8 10 216 https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/97f572ecf6038193c4f030706a857654.pdf e69c0614913b9078fd89027464b27140 PDF Text Text MARIA (Abeyta) RIVERA Maria, the fifth of Antonio and Josefa Abeyta's nine children, was born into an orderly and hard-working world. Her people were sheepherders in the country near Tierra Amarilla, N.M. "Most of us in that lime weren't too poor and sure weren't rich. We lived in a post house. Cedar posts were set in rows like a stockade, then plastered inside and out. The roof was posts and sticks covered with earth. It leaked and was a mess whenever there was a heavy rain until we could afford to put tin over it. I haven't been back there for a long time, but we hear the house is still there and still being used." When Maria was about three years old, her parents moved to a dry land farm near Cabresto (up Frances Creek east of present day Navajo Darn). Antonio built another post house and dug a well. He hit a good stream of water at 18 feet. The Abeytas raised dry land crops fairly successfully, but the garden needed watering and the well was the only source. Maria remembers hauling bucket after bucket to the garden. Two of Maria's sisters went to live with their grandmother at La Puente about three miles from Tierra Amarilla. Grandmothe(s house was a large frame house with five bedrooms. Maria recalls, "The fifth bedroom was just for guests and was never touched unless a guest was in the house. She had a large wood-burning cookstove, a fire place and a heating stove. No coal was available, so someone had to chop a lot of wood." Since there was no school at Cabresto, Antonio bought a farm near Rosa. It was much easier to raise profitable crops on the irrigated land and possible to send the children to school. However, Maria seldom got to attend school more than 4-5 months per year. Two of her older sisters had died. Since the other two were living with their grandmother, and Josefa had become ill, Maria became the cook, laundress and food preserver for the family. Maria says, "People talk about how bad kids are today. I don1 believe they are nearly as naughty as they were when I was a child. Once when I was a child a group of boys in our room tried to set the teacher on fire. The teacher was an old man and not too observant. The boys began slipping matches under his coat collar with the match heads protruding in a row. One of the boys behind him struck a match and was about to set the fire when one of the students yelled and grabbed the lighted match. Otherwise the resulting fire would probably have burned all the remaining hair off his nearly bald head. 11 "Every winter our cellar was full of beans, peas, chicos, cheese and piles of pumpkins. Then we had eggs, milk and butter coming all the lime. We always had enough. Everyone who put out the effort to grow a garden had enough in those days. I think the climate is colder now. It's hard to get things to mature." "In warm weather all of us children were outside playing or working all the time, but in cold months there was less to do. That's when Abuelo and Abuela (grandpa and grandma) told us stories around the fireplace. I wish I could remember the stories they 144 �told, but I can't. For public entertainment there were only a few events each year. On the 4th of July there were races and a rodeo but no fireworks. One year someone brought a Ferris Wheel. Nothing else; just a Ferris Wheel. It cost five cents to ride. I ate ice cream and drank lemonade and rode the Ferris Wheel so many times I got sick and had to go lie down at my aunt's house. Then there were the maromas. The latest maromas I remember was in Ignacio in the 1950's. The maromas was a group of people who made music, danced and sang and told jokes and stories. The whole community came when the maromas were in town. ·, ) ) ) ' When Maria was 25 she married Henry Rivera. His family had migrated to Rosa from Cimmaron and Monero, New Mexico. Henry had worked in the mines at Silverton and also worked for the railroad. The Riveras stayed at Rosa untll 1949 when they bought a farm near Allison. Their 10 children are: Cecilia (deceased), Bennie, Mary (deceased), Gilbert, Pete, Fred, Anna Marie, Orlando, Agnes and Richard. In addition to the children Maria has 23 grandchildren. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) In 1956 Maria moved to Ignacio. She has worked at various jobs since then. The children are scattered all over the country, and because of this Maria has got to do something she never thought possible. "I have traveled all over this country. I never thought I'd do that. The way I was raised people stayed at home. We didn't expect to fo anywhere and we couldn't with our livestock and crops and gardens. Now I've been to Los Angeles, Connecticut. Rhode Island and New York to see my children. I'd rather ride a burro than these little planes that come to Durango, but once I get to Denver the big planes are nice. _) August, 1976 - Shelby Smith ) ) ) _J __) _) ) .J ...J ..J -..J J -..J .J J ...J ...J ..J -.) ~ 145 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Maria (Abeyta) Rivera Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1976-08 Subject The topic of the resource Rivera, Maria (Abeyta); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Maria (Abeyta) Rivera based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the August, 1976 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rivera, Maria (Abeyta) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/f6df02712b2679c5c0e84da06a8d41a2.pdf 799fc300341c77c3992523e4e5d605af PDF Text Text PAULINE (De Herrera) RODRIQUEZ When Pauline Ruth De Herrera was born at Antonito, Colorado, on Sept. 15, 1907, Spanish people had been living in the Rio Grande and San Luis Valleys for a very long time. The dates in the graveyards, if nothing else, will testify to that. The old Conejos communities of Antonito, Las Mesitas, Mannasa and Espioza still maintain a Spanish flavor. The Las Mesitas Church with its two steeples is a striking landmark. Beside it is the church yard where generations of Paulina's ancestors are buried. Paulina's parents Alfred and Adala De Herrera, owned a home and small acreage near Antonito, but in the summer the whole family headed for the mountains. Alfred was a cowboy. "In May many farmers turned their cattle over to him to take into the high summer range near Cumbres. Dad would drive the cattle along, sometimes as many as 500, and Mother and all of us children followed in the buggy. We had a cabin overlooking a big meadow. It was such a carefree life. We picked strawberries by the gallons. They were small, but, oh, so sweet. Other days mother sent us for gooseberries. Once in the gooseberry patch my brother Chris and I got a terrible fright. We were picking when suddenly we came to a place under some overhanging branches where the grass and flowers were flattened like a nest. Some of the stems were still springing up. It was so plain we had just roused some animal (our imagination told us it was a bear.) We screamed and threw our buckets into the air and ran. Occasionally, we took off a little time for fishing. Our favorite place was La Laguna Azul, a beautiful mountain lake with gold water lilies along one side. We caught a lot of fish there. Always we wanted to see a deer, but we never saw one. I guess those mountains were hunted out in those days. About once a month we went down to Antonito to stock up on groceries. We would leave on Saturday and come back on Monday. Dad had two beautiful mares just for our buggy trips. We had such a relaxed and carefree life until the fall when the cattle were branded and moved down to the farms." Pauline remembers one time that was definitely not carefree. In the spring of 1911 there was a terrible flood all across Southern Colorado. Alfred was already in the mountains with the cattle. When Adala and the children awoke that morning the fields around them were a lake. "There was water in every direction. My grandmother Lujan was there with us and we decided it might be higher at her place in Las Mesitas, so mother went out and hitched up the mares. We went through deep water, but the real trouble came when we got to Las Mesitas Ditch (which was as large as the Allison Ditch). The bridge was washed away and the men on the other side said, 'don't come across. The mares will drown and so will you!' My mother was very brave. She said it was better to try than be trapped on the low side. The mares went clear under. Mother jumped from the buggy and lifted the heads of the mares out of the water. Finally, one of the men jumped in to help and the mares began to swim. When we got to the other shore, we were all soaked to the bone and crying. There was water around Grandmother Lujan's house, too; but it didn't get any deeper. In a couple of days it went down. All our chickens were gone and everybody's crops were ruined." 