Zane Grey in My Family Tree

Wetzels,  Zanes, and the Ohio River

Betty Zane's run with the gunpowder
Image from Wikipedia.

When I was a child, we had the books Betty Zane and The Last Trail in our home. They are two of the books in Zane Grey's Ohio River trilogy. I must have read each of them at least a dozen times. The third book in the trilogy is The Spirit of the Border. I checked it our from our county library and read it many times, too.

The trilogy is set in the Revolutionary War, and it features Ebenezer, Jonathan, Isaac, and Betty Zane and others. The main events in the books really happened and the main characters were real people.  Col. Ebenezer Zane was Zane Grey's direct maternal ancestor. He established Fort Henry in Wheeling, Virginia (now Wheeling, West Virginia,) in 1769 and also blazed a trail (Zane's Trace) that was a main route across Ohio for years.

I knew all this when I began researching my family tree a few years ago,  and yet I was awe-struck the first time I saw Ebenezer Zane's name in a hand-written document from early Ohio River history. I was researching Absalom Martin, the surveyor who founded Martins Ferry, Ohio, directly across the river from Wheeling, West Virginia. Absalom was a younger half-brother of my fifth great-grandfather Reuben Martin. Right after I met up with Ebenezer Zane in that document, I learned that Absalom Martin was married to Ebenezer Zane's daughter, Catherine! The surprise I felt about all this is beyond description.

Lewis Wetzel is another important character in  Zane Grey's Ohio River trilogy. In real life and in the books, he was an expert woodsman and hunter with a personal vendetta against Indians. Apparently, he never married. He certainly didn't marry anyone in any of the Zane Grey novels although he did reveal once in a moment of weakness that he secretly loved Betty Zane. *sigh*

I was intrigued recently when I found a distant connection to the name Wetzel in my family tree. Sophia Wetzel and Abraham Strock, married in 1834. They lived in Austintown, Ohio, up the river from Wheeling and Martins Ferry. Neither Sophia nor Abraham were blood kin of mine.  They were the mother-in-law and father-in-law of my third great grand-uncle James P. Hill.  Nonetheless, when I saw that Sophia was a Wetzel, my mind instantly went into Zane-Grey overdrive. How exciting! Obviously, Sophia was too young to be Lewis Wetzel's sister, but I thought she might have been his niece.

Well -- further research revealed that if Sophia was related at all to Lewis Wetzel, she was some kind of cousin. And since she's not even a relative of mine, I've decided it's silly to spend any more time puzzling about exactly who she was. After all, if there was an easy answer, some Strock family tree researcher surely would have figured it out already.

And now I have a yen to read those three books again. I'm going to tell Santa that I want them in hardback.

Books To Keep

Sorting through the juvenile fiction

We have come to the point in our house where we need another bookcase -- or fewer books. Unless I happen to find a cheap, good-quality, used bookcase, I always feel morally obligated to build one. So I decided to spare myself that task (and the challenge of finding a place in the house for another bookcase, once built.)

I sorted through most of our juvenile fiction, discarding duplicate titles, lesser works, extremely worn books, etc., and now I have a large, very heavy box of kid books sitting on the kitchen floor, waiting to go to the Salvation Army thrift shop.

But before I take it, I will let both Keely and Isaac see if they want to keep anything from it. These are books that accumulated during their childhood years.

I also made a list of the books I decided to keep. I have quite a habit of looking through any used books I find. If I have a list with me on my tablet as I'm looking, at least maybe I won't buy a duplicate book.

Here are the keepers. Note: this is not a list of all the great books I think kids should read. It's just a list of what's on my bookshelves tonight. I notice a sad deficiency in Mary Poppins and Little House books. Keely says that's because she and Isaac wore them out so thoroughly when they were kids. Also, no Little Women!

Well, I can't own them all. Not without more bookcases...

