The History Marm

Driving our newborn baby girl home from the hospital, my husband – we’ll call him Methuselah and we’ll call me Mrs. Methuselah for the sake of this discussion because I have been “of advanced maternal age” since I started having babies. Who comes up with these age distinctions anyway? – driving through the green fields he was articulating his belief that our family was definitely complete. I remember a clear impression that we would have one more baby someday, a boy.

A few years later, we had our baby boy and we planned to call him Lev.

After Lev’s passing, I went into the worst and darkest space I have ever known in every possible way: mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. Thankfully, one of my dearest friends reached out about a year later with a life-line in the form of a job. It saved my sanity and feeds my belief that work is truly the healing balm for many things wrong in our lives!

Loss is an interesting concept. Every year the emotion is just as raw and just as painful. Grief, pain, the sting of loss never eases – we just get used to it – it becomes part of us, a familiar companion permeating our hearts and lives.

Soooooo many people are blessed with what they call “Rainbow Babies” after losing a baby. We had ours, too. That ended in more loss on August 15, 2018.

For a while I decided God just didn’t trust me to be a mother to more than my two living children. And, knowing myself as I do, who could blame Him?! Given the field in which I am blessed to work, I am fairly sure that trustworthiness is not a criteria for motherhood. There are some real doozies out there!

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” James 1:22 KJV.

Peppy threw a shoe last week and as it was coming off, it broke part of his hoof. Yet, just a few days later, he gave his all in a cowhorse show even though during the show, his hoof cracked yet again. We were watching closely and could not tell at all that anything was off.

Peppy is a doer.

A few months ago I was watching a junior rodeo. The arena judge is very busy at these. He’s watching all contestants, flagging, giving advice to each participant on how they might improve. He is busy! Yet, between contestants the arena judge rode up to the fence and instructed his seven year old daughter to go get the little girl sitting a few rows over who was alone and invite her to be with the daughter and her friends.

THAT, my friends, is a doer!

Sure, everyone notices. Some people are willfully ignorant they say things like “yeah, I saw that and I wondered, but…” and they seem to think nothing of their complete failure to act!

The arena judge saw and then he did something!

May we all observe and do!

This is another post for school…hopefully I can return to my regular posting soon!

William Devane captivates audiences while proving his magnetism drawing rapt attention from viewers as he showcases various hobbies such as horseback riding in the Rosland Capital while encouraging the masses to purchase gold.  According to the National Mining Association, gold was first used around 4000 B.C. in Eastern Europe to fashion decorative objects.[1]    By 3000 BC, gold was making it’s way to a use continued today; where it was used in Iraq to make jewelry.[2]  In 1792 The Coinage Act put the United States on a “bimetallic silver-gold standard,” which defined the dollar as “equivalent to 24.75 grains of fine gold and 371.25 grains of fine silver.”[3]  In 1837 the weight of gold in the dollar was reduced to “23.22 grains.”[4]  By 1873 silver was eliminated and the United States was simply on a gold standard.[5] 

In 1900 the Gold Standard Act was passed into law which committed “the United States to maintain a fixed exchange rate in relation to other countries on the gold standard.”[6]  A short thirteen years later in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act required “Federal Reserve Notes be backed 40% in gold.”[7]  40% seems rather a shaky standard.  However, our current money system backed by nothing more than our government seems even shakier. 

Gold doesn’t make much news through the roaring twenties, but starts making headlines again in the 1930s.  In 1933 FDR ordered the prohibition of “private holdings of all gold coins, bullion, and certificates,” to alleviate banking panic.[8]  Conspiracy theorists could have a heyday with the 1934 Gold Reserve Act which gave the United States government title to all monetary gold and stopped the minting of gold coins.[9]  In 1937 the “bullion depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky” opened.[10]  Open the floodgates to all conspiracy theorists with the 1961 declaration forbidding “Americans…to own gold abroad as well as at home.”[11]  William Devane’s and others commercials indicate we can own gold…more research is needed to know about this 1961 declaration and the effects of it today on private gold ownership. 