14 6 �'l 'l ....., '1 'l ' 1 l 1 J 7 ) ) ) ) } ) ) Idyllic and pleasant as a Rocky Mountain summer can be, winter is another thing, especially in the Sun Luis Valley. Then the valley becomes a cold and windy place with vast, drafty blizzards howling down its length. Every evening before bed Pauline and Chris had to peel enough potatoes for the next day and place them in water to keep them white. "Every morning the house was cold. Dad got up first to light the coal oil lamp and to build a fire in the kitchen. Then I had to get up to slice and start frying those potatoes. Then mother got up and made biscuits, white gravy, fried eggs and always oatmeal with lots of fresh milk and butter." Pauline and all the children needed a good breakfast, since they walked three miles to school at Espinoza. Sometimes it was an ordeal. "When the weather got real bad, my father wrapped our feet in gunny sacks and tied them to our ankles with wire. At school our teacher would unwrap the sacks, hang them to dry by the fire, and then help us put them back on when it was time to leave. That was all we could do because, of course, none of us had overshoes." Pauline feels that one mistake many parents made at that time was to keep their children out of school too much. "Some of the boys in the 5th and 6th grades were great big things, old enough to be in high school today and when they would get restless and bad, I can remember the teachers sending them to the river to bring their own willows to be whipped." ) ) ) ) ) ) .J ) _) _) _) J ..J J J ._J J .J J J J J ._I .J Alfred DeHerrera liked politics. In Paulina's words, "He was always 'taken' by politics." About 1924 Alfred decided to run for sheriff of Conejos County. If there was any big money around to buy the politicians into office, Alfred didn't get any of it. He had to use his own. When he lost the election, the family was nearly broke. To help recover the losses Alfred moved the family to Millikin which was about half.way between Denver and Ft. Collins where he could get farm work. "We didn't stay there very long. It was strange country to us. Dad worked long enough to buy a car and then we headed back for the valley. We stopped to visit someone in Salida. While we were there, Dad found a job in a creosote plant, so we stayed and bought a home there. I was about 16 or 17 by then." Soon afterward Pauline met Vic Rodriquez. "Vic was one of 12. His mother was dead. My mama tried to help those kids. She sewed and mended their clothes and asked them in for cookies and did many other things which only a mama can do." Vic was working on the tram line to Shirley when he turned sweet on Pauline. "He began signing his checks and just handing them to me. Mama said I better not spend any of that because if Vic and I broke up, there could be trouble over the money. So I put it all in the bank." Vic and Pauline were married in 1928. Pauline handed Vic $900.00, every penny of what he had given to her. With the $900.00 Vic set up a saw mill at Trujillo southwest of Pagosa. Whatever lumber wasn't sold locally was trucked to Juanita and shipped on the train to other markets. Later Vic moved his mill to Blanco Basin and finally to Red Creek north of Bayfield . When the government started building Vallecito Dam in 1937, Pauline got a new job. She started doing laundry for all the crews working on the dam. "I had a gasoline powered Maytag that ran from 7:00 a.m. till 7:00 p.m. every day. There were 14 7 �clotheslines stretched from tree to tree. I guess we were the first mountain laundramat. I made about $10.00 per day. Sometimes my neighbor Mrs. Millsap would help and I gave her half of what I made." Pauline has good memories of Red Creek since most of the kids were raised there. "They were good kids. We never had trouble with any of them. I guess being raised in the mountains, they would have to be good kids. We always had plenty to do, both work and fun. Every Saturday there was a dance. Someone brought a guitar and someone a violin and did we dance! But no drinking. It seems like ii snowed more then, but it didn't seem so hard on people then. We always had fun in the winter. If we needed food, we'd hitch up a team to the sled and go lo town. All those years seem so carefree. We never had any worries. I didn't think I ever had any worries until Vic died. We had just bought this house and lived here two months when he died." Pauline has seven children. All of them are married. Irene lives in Bayfield; Ernest in Bellingham, Washington; Melvin in Ignacio; Jeanie in Farmington; Helen in Los Angeles; Delia Rae in Bloomfield; and Mary Ann in Colorado Springs. Pauline has 30 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. A lot of years have passed, but Pauline well remembers the "Star" automobile Vic bought to bring her to Trujillo. She remembers the frightful, narrow road over Wolf Creek Pass and how much she really didn't want to leave Salida. "I always missed Salida. I liked it there and didn't want to leave. And I have always missed the Italians. They were good neighbors, nice people. All of the years we've spent on this side of the divide I've been happy, but I never felt really at home. I always had in the back of my mind a wish to go back over there, but the last few years I feel different. Ignacio is a nice town with a lot of nice people. I think I belong here now." June, 1975-Shelby Smith 