Back to my musings, my late Uncle Champ -- named for my GGF Champion Travis Traylor Jr. -- also told me that when he asked his GF if he still carried a gun, GF winked and opened his suitcoat to show the butt of a Colt in a shoulder holster.
To one who grew up in those times, I suspect carrying a sixgun somewhere was simply a part of getting dressed for the day. I do find myself wondering just which shoulder holster design my GGF would have found most practical and comfortable. I have only messed with recent-vintage Bianchis and 1911s and never gave them much of a trial as I found them quite a burden. It is tempting, however, to return to a design traditional to that era and see how a Colt sixgun feels carried so.
This shoulder holster business came to mind as I was reading an account of saddle and harness maker J.K Polk of this town -- Sweetwater -- working out a shoulder holster design described to him by Mr. J.W. Hardin. Polk sold his business to S.D. "Tio" Myres in 1898.
Here's a photo of the Traylor men taken in Denver probably about 1916 or 1917. Back row is Earl, born 1896, Abilene, died Denver 1920 from complications of mustard gas and shrapnel wounds suffered in France in 1918; then Burks, born 1891, USN veteran, died, Anacortes WA 1978; front row Earl, born Buffalo Gap, 1881, died Dalhart, 1918 of tuberculosis (you can see it in his eyes); the patriarch, Champion Travis Traylor Junior, born Burnet Dec. 24, 1855, died Denver 10 August 1931; and the youngest, Fentress, born in Roby, 1899, died Port Angeles, WA, 1960.
