Life Sketches

 This is a new project I've embarked upon, hoping to make sure I have all the same information (levels, amounts, quantities, qualities) for each of my ancestors. As one does, I started with myself. Trying to decide on which details to include has been challenging, yet fun. 

As a result of taking this on, new and more accurate information has been discovered: My 2nd-great grandmother Lucinda, wife of Jason Newberry, now has a last name, and parents, and a new family branch for me to explore; my 2nd-great grandmother Elizabeth Ann Zane Fox's death year has been corrected (how on earth was I a WHOLE YEAR off??). 

As the years have passed, more records have been added to the various repositories, which has allowed me to see their actual death certificates, as opposed to viewing only the transposed information. 

It's an ongoing process, isn't it? I'm so grateful that there just doesn't seem to be an end to genealogy projects. 

Oh, what the heck

While I'm here, I may as well post something.

My cousin Candace is putting together a cookbook/memory book with our Grandma D's recipes and the grandchildren's memories of her and Grandpa. It's got me thinking about personal histories. I visited my great Grandma Keen's and my Gran's autobiographies here on the blog and reread them. What a magical gift it is to be able to read their words and feel them close by again.

Sometime last December, I decided to ditch Facebook, but I wanted to capture all the family memories I've logged there over the years. So I've been slowly dismantling my account (the "On This Day" feature has been instrumental in that effort). I've been blogging on the family blog every day since then, and adding our Facebook memories and pictures in chronological order. I hope to eventually print it in a book format and make copies to give to my family members.

It feels incredibly good to know that someday in the future, my grandchildren and descendants will be able to read about us and know a little bit about me and my family.

"Bring Out Your Dead"

Can I just tell you that I love calling funeral homes, cemetery offices and county death record offices? 

Not once have I ever encountered anything other than a helpful, kind employee when I've made the effort to look up a number and get on the horn. 

One lady in South Carolina (SWEET accent) offered to go outside in the snow one January day and take a picture of my relative's headstone and email it to me.

Bless you, employees.  We geeks couldn't do it without you.

Now on to today's character - my great uncle Burt Damon Bathrick*.  Never married as far as I can see, Burt lived what must have been a colorful life.  Born in 1863 in upstate New York to Lysander and Phoebe (who died when he was seven years old), the youngest child by fifteen years - Burt made his way west with his father and landed in Great Falls, Montana.  (Lysander ended up in Wyoming.)

I'm trying not to mix him up with a Bert Bathrick, who was born five years earlier and died in 1923. 

My uncle Burt held a variety of jobs, from railway laborer to beer hall employee to novelty salesman.  Just guessing from the occupations he chose, he is an adventurous, hardworking, gregarious, people-loving soul, who loved his adopted city but wasn't much for sticking around in the same job.  He never owned a home, always lived at boarding houses, which to me says he preferred to take life one day at a time.

I'm about to call Cascade county and see if he did stick around long enough to be buried there.  What's funny is, I find myself mentally stuck in the 1980s way of genealogy-ing sometimes... "So Great Falls, huh... it would be so fun to go there, but it's so far away..."

Then I remember "when" I am.  In these days of instant access to telephone numbers listed online, help is only a few clicks and a phone call away. 

Blessings abound :)

*Why Burt today?  The 1940 Census, of course.  I did an individual search on PAF using my ancestors filter (grandparents and aunts and uncles only) and filtered them by individuals born in the 1840-1941 birth range, so I didn't miss anyone.  Three hundred and ninety-six people I'm looking up.  I've already found new family members all over the place.  Yay :)

"That's a nice nose! Did you pick it?"

...one of my dad's old corny jokes I still enjoy throwing at my children.

My whole life, everyone has told me I look like my mom. I do look like her - our coloring is very similar, but as I grew older, I noticed our features aren't quite exactly the same... my nose and chin were different, my eyes crinkly-er, my eyebrows arch-ier or something. Our skin is different, too - she tans easily, while I burn and freckle like my father.

This observation led to much mirror-perusing. If I wasn't a carbon copy of my mother, the way everyone seemed to think, then who DID I look like?

And of course, being the genealogy geek that I am, I had to trace the features I saw on my face back to their original source - at least, as far back as the family photograph collection would allow.

I've split my face into four people. I know you were wondering.

From the nose up, I look like Ruby Fox; from the nose down, Jennie Dragoo; my dimples came from my grandfather, Carl Dysart; and my dark haired, dark-eyed coloring (and that of my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, great-great grandfather) came from Lorette Proctor.