Interestingly, the gold standard was completely abandoned prior to the 1961 declaration.  In 1919 the gold standard was suspended by several countries, including the United States, during World War I.[12] And, this might be the initial death knell of the United States ecnomomy eventually brining on the Great Depression if Sandeep Mazumder and John H. Wood are to be believed.  Mazumder and Wood posit their theory that FDR’s decision to resume the Gold Standard in 1933 with pre-1914 rules.[13]  There were even some European economists who suggested, when FDR resurrected the gold standard, that it was the cause of the Great Depression.[14]

Famed economist and once Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke partially agrees with Mazumder and Wood stating that the evidence showing monetary shocks created “through the workings of the gold standard” resulting in the Great Depression is “quite compelling.”[15]  He explains that some governments world-wide responded to the financial crisis of the “early 1930s by quickly abandoning the gold standard.”[16]  His study finds that those countries who abandoned gold were able to recover faster from the Great Depression because they could “reflate their money supplies and price levels.”[17]  He further explains that in countries, like the United States, where the gold standard remained, “real wages rose or stabilized and employment remained stagnant.”[18]  Meanwhile, countries not on the gold standard has “much lower real wages and higher levels of production.”[19]

It appears that countries who could captain their own financial ships may have fared better in the Great Depression, however, it also seems rather counter-intuitive that a standard not backed by gold is better.  Gold seems rock solid, it will always have value regardless of whether the government backing it attributes value to it or not.  This seems much more secure than the seemingly out of thin air paper or even crypto money systems of today. 

---

[1] “The History of Gold.”  National Mining Association, Washington, DC.  http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/gold_history.pdf, 2.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, 4.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 5.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 6.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, 5.

[13] Mazumder, Sandeep and John H. Wood. “The Cause of the Great Depression: The Decision to Resume the Gold Standard on Prewar Terms.” The Independent Review 26, no. 1 (Summer, 2021): 133-51, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fcause-great-depression-decision-resume-gold%2Fdocview%2F2627993544%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085, 134.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Bernanke, Ben S. “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 27, no. 1 (1995): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/2077848.

[16] Ibid, 4.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., 22.

[19] Ibid.

Another assignment for school…we have to post them on publicly accessible blogs…

Everywhere we look today, there is photographic activity.  We all walk around holding our phones, snapping pictures of everything and nearly everyone we see.  Even though some of the most beautiful memories we make in life are held as pictures in our hearts and minds, photographic proof of life seems to enhance life’s meaning, if only to the photographed.  I remember my grandmother having what seemed to be hundreds of framed pictures adorning her walls.  The pictures told the story of her life and showed what mattered to her; pictures with my grandfather and of my grandfather, pictures with my father and his siblings, pictures of my cousins and me, pictures of her sisters, pictures of her nieces and nephews.  “Aunt Pearl” loved and was beloved by all. 

Looking at black and white photos of my great-great-grandparents, I’ve never considered what went into the photos until reading an article by Heather Hatch.  Hatch reports pioneering settlers went to great expense and effort to have their pictures taken.  Quoting a dedication in the front of a 1936 photo album she writes “if by its perusal any of these same Old Settlers find enjoyment and entertainment in looking again into the faces of an old neighbor or friend our work has not been in vain” (Hatch, 342).  This is what makes a picture special, the feeling it evokes when it is beheld. 

Equally important seems to be the names written on the backs of photos as it is haunting to the reader to behold an impressive group of intensely eyed “Hashknife cowboys” on page one of Hatch’s work.  Each cowboy’s name is listed except the one farthest to the right who is simply listed as “unidentified” (Hatch, 333).  Especially in this day of Facebook, Instagram and “look at me” fever, the last thing anyone wants to be is “unidentified.”  The unidentified man seems to stand just slightly apart from the group.  He is the only one who can be seen head to toe.  His eyes almost seem the most intense, yet history may never know anything about him.  Record keeping matters to those of us seeking to learn from the past, but not always so much to those of us in the present who are leaving the record. 

