LAWDOG BOB'S
OLD WEST
Western Lore
Western lore is, admittedly, a somewhat vague category. There is so much to the "lore" of a time, place, specific historical people and incidents, etc. I suppose you can say lore refers to the culture and mythology surrounding a way of life, people's attitudes, adaptations, and aspirations, their interaction with their environment, ie. the forces of nature and
culture(s.) There's a lot of lore surrounding the Old West, for sure, and some of it___ a lot of it___ is pure myth. There's nothing wrong with that, as myth, like fictional literature, usually has an important substory to tell.
So this page will be a kind of "son-of-a-bitch" stew, as the old cowhands would say. A little of this and that, which, hopefully, informs you and me about what the lore of the Old West can teach us.
White Oaks, New Mexico, is pretty much a ghost town these days. A few people still live there, but what was once a rip-roarin' gold-mining town is now a quiet remnant of its former self. A few of the old buildings still stand, some abandoned, a few inhabited by current residents, but it would be hard for the uninformed visitor to know the significance of this place. A walk through the old Cedarvale cemetery is revealing, however. Here you'll find some graves of famous people, including New Mexico's first governor after statehood was granted, and some of the major players in the nearby Lincoln County War of Billy the Kid fame, including James Bell, a deputy shot down during Kid's escape from the Lincoln jail. No, Billy doesn't rest here...he slumbers eternally in Fort Sumner where Pat Garret gunned him down. One special grave marks the resting place of one of the few people who can be said to have "won" the Lincoln County war, if such a thing were possible.
Let's take a short tour of the town and cemetery.
White Oaks and the cemetery
Lawdog finds the grave he's been searching for.
The gravestone is a little misleading, as part of the name is misspelled. It should read "SUSAN McSWEEN BARBER." Does that give you any clues as to who she is, and why she's important? Below are photographs of Susan, the first photo as a teenager, known then as Susanna Hummer, the second, lower photo from her late twenties, about the time she was married to a lawyer named Alex McSween, when the newlyweds lived in Kansas. The last photo is in old age, living in White Oaks.
Susan and Alex migrated to Lincoln County, New Mexico, in 1875, in search of opportunity. They drove a wagon across the lonely prairies. The trip had to be perilous, as those were still unsettled, wild times. In the town of Lincoln, Alex set himself up as a lawyer and then became a business partner of John Tunstall, employer of Billy the Kid. Students of the Lincoln County War know that Tunstall was assassinated by hired guns from the Murphy-Dolan faction, business competitors and sworn enemies of Tunstall and McSween. The story is long and complex, but Billy and other "Regulators" rode the vengenace trail, bumping off some of the men behind Tunstall's murder, including Wm. Brady, Sheriff of Lincoln. Eventually, they found themselves holed up in McSween's house, surrounded by Murphy-Dolan men, including the local law and a company of soldiers from nearby Fort Stanton. Someone set fire to the house, and the Regulators made a run for it. Most made their way to freedom, but McSween was murdered while trying to surrender.
Susan, under a flag of truce, had earlier been allowed to leave the burning structure, but she saw her husband shot down in cold blood. With her house a smoking ruin, all her possessions destroyed, and her husband's store ransacked by looters, she was virtually penniless. Her life was also in danger, as threats were made against her by Murphy-Dolan people. She took up residence in an abandoned house, protected by Billy and other Regulators until she finally left for Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Over time, Susan was able to get $500 remuneration from Tunstall's parents in England. She returned to Lincoln with her lawyer, and instigated lawsuits against those who robbed her of her husband's life and her fortune. Not long afterward, the attorney was murdered on the streets of Lincoln. This didn't stop her. Her lawsuits continued, but a smear campaign was started, impugning her virtue. She lost a number of lawsuits against key players of the Murphy-Dolan faction, but she did win some civil lawsuits and gradually built up her civil awards. She traded and bought land along the Rio Bonito at Lincoln and started farming. Then she married another lawyer by the name of George Barber, an attorney who, ironically, had helped oppose one of her lawsuits. With the sale of her land holdings, and an influx of her husband's money, she moved to the Three Rivers area of the nearby Tularosa Basin and started ranching. She oversaw the building of her house, ranch buildings, and irrigation canals. She grazed vast cattle herds starting with cattle gifted to her by cattle baron John Chisum, and eventually became known as the "Cattle Queen of New Mexico."
Susan's demanding and assertive personality evidently was too much for her husband, who moved to White Oaks and lived separately. Susan and her husband eventually divorced, and she continued ranching. By 1891 her herd had grown to 5,000 head, her ranch valued at over $49,000, a large sum for those days. In 1901, at the age of 57, she finally sold out. After the sale, she moved to White Oaks and lived there for 29 years. She outlived all her enemies. The alcoholic Murphy died of cancer in 1878. Beset by financial difficulties, Dolan died of alcohosim at the age of 49 in 1898. Sheriff Pepin, who supervised the burning of her house and murder of her husband, died in 1909. Although Susan almost outlived her dwindling financial resources, she was happy and content living a simple life in a small home in the declining mining town. She died from influenza at the ripe old age of 85 in 1931. Perhaps you can see why I said Susan McSween won the Lincoln County War.
Living history museums provide tremendous insight into the culture, technology, and lifestyles of our forebears. One very good such museum in New Mexico is Rancho de las Golondrinas, just south of Santa Fe. It provides a glimpse into the life-style of Spanish colonial New Mexico, much of which persisted well past the 19th century and into the early 20th century. Las Golondrinas has quite a few restored adobe buildings, log and frame structures typical of colonial as well as "Old West" times, including a one-room log schoolhouse that was moved there from another site, a grain mill, corrals, houses, a mercantile, various trade shops, and a large open area of fields, woods, and a stream running through everything. During the warm season, volunteers dress up in period costumes and give lecture-demonstrations of old time life-ways. A few times a year, Civil War reenactors gather here and fight the battle of Glorietta all over again (that battle actually took place several miles northeast of here. Here are a few photos from Las Golondrinas.
Caretas (ox carts) in the plaza
Old grain mill
Lawdog inspecting log structure
Union troops on the march
Confederate skirmish line
Rebel cavalry
Another very interesting living history museum is Nebraska's Museum of the Pioneer. The original 19th century town site was a railroad center, mostly serving local farms and ranches. Several buildings have been preserved, rebuilt, relocated, etc. in the form of a period town. A tour of the buildings' interiors provides insights into furnishings, clothing, local pioneer family histories, dry goods and the necessities of everyday life, and the early stages of "modern" technology, such as telephone systems (1886...bet you didn't know that!) and transportation advances (railroads, automobiles.) When I visited, there was an extensive exhibit on the Lincoln Highway, which passed through town and was the first transcontinental highway in the U.S. in the 1920s.
On that trip, I made a stop in Springfield, Missouri. This is the old town square where Wild Bill Hickock famously shot Dave Tutt through the heart at 75 paces, in one of the few documented showdowns in the Old West.
The worst hailstorm I ever encountered was in Kansas, on that same trip. It put my new car in the body shop for a month. That's life on the plains!