• Allen, Philip Schuyler: King Arthur and His Knights, A Noble and Joyous History
• Bowman, James Cloyd: Pecos Bill
• Cameron, Eleanor: Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet
• Cleary, Beverly: Beezus and Ramona
• Colder, Soon: Artemis Fowl
• Dahl, Ronald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Dahl, Ronald: James and the Giant Peach
• Dodge, Mary Mapes: Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates
• Estes, Eleanor: The Middle Moffat
• Estes, Eleanor: The Moffats
• Forbes, Esther: Johnny Tremain
• Graham, Kenneth: The Wind in the Willows
• Hale, Shannon: The Princess Academy
• Krumgold, Joseph: Onion John
• L'Engle, Madeleine: A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• L'Engle, Madeleine: A Wind in the Door
• L'Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time
• Lawson, Robert: Rabbit Hill
• Lear, Edward: Nonsense Book
• Lofting, Hugh: Doctor Doolittle
• Lovelace, Maud: Betsy and Tacy
• Lovelace, Maud: Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
• Maclachlan, Patricia: Sarah, Plain and Tall
• McCloskey, Roberta: Henry Reed, Inc.
• McCormick, Dell J.: Paul Bunyan Swings His Ax
• Neville, Emily: It's Like This, Cat
• Norton, Mary: The Borrowers
• Norton, Mary: The Borrowers Afloat
• Norton, Mary: The Borrowers Aloft
• O'Brien, Robert C.: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
• O'Dell, Scott: Island of the Blue Dolphins
• Paterson, Katherine: Bridge to Terabithia
• Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan: The Yearling
• Rawls, Wilson: Where the Red Fern Grows
• Sachar, Louis: Holes
• Sachar, Louis: Wayside School is Falling Down
• Sachar, Louis: Sideways Stories from Wayside School
• Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger
• Scott, Dr. Jonathan (translator): The Arabian Nights Entertainments
• Sewell, Anna: Black Beauty
• Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
• Spyri, Johanna: Heidi
• Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island
• Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Twain, Mark: Tom Sawyer
• Verne, Jules: Around the World In Eighty Days
• Verne, Jules: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Wells, H. G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau
• Wells,H. G.: The Time Machine
• White, E. B.: Stuart Little
• White, E. B.: The Trumpet of the Swans
• Wyss, Johann Rudolf: The Swiss Family Robinson

I have been typing this on the Nexus tablet that the family gave me for Christmas. Now I am going to attempt to take a photo with this little machine and add it to this post. After the post reaches the internet, I guess I will have to edit it with my desktop computer, so I can italicize the titles. I'm not seeing how to do that with the Blogger app I'm using. (And that's what I did.)

Edited 1/6, 10:55 p.m.
Retrieved by Isaac from the give-away box:

• Winthrop, Elizabeth: The Castle In the Attic
• Finger, Charles J.: Tales From Silver Lands
• Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth
• Selden, George: The Cricket in Times Square

Crops of Christian County, Kentucky, in 1915

A "Farm Calendar" of income sources

In about 1915, Judge W. T. Fowler of Christian County, KY, put together a 32-page booklet. Every page was devoted to praise of the county's citizens, public institutions, private enterprises, and farms (especially the farms!)

In the foreword, Judge Fowler noted that a delegation of farmers from other counties was visiting Christian County to study the farming methods so successfully employed here. Judge Fowler wanted every visitor to take home a copy of the booklet, to use as a reference for writing articles about Christian County.

 Geoffrey Morgan led the delegation of visiting farmers (the "Morgan party", as Judge Fowler called them). Morgan was a Kentucky Board of Agriculture state agent who worked with county agents, according to documents of the period. A few years later, he helped organize the Federated Farm Bureaus of Kentucky.

Now, here is the Farm Calendar from Judge Fowler's little book -- a list of the most important farm products here, a century ago. Something is missing -- do you see it?

CHRISTIAN COUNTY is the only place in the world where something is doing all the time. Our farmers collect their dividends each month in the year. The following is a partial list of our money crops: Things which are sold off of Christian county farms each month in the year.


JANUARY -- Tobacco, clover, hay, corn, potatoes, dairy products, poultry, poultry products, mules, and pork products.

FEBRUARY -- Cattle, hogs, tobacco, corn, clover, hay, dairy products, poultry products, potatoes, mules, etc.


MARCH -- Tobacco, hay, corn, pork, mules, poultry, and dairy products.


APRIL -- Silage-fed cattle, hay, corn, mules, and all the articles mentioned in the preceeding months.

MAY -- Hogs that follow cattle, wool, seed potatoes, onions, dairy products, poultry products, farm seed, strawberries, early garden products.


JUNE -- Barley, alfalfa hay, new clover hay, early lambs, strawberries, garden products (all varieties).


JULY -- Wheat, late lambs, dairy products, etc.


AUGUST -- Oats, timothy hay, dairy products, orchard products (all varieties), garden products (all varieties).


SEPTEMBER -- Hogs fattened on barley and wheat field, wheat, oats, hay of all kinds, etc.


NOVEMBER -- Cattle fattened on summer and fall pastures, potatoes, garden products (all varieties), orchard products.


DECEMBER -- Corn-fed hogs, tobacco, corn, hay, pork products, dairy products, etc.