One woman who proves that one can “make their place,” did so in the harsh Arizona desert.  Mary H. Taylor rode into the smoldering Gila Bend desert in 1869 with her intended and rode right back out of it with King Woolsey who promised to keep her safe (Cunningham, 17).  Woolsey took Mary the two-day journey to Yuma for proper clothes and then Mary set about making a name for herself, tending Woolsey’s desert frontier store; Stanwix. 

Mary eventually amassed an estate estimated to be worth $2,000,000.  Most interestingly to this author is Mary’s Palo Verde ranch and her Agua Caliente holdings because these are two places that really aren’t inhabited much today, let alone at the turn of the twentieth century.  There’s a mountain peak between the two; Palo Verde and Agua Caliente, that is named “Woolsey Peak,” no doubt after Mary’s late husband and perhaps Mary herself.  Mary’s industry, as she was known for her work ethic and keen real estate mind, put her in a position of leaving her heirs, none of them her own children for she had none, comfortable.

History really is so wonderfully fascinating.  It’s about the slight twists and turns we take.  Mary arrived in a desert camp completely disgusted and fussing with her fiancé, only to take off immediately with Woolsey, a stranger who promised safety, and twenty-four hours later, after what she reports was a good “heart to heart,” they married.  He offered her a place to make her fortune and she took it, whole-heartedly, running with it until she was a lively millionaire still sparking with life in her eighties. 

What are the twists and turns of our lives?  Do we recognize them when they come?  Or, do they come, much like Mary’s, a stroke of fate, two halves of the same whole, colliding in the Arizona desert and sparking a fire.  This is what makes history so captivating and worthy of study.  The people who lived yesterday, ten years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, wanted what we all want:  purpose, love, money, safety, refuge, prosperity and work.  We tell ourselves we want peace and quiet, we want rest.  But look at the people who have that – they’re empty. 

We crave work.  We crave purpose.  And a society who lulls themselves into thinking that they don’t crave work and purpose is a society much like the one we see before us today; lost, drug and alcohol addicted, looking for entertainment and distraction rather than true purpose.  True purpose, that’s the gold at the end of the rainbow.  True purpose is where there is heart-wrenching effort sprinkled with life-giving joy. 

Cunningham, Bob. “WOOLSEY’S WIFE: The Arizona Adventures Of Mary H. Taylor.” The Journal of Arizona History 28, no. 1 (1987): 17–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41859356.

Hatch, Heather S. “A GLORIOUS LEGACY.” The Journal of Arizona History 28, no. 4 (1987): 333–52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41859787.

Jagodinsky, Katrina.  “Territorial Bonds:  Indenture and Affection in Intercultural Arizona, 1864-1894.”  University of Nebraska – Lincoln.  2012. 

Woolsey’s & Wentworth’s.  The Fry Building:  A Hidden Pioneer History – Part II.  State Library of Arizona, Blog.  July 17, 2019. 

This is another assignment for school…I cannot figure out how to straighten out the footnote debacle at the end….these – and likely many other – errors aside, it is an interesting read!

My husband found this in one of our canyons while checking cows.  From a distance he observed what he thought was a lion kill.  It’s odd for a lion kill to be out in the open though, so he rode in for a closer look.  He discovered two bucks who had locked horns while fighting and were never able to unlock.  They literally fought to the finish.  Imagine being attached, locked to, your mortal enemy and worse yet, not only are you attached, but you’re going to die, together.   

Look at their eyes, they are literally eyeball to eyeball, horn locked into horn, struggling against each other and mother nature as they finally succumb to what must have been starvation and dehydration, likely depression too if deer have that. 