And of course, being the genealogy geek that I am, I wonder endlessly about the three ladies and where THEIR features came from. Who does Lorette resemble with her brown eyes? When did this very distinct Dragoo nose and chin first make its appearance, and with whom? Was it a Zane or a Bathrick that Ruby inherited her eyebrows from?

And those pesky dimples! I have exactly one picture of Carl's parents, Carl Sr. and Ruth, smiling. I can't tell for sure but it looks like Carl Sr. is the dimpled grandparent. His son, my grandpa Carl, had them, my mom has them, I have them, and my middle son, who (out of our five children) looks the least like me and the most like his dad, was also somehow born with them.

Adam and Eve's first invention should have been a camera. And film that lasts millennia.

The Mormons in My Family

My parents and uncle joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1973; I consider them my "pioneers." In 1975, my dad and uncle's maternal grandmother Adina Keithler joined; she was followed by my dad and uncle's parents in 1976. For a few years I labored under the delusion that we were the first Church members ever in our family.

This was proven wrong in 1980, by the publication of Steinhilber. From it, we learned that Adina's grandmother, Lena Steinhilber, joined the Church in 1878. Since the author of the book, a distant cousin, wrote rather unfriendly things about the Church, we weren't sure how much of it we could believe. Just a few years ago, I found that Lena's sister, Anna Maria Roller, was also baptized in Germany during her lifetime, which sealed the deal for me.

Last November, I found another family Church member - Almon Bathrick. He and his family were natives of New York state and eventually made their way to Nauvoo, Illinois, the last place we Mormons were kicked out of. On the early records of the Church, he is found as a missionary, called to serve in Illinois. This was particularly exciting to my uncle, who spent two years as a missionary in the Chicago, Illinois mission - again, mistakenly thinking he was the first member of our family ever to do so.

And just now, I found the autobiography of another early family member who belonged to the Church, Franklin Alonzo Robison, a descendant of my Proctor family. Franklin's parents were also natives of New York and eventually came west to Utah; he was the husband of several wives (one named Isabella Eleanor Pratt, daughter of Parley P. Pratt, a prominent figure in LDS history) and the father of 29 children. Wow.

I guess this Mormon stuff must run in my family.

Life of William Ricketts Smith, Part 11: "I squeezed"

(Part 10 is here.)

I shipped out on the battleship Colorado a few days before the first of December. We were five days from Honolulu to San Pedro, and I thought I would be in Vancouver [Washington] long before Christmas. They picked us up at San Pedro and took us to Camp Anza, California, in the middle of the Anza Desert, to wait until there was a ship to take us to Camp Stoneman at San Francisco, and Fort Lewis, Washington. I was at Camp Anza a week or ten days, they loaded us on a ship and we docked at San Francisco where we spent the night. We were two or three days to Tacoma and were loaded on trucks and taken to Fort Lewis.

Having come from Oahu, I did not have a dress uniform, so it was necessary to get one before I could be discharged. They had a complete uniform, except for a blouse (coat), but the supply sergeant said he had them on order and should arrive shortly. I checked with him daily, as I had to go by the supply room on my way to the mess hall. It was about a quarter mile from the barracks. The morning of the 17th of December, when I stopped by, he said he still didn't have the blouse, but he said he had a size smaller than I wore and if I could squeeze into it, I could have it. I squeezed.

The 19th day of December 1945, I met with Colonel Taylor and received my discharge papers. There were some other GIs there and they were on their way to Castle Rock, Washington, and said I could ride with them. I figured that was better than waiting for the bus, so I went. I had to wait in Castle Rock till midnight to catch the bus and continue my journey to Vancouver, where my family was. I arrived in Vancouver about 2 AM. Having sent a telegram to my family the day before, I expected them to meet me. I didn't know where they lived, as they had moved, and all I had was a route and box number.

After a few minutes, a cab driver came into the bus depot and asked me where I was going. Meanwhile, no one was there to meet me and I thought they were probably on my way. The cab driver came back after about two hours (4 AM) and insisted on taking me out to find them. I had a general idea of the part of the country they were in, so I finally agreed to go with him. We drove around for some time, he would stop once in a while and knock on somebody's door and ask if they knew where the Keithlers lived. It was almost daylight when we finally located them. By that time I was so disappointed and disgusted that I was about to go back to Fort Lewis and re-enlist. The problem was that the telegram was not delivered until the next day. I have never sent another telegram to this day!

