Wildcat Lore
For years, many have lionized larger than life men and women who made our Douglas County great. As it should be. But the reality of pioneering outcomes in these parts is that most failed; their adventures were nasty, brutish and short. Local prosperity required many things: grit; water, agricultural, and animal husbandry savvy; and, above…
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One of the more vibrant Wildcat histories is that of the Blunt family. It began 60 years after we became a nation in Franklin, Missouri. After son John Elmer, “John E.,” was born to John and Elmira Blunt in 1836, the family migrated to Kansas. In the Civil War, both father and son were distinguished…
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In writing Wildcat Lore over the years, I have sought a home base, a spiritual center of gravity and a location suitable for the “capital” of our readership in these Wildcat Mountains. I finally figured it out: Round Top. We are all “Round Toppers.” Let me take you back a ways… Our readers’ homes are…
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Until appointment as Douglas County Sheriff in 1947, John L. Hammond was just a regular guy of the time. Born 1904 in Iowa and raised in Akron, Colorado, Hammond’s upbringing was about ranching and moving cattle to and from the market. His dad would buy them young, fatten them up and bring them to the…
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D.C. Oakes’ book, History of the Gold Discoveries on the South Platte River, is credited with giving the account of our gold rush, the one that brought 100,000 avaricious folks to Colorado in 1859. But the “table” had been earlier set by a handful of grizzled wayfarers like Kit Carson, Jim Baker, Jim Bridger and…
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Pomeranian Prussians from Burow, Johann and wife Minnie (Glauss) Heuer arrived in the U.S. as immigrants in 1872. Iowa farmland looked good, so the Heuers claimed it, and they farmed it for several decades. Charles Hier (the Americanized spelling of Heuer) was their second son, born four years later. Growing up, young Hier’s lungs…
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Last year, we featured Sedalia’s Dr. Minnie Love. She was a gifted, charitable woman and suffragette. But for some ill-advised pursuits in antisemitism, Love would have attained unadulterated fame. Her son, C. Waldo Love, noted another of her impolitic acts. She said of him that “[If he] didn’t have enough brains to get through school,…
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Cotton picking was more important than schooling in Denison, Texas in 1882. After Joe Kouba and twin brother Reuben finished third grade, the family farm was all that counted. Apparently a marginal operation, the Koubas moved across the Red River to Marietta, Oklahoma, Native American territory in 1889. There, Joe also fell under the influence…
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Born in Red Lodge, Montana in 1909 to mining industry magnate W. G. Duncan, William G. II (Bill) came to Sedalia in 1918 when his dad bought the old Beeman homestead. W.G. treasured the rural beauty and appeal of his new landscape and worked with Bill to preserve it for posterity. Though Bill’s father was…
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One sees something of a mess on the southwest corner of State Highways 105 and 67 in Sedalia. Bad news. Abandoned property, right? Where are the bulldozers? Only old-timers know that the parcel embodies epic stories of two families, their fabric deeply woven into Sedalia’s rich history. Born in Canandaigua, New York, in 1833, restless…
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