It gives me pause to wonder what I’m locked to that might not be good for me.  Here in our Country, the pre-civil war South was locked into a way of life that they literally fought to the death to maintain.  And, much like I tell my teenage son about choices…there will always be consequences – both good and bad – that we can foresee and there will always be those sneaky little unintended/unforeseen consequences that really sneak up on us!  According to Michelle Connolly the South experienced a sluggish economy in the postbellum era.  She states that the South lagged, economically, behind the rest of the country during this time.[1]  This was no-doubt one of those unforeseen and unintended consequences of many Southern decisions pre-civil war. 

---

Meanwhile, in one of the harshest deserts, the  Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February of 1848 and the Gadsden purchase in 1854 threw the gates open to settlement on the west.  Add in some good gold discoveries in the region and the West was off to a winning start in the settlement arena.  The  this day, people flock to this desert.  James Gregory has astutely stated that “Arizona remains today a state where most residents came from somewhere else, either another state or another country.”[1]

According to the Arizona Library, Arizona’s cattle industry was flourishing in the 1870’s and 1880’s.[2]  But, it was a native South Carolinian who would develop the one thing Arizona needed to become an economic and population powerhouse:  irrigation.  Jack Swilling was born in South Carolina in 1830.  He loved mining and chased gold to the Gila River in Arizona where he became a mining guide.  Mr. Swilling also worked as an express rider.  He was extensively travelled throughout Arizona.  

Mr. Swilling must also have been very curious, because the linear dirt mounds everyone one else had merely ridden or walked by, he decided must be linked to irrigation.  He was able to find that they were indeed “part of an extensive irrigation canal system previously used by ancient native peoples, now known as the Hohokam.”[3]  While irrigation continues to feed modern day and continuously growing Arizona, there’s a lesson here for all of us in the benefit of curiosity.  Albert Einstein is credited with saying “I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious.”[4]  Swilling’s curiosity took a baren desert with occasionally too much water and no water storage occasionally enduring overwhelming flash flooding, to a thriving and beautiful agricultural mecca and population center. 

Swilling parlayed his curiosity into a thriving business.  He acquired financial backing for his Swilling Irrigation and Canal Company and in 1868 he successfully diverted water from the Salt River and the small settlement, that would one day become America’s fifth largest city, Phoenix, was born.  Within one year one hundred people settled the area and two years later, the population doubled and fifteen hundred acres were in production through irrigation growing wheat, barley and corn.[5] 

---

[1] Gregory, James.  Arizona Migration History 1860-2017, America’s Great Migrations Project.  University of Washington.  https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/Arizona.shtml.

[2] Arizona’s Chronology.  Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records.  https://azlibrary.gov/arizona-almanac/arizonas-chronology.

[3] Arizona Water Prioners – Part 1:  Jack Swilling.  Water Use It Wisely.  https://wateruseitwisely.com/blog/arizona-water-pioneers-jack-swilling/.  April 30, 2019. 

[4] 35 Inspirational Quotes on Curiosity.  Awaken the Greatness Within. https://www.awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/35-inspirational-quotes-on-curiosity/.

[5] Bailey, Jim.  The Good Ol’ Days:  Development of the Salt River Valley.  Reclamation and Arizona.  U.S. Department of the Interior.  https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1899/topstory.html.

[1] Connolly, Michelle. “Human Capital and Growth in the Postbellum South: A Separate but Unequal Story.” The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 2 (06, 2004): 363-99.

I love the saying “a lion will never have to tell you he’s a lion.” Let the power and truth of that sink in for a moment…

When our son was very young, he enjoyed riding Roxy. Roxy was well into her twenties when our son came along. She was seasoned. We would put him on her and she would take care of him wherever they went. Sadly, Roxy’s life was over long before we were ready. Our son was heartbroken and lost all interest in horse activities.

When our son was ten, he announced one day he was ready to ride. We started asking around about a kids horse and someone who could teach our son reined cow horse. After coming up empty, we started praying (yes, praying is where we should have started to begin with…)

Enter Peppy. Peppy changed our son’s life – and our lives – in ways we could never have imagined. He has been a blessing from the start!

While watching Peppy this last weekend I realized he, like a lion, speaks volumes without ever saying a word…

Peppy says: “I am safe and you are safe when you are with me.”