The End

Photo of the Week: March 2, 2008

(Click on the image for a better view)

A couple of hotties get married in 1942 (you can read more about that here).

My Neenaw is one of the most beautiful brides I've ever seen. I am lucky to look anything like her. Gran's no slouch, either.

Life of William Ricketts Smith, Part 10: Big Trips, Hawaii, and Japanese Surrender

(Part 9 is here.)

Summers are hot and winters are cold in that area [Fort Knox, Kentucky]. Sometime around the first part of December, we got orders that we were shipping out. Our First Sergeant Boyd was able to get furloughs for most anyone that wanted one, so we packed up our little family and returned by train to Lodge Grass. It was winter. When we left out of Chicago, there were over twenty cars on the train, all full, powered by a steam locomotive. It was below zero as we crossed North Dakota. Our car had a coal stove in one end but it was not well tended. We used an Army blanket and my GI overcoat to stay warm and it was almost impossible to get anything to eat. The steam lines froze in some of the more modern cars and they were without heat. We were happy to get off at Billings, where we changed trains to Lodge Grass.

I returned to Fort Knox a few days later and a week or so later, went by the ranch in Montana in a troop train bound for Fort Lawton in Seattle, where we boarded a ship bound for Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, from there by train to Schofield Barracks. We were housed in Area W which was used for temporary unassigned units, where we lived on C rations. After a couple of weeks, we replaced the 82nd Ordnance Company, which had been there for several years. They were due for rotation back to the States, but because they were not in a combat area any longer, they had to be sent to Okinawa and then returned to the States, not as a company but individually.

Our duties at Schofield was the servicing of the equipment of the combat units passing through on the way to Okinawa, and there was a big build-up of troops taking place there for the ultimate attack on Japan. Our unit consisted of many different sections: tanks, wheeled-vehicle units, gunnery, instruments, machine-shop, welding, parts and supplies, and electrical. We could repair most anything. As the flow of troops increased, we sometimes worked around the clock to get it all done. About July, I was promoted to T3. We continued to work hard. We would go to the beach on the north shore sometimes. The water was very clear and some great breakers. My head got sunburned several times before it got toughened up [Gran lost most of his hair early in life].

It was about August, I think, we got orders to start preparing to ship out. The workload was still heavy, so some of our men were assigned to preparing our tools and equipment to ship. Then President Truman ordered the Atom Bomb dropped and everything was put on hold and sometime later the Japanese signed the surrender. We were all assigned a MOS number, based on time served and number of dependents, etc. Some had numbers a lot higher than me, so I was pleasantly surprised when my number came up just before Thanksgiving.

(Part 11)

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 9: Gifts from God and Family Life

(Part 8 is here.)

Several months previous to this time, a detachment from our company had been assigned to service duty on a tank driving range where trainees were taught operation of tanks. There were several areas used and I was assigned to one of them. One evening as I had parked my truck and was walking to our shop, we had a building in an old rock quarry where we met to take a truck back to our barracks, and Sergeant Bass and one of the mechanics was trying to find a problem with the electrical system on one of the trucks. I inquired concerning their problem and the answer came to me immediately from thin air, which I later learned to be the Holy Ghost.

When our company was reorganized, the sergeant that was in charge of the electrical section was relieved because of a minor disability and Sergeant Bass remembered the above incident and I was given the position as Non-Com over that section and promoted to T4 (Sergeant). I know that this was a gift from God!

Living off the post was a new experience for me. West Point is about seven miles from Fort Knox and about 25 miles from Louisville. Durwood Sheets lived in Louisville and James Nunnallee lived in West Point. Durwood had a 1936 Ford 2-door and James and I would meet him each morning in front of the store in West Point and drive to Fort Knox and return to West Point each duty day, except some days when we had to stay on the post for some special duty. It was pretty much of a hassle trying to be a soldier and a family man at the same time, but I was able to spend some time with my little family.

Our house was small, there was a kerosene cookstove and an oil burning heater. Trudy had to walk downtown to buy groceries and do their laundry and carry oil for the heater and kerosene for the cookstove. A couple with a boy about our son's age lived in the other half of our house, so the two wives and boys became friends, which helped to pass the time.