Each month in the year, Hopkinsville furnishes a good market for cream, poultry, and truck. Our creamery on First street purchases cream, poultry, eggs, and other farm products and pays therefor the highest market price. This is one of the best markets for dairy products and poultry products in the South.

Related article: 
Passenger Pigeons in Christian County, KY

Frank's Archive

The stacks

Most libraries have stacks, and our mechanic's library is no exception. This pallet of old car repair manuals always amuses me. We love Frank, our mechanic. He does a great job for us.

Look into the stacks at some traditional libraries:
Stacks at the Manchester Central Library (in the UK)

Sterling Library stacks at Yale University
Manuscripts Behind the Scenes: Library of Congress

Harshman Family History

Book by Charles William Harshman

I recently found a book about the Harshman, Hershman, and Hersman family on a thrift store bookshelf. It seemed unlikely that anyone of that name would ever find the book where it was, so I decided to try to place the book with an appropriate owner via the internet.

So, if your family lines include the Harshmans, Hershmans, or Hersmans, and you'd like to own this book, please contact me. You can have the book for $6. I paid $1 for it, and I'm asking for $5 to wrap it and ship it to you.

Here are the details:

Title: The Harshman Family, Also Spelled Hershman and Hersman: A History and Genealogy,
Author: Charles William Harshman
Publisher: Spanish American Institute Press, Los Angeles, 1932
Binding: Hardback, 352 pages
Condition: Some handwritten notes inside and a few dings on the cover. Binding threads are still intact and all pages present, but the glue on the spine is cracking a little. The book still has potential for many years of gentle use.

1920 Rules for Health and Beauty for Girls

Advice for girls by Maude Foote Crow

My mother was born in 1923. By the time she was a teenager in the late 1930s, some rules in this list might have already seemed a bit old-fashioned. Still, many of these rules are still sound advice today.

Bodily Carriage

• Hold the head erect.
• Keep the chest high.
• Hold the abdomen in.
• Rest the weight of the body on the balls of the feet.
• Keep this position constantly, by day and by night.
• When lying down, stretch out; do not curl up.

Freddy The Pig, Rediscovered

Found at Florence, KY

When we took Isaac to the Cincinnati airport last summer, we discovered Half Price Books, a great bookstore in Florence, KY. We revisited the store on our way to Cleveland a few weeks ago.

Isaac sold a few used books and bought at least twice as many as he sold. I bought a couple of books for Dennis, and for myself, a copy of The Art of Freddy. It was well worth the $2 it cost, just for the memories.

Freddy and me

The Freddy series was written by Walter Brooks and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Freddy is a pig. He and all the other animals on Mr. Bean's farm can talk. They are very good at solving mysteries and getting into complicated, dangerous situations that always turn out all right in the end.

There are 26 Freddy books (I know this from counting the book covers shown in The Art of Freddy, and Wikipedia verifies it.) I think the Rock County library had 15 or 20 of them when I was a kid, and I read every one.

I read Freddy's Perilous Adventure, dozens of time, because we owned it. It was a library book originally. I left it on the windowsill, and a summer thunderstorm soaked it. The cover was warped and the pages were wavy, so my mother had to pay the library for the book.

Freddy's Perilous Adventure was my main book for the rest of that summer, along with whatever I could find around the house to read, because I was grounded from the library. I was glad when I got back to school and the bookmobile! I liked Freddy and his animal friends, but I was ready for them to have a different adventure.

They're still adventuring!

Isaac was still shopping, so I enjoyed the illustrations in my Freddy book for a while. Then I walked out of the store to put my books in the car. After getting reacquainted with Freddy and his friends, it was a bit surreal to see these geese strolling across the parking lot. I wouldn't have been surprised at all if they had wished me a good afternoon or asked for directions.

Pioneer Stories of Brown County, Nebraska

Names in Brown County history

I've been lurking around eBay quite a bit lately, and not surprisingly, I found a book that I needed -- Pioneer Stories of Brown, Keya Paha and Rock Counties, in Nebraska, published in 1980 by the Brown County Historical Society. (Brown and Rock counties are where I was born and raised.) I bid on the book and was happy when I won it.

Today, the book arrived in the mail, and I'm a little disappointed. The title is misleading. The Brown County section of the book has 581 pages. The Keya Paha County section has 165 pages. And the Rock County section has 16 pages -- yes, 16 pages. The book should have been titled Pioneer Stories of Brown County, Nebraska and subtitled With Additional Stories from Keya Paha and Rock Counties.