Peppy says: “I love you.”

Peppy says: “I will always do my best for you!” And they were the champs at this Southern Arizona show a few years ago.

Peppy says: “I am patient. I love teaching my kids to rope and cow horse.”

Peppy says: “I am steady and sure. I will even pack this piece of wood if you want me to.”

Peppy says: “I am honest and I live for the joy that’s spread on your face when you ride me.”

May we all be a little more like Peppy and have our character known not by what we say, but by what we do and let us all do it consistently!

This is an assignment for a class I am taking. We are to write about Genealogical History, which is interesting after learning this week about the blurred line between legit historians and lay genealogists. Without further ado, here’s my post:

I have chosen to write about my paternal great grandfather, John McCleve. He died long before I was born, but I sure knew his oldest daughter, my Grandmother, whom I adored. She told me once that her family had come to the United States because they wanted to migrate to the American West and that her husband’s family – my Grandfather’s family – had come to the United States because they were “horse thieves” escaping hanging. I remember laughing as a girl when she would tell me this of her ancestral in-laws. I thought there’s no way this could be true because our family is so intensely set on living honorably!

However, as an adult looking for genealogical information regarding the four brothers, the alleged horse thieves, it seems she might not have been merely gossiping about her ancestral in-laws. For, when any of us search, we hit a wall, a hard wall of nothing. Family lore holds that four brothers came to the United States and upon arriving, they burned all of their identifying documents and went their separate ways vowing to never contact each other again so they couldn’t be found.

While I would love for this assignment to be filled with wild and exciting tales of horse thieves, I will turn to John McCleve who was a horse lover and trainer. I often think of my paternal great grandfather because, as my Grandmother and her two sisters wrote in his life story that he trained the horses he used in his freight hauling business “so he didn’t have to use a line on them at all.”

This makes me think of my dad, seen in the picture above, who would train his horses so that he could ride them without a bridle or reins. He would lope, turn circles, stop and back up in Bill Hardison’s arena when I was a child, using nothing more than his legs to cue his horses. I found it a most impressive fete then and as an adult I understand it is a truly impressive fete filled with dedication and hard work.

John McCleve had a fourth grade education. He was a devoted man who worked extremely hard and – if the life story written by his daughters is to be believed, which I have no reason to doubt it – he strove for a standard of excellence in all areas of his life. They report that John McCleve “finished the fourth grade in school, but times were hard and money was very scarce, so to help with finances for the family he took a job herding sheep when he was about ten years of age. He got the rest of his book learning by reading books while herding sheep and practiced his writing on the ground, using a finger or a stick.” I see this thirst for knowledge in his daughter, her son my father, myself and someday hope to find it in my children – we are voracious readers!

The daughters write that John McCleve “had a great sense of humor.” This runs strong in our family and my dad, pictured above, is always one to see, and often one to create, the humor in most situations as did his mother before him. I am very thankful to have inherited this ability!

I should add that I don’t have any pictures of John McCleve so my dad is having to fill the picture void in this post! John McCleve reminds me very much of my dad as I read in his life story that he “was very ambitious, a hard worker even as a young boy; and like his father was a great lover of animals and always took good care of them.” Eventually, John McCleve’s hard work paid off and he became a prosperous businessman with a beautiful ranch near Taylor, Arizona. This runs in the family as well. My dad is an incredibly hard worker who picked a difficult road to success but stayed faithful to his chosen road and became very successful. He taught us to work hard and this blessing has been a comfort to me throughout my life. Hopefully, I am continuing this tradition with my children of hard work, dedication and success.

I see a continued thread of loving horses, hard-work, knowledge and family handed down from one generation to the next in my family. I am incredibly thankful for this! It also makes me ponder the impact one generation has on the next. For better or worse, whether we mean to or not, we are influencing our children and posterity for generations to come in all that we do. This makes me want to strive to be my very best at all times and do my very best for my babies!

