OT/memories I

[donw]

i truly enjoy reading of family histories and am delighted at the story of the granpa and the smith & wesson he shared and the memories he shared and left for dave james.

here are a few of my family memories from my mom's side hope you enjoy as much as i enjoy reading others histories/stories.

my gramma was born on a ranch near webbers falls okla 1900 or 1901...she was not certain. remember, it was okla indian nation then.

when she died in 1986 she left us some written memoirs.

one was witnessing two men having a gunfight on a road in about 1907, on her way home from school, one killing the other with a shotgun.

another of nearly being drowned when the wagon they were crossing a swollen river in was swept away with them in it; the mule team did perish.

she also believed her parents were murdered by one of her brothers to get their ranch. it was a "sizable spread". they raised cattle, horses and mules. gramma loved mules to the day she died. she was shuffled "from pillar to post" between surviving relatives as 'child labor' until 1916 when she married grampa. she and grampa were married until his death in 1974. she lived quietly at the home they built in california after fleeing the dust bowl era of the midwwest until her death.

sometimes it's hard to believe we're not that far removed from the era of the "western frontier", some of us by only one generation or less, days and many of, if not most, of us are closely linked to that era. our family histories verify that.

[crs]

Good stuff - thanks for sharing.

[gamekeeper]

I love reading about history that can't be found in books! It gives you a true feeling of the times.

My Mother had an Uncle who was a gamekeeper, one night two guys tried to rob him, his dog, a Lurcher killed one of the guys, the BG was found next day by a haystack, he had bled to death. My Great Uncle was considered a hero at the time.

My first wife's Grand Mother shot dead a robber whilst collecting rents in Cardiff, she too was held in high esteem for using her Derringer to rid the town of trash.

Both incidents took place before the First World War. How times have changed over here.

[C. Cash]

Because of a nasty divorce, I was raised in large part by my Mom's parents: the Moore's. I never felt like I had it bad at all....I got to sit and listen for hours on end to my Grandparents recalling the days when Eastern Oklahoma was wild and wooly. I never wanted to get away but always wanted to hear more. According to my Grandfather, the Klan ruled that part of the country in the early 1900's...the enforcing arm of the law so to speak. A man who left his wife would be hunted down by these folks and horsewhipped for abandoning his family. How times have changed! My Grandfather was born the year Oklahoma became a state, near Bokoshe in 1907. His Dad was a Rail Road Foreman on the Ft. Smith and Western Railroad from the 1880's on. It is reported by family members who were known to be honest, upright people and who were there to witness it, that our family were friends of the Daltons when they operated out of Ft. Smith, AR. It is said that my Great Grandfather Moore got Bob Dalton a job working for the railroad. Family stories don't make him out to be that nice of a fellow(Dalton that is). My Great Grandmother said that Dalton's wife was afraid of him and hiding on the Moore place at one point, and he somehow got word of where she was and came over to get her back, whipping her so hard with a stick that the lower part of her dress came off. It was also passed down that Dalton brought over a bag of candy for the children and after he left my Great Grandfather threw it down the outhouse as he thought that it was poisoned. Nothing spectacular I guess but neat stories to a 10 year old.. My Grandmother who was from nearby Kinta, OK always related the tale of how her Mom saw Belle Starr ride into town and she was not sidesaddle, which caused quite a stir! Again...how times have changed. They too fled the Dustbowl, along with my Cash's from Texas...to work the fields in Central CA. The best, kindest and most Faith filled people that I have ever known. How lucky I was to have had the chance to be around them! This is a small photo from 1910 in Bokoshe, OK(the oldest Girls here remembered Bob Dalton) and my Grandfather is the little barefoot kid in the long shirt.

[mescalero1]

Cool,
I love to listen to my uncle talk about fleeing the dust bowl and going to California, he has agreed to be tape recorded reciting these stories, he is 86 and in his doctors words " a very robust man for 86 " I really need to do this.

[Old Savage]

I have a friend here who is a descendant of one of the Dalton boys. I have an x ray of his gun hand.

[C. Cash]

Cool,
I love to listen to my uncle talk about fleeing the dust bowl and going to California, he has agreed to be tape recorded reciting these stories, he is 86 and in his doctors words " a very robust man for 86 " I really need to do this.

I would do it as soon as I could Mescalero. Many of us have kicked ourselves for not doing just that with this, the Greatest Generation. So much is lost with the passing of each of these folks.

[Hobie]

Cool,
I love to listen to my uncle talk about fleeing the dust bowl and going to California, he has agreed to be tape recorded reciting these stories, he is 86 and in his doctors words " a very robust man for 86 " I really need to do this.

I would do it as soon as I could Mescalero. Many of us have kicked ourselves for not doing just that with this, the Greatest Generation. So much is lost with the passing of each of these folks.

I am one of those who much regrets questions unasked. I should have been an impertinent child.

[Dave James]

donw, great post,,my grandmother was from the Okla Territories, and have several letters she wrote to granddad while they where courting , talk about long distance at the time she there and him in Kansas.

My side of the James family is related to the James brothers, and the other side has a branch to the Earp's.

Up till the family lost the farm there where a pair of Schooner wheels from the wagon that grandmother rode in as a kid into the territories.

We lost my great grand dad in the 60's, he was a Civil War vet, that had "joined up" as a drummer boy, he is the one that started me on the road so to speak. all ways wished I had ,,had a recorder of some type to run while he talked, all i have are my dad's and grand dad's notes, and my memories of his teachings

[Charles]

I have the great good fortune of being raised by 'Grandparents. She was born in 1891 on the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory near what is now Hartshorn. The family originaly came to Texas in 1851 and sojured in Oklahoma for about ten years. They returned to Texas in August of 1899 an crossed the Red River at Red River Crossing. She was raised on a ranch near Tickham in Coleman County, until she married in 1917.

My Grandfather's people came to Texas in 1842. He was born in 1886 and he started life as a cowboy, then a blacksmith and wheelright. He later became a lawyer and judge. His father was a Texas ranger with Rip Ford before the Civil War ranging against the Comanche.

I used to spend my summers on the family ranch in Coleman Country texas, sitting on the big porch of the original Ranch home built in 1878. There the neighbors, Great Uncles and Aunts, Great Great Uncles and Aunts would gather to play cards, dominoes and tell stories of the past. A few of them even had memories of the Civil War as children.

I have many, many such stories filed away in my memory banks.