Despite the shockingly-short Rock County section, the book is interesting. I don't regret buying it. Leafing through the Brown County pages, I see many surnames that I recognize. I don't know the people at all, but I know their names.

My dad's mother was a Brown County resident most of her life and an enthusiastic genealogist. Sometimes Grandma Nora came to visit us for a week or two at a time when I was a kid. I remember her sitting at the dining room table with her embroidery, talking on and on about who was related to whom. Because of her, I recognize Brown County names like Hulshizer, Schipporeit, Bejot, Kackmeister, Wolcott, Mundorf, and Klapper. (I think some of the Kackmeisters may be cousins of my family -- we may share a great-grandmother or our great grandmothers may have been sisters. Then again, I could be wrong about that.)

Some Brown County names in the book do have personal meaning to me. The Gudgels drilled many wells for my dad. When I was little, we attended church in Ainsworth with the Bollers and Lotspieches, and my parents were always friendly with them. The Babcocks and Mengers lived in the western expanses of the community where I grew up. And there are other names that stir memories of faces and experiences.

Regrettably, no one from my family wrote up any of our history for this book. My great-grandparents on my dad's side of the family were homesteaders in Brown County, too. My great-grandfathers' surnames were Clark and Hill, and my great-grandmothers' surnames were Fisher and Mapes.

Warp's Review Book for Arithmetic

Preparation for 8th grade exams

Tonight I came across a workbook, Using Arithmetic in Everyday Life, that I had in elementary school. The workbook dates from my 8th grade year, 1964-65.

Our teacher was getting us ready for our 8th grade exams, and she wanted to be sure we could do story problems. This arithmetic workbook has 126 pages, and except for the explanations and examples, it is entirely story problems. I'm sure I found the problems tedious to solve -- they often involved two or more steps.

This book, Using Arithmetic in Everyday Life, was published by the Warp Publishing Company of Minden, Nebraska, and copyrighted in 1942 and 1957. Everyday life in Nebraska, for many students in those years, was spent on a farm or ranch. The author acknowledges that fact with word problems like these:

Suppose your father should test his seed corn and find that 12 out of 72 grains did not sprout. What percent sprouted? If he should plant 45 acres with this seed, how many acres of this field would not have any corn on them?

Mr. White's corn yielded 50 bushels per acre. He sold one third of the corn through a commission agent who charged 3%. If corn were $1.25 per bushel, what was the agent's commission. How much did Mr. White receive?

No authors are mentioned on the workbook's title page, but when I searched for "Warp's Review Books", I saw that Harold and Ruth Warp of Minden, Nebraska, are credited for writing earlier (1929-1930) workbooks. Student workbooks were available for 17 different topics in 1931, and the Teacher's Examination Review Books covered another 20 areas of study.

The primary goal of the Warp Review Books was to prepare students for the 8th grade exams. That's why they were written, and that's why our teacher had us doing arithmetic problems in one of them.

The 8th grade exam was still a big deal in Rock County, Nebraska in 1965 when I took it. The newspaper always carried a photo of the two top-scoring students with their teachers. (This was as much an honor for the teachers as for the students!)

I tried hard on the test, but the top glory that year went to Curtis Ratliff and his teacher, whoever she was, at the Bassett Elementary School. I don't remember who had the second-highest score.  I had the third highest score, so the extra practice in the Warp's arithmetic book may have helped me. I just should have done a few  more pages!

Old Time Entertainments

Homemade amusements

A recent report says that sitting in front of the TV or computer for long stretches of time greatly increases our chances of dying . We'd be healthier if we'd turn off the electronics and move around a little more. Here's a thought: maybe we should cut back on the web-and-channel surfing and return to some of the old-time ways of entertaining ourselves!

Before television and radio made their way into living rooms, folks often invited their friends for an evening of parlor games. Many of the games involved mild physical activity, such as "Blindman's Bluff" and "Charades." Others required mental energy, such as "Twenty Questions" and "Hangman".  Competitions such as checkers, chess, and card games were also popular.

Party books offered plenty of ideas for fun with a theme. For example, a 1903 book of Halloween activities contains complete plans for several spooky parties-- invitations, decorations, refreshments, games, skits, etc.

I wrote a while back about music in the parlor -- inviting guests for an afternoon or evening of homemade music.  Anyone with a bit of musical talent might be asked to perform. People liked to sing and to hear music. Sheet music made the latest hits available to all.

Recitations were another favorite entertainment. When guests came for the evening, someone might volunteer (or be called upon) to "render" a piece of memorized poetry or a passage of funny or dramatic prose.