At some point in our lives, we’ve all reached for a dictionary or googled the definition of a word.  At least I hope we have!  Because either we’ve needed – and obtained – clarification on definitions or some of us are walking around needlessly clueless!

            Many of us know the dictionary as Webster’s.  Noah Webster started working on a dictionary of American English, which differed in substantial ways from England’s English, in 1801 and published it five years later in 1806 and twenty-two years later in 1828 he published his American Dictionary of the English Language, defining more than 65,000 words.[1]      

            Noah Webster also helped to define the importance of Christianity not only to the Christian population, but also for the entire world so we could all understand the foundation of liberty.  In 1832 he published a History of the United States covering “…the dispersion at Babel, to their migration to America, and of the conquest of South America, by the Spainards.”[2] 

Within this work, starting at list number 578 he writes of the “Origin of Civil Liberty.”[3]  He states “Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of Christian religion.”[4]  He goes on to explain that the reformation brought about the opportunity for people to read the Bible and “understand their natural rights.”[5]  He explains this does not mean that there should be any church “established by law.”[6]  However, he does explain how Christianity is the foundation for liberty.  He writes “…the religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his apostles which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights.  This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.”[7]

Webster knew and well understood what Christianity meant.  He had spent a lifetime studying the Bible and had even taken it upon himself to translate his own version of it from the King James Bible.[8]  Imagine that.  I recently did a study that encouraged me to write three verses of 1 John daily until I have written the entire book of 1 John – by hand.  I am merely copying these verses but by doing this exercise, I am noticing that I really ponder the words and the teachings, it leads to deeper study and hopefully deeper understanding.

---

[1] https://noahwebsterhouse.org/noahwebsterhistory/

[2] Webster, Noah.  History of the United States : to which is prefixed a brief historical account of our [English] ancestors, from the dispersion at Babel, to their migration to America, and of the conquest of South America, by the Spaniards.  Durrie & Peck, New Haven, Connecticut. 1832.  Sabin Collection Number 102358. 270-271.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Webster, Noah.  The Holy Bible, Containing The Old And New Testaments, In The Common Version.  With Amendments Of The Language.  Durrie and Peck, New Haven, Connecticut.  1833.

Diligent is defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as having or showing care and conscientiousness in one’s work or duties.

At the junior rodeo this weekend, I noticed that our son – our very social, people-loving, chatty, easily distracted teenage son – when he entered the arena to prepare for his turn he was laser focused and constantly looking at and adjusting his rope.

He was being diligent because he knows that is the only path to success.

We are studying Proverbs this month as a family because January has 31 days and Proverbs has 31 chapters. Proverbs has many verses pointing to diligence. Proverbs 12:27 says in part “…but the substance of a diligent man is precious.”

We live very close to nature here. Diligence is demanded in many ways – especially while caring for animals when it’s ridiculously cold and the ice has to be broken so they can drink water.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying “Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to industry. Then plow deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.”

You can read more about Benjamin Franklin’s Way to Wealth here: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-way-to-wealth/

Do you choose a word that will be your theme for the year? Do you set resolutions? The most successful people I know don’t set resolutions. They are constantly improving, striving and working on goals every single day of their lives.

I don’t see myself as wildly successful, but I constantly work on goals daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. One daily goal I set is “brace before every move at the gym – every single move – to avoid unexpected and embarrassing urinary responses to squatting, lifting, sit ups, etc.”

Yet for 2022 I have two big goals that I have written down as resolutions.

I am used to winters looking like this picture above where “snow” is found in the beauty of open cotton bolls awaiting their harvest.

However, here in paradise, winter needs to look like this! And, while shoveling this for several hours I pondered my word for 2022. Originally, it was two words, two words laced heavily with some expletives: covered porches!

But, then my husband arrived to help with the last of the shoveling and it replaced my exhaustion filled discouragement with hope.

Hope. My word for 2022. Discouragement is a heavy weight that often seeps into my heart. But hope is a gift from God, a reassurance that if we are with Him, it will all be ok and truly will work for our good (Romans 8:28).