"Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly.
Play the dead march as you carry me along.
Take me to the green valley and lay the sod o're me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong"
"Streets of Laredo"
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"So, how're we doin?", Steve asked as he sipped his coffee. "Are we making any progress? Are you learning anything? And, most importantly, are you gaining any data that you will be able to use in your thesis?"
Jim studied the frames of Steve's glasses for several seconds. "I am learning, its not what I expected, but it puts a different slant on the subject, more person-centered. I think I was expecting more 'history type' data; now I'm looking more to the effect of times and events on the people who lived it. I think I like this better; don't know yet what my counselor will think."
They sat at a corner in a small diner on Route 25 on the North edge of Kennett. When the meal was finished, Steve pulled from his bag a heavy green book, and lay it on the table. "My mother's family history; a collection of facts, stories, newspapers, genealogy and other stuff, wanted to show you. It was put together a few years back by one of my cousins, Larry Corlew. He and his wife spent years travelling and collecting this. Book is out of print for years, but I got lucky. This was my sister's copy which her daughter was kind enough to lend me."
"What I wanted to show you is a collection of old newspaper articles that Larry had reprinted as part of the book. Every family has its black sheep; these clippings are about bad man (outlaw, if you will) who had the same last name as my mother's family. As you will see, this guy's father had died when he was quite young and his mother remarried, giving him another name. He apparently used both, but favored "Corlew", so that is the name his deeds are recorded under. No one seems to know what his connection, if any, was to the family tree; not sure they looked very hard. In any event, there is no known relationship to the "rest of us. Just goes to show that the 'old wild west" maybe wasn't quite as old, and not as far west as most of us would think; it was, however, unquestionably wild."
"The event described here happened in 1880 in the little town of Moberly Missouri, located about half way between St. Louis and Kansas City, just a little north of the main highway between the two cities, and, to put it in perspective, this was about a year before Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid, and Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday made the 'Gunfight at the OK Corral' a part of American history".
He pushed the book across the table, "Here's one of the more complete and readable renditions; must be a half dozen clippings in there and most tell essentially the same story."
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Jim closed the book, looked up and smiled, "Quite a story!"
"Just to give you a flavor of the times, and the atmosphere of the community. My grandfather began his family at about this time. Born 1860, he went to Texas and then to the Oklahoma Territory until around the turn of the century, when my grandmother died. Had nine children, all of whom survived, a survival rate quite rare for the time. My mother was the last of the nine, born in 1900. Grandpa apparently did well in Oklahoma, there is a record of his being president of the local chapter of the 'Anti-horse Thief Society.' Yeah, really, it was a national organization whose primary purpose seemed to be furnishing men ready, willing and able to ride in the sheriff's posse in pursuit of horse thieves, etc. Look it up sometime."
Jim smiled, stretched, yawned and pushed back his chair. "So what's next, where do we go tomorrow?"
"Back to Clay County. See you at breakfast."
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Editor's note: The article printed above was copied from Larry and Vi Corlew's book, "We Were Here, The Corlew Family Geneology". It obviously had been previously printed in "A History of Randolph County" of which I have no information. Some parts, (about one page) have been omitted in the interest of brevity.
ed
ps: The inserts are jpg files. They may not transmit well. If they don't, please accept my apologies, don't know what else to do just now.
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