Book Review: The ‘Trapdoor’ Springfield

Springfield 1873 Carbine (Rock Island Auction Company)

(Wild West Magazine) In 1865 master armorer Erskine Allin of Massachusetts’ Springfield Armory proposed a simple means of improving on his firm’s .58-caliber Model 1861 percussion rifle musket without excessive rework or expense: “All that is necessary is to cut away the barrel on the top at the breech and add the block and shell extractor, cut the recess in the breech-screw and modify the hammer,” Allin wrote. “All other parts remain the same.”
To a U.S. military just emerging from a devastating civil war to resume a relatively small-scale pursuit of “Manifest Destiny” in the Western frontier (or so it hoped), cheap and simple held immense appeal. Continued

Country Churches: Church of Christ, Des Moines, New Mexico

Yes, there really is a Des Moines, New Mexico, it's not far from Boise (City), Oklahoma. The exterior of the church is covered in a stucco application known as Formstone, which was very popular on the east coast in the decades right before and after World War Two. The preservation of Formstone buildings is a hotly debated topic.

Jose Chavez y Chavez

(DesertUSA) In the days of the Old West, New Mexico was home, at one time or another, to many of the more colorful desperadoes. The Clantons, William Bonney, Jesse Evans, William "Curley Bill" Brocius, Clay Allison, Doroteo "El Tigre" Sains, Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum, John "King of the Rustlers" Kinney, Jim Miller, and Johnny Ringo are a relatively small sample.
Because of its remoteness and proximity to the Mexican border, Southern New Mexico attracted a large number of outlaws; violent men who lived from the labor of others, who were quick to kill, and for whom the conventions of settled society meant little.
man who fit the mold of New Mexican outlaw, and has been largely ignored by historians and folklorists, was José Chavez y Chavez. Continued

Old House 138

Grenville, New Mexico, just a stone's throw from the Colorado & Southern Railway (now BNSF), was founded in 1888 and named for Grenville Dodge, a prominent soldier and railroad executive. The town's population peaked at around 250 people and is now mostly abandoned.

Sul Ross

(Texas Ranger Hall of Fame) Lawrence Sullivan Ross was born September 27, 1838 at Bentonsport, Iowa Territory. In 1839 his family migrated to Texas, first settling in Milam County. By 1849 the family had settled at Waco. Sul Ross attended Baylor University at Independence, Texas and graduated from Wesleyan University, Florence, Alabama in 1859.
... Ross joined the Texas Rangers in 1860, first serving as a lieutenant and later as a captain. He was empowered by Sam Houston to raise a company of men to serve in Young County and the surrounding area. He showed the same skill and courage as a Ranger captain as he had shown earlier with the army.
In December of 1860 he and his company pursued a Comanche raiding party that ended in the battle of Pease River in which Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been captured by the Comanche some 20 years earlier, was rescued. Continued

Oliver Loving

(Wikipedia) Oliver Loving (December 4, 1812 – September 25, 1867) was a rancher and cattle driver. Together with Charles Goodnight, he developed the Goodnight-Loving Trail.
... In the spring of 1867, Loving and Goodnight returned to Texas, ready to start a new drive. This third drive was slowed by heavy rains and Native American threats. Loving went ahead of the herd for contract bidding, taking only Bill Wilson, a trusted scout, with him.
Although he told Goodnight that he should travel at night through Native American Indian country, he pushed ahead during the day. In a Comanche attack, he was seriously wounded at Loving Bend on the Pecos River.
The weakened Loving sent Wilson back to the herd, eluded the Indians, and, with the aid of Mexican traders, reached Fort Sumner, only to die there of gangrene.
Before he died on September 25, 1867, Goodnight assured him that his wish to be buried in Texas would be carried out. Continued

Highland High alum McDonald, speedy Hall of Fame receiver, dies at 84

(AP) ... A native New Mexican, McDonald and his family moved from the small town of Roy to Albuquerque before his sophomore year in high school.