Books, such as the 1903 Comic Recitations and Readings pictured at right, provided material to memorize.  (Some of the subject matter would be considered unkind today.  Stuttering, regional and ethnic dialects, and the accents of immigrants were often imitated!)

When I was little, the cultural memory of rural Nebraska still recalled entertainments of the sort I've written about here. We played various parlor games at school recess when it was too cold to play outside. My friends and I memorized recitations for school and church programs. I remember dressing in a costume and reciting a humorous monologue at the high school gym for a large audience of extension-club ladies. My mother probably thought it would be a good performance experience for me and volunteered my services.

We've gotten away from these active, participatory sorts of entertainments now. We've parked ourselves in our chairs to absorb our entertainment from a screen, and it's not good for us. I've been sitting here far too long. I think I'd better stand up and do something!

A Book-ish Christmas

Reading with Dennis

Quite a few books were given at our house this Christmas. I received my own little stack of books, and I'm looking forward to reading and studying them. They include a new encyclopedia of tree information, three books of Great Plains and Kentucky history, and a volume of Willa Cather with several stories I haven't read before.

I worked last weekend, so I haven't had a chance yet to read more than a few pages in any of my books. However, Dennis has dived into his new book about the history of the Natchez Trace and has been sharing all the best parts with me and providing commentary. By the time he finishes a book, I always feel I'm well-educated on its topic.

Today, I heard all about the Horrible Harpes. They were brothers -- a pair of thieves and cruel serial murderers who operated in western Tennessee and Kentucky in the late 1790s. They worked the Natchez Trace at one point in their career of evildoing.

Dennis is not reading the books that he told me he really wanted for Christmas -- the brand new books, reviewed in his history magazines, that I had to order from university presses. No, he's reading the used book that I picked up at a thrift shop because I thought he'd like it. It certainly proves that I know his kind of book when I see one.

Using Google Book Search

Enjoying the old books

I like old books, and thus I enjoy Google Book Search, where I can find old books and magazines on just about any topic.

I type my search term into the box and wait for a page of results to appear. Then, from the drop-down menu titled "Showing", I select "Full view only". Another page of results appears -- all of which are fully available on the internet without any restricted pages.

The full-view books are often available for download, so I sometimes import them to my own computer. I've also started using the Library feature of Google Book Search. When a book is in my library, it's easy to find it again. It's also possible for anyone to browse my library.

13 Things Men Have Written About Women

Thursday Thirteen

Keely picked up a little book of quotations for me at a thrift shop. Its title is Women: Pro and Con, and it was published in 1958 by the Peter Pauper Press, Mount Vernon. No editor is listed.

The foreword suggests that the book presents a balanced view of women because the few quotations that praise women are much more heartfelt than the multitude of sarcastic quotations about women. Well, maybe. At any rate, here are thirteen interesting quotes.

 1. "Never any good came out of female domination. God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoiled all."
-- Martin Luther (1483-1546)

 2. "In the East, women religiously conceal that they have faces; in the West, that they have legs. In both cases they make it evident that they have but little brains."
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

 3. "Women have great talent, but no genius, for they always remain subjective."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

 4."Women are nothing but machines for producing children."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

 5. "Woman's advice has little value, but he who won't take it is a fool."
-- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

 6. "Nature has given women so much power that the law has wisely given her very little."
-- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

 7. "If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who wore fur boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him."
-- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

 8. "When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues."
-- Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

 9. "Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool."
-- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

10. "Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade, since it consists principally of dealings with men."
-- Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

11. "Women, cats and birds are the creatures that waste the most time on their toilets."
--Charles Nodier (1780-1844)

12. "To be beautiful is enough! If a woman can do that well who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing."
-- William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

13. "A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner than when his wife talks Greek."
-- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Core Values and the Golden Rule

In accord on what's important

Tonight while driving home from work, I heard Jim Bohannon visiting with David Armstrong, president and CEO of Armstrong International and a fifth-generation member of the family that owns the firm. His company specializes in steam, air, and hot water systems and has been doing business for over a century.

Armstrong credits the firm's success and longevity to a corporate culture of honesty, integrity and decency. When they hire an employee, he explained, they consider it more important to find someone who will fit well into their culture than to find someone who has a set of skills that exactly match the job description.

What is the culture of Armstrong International? The company's motto is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Every employee must share and live the company's core values; these include honesty, fairness, respect, trust, and faith in God, family, and job. See their website's statement of mission, core values, and guiding principles for more about what they consider important.

