Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Which era in American history would you choose to live in?

20 years old in 1775 so I could be in the fight for Independence or the same age in 1941, same cause.

I'm inclined to agree. I'd have loved to hunt with Boone or Browning or one of those guys, but between the lousy flinters, the wolves and the Injuns, I'd prefer to stay home.

I've had one run-in in the woods with a guy who was threatening me with a firearm, and all I had was an unloaded front stuffer. That was enough.

I hunt where I am the apex predator and it feels good. I don't need bears, savages, wolves and large cats to feel I've been there.

not really interested in going back before running water and soap. I don't want to smell ass 24/7

Yeah but the average life span was maybe 40.

Read some Civil War history, and notice how young the generals were. Robert E. Lee was considered an old man, in his 50s.

As a kid there were a lot of folks around here with outhouses and wells you had the old rope and pulley method or cisterns. I spent a good bit of time at my aunt's country store. One thing I've commented on is that there are not near as many bad smelling people now as there were then.

One of my favorite Daniel Boone studies. When he made his epic journey up the Missouri in his later years.

As much as I am frankly disgusted by what I see around me, and by most of the people currently populating the nation and the world, I see right now as my best opportunity to take this schitshow of a nation and begin to get it headed in a healthy direction. That hasn't been a likelihood for over 12 decades, and it isn't likely now, but it is more likely than it was. As the fist clenches, the sand escapes.

This is from my maternal Great Grandmother:

The Autobiography of Bertha Frances Boyd (1882-1964)
1958

Dear Children,
Here is my happy childhood days, from the time I was three years old, to the best of my memory, your daddy and I spent of our lives together; as my father moved on a farm just across the road from your daddy’s folk in Putnam County, Missouri, when I was three years old and your daddy was five years old. My father’s children were most all girls and his father’s children were most all boys. We children played together and when we were old enough to go to school, sometimes wading snow shoe-top deep, the boys going ahead and kicking the snow out and making a path for the girls to walk in. We played outdoor games at school, such as ball and dare base and other simple games. With such exercise we were strong and healthy and had a lot of fun.

We always walked to church which was 1½ miles; a little country church built on my grandfather’s place and when we were old enough to work in the field, we all worked together, sometimes for my father and sometimes for his father; just wherever there was work that needed to be done.

And when I was 16 years old and your daddy was 18, we decided to get married, not giving a thought to the fact that I could not boil water without scorching it and that he did not have a $20 bill to his name. We got married on the 17th day of April, 1899, went to his folks and lived with them the first summer. He farmed with his dad and I helped his mother with the housework, for she was sick all summer and on the 29th day of June, Lank and Alice, her twins was born. So, I really got a lesson on housework and taking care of babies that summer, which was a lot of help to me in later years.

So that fall we moved into a little house on his uncle’s place and were so happy to be out to ourselves. Although we had very little to keep house with, we did not complain, for we never thought we needed very much. We lived there that winter and in the middle of the winter, his grandfather died; so when spring came, we moved in with his grandmother, for in those days an old person never lived alone. We farmed her place one year, then she decided she wanted to live with her daughter, so she sold her farm and went to live with her daughter and moved to another house on the lowlands of the Sharitan River.

By this time, we had our first baby, a little girl. We named her Essie. We lived there one winter, then in the spring, we decided to go to Oklahoma Territory, thinking we could go to the new country and file on land and that someday we would have a home of our own.


My Grandmother, Essie Henderson
born 1900.
(photo circa 1950s, Drumright OK)

We had friends who had gone to Oklahoma and they wrote to us and told us some wonderful things about the new country which, of course, made us want to try our luck. My folks begged us not to go and said we would not stay, that we was just wasting our time and money. But we still wanted to try our luck, so we sold what little we had and on the 5th day of April, we boarded a train and started west for the Oklahoma Territory. We got to our destination on the 7th day of April. We got off the train at a little station called Tucker. It is now called Belva. It was a terrible looking place right in a canyon between two high hills, or rather bluffs. I never will forget what Noah said when he looked at those bluffs. He said “Well, I just have a notion to just Tucker right back.” But so many people told us when we left Missouri that we never would stay, that we would be glad to get back; but we did not want to be a piker and we did not want to hear them say “Oh, I told you so”, so we just made up our minds that we could stay and tough it out if our friends and other people could.


Belva, OK

The Indians were still plentiful and the cowboy and his gun was a part of the law, but the cattlemen were moving out and turning the country over to the homesteaders pretty fast. Our friends met us at the train and brought us to their place, which was west of a place where there was a store and a post office, now called Lenors, in Dewey County, a few miles south and east of Vici. Our friends name was John Lawson, who lived in a sod house, the first sod house I ever seen.


Sod house, Indian Territory, OK
(circa 1900)

Well, it rained a lot that spring and one day it would rain outside and the next day it would rain inside, for the house had a dirt roof. Well, we stayed there a few days, then we moved into a little dugout, just three miles south of Cestos. There was not any Cestos there then, for we were there before Cestos was there. Well, we lived in the little dugout that summer, battling the snakes and tarantulas and the centipedes, and also another roof that leaked so bad that there was only one dry place in the house when it rained and that was under the table, which was made of rough lumber from a sawmill a few miles away. I would put the baby (Essie) in a box and push her under the table to keep her dry, spread a tarp over the bed and well, you know the rest.

We lived in the dugout that summer and on the 27th day of October, our second baby was born, a little boy. We named him Guy. He was born in the dugout. Our bedstead was made of rough lumber, homemade, and our chairs were nail kegs. So then and there we decided that if we was ever going to get any land that we had better get busy, for all the best land was taken before we got out here or had a chance. So we knew a man that had a claim out in Woodward County, who said he was tired of Oklahoma and wanted to go back east. We asked him what he would take for his claim. He said $200. So we bought him out and we filed on the land. We felt that we were pretty well off now that we had 160 acres of land, even though it was covered with rocks. Never had no house at all, no fence, no well of water, in fact, no nothing, except a spring of jip water so bitter no one could drink it. Well, Noah and his dad went out to the claim, which was east of Woodward, close to the place where we got off the train, when we first landed in Oklahoma. And they built us a little house, just one room 12’X18′ feet in size, built it out of rough lumber from the sawmill, not very nice; but it was a mansion compared to the dugout that we had been living in, and we were oh, so proud of it, for most of our neighbors still lived in sod houses or dugouts. So, in the claim we planted our first crop, which was kafir corn. We had a team of small horses. Noah plowed the sod with a sod plow. The male board was bent rod. He used a gallon syrup bucket to plant the seed. He filled the bucket with kafir, had holes punched in the bucket and tied it on the back of his plow, and in every third furrow he plowed, he drug the bucket behind the plow and this planted the seed, and surely God was with us and helped us for we raised a fine crop of kafir, the best we ever raised, although times were hard for we had plenty of feed and nothing to feed nothing to feed it to. But luck came our way, for we had a neighbor that had cows and no feed, so he let us keep three of his cows and milk them that winter for their feed, So we had our first milk and butter that winter, and with two little children to feed it was a real treat.

But we still had to have bread, too, and a few other things. So, me and the two babies had to stay alone out on the claim, in that wild western country, for Noah to go and find work, in order that we might eat. And he had to go so far back into western Kansas to find any work at all, that he could not even come home on weekends. Our few neighbors lived in dugouts, off in canyons, and the wolves and the coyotes were so thick and so hungry that they just howled all night long, right close around the house, and many times I had such a creepy feeling, I was almost scared, and wondered what I would do if one of the children would get sick. But surely God was out there also, for not one of us got sick while he was gone. So we had bread and milk that winter. With lots of rabbit and quail meat, for there were lots of them, and we fared real well. The rabbit and quail were so thick they would come close around the house. If Noah was at home, he would kill them with the gun and when he was gone, I would sometimes catch them in traps. So, we fared pretty well that winter.