(To be continued next Friday)

Photo of the Week: 17 February 2008

(Click on the picture for more detail)

This picture is from Neenaw's house. Years ago, Gran wrote down on the back of the frame who everyone is. Last time I was at Neenaw's house, I scanned this picture and sent it home to myself - but I must have taken "neglectful genealogist" pills that day, because I didn't copy their names down. Next time I'm at Neenaw's, I'll do that.

I do know that the man sitting in the middle of the front row - the "thorn among the roses" - is my 3rd-great grandfather Thomas William Zane, and the woman with the dark hair standing behind him is his wife, Susan Virginia "Jennie" Cummings Zane - both of them beautiful, of course. "Not an ugly one among us!" Thomas and Jennie are my great grandmother Ruby's grandparents, so this might be the farthest-back picture I have of any of my ancestors. They are pictured with other members of Thomas' family. His father, Jonathan J. Zane, died when he was very young, and his mother remarried Mr. Wright and had more children, so I imagine these are his siblings and their spouses.

Thomas is in another picture at Neenaw's, with his band in Sundance, Wyoming. The nifty thing is, we had that picture of the Sundance Band and knew he was in the picture, but didn't know which band member he was... until we saw this picture above. Those whiskers don't lie.

UPDATE: While I was cleaning out my email inbox this weekend - all 47 pages' worth - I found this note I emailed to myself from Neenaw's, with the NAMES on the back of this picture. So here you go:

Standing, left to right: Adelia Ermine Wright, Jonathan Haines, Arthur Haines, Susan Virginia "Jennie" Cummings Zane, Silas Wright, Frank Bryson Murray

Sitting, left to right: Della Haines, Mary V. Wright Haines, Thomas William Zane, Clara S. Mason Wright, Nellie Margaret Wright Murray

Gran wrote: "This picture was apparently made after 1890 in Michigan as Elizabeth Ann Zane moved to Wyoming in 1890. Jesse Zane would be over 20 years old in this picture. T.W. Zane would be between 45-50 years old."

Mystery solved.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 8: New Son, Tank Training, Fort Knox

(Part 7 is here.)

Shortly afterward, we left for Washington state where we visited some of Trudy's relatives and where I later became employed at the Bremerton Navy Yard as an electrician and was later called into the Army in September. I was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where I was in basic training in the Armored Force. After five weeks of basic training, I was sent to Armored Force School for Tank mechanics and graduated with a T5 (corporal) rating. Shortly thereafter our son was born.

I applied for an emergency furlough, which was refused because the Red Cross reported that the mother and child were doing fine. The company clerk made out a request for furlough and told me to carry it to the battalion commander's office and see if it would be approved... and it was. I arrived at the hospital in Vancouver [Washington] just as Trudy and the baby were being released. I spent several days there before returning to Fort Knox. I continued working at the motor pool tank shop.

Meanwhile, they had expanded the training center to three groups and we had received several shipments of new tanks. However, men were getting transferred and shipped out continuously and life was quite uncertain from day to day. In the spring of 1944, we were organized into an Ordnance Company and became the 698th Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Company. All men with limited service classifications due to age or minor disabilities were transferred out or discharged, and new men, mostly trained at Aberdeen, were brought in. We finally became a line outfit and life became a little more certain.

A short time later, Trudy decided to come to Kentucky so we could be together. Through a friend in the outfit, I found a small house in West Point, Kentucky and rented it. Trudy and the baby arrived in Louisville on the train and we got settled in our little house in West Point.

(To be continued next Friday)

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 7: New Job, New Car, New Wife

(Part 6 is here.)

Early in the summer of 1940, I was offered the job of operating the power plant for the town of Lodge Grass. It was one of the highest paid jobs in the area, $142.50 per month. It was a 12 hour, seven day week job. I was responsible for operating the generating plant and maintaining the distribution system, reading meters, billing customers, as well as purchasing needed supplies and fuel for the engines. After a few months I had saved enough money to buy a used 1938 Chevrolet coupe, so I gave my 1929 Ford roadster to my brother.

During the summer of 1938, I had worked on a wheat farm a few miles southwest of Lodge Grass, operated by Bill Formanack of Miles City. His son Bob was working there while his dad ran a tire shop in Miles City. Bob played the piano and we organized a band, playing for local dances. A couple of years after that Bob married Ileta Stovall.

After acquiring my "new" car, I decided to drive up to Formanacks' farm to show Bob my car. There were a mother and daughter visiting there that afternoon from Sheridan, Wyoming, the daughter having gone to school in Sheridan with Ileta earlier. This daughter later became the love of my life and the mother of our two boys.

