Duchess of Weaselskin

Bayfield, CO - NW Okie's Stumpy and old things flowerbed is coming along nicely. We have added a water feature using an old water pump and a recycling pump as shown below.



This week some celebrate "Juneteenth." What is "Juneteenth?" We found online a national Registry, History of Juneteenth, which stated that Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. It dates back to 1865, on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which had become official January 1, 1863. However, the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. The surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger's regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

General Order Number 3

One of General Granger's first orders of business was to read to the people of Texas, General Order Number 3 which began most significantly with: "The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."

Have you noticed that the Republicans are becoming unrecognizable from what they believed in one hundred years ago? It is like the Democrats and Republicans have switched ideologies from way back when. Which party do you prefer: The party "Of the People, By the People, For the People?" Or . . . The party "OF the Rich, By the Rich For the Rich?"

Stop the Obstructionism of the GOP Congress! Where are the Jobs, Boehner?

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

100 Years Ago Today - 18 June 1912

America - One hundred years ago the Republican National Convention was deciding their candidate for president between President Taft and former president Theodore Roosevelt. Taft's platform advocated for a safe and sane government.

The Republican party of Roosevelt's and Taft's days is nowhere recognizable to the GOP party of today since the "Right Extremists" have taken over the party. Without the division of the Republican Party in 1912, Wilson would have had a much more difficult time securing the election.

In the article written by George Griswold Hill, for the San Francisco newspaper, The Call, dated 18 June 1912, Tuesday, in a Special Dispatch to The Call, reported that back in 1912, the Republican party promised to safeguard health, limit child labor and protect wage earners from danger. Even control of natural resources was advocated.

Chicago, June 17, 1912 -- The article begins, "I am able to give an outline of the platform of the republican convention. This, of course,is subject to revision by the committee on resolutions of the national convention and to such alterations as may be suggested by President Taft before the committee makes its final report."

This draft contained all the essentials of the declarations of principles on which Taft would stand for re=election before the American people.

Platform In Detail:

The republican party, assembled by its representatives in national convention, declares its unchanging faith in government of the people, by the people and for the people. It reaffirms its devotion to the fundamental principles of constitutional government established by the fathers, whose principles which make provision for orderly and effective expression of the popular will, for the protection of civil liberty and the essential rights of man and the interpretation of the laws by an untrammeled and independent judiciary that have proved themselves capable of sustaining the structure of a government which, after more than a century of development, embraces 100,000,000 people, scattered over a wide and diverse territory, but bound by common purpose, common ideals and common affection to the constitution of the United States.

Upholds Constitution

As to upholding the constitution the article continues, "Under the constitution and the principles asserted and vitalized by it, the United States has grown to be one of the great civilized nations of the earth. It offers a home and opportunity to the ambitious and the industrious of every race and from every clime. The Republican party faces the problems of the future confident in the strength and wisdom that experience of the past has brought. It will take no part in either changing or overturning the American form of government.

"The republican party now, as always, a party of progress and of constructive statesmanship. It is bewared, if again in trusted with power by the people, to go forward with the solution of those new problems which social, economic and political development have brought into the forefront of the nation's interest. It will strive not only in the nation, but in the several states, to enact the necessary laws again to safeguard the public health; to limit effectively the labor of children who should be at school; to protect wage earners engaged in dangerous occupations; to substitute the principle of workmen's compensation for actions at law to recover damages in case of injury; to retain public ownership and control of those natural resources that are still the public property, and in all possible ways to satisfy the just demand of the people for the study and solution of the complex and constantly changing problems of social welfare.

"In dealing with these questions it is vitally important that the rights of every individual to the freest possible development of his own powers and resources and to the control of his own justly acquired property, so far as these are compatible with the similar rights of others, shall not be interfered with or destroyed. The social and political structure of the United States rests upon the civil liberty of the individual and for the protection of that liberty the people have, wisely, in the national and state constitutions put definite limitations to secure the orderly and coherent exercise of governmental powers and to protect the rights of even the humblest and least favored individual and the function of independent courts of justice."

Preserves Authority

In 1912, "The republican party reaffirms its intention to uphold at all times the integrity and authority of the courts, both state and federal, and it all ever insist that their powers to enforce their process and to protect life, liberty and property shall be preserved inviolate. An orderly method is provided under our system of government by which the people may, when they choose, amen or alter the constitutional provisions which underlie their government.

