More Regarding Uncle Claude Argata Enkey

More Regarding Uncle Claude Argata Enkey

(May 22, 1902 — September 27, 1981)

 

by

 

Wally Lee Parker

(all rights to this material reserved by the Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter)

———

Reprint from the Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter

July/August, 2000 A.D.

———

 

… a letter from Alzada Burch …

On May 9^th, 2000, I received this letter from Alzada Burch, daughter of

Claude and Olive Enkey.

Dear Wally

 

            I am sending you a few memories.  Please excuse the ‘messy’ pages.  I am pretty sure that if I wait to recopy them I may never get them sent.  Hope we’re not too late to be of help.

 

Your Cousin,

 

Alzada Enkey-Burch

 

P.S.: I started to type this, but I’m just too slow.  I have arthritis in my hands, so you will have to make do with my scratchy notes.  Okay?

One of the items sent by Alzada was the formula for the poultice mentioned by Jack Willis in his memories of his Grandfather, Claude Enkey, published in the May/June newsletter.  Jack didn’t know the exact formula, or how his granddad came to start using it.  So Alzada explains ...

            Dad’s remedy for snake bite was equal parts of coal oil, turpentine, salt, and gunpowder.  He learned this recipe when my brother Lon — the oldest of us kids — got spider bit.  Lon, and my sister Opal were down at a neighbor’s house (the Steels) when Lon started feeling bad and getting stiff.  They figured he had been bitten on his neck, at the base of his skull.  The two kids decided to walk home.  Lon just kept getting sicker, so Dad decided he’d better take him to the doctor in Tahlequah.

            At the farm gate they met an old man passing by on the road.  Dad told him what was going on and the old man said, “You can take him to the doctor if you want, but I can cure him.”

            At the house, the old man mixed a paste of the above ingredients and spread them on torn strips of a white sheet to make a poultice for Lon’s neck.  Opal remembers changing the bandage, and recalls that it was green with the stuff that had been drawn out of the bite.  Not long after and Lon was up playing.

Alzada also added this story about Claude Enkey’s impressive physical strength.

 

            Earl Enkey’s daughter, Janice, tells of the time she watched my dad loading a truck.  He would carry a 100 pound sack of feed under each arm, one over each shoulder, and another one clinched by his teeth — all at the same time.  He was quite the show off that way.

 

And this recollection of stories told by Mabel Alice Enkey-Martin, Alzada’s aunt, and Lillie Ada Enkey-Parker’s sister, about Alzada’s grandparents, David Enkey and Pearl Lee-Enkey.

            Aunt Mabel said her father, David Enkey, hand built a china cabinet for Pearl’s dishes.  Pearl was so proud of it.  One day Aunt Mabel ran into it, knocking it over, breaking Grandmas dishes.  When David came in he told Pearl, “Don’t worry.  We’ll get you some more dishes.”

            Early on the family lived on a cotton farm.  They’d have pickers come in at harvest time.  David would haul the cotton to town by wagon.  The family was doing quite well for a while, but it gradually became too dangerous.  The workers were thieving so bad David began fearing for the family safety.

            On one occasion, when David was gone, a man trying to get in the house broke out a window.  Pearl sent one of the kids out the back way to get Claude, the oldest boy, who was working in the fields.  Claude ran to the house, got his gun, and hollered out to the intruder that he had better go or Claude would kill him.  Everyone knew that Claude was a crack shot, so the man ran away.

            Whenever David would take produce to town, everyone assumed he’d be returning with a lot of money.  So three men laid in wait and jumped him on a return trip.  He broke free and escaped.  Once home he told Pearl they’d better sell out and move before some of them got killed.

            Selling out, the family traveled around by covered wagon for two or three years.  During that time David did find one place he really wanted to buy.  But an old Indian told them that it was Indian land so he wouldn’t be able to build a house on it.  Since David wanted a home for his family, he let it be.  He was so discouraged by everything that the family kept traveling from one place to another till the money ran out.

Opal, Alzada’s sister, and the oldest of Claude and Olive Enkey’s children, has a number of stories to tell.  Alzada repeats several of them.

            Olive was a school teacher.  One time, when Opal was just a baby, Claude and Olive were traveling by wagon to see a school board member and took the baby with them.  The trip was taking longer than expected.  Opal got to squirming and whining.  They hadn’t brought anything for the baby to eat.

            Driving passed a house, they smelled food.  Claude said he was going to get the baby something to eat.  He knocked on the door, asking the woman if she had something that he could feed his hungry baby.

            “Well mister, I only have some bacon and cornbread.”  She gave him some and he gave it to the baby.  Opal was as good as gold the rest of the way home.

            After she was grown and married, Opal asked mother, “When did we live in a white, two-story house?”  Opal described the farm Claude and Olive lived on from December of 1926 to December of 1927.  Opal was born there on there that first December.

            Opal remembers sitting in a room with a varnished door and a blue speckled doorknob — sitting on a bedroom window seat used to store quilts.  It was a second story window.  From that window she could see her dad out in the field plowing.

            She recalled watercress growing by a brook that trickled near the house, and her mother picking the watercress to put on sandwiches.

            Opal told our mom that she could remember her and our dad looking at a brown house, and Opal was wishing she could talk, so she could tell the folks that she didn’t want to move from the pretty white house to the brown one.

            Olive said, “Well I guess you do.  The white house was the Davis place, and the people who owned it wanted to buy out the lease.  We moved from there to a brown house.”

 

And a story about Claude’s abilities with horses.

 

            Aunt Mabel used to tell about a high spirited horse her brother Claude had been given.  He trained this horse so only he could ride it.  Then he’d bet people they’d get bucked off if they tried to ride it.

            Unknown to Claude, Aunt Mabel got to going out to the barn, feeding and petting this horse, till she got to where she could get up on him and sit.

            One day Claude went with two other men to build a fence on a neighboring farm.  He had told Mabel to bring him over some lunch around noon time.  While working, my dad went to bragging about his horse, how spirited it was, and how not a man in the world could ride it ‘cept him.  About noon Aunt Mabel got to thinking about toting Claude’s lunch on that long, hot, dusty walk to the neighbor’s farm — and decided she’d ride her brother’s horse instead.  So she got on the horse and off she went.

            When the men Claude was working with saw Mabel — maybe nine years old at the time — ride up on the horse her brother had been bragging up as un-rideable, they just started laughing.  Aunt Mabel said my father’s face turned bright red.  And he was mad.  He told her to get off that horse before it killed her.

            Then Claude turned to the men and said, “I bet you guys five dollars you can’t ride it.”

            Having seen his nine year old sister ride up on the horse no man could ride — and not being too impressed — one of the men took my dad up on the bet.  He climbed up, and of a sudden come flying back off.  Grinning, and retrieving his pride, Claude pocketed his five bucks.

In reference to Claude Enkey’s unusual methods of hunting, Alzada said …

            Aunt Mabel told me how Dad learned to hunt like he did — reaching into hollowed out trees and pulling out squirrels, then killing them with his teeth and such.  That was something Grandpa Lee, our mother’s father, had taught him.

            And we all knew ‘bout hunting coons.  Our dad would hunt at night, with his dogs and a carbide lamp strapped to his forehead.  I remember the last time I went hunting with him.  I was about 9 or 10 years old and Lon was four years younger than me. 

            I knew it was a bad mistake when we drove up and parked by some thick timber, then crawled through a barbed wire fence and out into the dark woods with nothing but a lantern.  We walked, and walked, and walked.  Every once in a bit the dogs would start barking way up ahead and Dad would say, “There they are!  Sounds like they done treed something!”  He could tell by the way they barked whether they had treed an animal or were just running.  He could also identify each dog by its bark.  Anyway, he’d hear them and away we’d go.

            We run till Lon couldn’t go any more — and my legs felt like they were going to fall off.  We decided being alone in the dark wasn’t as bad as more running, so Dad told us to keep the lantern, sit down by a big tree, and he would find us on the way back.  We knew there was a graveyard pretty close to where we was, so we sat down in the leaves and stared at the dark, wondering if a ghost was about to grab us.

            We swore that if we ever got home we would never go hunting after dark again.  Dad finally came back — after what seemed like an hour or two.  I personally never went coon hunting with him again.  If I had to be alone, I would take my chances at home.

            Our father told about an animal encounter when panthers roamed the woods near our Peggs, Oklahoma, home.  Every year we picked huckleberries in those woods.  And there was a pasture in the timber covered hills we had to bring our cows down from every night for milking, and then herd back up into the hills.   You could hear the panthers scream out there in the woods — sounded just like a woman screaming. 

            Dad said he rode his horse into Spring Creek to let it get a drink.  Sitting there, he looked to the bank a few feet away and there was a black panther, standing, staring.  Dad’s hair, all the way down the back of his neck, stood straight.  Trying to think what to do, he reached into his pocket, got a match, and struck it.  The panther bolted, running off into a field.

Entertainment was something family and neighbors worked up for themselves.

            In those days there was no television of course, and only on occasion did we listen to a radio — powered by the car battery.  But when people came to visit, and all gathered around the wood stove, my dad could entertain them for hours just telling his stories.

            He was a good dancer too.  He’d square dance — and would call at gatherings.  But what I remember best was what he called ‘stomp dancing’.  Now days I guess it’s called ‘clogging’.

            He also played the fiddle.  And that brings up another story.

            Me and Bill — Bill being the fourth oldest child and six years older than me — had been looking dad’s fiddle over, wondering if it was one of those expensive ones — a Stradivarius.  It had a name on it, but, if my memory is correct, it said Stravinsky or some such.

            Dad had just thrown one of his famous Claude Enkey fits — after us for playing instead of working.  Bill got the idea of taking away some of dad’s fun to get back at him.  He decided to tie some bailing wire to the fiddle, climb up in the rafters of the house, and hang the fiddle from the two by fours.

            I was afraid to climb into the attic space.  Too many of my nightmares come down from the blackness up there.  But Bill came back grinning, “Dad won’t find it now.  If we can’t play, he can’t either.”   Then he made me promise I wouldn’t ever tell on him.

            I never did tell on him either.  But my conscious did bother me a lot over the years.

            A few years ago I reminded Bill about this.  At first he denied doing any such thing.  But I could see him wince when the memory finally came back to him.  What made it worse, years ago Bill had bought this same place and it later burned down.  And he now realized that as far as we know dad’s old fiddle was still hanging in the attic when the place turned to ash.

            My father did have a soft side.  But years of hard times, futility, and disappointment caused us to see a lot more of the tough when we were growing up.  That left its mark on all us kids.  And I’m thinking it made us strong.

            I think about the chores I was expected to do at age six; milking cows, clearing the fields of rocks, cutting sprouts, cutting and hauling in wood, cleaning the chicken house, gathering eggs, stripping sorghum cane, fighting with yellow jackets when dropping the sorghum sticks into the foaming molasses vats, picking huckleberries and blackberries — then helping mom clean them under the arbor with beautiful clusters of Wisteria hanging down while pumping water from the well beside the house to wash the berries.

            In 1947 — when I was seven — we moved from the Peggs place.  We moved to ‘the prairie’ home to take care of our mother’s mother, Grandma Freeman.  It was like going to a barren desert and I hated it.  But life goes on.

            My chores seemed to shift some there.  I milked cows, churned cream, stripped and cut cane to make sorghum molasses, carried pummies — the cane stacks after the juice was squeezed out — away from the cane press, chopped corn, planted the dreaded black eye peas — and gathered them in the hot sun, and shelled them, and shelled them, and shelled them.  It seemed like those dreaded peas lasted forever, always there to spoil my fun.

            But there was also some fun times.  Lying under a shade tree, birds singing, a cool easy breeze cooling when we were supposed to be chopping the weeds out of the corn.  Or digging the sweet, dripping hearts out of delicious watermelons before throwing the rest into the pig troughs.  And the smell of cornbread, fried potatoes, corn on the cob, and maybe fried chicken or slab bacon for lunch.  How good it tasted after a hard morning working in the fields — bailing hay, picking cotton, or hoeing the garden.

            I reminisce occasionally when I see a piece of machinery — a plow, planter, cultivator, disk, hay rake.  I suppose I have used just about every piece of farm machinery except the hay mowing machine.  Dad was always afraid us younger children would get our hands or feet cut off by that thing.

            Life was hard in those days.  But I wouldn't trade my experiences for all the gadgets made today.  It’s sorrowful, the memories today’s children have lost not being able to grow up on a farm.