A few months later she accepted my gift of an engagement ring. Then on the seventh of December 1941, war was declared against Japan. It was quite apparent that I would soon be involved, being physically fit and 23 years old. We agonized over whether or not we should marry, her father thought not but let us make our own minds up. Meanwhile I went to Los Angeles to complete schooling that I had previously started. Upon my return, we set the date of 14 April 1942 and were married.

(Part 8)

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 6: College, Barley, and "Valuable Lessons"

(Part 5 is here.)

In the finals of my senior year, I purposely flunked some of the tests because I didn't want to be the valedictorian and have to make a speech, but I ended up being salutatorian and had to make a speech anyway. I know this was a disappointment to my parents (I never told them the truth). I earned a scholarship from the Montana University System and decided to use it at Montana School of Mines because they did not require ROTC training, however I really preferred to attend Montana State College. These decisions were made because I was unable or unwilling to face the responsibilities that were inherent to the talents that I was blessed with. Fortunately God gives us time to learn some of these valuable lessons.

During my High School years I had the opportunity to be a relief operator at the city light plant and became familiar with the operation of the machinery there. In 1940 a Rural Electrification project was organized in our county.

Meantime my dad and I had moved to the ranch that was owned by my mother's father. We spent the first summer trying to get the place into production and were living in a sheepwagon. It was a hard summer as we worked about 15 hours a day. That fall we bought an old log house, which we tore down and moved to the ranch, and by the latter part of November 1939, I had assembled a one-room cabin from the usable parts of the old log house.

We moved some of our furniture from the house in town and my mother and brother, Raymond, joined us in our "new" home on the ranch. We celebrated Thanksgiving together. It was in the fall of that year that my dad was able to go with Uncle Jack and Aunt Dorothy to Kentucky to visit his mother, whom he hadn't seen since he and my mother were there in 1913 on their honeymoon.

He was reluctant to leave, as the barley was ready to harvest, but we all insisted that he go and assured him that we could get the crop harvested. Our neighbor, Jack Williams, had an old binder that had not been used for years. He consented to let us borrow it and we pulled it home behind the pickup. I worked on it for several days and finally got it in running condition. My brother was 18 years old and in High School, and had experience with horses, so it became his job to drive the team while I shocked the bundles and made emergency repairs on the binder. We had the grain all in the shock by the time Dad got home.

Later that fall, I took the truck, a 1934 Ford 1 1/2 ton, and went to Shaws mine in the Wolf Mountains, about 25 miles away, for a load of coal. We used the coal for both cooking and heating. By the time I got home the temperature was 20 degrees below zero.

(Part 7)

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 5: The Bicycle, the Saxophone and the Orchestra

Sorry I haven't posted anything all week... hubby broke his ankle, kids home from school on MLK day...busy, busy, busy!

(Part 4 is here.)

The next summer my dad bought his only competitor and was doing quite well. My friend Claude Abel was the paper boy for the Billings Gazette and we were getting the paper. I guess that was my introduction to the "funny papers." One day there was an insert in the paper from Mead Cycle Co. of Chicago for a Ranger bicycle for $32.00. It had a headlight and even a tool box. I asked my dad if I could get it. He said that if I could get a job he would help me to get the bicycle. He got me a job leading the stacker-horse in the hay field of his friend Howard Johnson. Even though their farm was only about 3 miles from town, I stayed with them during the harvest of the first cutting. I earned about $14.00 and was very anxious to order the bicycle so my dad said he would give enough money to place the order. I didn't try very hard to find another job after that. Some time later the bicycle came on the local freight train and as it was my dad's business to meet all the trains, he hurried right home with my bicycle. He was a wonderful dad!

My best friend Wendell Forman, of a progressive and fairly well-to-do family, decided to take cornet lessons from a local barber and musician. I had had the desire to learn to play the saxophone for some time and this was my opportunity to prevail upon my mother concerning my desire. My mother had a cousin living in Casper, Wyoming who was a musician, so she wrote to him requesting that he might find a used horn that we could afford. His return letter listed quite a few and his recommendation of the best buy. The price was $35.00. This would amount to about four months' worth of groceries for our family in 1933. Somehow my mother, probably with my dad's help, came up with the money and I got my saxophone.

The manager of the hardware store had previously played the saxophone but said he would not attempt to teach me, but would loan me a book. I began to learn on my own and finding that I was unable to play like Jimmy Dorsey within a few days, became quite discouraged; however, my friend Wendell was progressing quite well and not wanting to let him get too far ahead of me, I got back to it.

A local music teacher, Mrs. Cornwell, became aware of the fact that there were several of us in town struggling with our musical education and decided to organize a sort of orchestra. She was an accomplished musician and played the harp and piano professionally and was learning the xylophone. She had quite a library of music, some of which was well-known semi-classical music that beginners could eventually learn. In a town of 500 people, it didn't take long for the public to become aware of our presence and we were called upon to provide entertainment for various occasions. The local School Board decided to set aside a few dollars for the program and we became the School Orchestra, with the school providing the music and even paying Mrs. Cornwell a small salary to be our teacher and conductor.

In my senior year in High School we had a band instructor, Mr. McNeil, who was also coach of the athletic program. Real progress for our little school.

(Part 6)

Susan Virginia "Jennie V." Cummings Zane

And.... that's a really long name.

I have to say, the guy in Wyoming (whose name is Carl, not Steve) will have a nice soft bed in Heaven if he treats all of his patrons as well as he treated me. Color me IMPRESSED.

Today I received Jennie's death certificate from his office, exactly seven days after I called him, and the best part was, Carl also threw in a copy of her obituary from the Sundance newspaper. Color me THRILLED.

And, even after writing about it, I completely forgot that I ordered it, and was very happily surprised when my husband came in with the mail last Thursday. Color me AIRHEADED.

At any rate, Carl at the Wyoming State Archives Office (307-777-7826) is a sweet, sweet man and I would send him flowers and chocolates if he wouldn't think I was stalking him, or something. Color me GRATEFUL.

As for the death certificate itself, it was very well-filled in, including her parents' names and birthplaces, birth date and place, husband's name, cause of death (cerebral apoplexy - stroke)... and her obituary went like this:

Mrs. Jennie Zane Passed Away Here On April 4th
Had Been Resident of Community For Thirty Years

Mrs. Jennie V. Zane, for more than thirty years a resident of this community, passed away at her home in this city on Thursday, April 4th, following an illness which extended over a long period of time. Funeral services were conducted on Sunday, Rev. Calvin officiating and interment was made in the local cemetery.

Jennie V. Cummings was born in Loudan County, Virginia January 17, 1849 and died April 4, 1929 at the age of 80 years 2 months and 17 days.

She was married to Thomas W. Zane at Lawton, Michigan January 27, 1867, her husband died 25 years ago.

From this union two children were born, Jesse T. Zane, who preceded her in death several years ago; and Mrs. W.R. Fox of Gillette, Wyoming.

She came to Wyoming in 1890 and has been a continuous resident of Crook county up to the time of her death.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 4: Bill's dad Maurice and Baptism

(Part 3 is here.)

In 1930 my dad bought a dray business which he operated until 1939. The business provided us a pretty good living. It was hard work as most of the hauling was done with horses and wagon and all the loading and unloading was done by hand. The work consisted of hauling coal, gravel, ashes, lumber and whatever freight came on the daily passenger and freight trains including mail, parcel post and express as well as merchandise for the local stores. Ice cream came in big five-gallon insulated packers on the passenger train as did most perishables. My Dad seldom asked me to help him but was always happy to have me do so. I helped mostly when he had carloads to unload consisting mostly of lumber, coal or cement and handled the mail often on and off the passenger trains and hauling it with our model "T" truck. My dad was an honest hardworking man.

The property in town was three lots wide, a two-story house, barn, chicken house, coal and ice house, garage and a large vegetable garden. There was no inside plumbing so we also had an outhouse. My high school years were spent there. We had a milk cow and chickens and my dad had a green thumb so we always had a productive garden and we always had enough to eat.

Lodge Grass was my first experience of living in a town and I gradually became less intimidated by other people. When I was 15, I was baptized into the Baptist Church. My mother had been baptized in the Episcopal Church when young and she believed that you should be baptized by immersion instead of sprinkling, so she had been baptized in the Little Big Horn River a year or two before. Our preacher was a young man from Chicago, recently out of seminary, and wanted to have a baptism service at Easter time.

At Easter time in Montana the Little Big Horn is usually frozen over. Rev. Engle had acquired a large metal tank and placed it by the heating stove in the church. There was a well with a hand pump behind the church and some of the men spent several evenings pumping and carrying water in buckets to fill the tank. By the time Easter evening arrived the water may have warmed up to about 50° or so. There were about four or so of us being baptized. My friend Adrian Crosby was first and I was next. As soon as I was baptized I ran home, about two blocks, it was freezing outside, to change into some dry clothes.