"Until those constitutional provisions are altered or amended in orderly fashion it is not the privilege but the duty of the courts to see to it that when challenged they are enforced.

"The republican party is opposed to what is known as the recall of judges. Questions of law can not be wisely settled by popular vote. The public is better represented and better protected by the careful selection of the judiciary than by the recall of judges under the pressure of disappointment by those who clamor for revenge.

"Together with peaceful and orderly development at home, the republican party earnestly favors all measures for the establishment and protection of the peace of the world and for the development of closer relations between the various nations of the world. It believes most earnestly in the peaceful settlement of all international disputes and in the reference of all justifiable controversies between nations to an international court of justice."

Against Monopoly "The republican party is opposed to special privilege and to monopoly. It placed upon the statute books the antitrust act of 1890 and it has consistently and successfully enforced the provisions of that law. It will take no backward step to permit the reestablishment in any degree of conditions which were intolerable.

"The experience of the past twenty years and the illuminating decisions of the Untied States supreme court in actions brought to enforce the anti-trust act make it plain that the law abiding business of the country may be carried on without fear or without disturbance and at the same time without resort to practices which are abhorrent to the common sense of justice.

"The republican party favors the enactment of legislation supplementary to the existing anti-trust act which shall define as criminal offenses specific acts which uniformly mark attempts to restrain and to monopolize trade, to the end that those who honestly intend to obey the law may have a guide for their action and that those who violate the law may be the more surely punished. The more certainty should be given to the law controlling combinations and monopolies than characterize other provisions of commercial law, in order that no part of the field of business opportunity may be restricted by monopoly or combinations; that business success heroically achieved may not be converted into a crime and that the rights of every man to acquire commodities and particularly the necessaries of life in an open market uninfluenced by the manipulation of trust or combination may be preserved."

High Cost Of Living

The steadily increasing cost of living has become a matter not only of national but of worldwide concern. The republican party will support the prompt, scientific inquiry into the causes which are operative both in the United States and elsewhere to increasing the cost of living, and when the exact facts are known, will take the necessary steps to remove any abuses that may be found to exist, in order that the cost of the food, clothing and shelter of the people may in no way be unduly or artificially increased.

The steps taken by the president and congress for the termination of the Russian treaty of 1832 are heartily approved as an impressive assertion of the equality of all American citizens. Henceforth all treaties with foreign powers to which our government shall become a party must expressly stipulate for the absolute right of expatriation and against all discrimination whatsoever, among our citizens, regardless of race, creed or previous alliance.

The policy of a protective tariff, to the end that the American workman shall be afforded just protection front he unfair competition of foreign labor, is reaffirmed and a revision of the tariff schedules in accordance with the schedule and impartial findings of the able and nonpartisan tariff board will be undertaken and achieved by the republican party, which has been the party of performances alone, not promises in the past, and will continue to be so in the future. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

NW Okie's Corner

Bayfield, CO - With the sunny, semi-cool weather, I have dug out my bicycle and in the process of rejuvenating it, fixing gears, brakes, wheels, etc. so I can get some exercise for this "ole lady." Come with me on YouTube.com and take a ride along County Road 500, at Vallecito Reservoir to see what my neck of the woods it like.



Besides getting my exercise with my bike, I have also been learning how to pick out "rolls" on my banjo with my right hand. I have only begun the banjo, so no musical repertoire of recognizable songs is being played here. It is turning out to be a slow process of learning the picking, tuning and care of the banjo. No fast picking for this old lady, yet! I will leave that to my youngest son!

We are continuing with history of Highland, Virginia this week with mention of the agricultural in the valleys of Highland.