He developed into a three-sport athlete in football, basketball and track and field for the Hornets. Continued

Benjamin Grierson marries Alice Kirk

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1854, Alice Kirk and Benjamin Henry Grierson were married in Illinois.
Grierson entered the army during the Civil War and rose to the rank of major general.
After the war he commanded the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the Tenth Cavalry on the frontier.

… Alice left behind a remarkably frank correspondence describing the problems of raising a family in the frontier army.
Her letters were later published under the title The Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson (University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
Continued

Fred Waite

(Wikipedia) Fred Waite, born Frederick Tecumseh Waite (occasionally spelled Fred Wayte) (September 23, 1853 – September 24, 1895), was a Chickasaw cowboy who joined Billy the Kid's gang. He left the gang to return to his people.
With the Chickasaw Nation, Waite served as a leading politician before his death at the age 42. Continued

It's a good day to be a coyote

Street sign, San Jon, New Mexico.

Loved by a few, looked down on by the rest, coyotes are the perfect mascot for the tiny town of San Jon, New Mexico. Proud, persistent, and loud, Coyote does not care about your opinion.

Free fishing day in New Mexico Today

Fishing Calaveras by Jose Pulido

(Santa Fe New Mexican) You can fish for free in New Mexico on Saturday without a license as part of Celebrate National Hunting and Fishing Day.

Residents and nonresidents can fish public waters statewide, but all other fishing rules apply, said the state Department of Game and Fish. Continued

William Walters

 

(Wikipedia) William Walters, also known as "Bronco Bill" (1869 - 1933?) was an outlaw during the closing days of the Old West. He is best known for the legend of his "lost treasure", allegedly located in the area of Solomonville, Arizona.
Bill Walters was born in Fort Sill, in Oklahoma Territory. He worked most of his youth as a cowboy, then began working for the Santa Fe Railroad as a section hand. Shortly after becoming employed by the railroad, Walters became involved in train robberies and the robberies of stagecoaches.
He began riding with the Black Jack Ketchum Gang around 1893, where he is believed to have committed at least two murders.
He soon coaxed some of the gang members to leave with him, and form their own gang concentrating on the robbery of Wells Fargo shipments. It would be in this endeavor that he saw his greatest success. Continued

Reies Tijerina

(Wikipedia) Reies Lopez Tijerina (September 21, 1926 – January 19, 2015) led a struggle in the 1960s and 1970s to restore New Mexican land grants to the descendants of their Spanish colonial and Mexican owners.
As a vocal spokesman for the rights of Hispanics and Mexican Americans, he became a major figure of the early Chicano Movement ... Continued

Texans fight at Chickamauga

A member of
Terry's Texas Rangers

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1863, the two-day battle of Chickamauga began, ending in one of the last great field victories for the Confederacy.
The first day's action, fought in densely wooded terrain, became a classic "soldier's battle" in which generalship counted for little and the outcome was decided by fierce small-unit encounters.
Texas units in the Georgia battle included Hood's Texas Brigade, Ector's Brigade, Deshler's Brigade, and Terry's Texas Rangers. Continued

Simpson Stilwell

(Wikipedia) Simpson Everett Stilwell (August 18, 1850 – February 17, 1903) was a United States Army Scout, Deputy U.S. Marshal, police judge, and U.S. Commissioner in Oklahoma during the American Old West.
He served in Major George A. Forsyth's company of scouts when it was besieged during the Battle of Beecher Island by Indian Cheyenne Chief Roman Nose and was instrumental in bringing relief to the unit.
… In 1863, at 14 years old, Simpson's parents sent him to fetch water from the family well. He left for Kansas City instead, where he joined a wagon train bound for Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory. He traveled between New Mexico, Kansas City, and Leavenworth several times, spending the winters in New Mexico. Continued

Henry McCarty

(Wikipedia) ... Henry McCarty was born in New York City on September 17, 1859 to Catherine (née Devine) McCarty, and was baptized eleven days later in the Church of St. Peter. … Following the death of her husband, Catherine McCarty and her sons moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she met a man named William Henry Harrison Antrim. The McCarty family, along with Antrim, moved to Wichita, Kansas in 1870. After moving again a few years later, Catherine married Antrim on March 1, 1873 at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico; both McCarty and his brother Joseph were witnesses. Shortly after, the family moved from Santa Fe to Silver City, New Mexico. Continued

Cherokee Strip Land Rush

(Wikipedia) ... The Land Run itself began at noon on September 16, 1893, with an estimated 100,000 participants hoping to stake claim to part of the 6 million acres and 40,000 homesteads on what had formerly been Cherokee grazing land. It would be Oklahoma's fourth and largest land run. Continued

Ghost Towns You Can Own: 5 For Sale Right Now, and 5 That Sold

Cuervo, New Mexico is not on the list. (Sixgun Siding)

The median price for a home in this country is $279,500, according to Zillow. But you can spend less right now and live in your own town – all by yourself. Continued

George McJunkin

 

(Wikipedia) George McJunkin (1851–1922) was an African American cowboy, amateur archaeologist and historian in New Mexico. He discovered the Folsom Site in 1908.
Born to slaves in Midway, Texas, McJunkin was approximately 14 years old when the Civil War ended.
He worked as a cowboy for freighters. He reportedly learned how to read from fellow cow punchers. McJunkin taught himself to read, write, speak Spanish, play the fiddle and guitar, eventually becoming an amateur archaeologist and historian. In 1868, McJunkin arrived in New Mexico and became a foreman on the Thomas Owens Pitchford Ranch.
In later life McJunkin became a buffalo hunter and worked for several ranches in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. He was also reported to be an expert bronc rider and one of the best ropers in the United States. He became foreman of the Crowfoot ranch near Folsom, New Mexico. Continued

Family Plot

First producing oil well in Texas comes in

Instead of traditional cable tool percussion drilling, Barret chose to use an auger fastened to a pipe and rotated by a steam-driven cogwheel — the basic principle of rotary drilling — which has been used ever since. - American Oil & Gas Historical Society

(TDbD) On this day in 1866, the first producing oil well in Texas came in at a depth of 106 feet at Oil Springs in Nacogdoches County. The Melrose Petroleum Oil Company, which had been organized in December 1865 by Lyne Taliaferro (Tol) Barret and four partners, began drilling in the summer of 1866.
Taliaferro, a Nacogdoches County merchant born in Virginia in 1832, had first contracted to lease 279 acres near Oil Springs in 1859, but the Civil War put a temporary halt to his exploration. The first well produced about ten barrels a day … Continued

D. H. Lawrence

(Wikipedia) David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works, among other things, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, some of the issues Lawrence explores are emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct.
... In 1935 Ravagli arranged, on Frieda's behalf, to have Lawrence's body exhumed and cremated and his ashes brought back to the ranch to be interred there in a small chapel amid the mountains of New Mexico. Continued

Country Churches: San Jon United Methodist

The Battle of Lyman's Wagon Train

Painting by Frederic Remington

(The Handbook of Texas Online) … On the afternoon of September 10, Lyman, seeing that the situation was critical not only for his own men but for Miles's column, penned a formal message to the commander at Camp Supply, telling of his plight and requesting reinforcements.
In the meantime Tehan slipped away and went back to his adopted people. He probably advised the Kiowas to fortify the waterhole, and the besieged train endured nearly two days without sufficient water as the Indians, whom Lyman estimated to be nearly 400 in number, continued taking potshots at the whites. Continued

The Compromise of 1850

Map by User:Golbez

(Wikipedia) The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War (1846–48). The compromise, drafted by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and brokered by Clay and Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, reduced sectional conflict. Controversy arose over the Fugitive Slave provision. The Compromise was greeted with relief, although each side disliked specific provisions. Continued

Old House 137

Located just east of Tucumcari in an area once known locally as "The Plains."

Frank Baldwin captures mysterious "white Indian" Tehan

Lt. Frank Baldwin

(TDbD) On this day in 1874, Lt. Frank Baldwin and three scouts captured the "white Indian" known as Tehan in what is now Hemphill County. Tehan was taken by the Kiowas when he was a child. They called him Tehan ("Texan").
He was subsequently adopted by the medicine man Maman-ti and grew up to become a fierce warrior. Except for his red hair, fair skin, and bull-like neck, he was pure Kiowa, and he reportedly committed several depredations on whites as an apprentice brave during the early 1870s.
Tehan was about eighteen when the Red River War broke out in the summer of 1874. Baldwin left Tehan with Capt. Wyllys Lyman's wagontrain, which was subsequently besieged by the Kiowas. During the siege, Tehan escaped from his guards and rejoined his adopted tribe, sporting a suit of clothes the troops had given him. Little more is known of his fate. Continued

Buddy Holly

(Wikipedia) Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American musician and singer-songwriter who was a central figure of mid-1950s rock and roll.
Holly was born in Lubbock, Texas, to a musical family during the Great Depression; he learned to play guitar and to sing alongside his siblings.
... Unhappy with Bradley's control in the studio and with the sound he achieved there, Holly went to producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, and recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", among other songs. Continued

Colt McCoy

(Wikipedia) Daniel "Colt" McCoy (born September 5, 1986) is an American football quarterback for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL).
He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the third round of the 2010 NFL Draft, after playing college football for the University of Texas. He has also been a member of the San Francisco 49ers.
McCoy was born in Hobbs, New Mexico. Continued

1956 Chrysler Imperial Southampton

Must have taken a wrong turn off 66

Review: In ‘Bisbee ’17,’ Anti-Union Violence Haunts an Arizona Town

 

(NYTimes) … Starting on July 12, 1917 — a few months after the United States entered World War I and in the midst of labor agitation across the mining industry — sheriff’s deputies rounded up around 1,200 people thought to be union activists, forced them into boxcars and transported them to the New Mexico desert. What came to be known as the Bisbee Deportation lingered at the margins of local memory, not forgotten but not much discussed either.
As the centennial approached, a group of history-minded citizens organized a re-enactment, and Mr. Greene focuses on the preparations for that curious pageant. Continued

EAT

 

There used to be a lot of places named EAT along America's roads and highways. Some of them had great food and some of them didn't. This one, now closed, operated in San Jon, New Mexico.

Letter from Back East: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935

The 1935 Hurricane memorial on Upper Matecumbe Key, Florida.

After World War One, veterans were offered a service bonus payable in 1945. And that was a fine and good thing, but along came the Great Depression and many of the veterans, displaced by the economic hard times, lobbied Congress to pay the bonus sooner.
In 1932 thousands of them demonstrated in Washington D.C. They set up a camp and there they stayed. President Hoover eventually ordered the marchers out of the city by force. It wasn't a pretty sight.
The next year the marchers returned and President Roosevelt persuaded many of them to take jobs building the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys. While working on this project, they were hit by a hurricane on Labor Day, 1935. It was the most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States. 164 Keys residents were killed that day, along with 259 veterans. The stories from this storm are gripping and I won't go into them here; there are several books that do a better job of it than I could in a little blog entry.
How does this relate to our area? It doesn't. It's just that some of those bonus marchers stayed at my grandfather's house in Washington D.C. all those years ago, and every Labor Day I wonder if any of them went down to work on the highway, and if any of them made it out alive.

Florida Keys at sunset, both photos Canon EOS 20D.

"Wolf of the Washita" born in Tennessee

Photo by Plazak

(TDbD) On this day in 1840, gunfighter Clay Allison was born on a Tennessee farm.
After serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, Allison moved to the Brazos River country in Texas. He soon signed on as a cowhand with Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight and was probably among the eighteen herders on the 1866 drive that blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail.
In 1870 he left Texas and was involved in a number of violent incidents, including lynchings, brawls and gunfights, in Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico during the 1870s. Continued

"The NM Game & Fish Prairie Chicken Seafood Restaurant"

Somebody made a joke on the Google.

Richard Farnsworth

(Wikipedia) Richard W. Farnsworth (September 1, 1920 – October 6, 2000) was an American actor and stuntman.
He is best known for his performances in The Grey Fox (1982), for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, and The Straight Story (1999), for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
... Farnsworth enjoyed a long marriage and had two children. After becoming a widower, he married again and lived on a ranch in Lincoln, New Mexico. Continued