(Part 5)

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 3: Showers, Indians, and Electricity

(Part 2 is here.)

We lived in our oilfield shack at Parkman Camp from about January 1927 until March 1928. We had free natural gas and the water tank was right by our house. There was a "company" bath house and if you had a membership you could bathe there. The first shower bath I ever saw. My dad worked for one of the oil companies and we bought our groceries at the commisary in Midwest. Times were pretty good for us.

By the spring of 1928, my dad had saved up a little money and he couldn't stand being away from the farm any longer so we made a trip to Lodge Grass, Montana where my dad rented a farm from an Indian named Martinez. By the time we got started moving, the spring thaw was beginning and the roads were solid mud or rather sloppy mud. The engine went out of the truck and my dad bought another one and with all the other expenses, we were nearly broke when we finally reached the farm.

Our neighbor was an old Indian, Chester Otter Chief, and he painted his face. I had never seen an Indian before and he used to peer at us through the bushes along the creek. My mother was afraid of him, so was I. The fields were foul but my dad was able to grow a fair crop of barely but it was worth about 20 cents a bushel I guess. So he decided to buy some pigs and feed them the barley and maybe make better money that way so he moved us into town and we didn't have to ride the bus anymore. The bus was a horse-drawn covered wagon. It had a small coal-burning stove and would have been comfortable except it was so rough riding.

In the early part of 1929 I became ill with typhoid fever and came very near to dying. I missed almost two months of school and was a long time after that recovering my strength. The evening of the fourth of April brought a telegram saying that my Great Grandmother Zane had passed away. The same year the town of Lodge Grass incorporated and installed a light plant bringing us the first electric lights we ever had in our home. Also in 1929 my Grandfather Fox bought a farm on Owl Creek southeast of Lodge Grass and a house in town in which we lived for ten years.

(Part 4)

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 2: Measles, School, and Oilfield Life

(Part 1 is here).

There were four of us, my brother Raymond having been born in June 1921, and six of them [Uncle Harold Fox, Aunt Ella, four cousins] in an unfinished house with two bedrooms. To make matters worse, all us kids came down with measles. We pooled our efforts in the spring of 1926 but as fall came we were no better off than we were in the spring, just tireder. My dad got a job in the Midwest oil field and began work about September. We sold all our belongings except our car and clothes and household goods as well as my dad's share of the homestead for a total of about $300.00.

We moved to our oilfield shack at Parkman Camp about three miles south of Midwest, Wyoming. That was the first school I attended where there were more than six students. The school was about 1 1/2 miles west and was also attended by kids from Consolidated Camp. I was accustomed to walking to school about that distance as I had always done so. The first school I attended had barely room for the teacher's desk, the stove and four pupils' desks and the teacher's chair which was used to prop the door shut on windy days. There were three Eastwood kids, Ralph, Earl and Ina and me for a total of four. The teacher (Miss Reynolds) stayed at our house and my dad used to take us in the bobsled sometimes.

I don't remember very much about my life on the homestead, just sketches. We got our drinking water from a spring at our neighbors' place about 1 1/2 miles west. I guess our places joined. Their name was Speilman and we hauled water on a stone-boat in a barrel. There was a place where we dug our coal at Harry's place and Aron Speilman and my family used to get coal together so we had plenty of coal to keep us warm in those Wyoming winters.

I remember one time when a big threshing machine came to our place and threshed our grain. I remember a terrible hail storm and my mother went out to save her little chicks and a hailstone hit her in the back and made a big black and blue mark. I remember a winter day, a bright sunny day, my dad and I went horseback to look after the cattle and we found some of them dead. When I got back to the house, I was standing by the window looking out across the snow and I came to the realization that I was an individual and that someday I would have to die as those cattle had to do and I have never forgotten that day.

(To be continued next Friday)

Life History of William "Bill" Ricketts Smith, Part 1: Birth and Family

[Written by my grandfather, pictured about 1942]

I was born on a cattle ranch about five miles north of Gillette, Wyoming. It was a cold winter day, November 5, 1918, election day. The ranch was owned by William Pendleton Ricketts from whom I received my middle name. The ranch was commonly known as "The Rooney Place" and was also known as the Rawhide Ranch as it was located on Little Rawhide Creek. It was necessary for the doctor to come from Gillette and I guess he arrived before I did. His name was Dr. Sexton.

