the American dream back then.

What could be more American than baseball? Is baseball known as American as apple pie? That brings us to our topic this week . . . baseball in pre-world war I and II.

The photo above, on the left is a group shot of the Guthrie baseball team taken around August 1909, in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Grandpa Bill McGill is on the backrow, third from the left. We have also included the names of the rest of the team that we have recently run across.

We heard from a baseball historian at Oklahoma University, who is compiling another baseball book on small town professional baseball in Oklahoma before World War II. The historian tells me that the book will follow the format of Territorians To Boomers that was released on June 4.

This Oklahoma baseball historian wrote to ask if he could include a couple of photographs that I had of the 1909 Guthrie baseball team, of which my Grandpa William "Bill" J. McGill was a pitcher. I have included those two photographs here.

The photograph on the right is another postcard dated around mid to late August 1909 that Bill McGill sent to his sweetheart, Constance Estella Warwick, who was staying in Colorado Springs around that time when Bill McGill was playing baseball with the Guthrie baseball team.

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Declaration of Independence (235 Years Ago)

America - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The above quote was taken from the Declaration of Independence, which was drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776. Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was nothing new. Its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. Jefferson summarized this philosophy in "self-evident truths."

Did you know that the oldest signer of the Declaration of Independence was none other than that famous signer, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was born 17 January 1706 and was 70 years old at the time of the signing. In a close second place behind Franklin was Stephen Hopkins (born 7 March 1707) of Rhode Island.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated below. During your Ancestry research, have you found a connection to one of these "Founder Fathers?"

• Column 1, Georgia: Button Gwinnett; Lyman Hall; George Walton; Column 2, North Carolina: William Hooper; Joseph Hewes; John Penn; South Carolina: Edward Rutledge; Thomas Heyward, Jr.; Thomas Lynch, Jr.; Arthur Middleton;
• Column 3, Massachusetts: John Hancock; Maryland: Samuel Chase; William Paca; Thomas Stone; Charles Carroll of Carrollton; Virginia: George Wythe; Richard Henry Lee; Thomas Jefferson; Benjamin Harrison; Thomas Nelson, Jr.; Francis Lightfoot Lee; Carter Braxton;
• Column 4, Pennsylvania: Robert Morris; Benjamin Rush; Benjamin Franklin; John Morton; George Clymer; James Smith; George Taylor; James Wilson; George Ross; Delaware: Caesar Rodney; George Read; Thomas McKean;
• Column 5, New York: William Floyd; Philip Livingston; Francis Lewis; Lewis Morris; New Jersey: Richard Stockton; John Witherspoon; Francis Hopkinson; John Hart; Abraham Clark;
• Column 6, New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett; William Whipple; Massachusetts: Samuel Adams; John Adams; Robert Treat Paine; Elbridge Gerry; Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins; William Ellery; Connecticut: Roger Sherman; Samuel Huntington; William Williams; Oliver Wolcott; New Hampshire: Matthew Thornton

• June 7, 1776 - Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution urging congress to declare independence from Great Britain.
• June 11, 1776 - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence.
• June 28, 1776 - A fair copy of the committee draft of the Declaration of Independence was read in congress.
• July 1-4 - congress debated and revved the Declaration of Independence
• July 2, 1776 - congress declared independence by adopting the Lee Resolution.
• July 4, 1776 - congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Congress ordered that the Declaration of Independence be printed (Dunlap Broadsides).
• July 19, 1776 - congress ordered the Declaration of Independence engrossed (officially inscribed) and signed by members.
• August 2, 1776 - The engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence was signed by most of the delegates. Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Wolcott, Lewis Morris, Thomas McKean, and Matthew Thornton all signed on a later date.

The Vanishing Herd

Northwest, Oklahoma - Sandie Olson tells us they have finally had a bit of relief from the heat in Northwest Oklahoma. Sandie Olson with the Waynoka Historical Society sent us some information about a beautiful hardcover book that Jim Fulbright and Albert Stehno have written, entitled The Vanishing Herd.

Sandie says, "I received my copy of The Vanishing Herd by Jim Fulbright and Albert Stehno. Al was the agriculture teacher at Freedom years ago. It is a beautiful hardcover book of more than 500 pages, and gives individual histories of cowboys of the Cherokee Outlet, as well as other information. Books are $60 + $5 shipping, and can be ordered from Albert Stehno, 5700 Acre, Billings OK 74630. I think OkieLegacy readers would like to know about it." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

American Baseball

America - It was back in the 1970's that advertisers exploited the patriotic connection with the commercial jingle "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet." How American is baseball, hot dogs and apple pie?

Let us look at Baseball for now with a glimpse into the book Baseball, that shows the A. G. Spalding collection of historical data connected with baseball, which is sometimes known as America's National game. This book is part of an "oval" series of games by Ricard George Knowles and Richard Morton that dates back to the mid to late 1800's.

On page 82, Chapter VII, Baseball in America supposedly began its season in America around 1895. Some say baseball's origin was more or less accurately, connected with old-fashioned games of England, France and early American colonies. BUT . . . it may be at once admitted that rounders was the only game which really bears any affinity to it.

It was in the United States in early April, 1895 when 65 thousand people attended the five opening games of the National League: New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Louisville.

The Father of Professional Baseball

The book referred to Harry Wright, who died on 3 October 1895, as the captain of the famous Cincinnati"Red Stockings." Wright was an Englishman, who originally assisted his father, Sam Wright, as the professional cricketer attached to the St. George Cricket Club, of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Harry Wright's life was so connected with the story of the rise of baseball in America. Harry's first connection with baseball in 1857. Harry used to visit the baseball fields located on the river side Hoboken, north of the Stevens estate. The locality being known as the Elysian, Fields, the Knickerbocker, Eagle and Empire Baseball clubs that occupied the old Kinckerbocker club field.

Harry Wright was known as the "father of professional ball" playing. He organized the first team of ball players who were openly, avowedly paid for their services as regular baseball players. It was Harry Wright's Cincinnati Red Stockings started in 1868 as a regular professional nine that professionalism became the rule. See Links below Reache's Official American League Baseball Guide

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Canada Day (Dominion Day)

Canada - Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day) is a National day of Canada, a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act. Canada Day celebrated as the passage of the British North America Act of 1867, later to be known as the 1867 Constitution Act.

This act amalgamated the previously freestanding colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Canada into a single federation. It also re-split Upper Canada and Lower Canada into separate provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The confederation talks were held in Prince Edward Island. See following Links for more information: Canada Day 2011 and Wikipedia - Canada Day. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe