52 Ancestors Week 11: Luck

A horse and buggy in 1909
On the road, 1909 by Fylkesarkivet i Vestland, on Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.

When I saw that this week's prompt was "Luck," the first thought that leapt to mind was of a certain newspaper report about an incident involving my great-grandma Cora's brother, Buchanan Wade, whom my Uncle Lowell (and probably the rest of the kids) called "Uncle Buck." But no, I reasoned, I have told that story too many times; it has featured in my Instagram feed and in my WikiTree comments. Surely I have written about it on my blog as well. A search of my blog posts, however, revealed that the story has yet to be told here, so I am free to share it this week!

Upon reading the article, you will discover that the phrase "leapt to mind" was something of a pun...

Horse Falls 30 Feet; Lands In Tree-Top and Wasn't Hurt
   It is said that a cat has nine lives but now it is believed that a horse belonging to Buck Wade has all the cats in catdom beaten a mile. Mr. Wade's horse jumped over the guard rails on the big fill by the ice plant Tuesday morning, fell fully thirty feet into the top of a tree and apparently was none the worse for its thrilling adventure.
   Mr. Wade was driving east along the north side of the fill when an approaching auto frightened his animal. The horse whirled to the guard rail and Mr. Wade leaped for his life, landing safely on the road side. But the horse went on and landed with the buggy on top of it in a tree at the bottom of the creek below. How it escaped instant death is a miracle. Probably such a thing could never happen again without fatal results either to the horse or its driver.
   Men in the vicinity rushed to the scene and got the horse out as quickly as they could. The animal walked away just a little stiff in some of its joints but otherwise apparently safe and sound. The buggy fared much worse, being torn all to pieces.

It seems that both Uncle Buck and his horse had plenty of luck that day. Only the buggy did not share in their good fortune.

The article does not state what make of auto was involved, but this Firestone-Columbus automobile (in this case, chauffering presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) was one of the vehicles on American roads at the time.
Unknown author / Public domain

Citation:

"Horse Falls 30 Feet; Lands In Tree-Top and Wasn't Hurt," Sedan Times-Star, 25 Nov 1909, p. 1, col. 5-6; digital images, America's GenealogyBank (www.genealogybank.com : accessed 15 Aug 2011), Historical Newspapers. 

52 Ancestors Week 10: Strong Woman

Katie Sandwina, "The Lady Hercules," lifting three men
Bain News Service / Public domain

It is incredibly difficult to narrow down the topic of "Strong Woman" to a single woman in my family. In just one generation--that of my great-grandparents--it is impossible to decide. There is Great-Grandma Flora (Amos) Underwood, who left England with her husband and infant son, to travel across the ocean on a journey to America, knowing she would never see her home in England again. She left a comfortable middle-class life for the unknown world of the western U.S., living almost a pioneer existence and learning the skills along the way.

There is Great-Grandma Cora (Wade) Brosius, who raised a family of six boys and one girl in Kansas, married to a man nearly twenty years older than she was. When he died and left her with four children who were still quite young, she packed those children into a car and the five of them drove across the country to the Pacific Northwest to begin their new lives.

There is Great-Grandma Mary (Craig) Stroesser, who grew up in "the Bottoms" in Omaha, a neighborhood marked by its shanty houses and poverty, and frequently flooded by the nearby Missouri River. She went on to marry and give birth to thirteen children, suffering post-partum depression after many of them according to family lore, and suffering also the deaths of three of her sons. Although Grandma Rose, her daughter, had a strained relationship with her, it seems clear that Great-Grandma Mary was battling her own demons.

Then there is Great-Grandma Hazel (Fox) Hoyt, who, according to family lore, graduated valedictorian. Unlike my other great-grandmothers, she began to work outside the home during WWII, and continued to work after the war was over. She was a shipping clerk at Dehner Boot Company until her retirement. She was also the only great-grandmother whose lifetime overlapped my own.

Truly, I believe that you could pluck almost any woman off my family tree and, looking at her life and circumstances, come to find that she deserves the appellation of a "Strong Woman."

Wordless Wednesday: Grandma Aileen's Pedigree Scrapbooking Page

Just felt like sharing this digital scrapbooking page I created for Grandma Aileen's pedigree...