I can’t thank Cousin Alzada Burch enough for this wonderful set of memories.  Most of us could ‘wince’ a little in sympathy with the story of the lost fiddle.  And most of us have our own stories of the pain we’ve caused our parents — pain that we dearly wish we could take back.

 

…

Regarding Uncle Claude Argata Enkey

 

 

Regarding Uncle Claude Argata Enkey

(May 22, 1902 — September 27, 1981)

by

Wally Lee Parker

(all rights reserved by the Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter)

 

In early March, 2000, Jack Willis, eldest grandson of Claude and Olive Enkey, sent the Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter a cassette recording containing some of his memories of his grandfather — one of my uncles on my mother's side.  Below is my highly revised transcription of that cassette.  After reviewing the text for accuracy, Jack Willis approved this distillation of his words.

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Reprinted from the Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter

May/June, 2000 A.D.

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… Some Stories about My Grandfather …

… as recalled by Jack Willis …

             Before I moved to Utah, my family — my father, Marvin Willis, mother Opal Beatrice Enkey-Willis, my brother Larry, and sisters Carol and Patty, — lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Back then our family would try to visit other members of the family at least once a week.  We’d generally end up at grandpa Enkey’s farm, about ten miles from Hulbert.

            For several years, while attending school at Northeastern State College, I lived with my grandparents, Claude Enkey and Olive Freeman-Enkey, on the farm granddad Enkey called ‘the Prairie’.

            Grandpa originally had two places.  The other was on ‘Fourteen Mile Creek’.  Bill Enkey, that’s grandpa’s second son, lives there today.

            Claude Enkey couldn’t read or write.  His wife Olive had a college education.  My grandfather was very physical, very boisterous, very much a showman.  My grandmother was quiet, a little bit of a conniver, and very, very bright.  Life together must have been an interesting challenge for both of them.

            Grandpa Enkey’s home was tiny, with only three rooms.  Over the years, instead of adding on to the building to increase its size, Grandpa would find some old building, then, using wagons and his tractor, he’d pull that building up next to the existing house.  He wouldn’t exactly attach it.  There’d be a gap, six inch to a foot between the two buildings.  But that was his idea of adding on.

            We use to sit around the cast iron stove in the farm house living room, sometimes till two or three in the morning, roasting home grown peanuts and listening to grandpa’s stories — stories ‘bout coon hunting or this event or that happening, but always some unique adventure or the other.  In the telling he would absolutely slaughter the English language.  When he’d tell stories about the family, he’d keep asking grandmother, “Ollie, is that right”?   He’d go on till every one of us had given up, gone out to one of the adjoining bedrooms — adjoining buildings — and gone to bed.

            None of the adjoining buildings was ever heated, so I hated going to bed.  I’d crawl into an ice cold bed, cover up with four or five denim quilts patched out of bit of worn out Levi’s, and freeze until the bed heated up.

            But being there was always worth it.

            The typical meal was unique.  Sometimes — though it was considered a trash fish by most — we’d have Alligator Gar.  The fish might have been fifty or sixty pounds.  It didn’t have the usual backbone.  The backbone was cartilage.  It’d be cooked as steaks — an inch to an inch and a half of thick white meat, and maybe six inches wide.  I didn’t like the possum — too greasy.  Sometimes there’d be raccoon.  And I loved the squirrels and rabbits grandpa Claude would apprehend through his own special methodology.

            There was always fried okra, and, on occasion, fried green tomatoes.  Grandpa Enkey loved turnips.  And so did my grandmother.

            Grandmother Olive would make a wonderful dish that I called Texas sheet cake — chocolate brownie like cake that was only an inch to an inch and a half thick, with chocolate icing all over the top.  And she made the best black berry cobbler.  I’ve tried ever since to get her recipe for that cobbler.

            Most always there was cornbread.  I really think grandpa’s favorite meal was nothing more than spooning up chunks of days old cornbread that he’d softened by stuffing torn off chunks down into a glass of raw milk.

            And every time we left the farm, we always left with something.  Maybe a jar or two of this or a bunch or two of that.  There seemed a lesson in that.  They’d lived through the depression, the dust bowl — some really bad times.  But there was always food in their cellar.  So no matter how bad things might seem, there was always something to give.

            The physical characteristic of grandpa I remember best were these giant hands — rough hands.  Physical strength was a big part of his life.  Grandpa also had a temper, and was not accustomed to backing down.

            He had two work horses — huge horses.  Polly, white with black spots, was reasonably well behaved.  The brown and white horse, Mae, was quite temperamental.  Grandpa, whenever his John Deere tractor was broken down, would use the horses to work the fields.

            On one occasion, Mae made the serious mistake of kicking my grandfather.  Within an instant, in a fit of anger, I saw him pick up the hind legs of that horse and throw it on its side.

            When I told my father, Marvin Willis, what I’d seen, he said, “That’s nothing.  I saw him reach under a horse’s belly, picked the horse up, all four legs off the ground, and throw it.”

            I think Claude Enkey delighted in intimidating his son-in-laws.  He would take them hunting — all night long.  If they didn’t learn their lesson the first or second time — if they agreed to go with him a third time — I’m sure at some point they all learned that he was a far stronger and physically capable individual then any of them.

            He was very proud of his physical presents, of his strength, and of his ability, even at an older age, to do acrobatic stunts.  He was still, in his sixties, doing hand springs, cartwheels, and flips.  When my sister Carol would take a boyfriend to visit the grandparents, Claude would be out there, showing the boyfriend that he could do anything the boy could do — and probably do it better.  I did see him pick up the front of a car once, just to show some of my friends from Tulsa how strong he was. 

            There was the right way, the wrong way, and my grandfather Claude’s way.  This was especially apparent when grandpa treated himself rather than going to see a doctor.  He had a concoction, a mixture.  Coal oil, gunpowder, and something else — I can’t recall what — was one such remedy.

            I remember him having a large hole in the top of his thigh where a tick had bit him.  You could literally stick your thumb inside this hole.  It had become infected.  So he poured his coal oil and gunpowder mixture into the hole.  I know it hurt.  I watched his eyes roll back as he let out a moan.  A week later the sore was healed.

            If he got bit by a copperhead he wouldn’t go to the doctor, he’d pour this stuff or some other on and cure himself.

            Anyway, I always enjoyed visiting with grandpa, his stories were so colorful.  Stories of him hand catching eels in the creek.  Coon hunting.  Running hounds.  And how he would stick his hands into — not just squirrel nest — but into holes in trees, stick his hands in not knowing what kind of animal was inside.  It was very common for him to pull his hand out of a tree trunk clutching a possum or some other critter — and you ought to know a clutched possum is something just meaner than hell.

            But grandpa was up to that.  When he was younger they had a big celebration in Tahlequah — a fair, rodeo, or something.  Grandfather said they had an event called the ‘greased pig contest’.  They would grease a pig up, let it loose, and all the men would try to catch it.  Whoever could hold onto the pig won some sort of a prize.  Grandpa and a black man grabbed ‘hold of the pig at the same time.  My grandfather reached over, grabbed the black man by the leg, and bit him.  The man let loose.  Grandpa won the contest.

            As I said, grandpa had a temper, and was not accustomed to losing.  And he could deliver on just about anything that he said.  He was a very intimidating individual.  Although I loved him dearly, it was well known that he could back anybody, or any group, into a corner.  And believe me, people listened. 

            One of the best stories about his temper is told by my mother, Opal Beatrice Enkey-Willis.  Remember this — I have never known my mother to lie.  That’s not something she does.  So this story just has to be true.

            One time, when she was young, the family was traveling in a Model-A Ford when one of the car’s tires went flat.  Grandpa got out and went about changing the tire.  I don’t know how many lug nuts held each wheel of those old cars on, but a safe bet would be at least four.

            Now Grandpa — before he, in his later days, became religious — was quite the ‘cusser.’

            At any rate, when he got ready to put the wheel back on, he went looking all around the car.  Then, thinking they’d somehow lost the lug nuts to his wheels, got very upset with the kids.  After a thoroughly good cussing to all of them, he found the lug nuts, every one of them, right where he’d put them for safe keeping — in his mouth.

            One time, when I stopped by to visit my Grandpa — he must have been in his late fifties or sixties then — I couldn’t help but notice that the skin on his right arm was literally shredded.  It looked like somebody had taken one of those cheese shredders to it.  I asked what had happened.  Grandpa smiled.  A gleam appeared in his eye.  And when I saw that gleam, I knew I was in for a great story.

            Seems that the day before he’d been out fishing — but not in the typical fashion.  Seems he’d been ‘noodling’.

            ‘Noodling’ is something of a southern art.  I don’t know if it’s unique to Oklahoma, or to Okie’s, but it’s something that my grandfather was apparently really good at. 

            Anyway, to ‘noodle’, grandpa would step into a creek or river, walk around in the shallow water near the bank till he found a partial rock outcropping or some other overbanking ledge under where a fish might be hiding.  Then he’d get down and feel around, reaching underneath into the shelter.  The gentleman practicing this art, when he felt a fish, would find the mouth with his fingers.  At some point the fish, in this particular case a catfish, would need to open its mouth to force water through its gills.  When it did, grandpa would stick his hand in the fish’s mouth, and either grab it by the gills from the inside, or force his hand down unto its gut.  And then he’d pull the fish out and throw it up on the bank.

            Catfish have very raspy mouths, as rough as sandpaper.  And I saw the particular fish of this story.  I know one number was four and one number was five — and my memory tells me that that catfish weighed fifty four pounds, but surely not less than forty five.  And that’s what shredded the skin on his right arm.

            Gramps never had any money.  When we’d go fishing he’d always take one of his old trucks, and, to save on gas, when we’d come over the top of a hill, he’d shut the key off and coast down.  Because he’d leave the gears engaged so he wouldn’t have to ride the brake down the hill, raw gas would build up in the exhaust pipe.  Near the bottom of the hill he’d turn the key back on, and most every time the backfire would blow the muffler off.  Still, he thought he was saving money.

            Perhaps my grandfather was best known in the Hulbert area for his sorghum molasses.  He grew the sorghum, then, with a crusher powered either by one of his horses walking circles around it or by the power-take-off from his John Deere Tractor, would process the stems — would squeeze the watery juice out of the stems.

            He kept his ‘boiling vat’ in a hut.  The hut was just a wood frame with canvas thrown over it.  The vat was a rectangular metal trough, about eighteen inches deep and maybe eight feet long.  Under that he’d build a hickory wood fire.  The watery juice from the crusher was poured into the vat and boiled down to syrup.

            Some of my fondest memories of my grandfather are from the times we spent sitting in this hut, boiling the excess water out of the sorghum.  The juice — it had a slight yellow tint — would boil down as clear as honey.  Granddad gauged the cooking process by taste and texture.  He’d ladle out a sip; get a gleam in his eye, and say, “Smooth.  Real smooth.”

            He was always taking some farm implement that had worn itself out and redesigning it.  It was nothing for him to have a tractor seat on a thrashing machine, or a model T Ford front end on his tractor.  His place looked like a junk yard.  But he had a plan for everything that was there. 

            I remember him on his John Deere tractor, with that light front end bouncing, and those big rear wheels turning, doing wheelies over the banks of his ponds.  He was scooping out dirt, deepening the ponds, to make a fishing place for the grand kids.  He would stack the crushed sorghum cane against the sides of the ponds.  I guess there was something in the stems that would feed the fish.  We’d catch hundreds of perch and catfish.  And it was nothing to catch a perch that was a foot long. 

            Early one morning, sometime in 1967 I think, we got a call that grandpa’s ‘prairie’ house was on fire.  We rushed to the farm to find nothing but smoking embers.  Grandfather had failed to keep the chimney clean, and it had caught on fire.  With tears in his eyes Grandpa Claude said, “You work your whole life, and everything that you’ve ever worked for is gone in an instant.”

            I know they had some beautiful old family pictures and a lot of other family relics in the house — all gone now.

            At that time granddad was batching it.  Several years earlier Grandma Olive had moved out to California to live with one of my aunts.  After the fire, the home gone, grandfather was forced to move away from the Oklahoma Ozarks too — out to California to be with Olive.

…

Part 8: Historic Oil Wells of the Little Spokane River Valley

(all rights to this material retained by author)

A Review of the Historic Oil Wells

of the Little Spokane River Valley

&

Regions Around

(part 8)

by

Wally Lee Parker

 

… the Great American Desert …

            Though the high plains of the American west aren’t considered desert by modern standards, after 1803’s Louisiana Purchase the America expeditions sent into the territory often described these semi-arid grasslands as such.  From colonial times through the middle years of the 19^th century, the American public saw no inconsistency in applying the word ‘desert’ to most any stretch of treeless land not considered fit for farming.  As the 1912 edition of Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History explained, “The Great American Desert … was the term used by the people east of the Mississippi River to express their idea of the country west of that river when it was an unknown land.  Carey and Lee’s Atlas of 1827 located the Great American Desert as an indefinite territory in what is now Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Indian territory, and Texas.  Bradford’s Atlas of 1838 indicates the great desert as extending from the Arkansas, through into Colorado and Wyoming, including South Dakota, part of Nebraska and Kansas.  Others thought the desert included an area 500 miles wide lying directly east of the Rocky Mountains and extending from the northern boundary of the United States to the Reo Grande River.  Its boundaries changed from period to period for Mitchell’s Atlas of 1840 placed the Great American Desert west of the Rocky Mountains.  The section shown by the various geographies grew smaller every year until only sandy plains in Utah and Nevada bore the name desert.”

            During his 1806 expedition into the far western reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike thought so little of the area’s potential that he wrote, “… our citizens … will through necessity be constrained to limit their extent to the west to the borders of the Missouri and Mississippi while they leave the prairies incapable of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines ...”

            On a map published in 1822’s Historical, Chronological, and Geographical American Atlas, a notation from Major Stephen H. Long’s 1820 expedition into the then far western territory was printed over the area that would eventually become the State of Nebraska.  This notation is often cited as the original application of the phrase “the Great Desert” to the region.  The map’s overprint goes on to describe the area as “frequented by roaming bands of Indians who have no fixed place of residence but roam from place to place in quest of game.”  Long’s meaning can better be understood when observing that in other writings he characterized the western grasslands of the Great Plains as having “a manifest resemblance to the deserts of Siberia.”

            In 1836, American novelist, essayist, and historian Washington Irving further embedded the term ‘desert’ into America’s visualization of these western territories when he wrote, “This region which resembles one of the ancient steppes of Asia has not inaptly been termed ‘The Great American Desert.’  It spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony.  It is a land where no man permanently abides, for at certain seasons of the year there is not food for the hunter or his steed.”

            This then was the impression Professor Samuel Aughey and his associates had to overcome in order to sell the western Great Plains to potential settlers as an agricultural paradise just waiting for the plow.  After all, for the most part there were no forests to clear away as farmers east of the Mississippi often had to do.  No stumps needing to be ripped from the ground.  No vast reaches of hefty stones needing to be gathered and stacked into windrows.  It should have just been a matter of turning the wild grasses under, dropping in the seeds, and waiting for rain.

            In other words, the only thing of residual concern for settlers intent on putting a plow to the prairie was the weather.

            Among the first in America to seriously investigate weather as a natural phenomenon was founding father Benjamin Franklin.  Franklin advanced a number of weather related hypothesis based on his observations.  He also carried out scientific experiments — perhaps the most spectacular being his investigations into the nature of lightning.

            Regarding Franklin, an article by John Coleman Adams in the October, 1892, issue of Popular Science Monthly states that a set of observations Franklin recorded in the late 1740’s were “... probably the earliest literature on the subject of North American Storms … the first documents of scientific value in the long series of observations and of studies which have brought us to our present … knowledge.”  Adams also noted that “Undoubtedly” (the usual direction of storms over the colonies) “had been observed before by fishermen, by mariners, and others accustom to the practical observation of the weather.  But this is the initial point of its treatment as a scientific phenomenon.”

            The movement toward compiling a nationwide meteorological database began in April of 1814 when then “Physician and Surgeon-General of the Army,” James Tilton, directed army surgeons to record the local weather at their hospitals.  As for the rationale behind having doctors keep data on the weather; soon after his appointment to the office of Surgeon-General of the Army in 1818, Joseph Lovell submitted for approval this directive to the then Secretary of War, J. C. Calhoun.  “Every physician who makes a science of his profession or arrives at eminence in it will keep a journal of this nature, as the influence of weather and climate upon diseases, especially epidemic, is perfectly well known.  From the circumstances of the soldier, their effects upon diseases of the Army are peculiarly interesting, as by proper management they may in a great measure be obviated.  To this end every surgeon should be furnished with a good thermometer, and in addition to a diary of the weather, should note everything relative to the topography of his station, the climate, complaints prevalent in the vicinity, etc., that may tend to discover the causes of diseases, to the promotion of health, and the improvement of medical science.”

