Duchess Snowy Domain

Bayfield, CO - As the World turns and February ends, with about 4 to 5 inches of new snow a few days ago, we find the temperatures rising to the mid-40's and 50's in the next few days in Southwest Colorado.

We also dug out this old early 1900's baseball photo of NW Okie's Grandpa Bill McGill and his team mates at Minneapolis, Kansas. Grandpa Bill is the tall, good-looking gentleman, standing, third from the right.

Grandpa Bill's Baseball Legacy can be viewed at the following Link: Grandpa's Baseball Legacy. Grandpa played for Friends University, in Kansas around 1904. So ... we believe this photo was taken between 1904 - 1905, or so.

On the left side of Grandpa's Baseball Legacy there are links labeled Pg 1 thru Pg 36. Taking you through Grandpa's baseball days from a Oklahoma to Kansas, Southwest Texas League, to the Major League and the St. Louis Brown's and back to Oklahoma early baseball days.

Are there any '66 Alva High Goldbugs out there? We ran across Your Class of 1966 Goldbug yearbook online at classmates.com. You might have to have a membership to login and view, though.

Hey! Will March come in like a Lion or Lamb this Tuesday? Whatever the case, have a great week!

Good Night, and Good Luck! View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

This Day In History (February 28)

America - On this day in history, February 28, from 1827 to 1956, we find the first railroad incorporated for commercial transportation; The SS California left Cape Horn and arrived in San Francisco; Republican Party was organized in Wisconsin by 50 slavery opponents; US Territory of colorado was organized; Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick began a raid aimed at Richmond; Thomas Edison hired Samuel Insull; the first vaudeville theater opened; AT&T was incorporated; the first televised basketball game was shown; and much more.

1827 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first railroad incorporated for commercial transportation of people and freight.

1844 - Several people were killed aboard the USS Princeton when a 12-inch gun exploded.

1849 - Regular steamboat service to California via Cape Horn arrived in San Francisco for the first time. The SS California had left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848. The trip took 4 months and 21 days.

1854 - The Republican Party was organized in Ripon, WI. About 50 slavery opponents began the new political group.

1861 - The U.S. territory of Colorado was organized. Nickname: Centennial State; Capital: Denver; Motto: Nothing Without Providence; Flower: Rocky Mountain columbine; Bird: Lark Bunting; Tree: Colorado blue spruce; Song: Where the Columbines Grow; Entered Union: August 1, 1876.

1864 - Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick began a raid aimed at Richmond. The goal was to free Federal prisoners and to spread the word of President Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. The next day the group split into two wings on their way to Richmond. (Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid)

1881 - Thomas Edison hired Samuel Insull as his private secretary.

1883 - The first vaudeville theater opened.

1885 - AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph) was incorporated. The company was capitalized on only $100,000 and provided long distance service for American Bell.

1893 - Edward G. Acheson showed his patent for Carborundum.

1900 - In South Africa, British troops relieved Ladysmith, which had been under siege since November 2, 1899.

1911 - Thomas A. Edison, Inc. was organized.

1940 - The first televised basketball game was shown. The game featured Fordham University and the University of Pittsburgh from Madison Square Gardens in New York.

1948 - Bud Gartiser set a world record when he cleared the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.

1953 - In a Cambridge University laboratory, scientists James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA.

1954 - In San Francisco "Birth of a Planet" was aired. It was the first American phase-contrast cinemicrography film to be presented on television. 1956 - A patent was issued to Forrester for a computer memory core. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

NW Okie's R & R (The Good Old Days)

America - This week we share with you some information we found as we rummaged through our archives. It concerns Conestogas and Prairie Schooners. How were they first developed?

Through our archive research we found out that the Conestogas were the large, boat-like wagons with angled ends, sloped floors to the middle so barrels wouldn't roll out when the wagon was climbing or descending a hill. See the image on the left.

It was developed in Pennsylvania and named for the valley in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania by Pennsylvania-German settlers for hauling freight in the East from 1750 until the railroads came along. They were pulled by teams of six or eight horses and could haul up to five tons.

Traders on the Santa Fe Trail found that bullwhackers, muleskinners were preferable to horses because of the immense distances and scarcity of good water along the trail. Two-dozen oxen, mules were used to haul the heaviest loads with a second wagon (back action) hitched behind the lead wagon.