We also ran across the mention of the January 1884 lynching of E. D. Atchinson, near Vanderpool, Virginia. Here are the links to our OkieLegacy Archives concerning the January 1884 lynching:

1. 1884 Lynching In Monterey, Vol. 11, Iss. 41, 2009-10-12
2. The Good With the Bad Ancestry Stories, Vol. 13, Iss. 16, 2011-04-18
3. Lynching In Monterey, Vol. 13, Iss. 46, 2011-11-14
4. 1884 Lynching In Monterey, Vol. 14, Iss. 20, 2012-05-14

Highland, Virginia - Agricultural Interests & Customs

Highland County, VA - There is a ribbon of bottom land that follows each larger watercourse in Highland. They vary in breadth and sometimes, as on the Cow pasture, were interrupted for short distances. Along the larger streams, farmhouses succeeded one another at frequent intervals. Farms were also found on the lower courses of the tributary streams. Tillage land was also seen on the low tables in the Bullpasture Valley and on the broken hillsides of the Straight Creek basin. Elsewhere, the higher ground was very little reduced to tillage or pasturage, except where limestone belts occurred, as in the Bluegrass and Big valleys.

It was along the Bullpasture and Cowpasture that there was more general farming than anywhere else. These valleys were somewhat lower than those to the westward and had a quicker soil. W. P. B. Lockridge had grown in one season 2,000 bushels of corn and 700 of wheat, his bumper crop of wheat had been 33 bushels to the acre. Then there was T. M. Devericks on Shaw's Fork had grown 28 bushels to the acre. major J. H. Byrd, who had made a point of intensive cultivation, had grown four tons of timothy hay to the acre, and once took a state premium on his crop of 75 bushels of shelled corn to the acre. He sent 100 selected ears tot he exposition at Norfolk.

The valley of Jackson's River was better for grass than the eastern valleys, and little of the soil was kept in tillage. In Big Valley a yield of 93 bushels of corn to the acre had been reported, though. On the bottoms of Jackson's River, 25 stacks of hay would be seen in a favorable season in a field of only moderate size.

In the Bluegrass Valley the grazing interest was likewise supreme, very little tilled ground being seen.

The native strength of the river bottoms and bluegrass pastures was apparent in the fine big oaks, maples and hickories, especially on Jackson's River and in the Crabbottom. In former years, walnut trunks as high as six feet four inches in diameter were burned in log piles.

Yet such were the improvident methods of the early people, that the compiler of the Virginia Gazetteer of 1832, a man familiar with the worn soils east of the Blue Ridge, speaks of the Cowpasture bottoms as badly tilled, and those of Jackson's River and the Bullpasture as only in tolerable condition. He makes an exception of the Wilson farm at the mouth of Bolar Run, and calls it equal to any in the Valley of Virginia. But wiser methods were used in Highland with the smaller amount of land still kept in cultivation.

The Crabbottom, where my HULL (HOHL) ancestors settled, was the garden spot of Highland, although acre for acre the smaller basins of upper Jackson's River, Big Back Creek, and Big Valley compared with it favorably. The woods had only to be cut out or thinned, a bluegrass sod coming in spontaneously. On the pastures alone and without grain, huge cattle of the best breeds were made ready for market. The value of the fat cattle driven out of this valley would perhaps average $150,000 a year. The Crabbottom graziers thus were enabled to live a rather unlaborious life, and a holding of land was esteemed a choice possession. The soil changed hands often at much more than $100 an acre, comparing in price with land in the corn belt of Illinois.

The lands of the Bluegrass District, being largely limestone and supporting so large a grazing interest, were assessed at nearly as much as those of both the over districts. In the production of buckwheat Highland ranked fourth among the counties of Virginia. In maple sugar it lead them all. More than a thousand pounds were occasionally made on a single farm. The county was also well adapted tot he apple tree. One of these on the Vandevender farm grew during the century or more of its existence to a girth of ten and a half feet and its full crop was 80 bushels of fruit. Except in very unfavorable seasons the county had more than enough apples for home use. The other fruits usual to the latitude were also found, though to a less extent. large and fine specimens of apples, pears, peaches, and plums were to be seen in favorable years.

The result of the settlement of a new region was a community of purpose among the people, leading to a die acquaintance with one another. This also lead to a sameness in manners and customs and in the mode of living. The people became homogeneous in these respects much faster than they became homogeneous in blood. The stranger would hardly know that Highland was peopled from opposite directions, because the two elements of the immigration meeting on the divide which crossed the county. On either side of it they would find the same farm architecture, the same speech, and the same hospitality.