I suppose all this traditional morality could get a bit "preachy", but David Armstrong teaches by telling stories, not by lecturing. He believes stories (and their morals) can motivate, strengthen bonds, and convey principles so that a workplace culture is built over time, and its values are internalized and exemplified by every employee.

Armstrong is a motivational speaker, as well as a successful CEO and author. His latest book is Hanging by A Thread : The Erosion of the Golden Rule in America (available at Amazon, Abebooks, and dozens of other places).

The Armstrong International website has a free download (PDF) of a little book of Armstrong company proverbs. You can also read a sampling of David Armstrong's stories at his website and watch video clips from his talks.

For me, it was refreshing to learn about a company whose high standards of conduct have enabled it to persevere and prosper. What a contrast to the sad stories of slipshod, self-centered, reckless business mismanagement that I've heard too often recently.

Reigning Over the Reins

Faulty headline noted

Kennedy camp reigns in Bloomberg adviser Kevin Sheekey’s Senate seat lobbying efforts

(Headline on a New York Daily News article)

Oops. That should be "reins", not "reigns." Reins are the long straps on a horse's bridle that a rider uses to guide and control the horse. When a rider reins in a horse, he brings it to a stop, as the Kennedy camp would like to do with Kevin Sheekey.

A monarch reigns. After all the recent talk about the Kennedy dynasty and the entitlement to public office that the Kennedys supposedly feel, I wonder if the headline writer made a Freudian slip.

The NY Daily News article tells of efforts to "muzzle" Kevin Sheekey, who is described as New York City Mayor Bloomberg's "pitbull." Caroline Kennedy's advisers are afraid that Sheekey's high-pressure advocacy is hurting her bid for Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat. The advisers are trying to rein in Sheekey's efforts.

Perhaps the headline writer didn't read Zane Grey westerns as a child. In Grey's fiction, cowboys reined in their horses nearly as often as they pulled out their guns. An example:

The cowboy reined in his horse, listened a moment, then swung down out of the saddle. He raised a cautioning hand to the others, then slipped into the gloom and disappeared.

(from page 54 of Desert Gold by Zane Grey)

On the frontiers of Zane Grey fiction, it didn't rain much. If anyone reigned, it was the cowboys. They had firm control of the reins.

"Puzzle Pages" Workbooks Remembered

Reading seatwork series illustrated by Ethel Hays

In our one-room school, our teachers taught several classes for every subject. The number of classes depended on the grade levels of the current students. Sometimes there were half a dozen grades or more for ten or twelve students.

Usually, the teacher called the classes in order from youngest to oldest. "First grade Reading," she might announce, and the first grader/s went to the bench beside the teacher's desk with appropriate books and papers. After a few minutes of oral reading, the teacher assigned some seatwork and called the next class.

In the primary grades, we always had a page or two to do in the reading workbook, a few pages of practice reading from the textbook, a page in the phonics workbook, and the next page of Puzzle Pages.

Read and write, cut and paste

Puzzle Pages was a reading seatwork series. Besides the part of every page that had to be read, the work usually required some writing and some cut-and-pasted words or pictures from the back of the book. This kept our hands busy with pencils, round-tipped scissors, and globs of white paste. We were also expected to color all the pictures on the pages.

The cover of this Puzzle Pages workbook is exactly like the ones I remember. Just look how busy those children are. And so were we! My husband remembers this workbook, also.

One day, the children in the Puzzle Pages story went to the circus, so we had pictures of circus animals to cut and paste. When the teacher checked my page, she marked the elephant wrong, even though I had pasted it in the right place. She said it was colored wrong. Not having gray in my box of 16 crayons, I had made the elephant purple. Maybe she would have preferred light black.

Ethel Hays, artist and illustrator

ThePuzzle Pages workbooks were published by McCormick-Mathers of Wichita, Kansas -- a publishing company which appears to have gone out of business. Internet searches for "McCormick-Mathers" yield used books from the 1930s through the 1980s, but no website for the company.

The illustrator of all the various Puzzle Pages editions and revised editions was Ethel Hays. Her other work included a comic strip, Flapper Fanny, during the 1920s and magazine illustrations and comic strips during the 1930s. During the 1940s, she illustrated a number of well-knownl children's books, including The Little Red Hen (1942),  Little Black Sambo (1942), The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1942), The Town and The Country Mouse (1942), and others. She also illustrated the popular Raggedy Ann books of the same era.