The next Spring we planted more kafir, and made a garden and put up a little fence so we could keep the milk cows, which meant so much to us. In August we had our third baby, a little boy. We named him Dave. He was born in the little shack on the claim, with a Mrs. Rodell as a midwife in attendance. A wonderful person she was, for with no money, a doctor was out of the question, but with God close by, we did not need a doctor. We just got along fine. We lived in the little shack 5 years before we could make a cistern, so we could have water at home; and that was a great treat, for we had hauled all of our water in barrels with wagon and team and hauled it 5 miles for 5 years. And many, many times I felt in my heart that it was just not worth it to endure all the hardships of a new country for 160 acres of land not too good and for the experience of a pioneer life, But after we were there 5 years, we got a deed to our land, which made us feel better, and after the Oklahoma Territory was admitted to the Union and became a state, we felt we were safer and that we had helped to conquer the wild west and that we had helped to make and to improve one of the greatest states in the Union, the great and wonderful Oklahoma.

Then in the year of 1906, on April 1st, we had our fourth child, a little girl. We named her Ocie, a precious little one that we only got to keep 8 months. When she was 7 months old, I took the children and went back to Missouri to visit my folks who I had not seen for 5 long years, and I was so homesick for them that Noah told me that we could not both go, but since his folks were out here where he could see them often, for me to take the children and go back and see my folks and he would stay home and work. I went but it was the saddest trip I ever made, for while I was there, my baby took sick and died. I had to put her away out there so far from home and he could not even come to us or be there for the funeral, for at that time we had no way of getting him a telegram, closer than Alva, which was about 50 miles, and only a wagon and team to make the trip. So, he just could not make the trip. You will never know how hard it was to take her out there well and hearty, then have to bury her out there and come back home without her. But we never know what we can stand until we are put to the test.

After coming back home, we lived through another 2 years of pioneer hardships on the claim, and in 1908, on the 29th of March, we had our fifth child, a little girl. We named her Elsie. We were as happy as most anyone could be in a new country, enduring life as most all pioneers could expect. But in 1909, we decided to try something else, so we traded the farm for some property, a dwelling house in Quinlan, and a meat market and ice business, which we thought we could handle without hiring any help, if I could help in the shop. So we moved to town with our children, which was a bad mistake, but we got along very nicely with our meat and ice until we began to sell on time. Well, it wasn’t long until we had more on the book than we had in the bank, so we had to give up the meat business.

Well, while we lived there in town, we had another baby. It was a girl. We named her Gladys. She was born August the 1st, 1910, and in 1912, a boy. We named him Otis. He was born August 2nd. So, by that time we had the Arkansas fever, so we sold our house and with two covered wagons and what we could haul of our belongings, we started for Arkansas. We journeyed along very nicely until we got to Marshall, Oklahoma, a few miles south of Enid, and that is as far as we got, for our oldest girl, Essie, fell out of the wagon and the wheel ran over her leg and broke one bone, so we had to stop there and it was several days before she was able to travel. So we found a few days work and by the time she was able to travel, we had decided to just stay there in Garfield County, Oklahoma, so we rented a farm and Noah and the boys cut wood and sold it to buy groceries that winter, for by that time the boys Guy and Dave were big enough to help. We soon got acquainted with some fine neighbors and enjoyed living there, and we soon picked up a start and got along very well financially. We stayed in Garfield County for 9 years. We changed farms once, moving from the farm over by Marshall to a farm over by Hayward, and in the year of 1915, October 25th, another baby girl. We named her Florence, another blessing in our home, for nothing can bring as much pleasure in a home as a baby’s smile. We loved our children and was willing to work hard for their support and that they might have the necessary things of life to make them comfortable. We lived there a few years; I think 9 years, had two more children were born to us while we lived on that place. A girl named Ruth and a boy. We named him Jasper for his father whose name was Jasper Noah.