As a household tongue the German language had for some years been quite extinct in Highland. Exceptions to this statement, if any, were assignable to persons of Pendleton birth or parentage. The passing of the German speech was due to the blending of stocks in the north of the county. When one of two married companions was ignorant of the German idiom, the latter, as an alien speech in America, was the one which nearly always gives way.

It was well that our national tongue was here without any competitor. The neighborhood that clings to a broken-down jargon, like that of the upper South Fork Valley in Pendleton, threw itself, in a very sensible degree, outside the current of American life and thought, and stamps itself as unprogressive.

It tended to shut itself into its own corner and it reared citizens of narrow and uninformed views. The habit stands in the way of an easy use of English and a correct English pronunciation. It was a needless handicap on the child who started to school. The people who sued this patios in their homes had a very meager list of words, and could neither read German script nor German print. Their belief in witchcraft and signs was a result of their stagnation.

In Highland there was a close approach to social equality. The farm homes were comfortable and cozy. Modern furniture, musical instruments, things of ornament, and potted plants were quite the rule. The table fare was liberal and sensible. Destitution was hardly to be seen in the county.

It was thanks to the homogeneity of the people, and to the absence of mines and factories, the public order of Highland was very good. Serious crimes were very infrequent, and the county had no citizen in the penitentiary and but one boy in the reform school.

But . . . the good record of the county was marred by a lynching in the month of January, 1884 when a laboring man from Michigan, Porter (alias Atchison), came into the west of the county after his release from the Pocahontas jail. Atchison was not a well-behaved person. During a game of cards with a citizen of Back Creek, a quarrel arose, both men being intoxicated. Atchison struck the other person a blow with his knife, but inflicted only a slight wound in the breast. For this he was lodged in the Monterey jail. Exaggerated reports of the affair got abroad. A party of citizens broke into the jail, shot him in his cell, and then hanged him to a tree on the Vanderpool road, where the same crosses the brow of the conical hill south of the town. All but one of the lynching party was identifiable. One citizen was tried by a jury of Rockbridge men but acquitted. The others were assumed to be implicated in the unfortunate occurrence left the county and never returned. One of those assumed to be implicated in the 1884 hanging at Vanderpool may have been my great grandpa John Robert Warwick (1857-1937).

[We have written about this January 1884 lynching in our OkieLegacy Archives: 1884 Lynching In Monterey, Vol. 11, Iss. 41, 2009-10-12
The Good With the Bad Ancestry Stories, Vol. 13, Iss. 16, 2011-04-18
Lynching In Monterey, Vol. 13, Iss. 46, 2011-11-14
1884 Lynching In Monterey, Vol. 14, Iss. 20, 2012-05-14]

Cities and towns were formerly few and small because large ones could not be supported. So long as farming was done in the old way, every farmhouse being a workshop, it took a very large share of the people to feed the nation. The simple life and the home manufactures made the mills and factories of the cities comparatively unnecessary. The farming community could not spare much of its increase excel to open new farms. The country was seemingly more attractive than the town.

Towns were once compact, because men had to live within working distance from where they worked. Town life was no more comfortable than country life. In the minds of people the balance of attraction was strongly on the side of the town. People conceded the purer air and water, the fresher vegetables, and the freedom from nerve-racking noise to be found in the country, yet the movement to the city, the town, and the village went on unchecked. If food did not have to be produced front he soil, the rural neighborhood would become nothing more than a summoner playground.

Forest had other uses than as a supply of timber. They regulated the flow of water in the rivers and they afford a cover for game. Highland had once plenty of game, but it diminished through the years of inhabitants. The red man killed only for his own needs. The white man was short-sighted as in the matter of lumbering, slaughtered without restraint, using up principal as well as interest.

Highland was never designed as a region of general farming. Its specialty of livestock, for which its limestone aid, its pure water, and its temperate air so well adapted it, was very logical. Yet with ready transportation the tillable lands could yield a large and profitable supply of crops which the farmer used to think had a place only in the orchard and house garden.

The streams and rivers never fail and their currents were swift. The summer climate was in itself a valuable asset, but remained dormant so long as it retired an entire day to reach the county seat front he nearer railroad points.