Long Valley Cemetery in Loup County, Nebraska

Remote hill country of northwestern Loup County

While I was poking around Abebooks tonight, I happened upon several copies of the Holt County, Nebraska, centennial book and a copy of the Loup County, Nebraska, centennial book. These counties border on Rock County, Nebraska, where I grew up.

I probably won't buy either book. All my bookcases are stuffed already, and besides that, I don't casually buy $50+ books. Also, the Loup County GenWeb page says that the Loup County Historical Society still has new copies of the centennial book for sale.

I'm a little more interested in Loup County history than Holt County history, because my family had pasture land in northwestern Loup County. Much of the county is Sandhill rangeland -- big, sandy hills -- and there aren't many real roads off the highways. Two-track trails wind through miles of pastures from one windmill to the next. They are used by ranchers checking their cattle. No one else has any reason to be out there in the hills off the main roads.

At one time, every square mile of those hills was homesteaded. One by one, most of  the homesteaders eventually went broke or gave up, and their land was bought up by the cattle ranchers. In some places, the land is still scarred a century later from wind erosion of the homesteaders' plowed fields.

Long Valley Cemetery is another reminder of the homesteaders who once inhabited the hills. It's south of the land we owned, and west or southwest of the Upstream Ranch (a landmark along the 60-mile stretch of Highway 183 between Taylor and Bassett.)

The Taylor, Nebraska, website states,

Located in the yard of the old Long Valley Methodist Episopal Sod Church, with seven interments, this cemetery is accessible only via guide and 4-wheel drive pickup. Contact Loup County High School if interested. There are NO roads near this cemetery. (Source)

In other words, they don't want people to drive out into the hills and get their cars stuck in the sand trying to find the cemetery, and then maybe get lost trying to walk back.

A history of Loup County provides a little information about the Long Valley Church:

A Methodist Episcopal Church was organized and incorporated at Long Valley in western Loup County Sept. 12, 1909. Rev. Mr. Brink of Burwell was the organizer and later Rev. Albert Elliott became regular pastor. The church building was a large sod structure, which was not uncommon in the early days in the sandhills. (Source)

I would probably find lots of interesting, obscure, historic trivia of this sort in the Loup County centennial book, and that's why I'm tempted to buy it, despite my better judgment.

Above: A sod church somewhere in

Nebraska (not the Long Valley church)

Also see this photo of a

sod church interior.

Thirteen Books in My Bookcase

A "Thursday 13" on a random topic

Here's a look at the nearest bookcase to my computer, third row from the top, left to right. Some links below go to Prairie Bluestem posts, and some links go to other internet sites.

1. Beeton's Book of Household Management, by Mrs. Isabella Beeton. Originally by S.O. Beeton in 24 monthly parts, 1859-1861, London. My copy is a "First Edition Facsimile." Online version of this book.

2. Montgomery Ward & Co. Fall & Winter 1894-1895 Catalogue & Buyers Guide: No. 56. As you might suspect, this is a reprint of the original. Story of Montgomery Ward with some illustrations from the 1895 catalog.

3. War-Time Guide Book for the Home. Prepared by the Editorial Staff of Popular Science Monthly. Copyright 1942. Read my post about this book.

4. Fabrics and Dress by Lucy Rathbone and Elizabeth Tarpley. A 1931 home economics textbook. A few images from the book have been posted online by a blogger who has a children's clothing business, but it's under copyright until 2026.

5. The Poems of Eugene Field, Complete Edition. Online version of this book. Read my post about how I acquired this book and also book #6.

6. The Works of Stevenson Read Robert Louis Stevenson online.

7. The Best Short Stories of 1929 List of the stories included in this book.

8. American Notes by Rudyard Kipling. Read this book online. Read my post about what Rudyard Kipling thought of Omaha, Nebraska.

9. Similes and Figures from Alexander McClaren, published in 1910. McClaren was a well-known Scottish Baptist preacher, sometimes called the "Prince of Expositors." Read an artitle by McClaren titled, "The Boy Jesus" which appeared in the 1906 Pennsylvania School Journal.

10. Riley Love-Lyrics, by James Whitcomb Riley Read my posts about William B. Dyer's Life pictures in this book and about growing up with James Whitcomb Riley.

11. Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Read this book online.

12. The Roundup. Book VII in the New Silent Readers Basal Activities Series, published in 1937. An essay about slang that I posted from this book.

13. America Our Country, a 1934 history book published by the John C. Winston Company. Under copyright until 2029, so I don't usually look in it for blogging material.

