X-Message: #1
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 21:16:05 -0500
From: "Nancee Seifert" <iggy29@scican.net>
To: IADECATU-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: [IADECATU] AN INTERESTING LETTER -- From KATE STRONG
Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa
Thursday, February 4, l904
'Kate Strong, of Oklahoma, Sends Us Another Batch of News Concerning Oklahoma.
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Geary, O.T., Jan. l4, l904.
As I cannot collect enough material to write an interesting letter will jot down a few items to cure a slight attack of homesickness. This has been rather a monotonous winter in this locality, not even a snow flurry to relieve it and no rain to benefit the wheat crop. The coldest weather registered so far this winter only 8 degrees above zero. I haven't worn overshoes this winter nor had cold enough or such like, only a spell or two of genuine laziness. The Reporter, (if not too late to talk about Christmas) excelled in newsy and interesting reading matter in the Christmas number. I will express my good opinion of it by paying up for I suppose the usual incidental expenses even to the editor as well as a great many others, was a trifle extravagant. It seems Christmas times cost more than the Fourth of July, but if O.E. could have been in Geary he would have been treated to free drinks and a swell dinner at the Mint Saloon. He surely would have relished one or the other. Now for a little Christmas experience of my own. The folks all went to some festivity or other and left me alone. I sat up until 11 o'clock and getting sleepy concluded I would retire. I went up stairs and as I had left the lamp burning down stairs and had been away from home part of the day I thought I would look in the closets for imaginary or real burglars; found nothing but thought I had better strike a match and look under the bed like the old maid did. The match lit all right but I did not have time to see for a fringed rag I had pinned around my head caught fire and it seemed pinned on to stay. It kept me bobbing around quite a bit before I got it off and I was so badly frightened I would have been glad to have found someone under the bed. When the folks came home they said they smelled fire and I told them it was only a little smoke.
The next is a mule hunt or rather a man hunt, which MR. STRONG indulged in, (I am tired of saying J.D.) you will know who I mean. He purchased a fine span of mules, paying $l30 for them. He sends them out to the ranch one day and the next Fred comes in and tells him he has bought stolen mules for they have the C. brand on the jaw. MR. STRONG said he didn't see any brand on them but Fred said they were surely stolen for he did not have the transfer papers with him which he should have had. Well he began to feel quite dubious as he bought the mules quite cheap at Dallas, Texas, and they have a Detective Protective Association which will recover stolen property free of charge with the C. brand. MR. STRONG had forgotton the man's name who sold him the mules, neither did he ask him where he lived, but remembered of hearing him say he had stayed all night Bridgeport and he struck out for that place. The man had told the truth about that part of it. He did not drive the mules for he was liable to be arrested for having them without the papers, but hired a man and team to take him to Sickles, for he heard he had gone in that direction. The driver asked him if he had anything to shoot with, for they would have to travel through some awful rough country and were liable to be held up for drinks I suppose. They finally came to a country post office. The postmaster knew of the man and the mules and told him where he thought he lived, and also said he was a preacher. MR. STRONG said he thought he had bought stolen mules. They went on to Sickles, found out the man's name and were directed to where he lived. He was not at home but his wife said he had the papers in his pocket when at Geary, but didn't think of them once until he was nearly home, but intended to send them to him at the Geary postoffice, so you may know they were important. She told them when they first moved to Sickles, during her husband's absence she and another lady guarded two span of mules and a horse with loaded shotguns all night, and drove two men away who were trying to steal them. A neighbor's fine team was stolen the same night, and the next day she had them branded paying $l per each. The same week one of the mules MR. STRONG bought was stolen but was turned loose and came back. He was out just $5 and a 60 mile drive by her not asking questions like a foolish woman does. She said it seemed odd to me for a preacher to own so much stock but I guess it was his energetic wife who helped him out.
Next a newspaper story at Eagle City says a sand storm piled sand up against a hardware store four feet deep at Magnum, Oklahoma. l,000 loads of cotton per day would be a good place to build a cotton factory but Gerr County will eclipse all in productiveness for she issued l,l00 marriage certificates in 11 months. Is it a newspaper lie or not. I cannot say. Since writing these lines another murder has been committed in Decatur County. Insanity and money cover a multitude of sins. Decatur County must be a Jonah unto herself for so many crimes and criminal offenses are a great draw back to the county's prosperity. Perhaps if she would build a new court house Jonah would crawl back an item in two days.