The massing of population in the valleys paved the way to the coming of the centralized school. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

June 1912 - Kept Off Jury, Women In Arms

Sacramento, California - In that same June 18, 1912 newspaper there was another article with headlines, Kept Off Jury, Women In Arms. Sacramento, June 17, 1912 -- "Six women summoned as prospective jurors in a justice's court in Broderick, a suburb, and dismissed from service on motion of the attorney for the defense, are up in arms over what they consider an affront to their citizenship and are planning a mass meeting of protest.

"The dismissal was secured on a legal objection based on a ruling recently made by attorney General Webb to the effect that women are ineligible for jury service. Web found nothing in the new suffrage law giving women the right to act as jurors and held that jury service could not be considered as a political right, but as a duty of citizenship that may be imposed on any or all citizens.

"In the absence of any law imposting such a duty, he gave as his opinion that an objection to women serving as jurors might lie at any time. The summoning of the women as prospective jurors today was planned by Constable Russell as a surprise, but it was a surprise that did not appeal to all the parties concerned.

"T. Marayhia brought suit against William Henley for a load of hay. Marayhia has been renting Henley's barn, but recently the rent was raised and he refused to pay it. Henley is alleged to have taken a load of the plaintiff's hay in payment without the latter's permission.

"In summoning tales men for the case Constable Russell took the names of six women front he last poll book. They were promptly dismissed upon the objection of Henley's attorney and have been voicing their own objections ever since." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

The Tacoma Times, 18 June 1912

Tacoma, WA - It was one hundred years ago today that the frontage headlines in The Tacoma Times, the only independent newspaper in Tacoma Washington, dated Thursday, 18 June 1912, had the following headlines: "Women are No Housekeepers Any More;" "Balloons Will Tell Who Is Nominated;" "Elopers Lead In Wild Love Chase Around Big World;" and much more.

Back in June, 1912, it was discussed that paper gas bags balloons flashed high in the air would tell who was nominated and victor of the republican convention for president.

1. If Col. Theodore Roosevelt was victor, Times balloons carrying 30-foot red, white and blue streamers by day and colored fire streamer by night;
2. If Pres. William Howard Taft was victor, Times balloons without streamers day or night; (these were the balloons that flashed the results of the Republican National Convention Nomination and Victor.)
3. If Robert LaFollette was victor, Times balloons carrying red flag by day and red fire by night;
4. If Sen. Robert Cummins was victor, Times balloons trailing green flag by day and red fire by night;
5. The Times balloons were furnished by Frank A. Neyhart & Co., 935 So. C St. Mr Neyhart would superintend the sending up of the balloons.

The Progessive (Bull Moose) Party of 1912

The Progressive Party (Bull Moose party) of 1912 was an American political party formed by former President Theodore Roosevelt after he split from the Republican party during the national convention and failed to get the nomination for president.

President Teddy Roosevelt boasted, "I'm fit as a bull moose," after being shot in an assassination attempt prior to his 1912 campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hence the name "Bull Moose Party."

Inspiration for the party's beginnings may have come from Roosevelt's friend and supporter, U. S. Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah, who in October 1906 broke off from the Republican Party and started the American party in that state. Kearns was a Roman Catholic, and this was a direct response to the influence of the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the Senatorial elections between 1902 to 1905.

Bull Moose Convention & Platform

Despite obstacles, the August, 1912 convention opened with great enthusiasm. Over 2,000 delegates attended, including many women. In 1912, neither the other Republican candidate, President Taft, or the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, endorsed women's suffrage on the national level.

The famed suffragette and social worker Jane Addams gave a seconding speech for Roosevelt's nomination. Roosevelt insisted on excluding black Republicans from the South, whom he regarded a corrupt and ineffective element, but included black delegates from all other areas. Roosevelt went so far as to further alienate southern white supporters on the eve of the election, by publicly dining with blacks at a Rhode Island hotel. Roosevelt was nominated by acclamation, with Johnson as his running mate.

Bull Moose Platform

• A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies.
• Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled
• Limited injunctions in strikes
• A minimum wage law for women
• An eight hour workday
• A federal securities commission
• Farm relief
• Workers' compensation for work-related injuries
• An inheritance tax
• A Constitutional amendment to allow a Federal income tax

• Women's suffrage
• Direct election of Senators
• Primary elections for state and federal nominations