My dad was foreman on the ranch, having been there since my parents were married December 24, 1913. Mr. Ricketts' main ranch, The Sunnyside Ranch, was about ten or fifteen miles farther north. We continued to live there for about two years after I was born. Meanwhile my father was "proving up" on his homestead which joined the Rawhide Ranch on the south. The winter of 1919 was very severe and Mr. Ricketts suffered great loss of cattle as did most of the ranchers of the area. He was forced to cut back on his operation after having been in control of thousands of acres of open range. This was actually the beginning of the end of the cattle empires of that day.

My dad had acquired some cattle during the years he had worked for Mr. Ricketts, so in about 1920 we moved to the homestead. My uncle Jack (John William Smith, Jr.) after having served in the Army (WWI) came to work for Ricketts in 1919 and had taken a homestead joining the land my father had claimed so we had a total of 640 acres. There was about 60 acres that was suitable for farming and the balance was fair grazing land. Drought and hail took its toll and by the fall of 1925 we had "lived up" all the cattle and were facing a bleak winter.

My dad had previously "worked out" some to support us. My mother's parents lived in Gillette, her father (William Raymond Fox) was an undertaker there. They had homesteaded northwest of my dad about two miles as the crow flies. My mother's brother Uncle Harry (Harold Germaine Fox) was living on the Fox homesteads with his wife Ella (Davis) and their four boys. Prosperity hadn't been with them either. My grandfather Fox decided that rather than see us all starve, he would move us all together at Harry's place, their house being a little bigger than ours, and it would be less expensive than supporting us at two locations.

[Continued next Friday]

Timeline: William Raymond Fox & Elizabeth Ann Zane

30 December 1888 - William and Elizabeth married in Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo, Michigan
12 August 1891 - First child Harold Germaine Fox born in Sundance, Crook, Wyoming
14 February 1893 - Second child Ruby Valentine Fox born in Sundance
3 January 1899 - William's grandfather Lysander Bathrick died in Sundance; buried in Sundance
*1900 Census - Living in Sundance, Crook, Wyoming, next door to William's parents. William was a farmer. Elizabeth was the mother of two children, two living. Household included William & "Lizzie"; children, Harold and Ruby; and boarder Grace Blake, 18, born in Iowa.
4 April 1901 - Third child Ruth Fox born and died in Sundance; buried in Sundance
3 July 1901 - Elizabeth's father Thomas William Zane died in Sundance
*1910 Census - Living in Gillette, Campbell, Wyoming. William was a land surveyor. Elizabeth was the mother of three children, two living. Household included William & Elizabeth and daughter Ruby.
8 August 1911 - Harold and Ella May Davis married in Sheridan, Sheridan, Wyoming
18 November 1911 - Grandson Francis Raymond Fox born in Gillette, Campbell, Wyoming (Harold & Ella)
23 March 1913 - Grandson Harold Maurice Fox born in Gillette (Harold & Ella)
24 December 1913 - Ruby and Maurice Warfield Smith married in Gillette
22 March 1915 - Grandson Clarence Milton Fox born in Gillette (Harold & Ella)
26 December 1916 - William's mother Maranda Adelia Bathrick Fox died in Moorcroft, Crook, Wyoming; buried in Buffalo, Johnson, Wyoming
5 November 1918 - Grandson William Ricketts "Bill" Smith born in Gillette (Ruby & Maurice)
10 January 1919 - Grandson Miles Leroy Fox born in Gillette (Harold & Ella)
*1920 Census - Living in Soukop, Campbell, Wyoming. William was an undertaker for his own establishment. Household included William and Elizabeth.
3 June 1921 - Grandson Raymond Maurice Smith born in Gillette (Ruby & Maurice)
4 April 1929 - Elizabeth's mother Susan Virginia "Jennie" Cummings Zane died in Sundance; buried in Sundance
*1930 Census
3 November 1936 - William's father Adelburt Alphonso Fox died in Buffalo; buried in Buffalo
18 June 1939 - Francis Raymond Fox died in Ucross, Sheridan, Wyoming; buried in Gillette
7 October 1939 - William died in Rochester, Olmsted, Minnesota; buried in Gillette
31 May 1963 - Elizabeth (pictured at left) died in Basin, Big Horn, Wyoming; buried in Gillette