The Prairie Schooners were a half-sized version of the Conestoga. They measured 4-feet wide and 10-feet to 12-feet in length. The length doubled to 23-feet with the tongue and yoke attached. The schooner stood about 10-feet tall with the homespun, cotton bonnet (doubled over to make them watertight) and had a wheelbase over 5-feet wide.

It weighed around 1300-pounds empty. It was 2 to 3-feet deep with a bit of tar to render it watertight to float across slow-moving rivers. It took 4 to 6 oxen or 6 to 10 mules to get the sturdy little wagons across the prairies.

It offered shelter almost as good as a house. The front wheels were smaller than the back wheels for easy, sharper turns and extra play. The prairie schooners were manufactured by a dozen or more wainwrights specializing in building wagons for the overland emigrants. One of those wainwrights was the Studebaker brothers. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Warshing Clothes Memories

Oklahoma - As to a few weeks ago concerning the feature about "Warshing clothes Recipe, Doris Guntrum shares this Comment, "This sounds familiar, my first memory is of a gas powered washer, 3 tubs of rinse water, pumped by hand, one tub with bluing, a pan with starch to do shirt collars and fronts, then hanging on the line (even in freezing weather), or drape them all over furniture in the house. Oh yes, the outhouses were very cold indeed. (An Okie from Freedom)" View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Rummaging Through the Archives

Fort Supply, Oklahoma - This week of rummaging we bring the archives, Vol. IV (not included in the OkieLegacy Ezine database). We found these three scanned images of postcards around the Fort Supply, Oklahoma area.

These Old Fort Supply, Oklahoma penny postcards date back to around 1908. They were mailed to my grandmother from T. Lowe (an alleged a cousin of Constance Warwick).

Mr. Lowe was supposedly a residence of Old Fort Supply, Oklahoma back in 1908 when he wrote, sent these postcards to my grandmother Constance Warwick, while she was single, rural teacher, living in Alva and teaching at one-room school houses in Old M (Woods) county, in Oklahoma Territory. The middle postcard shows a picture of the Old Man Custer building. Its was one of the old buildings located down at the Fort (Fort Supply). Here is the backside of the penny postcards.

The last postcard shows a picture of Flora & William Martindale, a couple who resided about 4 miles north of town during 1908. Flora was an English woman, according to the information written on the backside of the postcard by T. Lowe, Feb., 1908 to my grandmother, Miss Connie Warwick, in Alva, Oklahoma. If you have any information concerning Flora & William Martindale, do not be shy, leave a comment below or send NW Okie an email with your information. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

George Rollins' Letter To Editor - 1904

Alva, Oklahoma - This is concerning George Rollins' letter to the the editor in 1904. This is what Wanda Hooper Curbow sent us concerning the letter, "I found this Letter to Editor, written by George Rollins, Alva, Oklahoma and appeared in the Souvenir Edition - Alva Pioneer, Friday, Jan. 1, 1904, Vol. 11, No. 16, Alva, Woods Co., Oklahoma.

W. F. Hatfield, Publisher Daily and Weekly Pioneer editor, sold the "Souvenir Edition" in 1904 for 50-Cents. It was printed to celebrate Alva's tenth anniversary since the opening of 1893. Printed as it was in 1904. Wanda Hooper Curbow's Mother was Georgie Ethel Rollins>

Wanda also says, "My Grandfather was George Rollins. We know he was in Oklahoma and in the Masons there. I found where a George Rollins wrote a letter in a paper Souvenir Edition - Alva Pioneer, Oklahoma. Is there by chance a copy of the original, and if so could I get a copy?"

Is there someone with a microfilm reader that could look up this Souvenir Edition of the Alva Pioneer, dated Friday, Jan. 1, 1904, Vol. 11, No. 16, Alva, Oklahoma, and send us a copy? View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

1958 News - Long Search For Camels Hits Gusher

Waynoka, Oklahoma - Dennis R.Feature left the following Comment concerning an OkieLegacy feature awhile back that spoke about the 1958 News search for Camels for the Waynoka Sand Dunes.