1880s Settlers in Northern Nebraska

Old book about a Pennsylvania colony in Brown County, NE

Tonight I've been browsing through the digitized edition of To and Through Nebraska by Frances I. Sims Fulton. It tells a bit of the story of some Pennsylvanians who homesteaded as a colony in Brown County, Nebraska, in the early 1880s.

It seems that in the early 1880s, around Bradford, Pennsylvania, there was an oilfield boom and bust. Many people who had speculated with their life savings lost everything.

Seeking a new start in life, the author's brother and other westward-leaning men organized "The Nebraska Mutual Aid Colony." When they had enlisted enough investor-homesteaders, they purchased 640 acres in northern Brown County, Nebraska, as a townsite. Each member was guaranteed two lots in the town plus a share in the sale of future lots. Members who wanted land were supposed to buy or homestead within ten miles of the town.

The author, a young single lady, traveled from Pennsylvania to Brown County, Nebraska, with the first group of colonists. They came by train to Stuart, Nebraska, and then went overland to the settlement area. Her intent was to give an eyewitness report about the situation to her family at home. Her father had invested, but he was worried about the settlement's distance from the railroad.

When the colonists arrived at their selected settlement area, things didn't go quite as they had planned. Some land around the townsite had already been homesteaded by strangers, and some of the colonists weren't able to get land nearby as they had planned.

The author's father wrote to her, saying that he couldn't bear to relocate at his age, so Miss Francis Fulton gave up the idea of being a homesteader. But before she went back to Pennsylvania, she spent several months in Brown County with the colonists, recording her experiences for the benefit of others who might want to emigrate to the area.

When she left Brown County, she traveled to Long Pine, Valentine, and Fort Niobrara to see the scenery. (These are still scenic areas today) She had heard stories about the wild cowboys at Valentine, so she traveled with a middle-aged married lady. They had no problems, and she observed that some of the cowboys were truly just boys. She also visited the Platte, Big Blue, and Republican River valleys in Nebraska before returning to Pennsylvania.

The book is an interesting account of a young Victorian lady's great adventure on the Nebraska prairie, one of the last American frontiers. If you like Nebraska history, I think you'll enjoy browsing through the book. And the price is right -- free.

Note:
Holt Creek and the Keya Paha River are mentioned, so I think the settlement was near the Nebraska / South Dakota state line in present-day Keya Paha County, NE. To be specific, I think it was northeast of Springview in the Burton area. A letter from one of the colonists is quoted in the book; the heading is "Brewer P.O., Brown Co. Neb." A history of Keya Paha County lists Brewer as a post office in 1884; however, Brewer is not shown on an 1895 map of Keya Paha County.

Keya Paha County isn't actually in the Nebraska Sandhills, but for simplicity's sake, I'll give this post a "Nebraska Sandhills" tag. The Sandhills are certainly not far away.

Electricity in the Home, 1942

Electricity applauded, 65 years ago

Did your parents or grandparents have electricity in their house by 1942? If they lived in a rural area, it's very likely that they did not. In 1939, just 25% of rural homes were electrified.

In this part of Kentucky, the Pennyrile Rural Electric Cooperative brought electricity to rural homes. Pennyrile Electric was organized in 1937, but out here, some of the old-timers reminisce that they didn't get electricity until the early 1950s. I don't know if that was because electricity wasn't available earlier, or because of reluctance in some families to install electricity.

In Decorating the Home, a 1942 interior-decorating textbook, Ethel Lewis writes about some of the latest electrical gadgets.

Electricity and light are so nearly synonymous today that some of the newest electrical devices can be listed here.

In addition to all the labor-saving equipment, there is the electric clock, the fan, and most of us depend upon electricity to run the radio and the automatic-change phonograph.

For the nursery there is the "seeing eye" which protects the crib and so warns of the approach of thieves or kidnappers.

The ray from the photoelectric cell is the unseen source which opens doors so miraculously as a person approaches.

Perhaps nothing appeals more to the mechanically minded than the automatic window closer which works so swiftly when the alarm sounds the hour for rising.

The control and use of electricity are certainly one of man's greatest achievements, and many a home is a better place in which to live because of it.

Let electricity work for you; let it help you to preserve your eyesight.

From Decorating the Home (p. 127) by Ethel Lewis. (Published in New York by the Macmillan Company in 1942.) The lamp images in this post are also from Decorating the Home.

Did you notice? The electric refrigerator, electric range, electric water heater, and electric clothes washer aren't even mentioned, though they totally changed women's lives. They're part of the "labor-saving equipment" that Lewis breezes over.

I must admit that I take them for granted also -- as long as my electrical appliances work, I don't give them the grateful appreciation that they deserve.