We got along real well financially while we lived there, got a nice start of cattle, the Aberdeen Angus type. World War came on and prices went up on what the farmer had to sell. We got a good price for our hay; we had lots of hay to sell. We had to haul it 18 miles and sell it to the oilfield workers, for a new oilfield was opened up at Covington, 18 miles from our place, and at that time horses was used for all kinds of oilfield work, and it took a lot of hay to feed them. There was no trucks or cars in that dav and time as there is today, in 1958.

And in 1920, while we still lived near Hayward, a preacher came to our house. It was Brother Rollie Cunningham and brought to us the Word of the Lord. He was the first one to preach the faith to us, and we both knew he had the truth, that what he preached was Bible. And we accepted the faith and was baptized, Noah, myself, and Elsie, March the 20th, 1920. Elsie was just 12 years old at the time, but we only stayed there on that place one year after we were baptized, for there was no church there, so we could assemble.

Our first place we rented near Vici was 6 miles south of Vici. We rented it from Bro. Bob Davis and while we lived there we drove a team of horses 10 miles to church; rode in a spring wagon and we went most every Sunday, seldom ever missed church, but as time went on, we moved several times. One move was close to Lenora and while we lived there our last baby was born on March the 3rd, 1926, a little boy. We named him Kermit. We lived there on that place a few years and when Kermit was 10 years old, in 1936 we moved to Delta, Colorado, not being able to get a house when we first got there, we lived in the house with Joe and Gladys 8 months. They had gone out there a few years before we did, had got settled and was operating a restaurant.

We lived with them 8 months, then Noah got a job on a ranch up on a mountain range called Horsefly Range. He worked for an old man. His name was Archie Terrell. He was a bachelor so I went along and cooked for them and kept the house for my board and room. We worked up there all summer and up into the winter. Then Grandma Boyd took bad sick and they called us home. By that time the snow was 4 to 5 feet deep. We had to be brought out with; a team and sled and snow was half-side deep to the horses. I was so glad to get down off from that hill, I never did want to go back up there.

Then we got a job working for Grant McCracken, a man we knew in Oklahoma, before we went out there, so we worked for him one summer, then we rented a place in what was called Disappointment Valley, close to a little post office named Cedar, southeast of Norwood. We lived there two years, then decided we wanted to live closer to Delta and closer to the children. So we moved to a little farm southwest of Delta. This was on a mountainside, not far from a little town, Olathe, Colorado.

By that time Noah was failing in health and was not able to farm, so we got Guy to move in with us and take over the farm work and on this little ranch is where Noah passed away in the year of 1942, April 26, at the age of 62. I was glad we were living on the mountain where he spent his last days, for he loved the hills and the tall pine trees. He would often tell me how he loved the hills and would often go up on the mountainside and sit under a big pine tree for hours, just enjoying the scenery and meditation. I often hated to move so bad that I would try to talk him out of a move he had planned and would cry if I could not, (which of course, I couldn’t) so would start getting ready for the move. But after all, since he passed on and I am left alone to meditate and to think, I am glad now that I did give in to his wants and went along with him, for after all, he suffered hardships as well as I. Many times the roads were rough, the trials were hard, but we made our marriage last until parted by death.

I stayed on in Colorado for awhile, lived with Guy part of the time and Kermit part of the time. J. R. went to California to work in defense plant as we had entered into World War II and he knew he would have to go in to the army soon so went on in and got into defense work, though it might delay his going into the army some, which maybe it did. Those were hard and trying days with heartache and sorrow. I was in California part of the time and in Colorado part of the time. Kermit also had to go before the war was over, bit with the help and the mercies of God they were safely returned. Otis also had to go, but he never had to leave the states, and spent most of his time in a hospital in Arkansas, so we were glad he did not have to leave the states. Kermit and Clara were married April 26, 1945, while Kermit was still in the Navy. After J. R. came home from the Army, him and Edit was married August 20, 1947. They moved to California. This left me alone part of the time, and then Guy bought a place in Delta, Colorado. He built a house on it and I lived with him until October 29, 1948. When I was brought to Vici, Oklahoma, sick, I was took to Elsie’s and stayed all winter with her. Then in April, 1949, I moved to Vivi, rented a little house from Edison and Lois Turner, where I have lived alone for 8 years.