Dennis R. says, "Our family would visit my aunt and uncle and cousins who lived east of Waynoka when I was little in the 50's and 60's. We always had to go to the sand dunes. There used to be a pin with a five legged calf, fainting goats and I don't remember if there was any camels or not. The owner of the Conoco station (I think) would take us for rides around the sand dunes in a home made dune buggy. We always came home with plenty of sand burrs." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Shreeve's of Farry, OK

Farry, Oklahoma - Glenda Shreeve shares this Comment concerning Farry, Oklahoma. Glenda says, "I am related to the Jess Shreeve, and Denver McMurphy family in Farry and the Floyd Morland and Blanch Babcock family in Freedom. I would love to see any pictures you may have." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Our European Forefathers

Highland County, Virginia - The following comes from the book, A History of Highland County, Virginia, page 34, Chapter III, copyrighted 1911, by Oren F Morton. In chapter three it gives causes of early immigration from Europe as religious intolerance and European society. Why England led in the settling the colonies; the attitudes of other countries; the elements appearing in the immigration, the Scotch-Irish and the redemptorists and convicts.

It states when in 1607 there was an actual beginning of those thirteen colonies, which grew into the Untied States of America, Europe had not more than a third of her present population.

It was not a pleasure trip to cross the atlantic. The voyage often consumed more than a hundred days, the speed of the sailing vessel being no greater than that of a man afoot.

If the winds were very contrary, the supply of water and provisions might fail. Smallpox and other forms of disease were liable to cause havoc in the crowded and untidy ships. There was also the peril of shipwreck, but there was the further peril of capture by pirates.

Once safely across the ocean, the average immigrant was not at all likely to revisit his old home. The prime causes for the settling of America was Religious Intolerance and Economic Oppression.

For 15 centuries there was practically but one Christian Church in all Europe. The one church upheld the various national governments, and the various national governments upheld the one church.

It was the general conviction that unity in religious interest within the state was essential as unity and vigor in civil authority. So it was thought rightful and proper for the state to crush a new religious sect, just as it would crush a rival to its civil pretensions. Those times were harsh. Since a man could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, he might expect to be burned alive for being a heretic.

Each sect wished to be let alone, but would not let others alone. But here in America was a wilderness where men who could not agree might still get beyond elbow touch with one another. So the Pilgrims came to Massachusetts. The Baptists to Rhode Island. The Quakers to Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians to New York and the South. The Presbyterians to the frontier.

Another prime cause for the immigration to America was economic oppression. The long rule of the Roman Empire made Europe thoroughly acquainted with despotism. When that empire went to pieces, the lawlessness of Western Europe became intolerable.

The masses of the people saw no other recourse than to put themselves under the protection of military chieftains. They had to toil for the support of the leader and his household and to follow him in war. They thus became known as serfs, or villeins, and lived in virtual slavery.

The chieftains became the dukes and barons of the Middle Ages. They lived in castles, wore armor in battle, and boasted of their coats of arms. They were proud and overbearing, held labor in contempt, and despised the serfs on whose toil they lived. Toward these peasants there was no thought of social equality or intermarriage.

The structure of society was known as feudalism. It slowly gave way as new monarchies rose here and there out of the wreckage of the old empire. These gained power at the expense of the nobility, until the latter lost their authority as petty rulers, although regaining the ownership of the lands they had controlled. This loss of the nobleman's power worked an important change in the relation between noble and peasant. The former became little more than a landlord, to whom the peasant now paid rent instead of giving compulsory service.

The lot of the peasant was still hard, although he was coming into a higher consciousness of his natural rights and was more disposed to act upon them. In Europe the area of land was a fixed quantity. The arrogant landlords were virtually reducing the amount. They were enclosing large tracts, so that they might hunt deer and pheasants. This process of enclosure and the growth of population made the rents too high for comfort.

Poverty was spreading, and the yeoman farmer, the natural backbone of society, was being crowded to the wall. He could perceive that the future was with the mass of the people and not with the small privileged class. But he could also perceive that those who control the land control the government and determine the structure of society.

Europe would remain aristocratic until land monopoly was overthrown, and this result would come only after a long and bitter struggle. The universal tendency of rent was to leave the toiler only enough to enable him to exist. It was rent that determined wages.

In America there was a seemingly boundless amount of wild land. Wild land meant free land, free land meant ownership, and ownership meant relief from unjust rents.

Free access to land meant that direct participation in government would be generally diffused. It further meant that the resulting society would be democratic rather than aristocratic. It could still further be seen that a higher and more general degree of well-being was possible than where privilege was in the saddle and riding rough-shod.

So … the desire for economic freedom lured men to America even more than the desire for religious freedom.

It was inevitable that the varying degree of land monopoly and aristocratic thought and practice was a share of the baggage brought from Europe.