Geary Journal of the I.O.O.F. Lodge at Billings, O.T., have received $500 contributed by the Odd Fellows in the territory for the support and education of the children of the Widow Brown who was killed in a cyclone at Hydro last October. It was a disastrous cyclone and struck near where Steve lives. Cyclones always look and appear the same but the serious and comical things which occur are always different, and such was the case with this one. The papers at the time gave a graphic account of it, one or two things I will write of if it is somewhat late. The above item brought it to my mind. The Brown family were extremely unfortunate. About two years ago the eldest son died in Kansas, his father went to see him and he was taken sick and died. The widow and four children were living four miles from Hydro, right in the track of the storm. It tore the house all to pieces and it tore Mrs. Brown's scalp off until it hung down over her face, and she lived 24 hours in that condition. Killed two children, covered one little girl two feet in the mud and water; two smaller children were found wrapped in a blanket unharmed and quite a distance from the house or where it stood. The singular part of this tragedy is this. One half mile away a neighbor's house was badly shaken but not wrecked, but the doors were blown open and the lights put out. The storm began at 8 p.m. and it hailed l l/2 hours. These people finally got a light and among the things scattered on the floor they saw some pictures which the Widow Brown had had in her house. They knew then her house was gone and with some other neighbors started to their rescue in time to save the little children and get the poor old woman to a place of shelter. They found the little girl clinging to a wire fence and her brother beside her dead. Her hands were torn and badly lacerated by the wire. It was still raining terribly. The children will not sleep a night above ground now, but sleep in a cave. Steve and his wife went to the cave when the window lights began to break. He was wrapped in a quilt sitting on a box in the cave when all at once a deluge of water struck him on the back of the neck and knocked him off into water two feet deep, all tangled up in his quilt. He said he thought the cyclone had struck him sure and his time had come, but it was only water pouring down a gopher hole.
Well, two big Indians just came and interrupted me. It is the fifth time I have answered the door this afternoon. American Horse and his interpreter wanted to see MR. STRONG about trading for some cedar posts. When you want to trade with a white man, feed him before trading, but feed an Indian and you can never trade with him, so he did not get anything to eat this time. I must tell you about the fine hen house STRONG built for me. Well, it is all lumber and no hen house. J. Smith up in Tenn. knows a little about STRONG's carpenter work, especially the cart he made away back in the seventies to haul the wheat, bran, and meat barrel out of the summer kitchen. The sequel was too laughable. I guess I will be like Samantha Allen; if it wasn't for Josiah I would have nothing to write about, but before closing I must tell you about JOHN's big hunt a week or two ago. He hasn't been well this fall and I didn't think winter hunting would be good for him, but as he took two doctors and two druggists with supplies with him (supplies I suppose they were, for I heard one ask if they thought there would be any snakes this time of year) they finally got started and got as far as the caves where they camped, (The Dalton gang made their rendezvous in these caves several years ago) got their supper and went to bed so as to be up in early pursuit of the game the next morning. JOHN, with a borrowed gun which would shoot only when he didn't want it to, made out to kill what squirrels they needed. The second day they started at daybreak, traveled a short distance and saw nine deer. The first man who saw them thought they were cattle and he came from Des Moines. I think they all shot at them and knocked one down but before they got to it it was up and gone with all the rest. They were all mad for they had no dogs except bird dogs with them, (the idea of him going hunting without a hound) so he starts back to the ranch for old Maje and a stag hound they have out there but the boys and dogs were across the Canadian River. He was just a little mad. One man, a short heavy set fellow, struck out on foot but he never overtook them nor seen them any more. They met him coming into camp, and they thought they would have to carry him the rest of the way. JOHN said he laughed until he could laugh no more at his forlorn and comical appearance. Holmes said he had been mosquito bitten through two shirts over on Deer Creek last summer, and bitten so bad that he could neither see nor eat, but was never so near dead before. The third morning JOHN got up (will call him JOHN in this hunt) and built a fire in front of the tent. As the fire blazed up he happened to glance over the sleeping crowd and saw the light reflecting on the face of he thought the ugliest man he ever saw, and he awoke another man to look. He says, "My God, he is dead., but the man heard him and raised up and says, "Who is sick?" He was one of the doctors. They told him they thought he was dead but to get up for there was a regular blizzard coming. He looked out and saw the snow coming in regular whirls, as he thought, but it was the wind blowing the white ashes over the tent. These hunters had to go and get some more supplies as they had only brought crackers and such stuff to eat and they did not last long. JOHN said if he just had Dan Bright, George Wadsworth, Jim Dobson and Virge Penniwell and well filled grub boxes, he would have just been happy, and had them off to one side to laugh in their jolly old way. The fourth morning they struck a lot of wild turkey tracks but the wind was blowing a heavy gale all day. They finally got a greyhound and started after the wounded deer but I guess its wounds had healed for they never ran acorss it. I think instead of seeing imaginary snakes it was deer, anyway they brought the hound home with them and it only had three walkable legs. However, they all say they had a life time of fun, but they were all unrecognizable when they got home. The sand had gotten in its dirty work as usual.
Jan. 26th. Never got to finish this as had to go out to the ranch and help butcher as the boss wasn't able to go, and while out there a bountiful rain fell which made the farmers all rejoice. Also killed a skunk in a pile of brush, the first one seen about the ranch since we came to Oklahoma. Since coming home a beautiful snow fell, or at least it looked that way before it struck the ground. The pure and beautiful snow is a misnomer in Oklahoma for it is a dirty red as soon as it strikes the earth. The thermometer registered 3 degrees below zero on Monday, Jan. 24th, the coldest day this winter. Today I thought Gabriel's trumpet had come but it was only a man standing in front of the house with a big mouth and he was hollowing and blowing through a horn nearly as big as a barrel, saying "Bananas for sale. A car load at the depot at 75 cents a bunch," and now everybody is sick. "Too much, no good," Indian say for he is sick too.
I hope some of my friends in old Decatur will enjoy reading these disconnected lines and cast a welcome thought to one so far away for it is a tender message to all.
--KATE STRONG.
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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
April 5, 2003
*What a character Kate must have been -- calling her husband by 'many names'. (grin..)