And many things have happened since that time; some good and some bad. Well, here it is 1958 and I am still in the little house and I just got home from California. I went out there to a funeral. Gladys’ man, Joe Jones, passed away with heart attack September the 29th, 1958. I stayed a few days and Guy was sick out here in Oklahoma, so I came on back home on his account, for he had lost his health four years ago and had been failing in health ever since. He went to the hospital November 9th, 1958, and I arrived home that same day.

really good read......thanks....bob

I like how you think and I tend to agree. I do think it will get ugly, much uglier perhaps near term, but then better for the long run. Isn’t the first time this Country has faced massive adversity.

It wasn't so much the technology as the intention. I've gone 30 days without a shower or bath on some of my extended trips, but I washed every day and stayed fairly clean. The problem was that up until fairly recently folks thought that bathing was unhealthy. The days of the Saturday night bath (whether you needed it or not) must have been pretty rank.

One of my grandfather's stories from 1910-ish was how the Polish family up the road used to sew their kids into their longjohns at Christmas and not let them out until Spring.

Well as long as I could alter the space/time continuum, I would not go back, but I'd just stay right where I am----- but cause my body to go back to before I was injured and wounded, then fast forward just a few years more but in a 26 year old uninjured body. I'd keep my mind as it is now so what I have learned would be in me, but I'd have the abilities I did then.. This is the most important period of US history since the revolution and if I could be a 26-30 year old Recon Marine. I would do what I can to help others know and prepare for what is coming to this country in the very near future, and I'd have the ability to actually lead by example.

We Germans have a saying:
Too soon old. Too late smart"

The older I get the more truth I see in that saying.

i wished somehow i could back to the time before the Civil War and still have the knowledge of today and explain we need to send all slaves back to their home country and that would be the fare honest thing to do for these poor people,its their right .

I've always found the period from 1898 to 1914 to be incredibly interesting worldwide, not just in the US. Technology, immigration, social and political changes, quite a lot going on. The modern world was emerging, and it could have gone in various directions, then WW1 came along and sent us on our path. Both my Grandfathers came to the US during this time, one in 1899 and one in 1911.

Glad you found it interesting. My great aunt Elsie, the younger sister of Essie, came to help out when my mom died in 1968, and my youngest brother was 10. They both looked remarkably alike. I attended my Great Uncle Guy's funeral in Vici when I was just a youngster. Would have been 1958, as she mentions in the last paragraph.

Just as an example, I spent a lot of time with my buddy who went through The Bulge. I'm probably one of the few people that has experienced second-hand PTSD. Some of John's stories were so vivid that I found myself getting triggered for a while, especially after talking about his time up on the Sigfried line. Walking through pine forests for a while was really hard for me. So was hiking in the rain.

The PTO was as bad or worse. I had a uncle-in-law that got caught below decks in a Kamikaze attack. Until he finally gave it up to Christ, they used to have to lock him in his bedroom when it got bad.That went on for over 30 years.

As to the Pioneers, I've recently had to put down my copy of Dark and Bloody River. I got to the massacre at Gnadenhutten and started asking myself why I was doing this to myself. The book is just one story after another of one side catching the other off guard and killing them in the most brutal fashions imaginable.


Even before the war, things weren't too cool. My Dad was over in 1938 with his family, visiting the relatives. The local gauleiter invited the family to a book burning. Dad had nightmares of it for years.

i was ok with this one up until 5 years or so ago

I’m pretty much in agreement with the OP! But, as I’m blind as a bat.....I wouldn’t have lasted long at the founding of our nation! memtb

You constantly amaze me with your ability to cleary say things that I’ve thought or said previously. You just nailed-it with this post! memtb

Early 1800s before civil war. Exploring the west.