It goes on to say that humanity does not progress by leaps but by steps. And yet such weeds could never take firm root in the American soil so long as there was free access to a public domain.

Land could not be a dependable source of income unless the owner rolled up his sleeves and went to work. To evade this necessity, the planter imported white servants and soon afterward was purchasing negro slaves. Neither indentureship nor slavery could withstand the competitive power of free access to land.

Thus, economic and religious opportunity were thus the two arms of the magnet that drew Europeans to America and made this country great.

It has been reported that England was foremost in breaking the power of feudalism and giving the masses of her people a will to assert themselves.

Also, the strong religious sects in that country were better able to take care of themselves than was true of other European lands excepting Holland. Holland was the first commercial country of Europe, and owned as many ships as all the rest of the continent. With respect to civil and religious liberty, Holland was also the freest of the European lands.

Holland was quite exempt from persecution and had a keen eye to business. Hollanders were expert to found a single colony, and primarily for the purpose of trade rather than agriculture. This is precisely what took place, and the metropolitan city of New York bears witness to their good judgment.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland, dependencies of England, contributed to the stream of emigration, but as the interests of the Scotch, Welsh, and Irish in the new continent were identical with those of the more numerous English, these people did not seek to form colonies of their own.

Germany and Scandinavia had taken no interest in American exploration. The former was not then a united county. From 1618 to 1648 it was in the throes of the most terrible war that ever desolated Europe. Germany had not time to think of founding colonies of her own. Sweden was then a great military power. To find a haven for persecuted Protestants, her king started a little colony on Delaware Bay.

France, Spain and Portugal had been very active in the exploration of America. But the french were not emigrants by temperament or inclination, and they had made not resolute effort to colonize our Atlantic seaboard. As for Spain and Portugal, they took little interest in lands which lay outside the tropics.

Yet in an indirect way, France and Germany sent many of their people to our shores. A bigoted king undertook to crush the strong foothold the Reformation had secured in France. His Protestant subjects, known as Huguenots, were the most intelligent and enterprising of his people. The were the mainstay of French commerce and industry. The toleration extended to them by a former king was revoked, and it was made difficult for a Huguenot to escape with his life. Yet to the number of 300,000 they did get away, and they found a refuge in England and Germany.

In England they joined the Puritans and in many instances adopted English surnames. In Germany they became a large degree a German-speaking people. In both countries they joined very numerously the emigration to America. In New England and South carolina they were particularly numerous. Unhappy Germany continued to be desolated by war after war. An incident in one of these was the devastation of the Palatinate, a province on the Rhine and bordering France.

This was done by order of the French king, and the fine province was made a temporary desert. Villages and farmhouses were burned to the ground, orchard trees were destroyed, and wells were filled up. BUT William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, invited the now homeless people to join his colony, and many of them complied. This early German emigration was almost wholly from the valley of the Rhine and from Switzerland.

It was not until the second decade of the eighteenth century that America was more homogeneous than it had ever been since.

The volume of immigration had become relatively small, and the institutional differences among the colonies, the people were predominantly of English blood and character.

They viewed with considerable disfavor the heavy volume of Scotch-Irish and German immigration which now set in. This was because of the alien appearance and in part the alien speech of the newcomers. While events did not justify the fears of the older population, the future of America as profoundly influenced by the new arrivals and very particularly by the Scotch-Irish. This is the very element which led in the settlement of Highland county, Virginia.

If you were to sketch the peculiarities of the European stocks from which the Colonial Americans were derived, the English, the Lowland Scotch, the Saxon Irish, the Hollanders, the Germans, and the Swedes were of the Germanic stock, which is cool-blooded and persistent.

The Welsh, the Highland Scotch, and the native Irish were of the Celtic stock, which was more turbulent than the other and more impatient of restraint. The Huguenots were of the Latin stock, which, like the native Irish, was of warm sensibilities.

This NW Okie's ancestors had all of the above mixture of Colonial Americans: the English, Lowland Scotch, Irish, Hollanders, Germans and the Welsh. you can view our Paris Pioneers by clicking the link herein. The Paris Pioneers is a combined family tree of Paternal, Maternal & NW Okie's Husbands ancestors. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Looking For J. E. Crosbie Photos & Info

Stephanie Malevich [Email: stephmalevich@yahoo.com] left the following Comment concerning J. E. Crosbie. Stephanie says, "I am a grand daughter of J. E. Crosbie and I am looking for any information, pictures, etc anyone will share." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe