Followers

Monday, October 17, 2022

Well armed


Ken called this one "well armed dandy."  He does seem a bit overdressed for the frontier.

 

4 comments:

  1. All these old cowboy photos remind me of my great granfather John Frances Fitzgerald (1869-1959) When he was a teenager /young adult he belonged to a posse in San Francisco that ran gunslingers "out of town" to protect local citizens. Also, some of the famous of old west folklore would also be escorted out of town out of concern they would attract gunslingers and shootouts in the city streets. Goes to prove the old west was not that long ago and confined to Kansas (Dodge City) or Arizona (Boot Hill). Now my dad's gramps in buried at Holy Cross Cemetary with his beloved Amy (Florence Emerson/Corville)
    -Rj in the IE .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My grandfather, born 1883, could remember the last "Indian raids" in West Texas. I put that in quotes because they were actually desperate Native Americans who jumped the Oklahoma reservations and engaged in a crime wave, as opposed to an uprising. Granddaddy's brother-in-law was a crooked sheriff who commandeered storm cellars to store bootleg whiskey.

      Delete
  2. LoL- Everyone thinks the old west ended during the Civil War, it lingered on
    until probably the 1890s/ 1900s.
    Had to put two last names on my great-grandmother because of her scoundral father. He was born in England and travelled by sailing ship between England, Australia, and California ! He ran a series of oyster bars and owned oyster beds in tidal waters at variuos times in those countries. He was constantly on the run from debt collectors and infuriated investors who he had embezzeled.
    Married a girl in Australia (she was 15, normal in those days ), fathered 11 children and abandonded them all when he sailed for a final time to California. There he married my great-great-grandmother (she was 16, he was middle aged) and fathered 9 children ! Not to mention several illigetimate children in England before both marriages.
    Thus the surname change from Emerson to Corville,when he finally settled in California. Corville was actually his middle name. (I have a couple of relatives who are into the family genealogy big time, before that we knew none of this history). In the end he was a devoted family man and devote Bible reader, for he had no use for organized religion because he felt they used the Bible to fit their own judgemental naratives. (that according to my grandmother)
    Also found out , at that time when you set sail from Europe to Australia or California, the sailings did not go around the tip of South America or the Horn of Africa. They sailed for Caribbean ports of Central America, where you would then board an overland stage coach to their Pacific ports where sailing ships would then take you to the U.S.Pacific Coast, Australia and all ports in the Pacific. -Rj in the IE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There was crazy "Wild West" stuff going on as late as the eve of WWI.

      Fifty years before there was a canal in Panama, there was a railroad connecting the two oceans. There was also one across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. As a college senior, I rode a train across Tehuantepec in 1973, and some Mexican students I met on the train told me it's history. It took us 16 hours to go 150 miles, mainly because they stopped every ten miles to load produce onto the train which had four passenger cars behind 50 freight cars. I will say that they grow some damn good coffee in that region.

      Delete