The Last of the Post Traders
Several of the photographs in the Loud family scrapbook that covers their years at Ft. Washakie, Wyoming, depict James K. Moore, the long-time post trader. Moore had come to the West as a young man and worked in various mercantile operations. He became the post trader for Ft. Washakie (then called Camp Auger) in 1871, before the actual fort was built, and he remained there until 1907, only two years before the fort was decommissioned.
Drilling Rigs and Boomtowns
When I was in high school, I went on a summer program to England. That was during the era of the television show Dallas, and as a Texan, I got the usual questions about horses, cowboys, and oil wells, none of which I knew much about. The funny thing is that my family, like many others in the state, actually does have a strong connection to the Texas oil industry. In fact, my Barnhart great-grandparents would never have come to Texas if it hadn’t been for the lure of “black gold.”
The Grimké Brothers
It’s impossible to spend much time reading about the abolition and women’s suffrage movements in early 19th century America without running across the Grimké sisters. Sarah and Angelina Grimké were among the leading lights of both those civil rights movements prior to the Civil War, and I have long admired their courage and dedication to promoting social equality. It was only recently, however, that I learned that Sarah’s and Angelina’s nephews—the Grimké brothers—were among the leading lights of late 19th century and early 20th century intellectual and civil rights movements.
At Home in the Arctic
Some time ago, I wrote about my great-grandfather’s cousin Ethel Barnhart and her husband William Van Valin, who in 1911 became teachers in a school for Alaskan Natives run by the U.S. government. After four years, Will and Ethel returned to the continental United States, bringing with them a large collection of Native Alaskan artifacts, many of which they sold to the Penn Museum, a Philadelphia anthropological museum affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. A few years later, when the Penn Museum was offered funding for a research expedition to northern Alaska, museum staff turned to Will to lead the effort.