            A paper read to Chicago’s International Meteorological Congress of 1893 clearly stated, “Meteorological science in the United States was conceived and brought forth by the Army Medical Department.  It was nurtured carefully as well in the then unknown West as in the East, and it gained strength year by year. … The Weather Service of the United States may well be said to be the child of the Army Medical Department.”

            That paper’s presenter, Major Charles Smart, noted that the first results of the Army’s record keeping was published in 1826 in a volume titled, “Meteorological Register for the years 1822-’25.”  This volume was only the first.  Still, even by that early date the rationale for collection the data had already expanded far beyond epidemiology.  And the tools the doctors used had expanded to include a barometer, wet-bulb hygrometer, rain gauge, and a set of detailed, standardized instructions for obtaining readings.  As Smart’s 1893 paper went on to explain, “The meteorological tables in this (1826) volume were intended as a contribution and stimulus to the solution of the question whether, in a series of years, there is any material change in the climate of a country and, if so, how far it depends upon the cultivation of the soil, density of population, etc.; for at the time of publication contradictory opinions were held, some contending that as population increased and civilization extended the climate became warmer, others that it became colder, and others again that here was no change.”

            For much of human history, all weather had been local.  Observed changes in weather patterns from year to year was only a matter of personal recollection for the most part.  As for the cause of those yearly changes, the tendency was to look locally as well.  As large tracks of woodland in the eastern United States were being cleared for farming, yearly weather variations were often related to readily observable occurrences such as the smoke rising from burning slash or the increasing number of fireplaces.  If the weather became warmer or colder, wetter or dryer, the actual reason for the change made little difference since some local event or chain of events was assumed to be the cause.  Associating local temperatures, wind intensity and direction, or rainfall with the surface temperature of ocean water thousands of miles away was inconceivable to the average citizen — still, by the second quarter of the 19^th century the thought that weather was global in causality had become a seedling hypothesis shared a small but growing cadre of the world's scientists.

            But then, with the establishment of the first commercial telegraph in 1845, the idea held by the general public that all weather was local began to peel away.  Professor Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, noted in his 1847 proposal that the Smithsonian devote increased resources to meteorological research — “Of late years, in our country, more additions have been made to meteorology than to any other branch of physical science.  Several important generalizations have been arrived at and definite theories proposed which now enable us to direct our attention with scientific precision to such points of observation as cannot fail to reward us with new and interesting results.”  Professor Henry proposed the Smithsonian “… organize a system of …” observation stations “… which shall extend as far as possible over the North American continent.  The present time appears to be peculiarly auspicious for commencing an enterprise of the proposed kind.  The citizens of the United States are now scattered over every part of the southern and western portions of North America, and the extended lines of the telegraph will furnish a ready means of warning the more northern and eastern observers to be on the watch for the first appearance of advancing storm.”

            The impact of adding electromagnetic communication technology to the meteorologist’s bag of tools was noted by Cleveland Abbe in an 1871 Journal of Science and Arts article on weather telegraphy, “It was … possible to study with advantage the progress of atmospheric changes only when the telegraph lines had become widely extended over the earth’s surface.  It was through the public press — the daily newspapers — that it first became possible to watch the hourly progress of storms under one’s own eye, and to confirm the general laws independently deduced from the closet (— not generally seen —) studies of the professional meteorologist.”

            By the mid 1870’s, when Professor Samuel Aughey began aggressively advancing his theories regarding the ability of local agriculture to impact local weather, enough progress had been made in the study of weather to make any theory postulating that increasing the local acreage under tillage could substantial increase the amount of rain falling over that local acreage highly suspect.  Professor Aughey, apparently well connected to the Smithsonian and a number of other highly respected scientific institutions, should have been well aware of thinking within the meteorological community on such matters — mainstream thinking that had already by-in-large discarded the type of hypothesis Aughey was putting forth.

 

… to be continued …