148 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pauline (De Herrera) Rodriquez Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1975-06 Subject The topic of the resource Rodriquez, Pauline (De Herrera) Description An account of the resource Biography of Pauline (De Herrera) Rodriquez based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the June, 1975 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rodriquez, Pauline (De Herrera) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 3 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/6e0c4f410bbd8194782e808e1c2d213f.pdf 27227af8ba5982b2f57f98a2ebee5d9c PDF Text Text 'l 'J 'j ' 'l J } J i J l ) , ) ) ) ) ) ) ) _) ) ) ) ) ) _) .) _J ...J ..) .) .J J ...) J ...) ROSITA ROMERO Rosita's daughter, Louise Pesata, believes her mother is in her mid-nineties, but on one knows exactly, for the Taos people did not count the years or the days when she was born. They told their children, "you were born in the snow time or when the leaves were green." Any exact records of her birth were destroyed when the Guadalupe Church burned many years ago, but none of th is counting of years and of dates is of any concern to Rosita. What she does know is that she was born in a dwelling on the second level of the north pueblo at Taos. The same dwelling has been her home for about 90 years and is still her home whenever she wishes to go there. Rosita is the only child of Venturo Romero (he died of a stroke when she was a young child) and of Manuelita Lujan Romero, who lived until 1927. When Rosita was 6 years old, she and many other children in the pueblo were sent to the Indian School at Santa Fe. They were loaded into wagons and driven to Taos Junction to meet the train which came from Alamosa on its way to Santa Fe. This particular train and route was known as the "Chili Line." All students were issued uniforms, the principal feature of which was a large, wide-brimmed, black straw hat. She spent three years at the school. Her memory of those years is primarily of "looking at the books," and "playing on the swings" and of how long the year seemed with no vacations for holidays or feast days. After third grade Rosita attended a one room school near Taos for a while and that was enough school for her. When Rosita was a young woman, the town of Taos began to change from a small, but historic town into a sophisticated center for well known artists and authors. The attraction for the Taos Valley to the artists and their wealthy followers is evident to anyone who visits there today. Its climate and beauty and blend of cultures is still a stimulating environment. The influx of wealthy people was a fortunate circumstance for Rosita, since it provided her with plentiful work as a domestic servant. It was necessary for her to work, since she supported her daughter Louisa entirely by herself. In the course of her work, Rosita was employed by artists such as Blanche C. Grant, Victor Higgins, Eleanor Kissel and John Baldin. She also worked for Dr. Thomas Martin who was clinic doctor in the 1920's, and for John Collier, one of the Indian Commissioners. During all the years of work which only ended when she retired in 1973, Rosita walked the 3 miles from the Pueblo to her place of work and home again through snow and rain and summer heat. At home Rosita's life was little different from the lives of her ancestors hundreds of years ago. The pueblo allows no plumbing, electricity or other changes. Rosita carried all her water from the river, gathered all her wood for fires in the canyons and hauled it on her back to the village and up the ladder to her dwelling. In her spare time she gathered food for the winter, various greens and wild spinaches, mushrooms, plums and chokecherries to be dried. Her principal craft was the making of shoes and moccasins. She learned to scrape and dry and tan the deer skins. One of the most common tanning agents was boiled animal brains, which were rubbed and worked into the drying leather. Rosita chose moccasin making because it could be stopped and J ..) J J -..) J 14 9 �resumed easily at spare moments before or after working in town. Other crafts such as pottery making cannot be interrupted so often. Most of the people at the pueblo are initiated members of one of the clans known as the "knife people", the "wooden earring people", the "water people", etc. Rosita is one of the "water people". Each clan has its own initiation procedures, its secrets, its ceremonies, its projects and its own sacred religious traditions, much of which is probably hundreds of years old. Initiated members receive the security and encouragement of an extended family. Both men and women can be members of the clans, and all attend some meetings in the kivas. However, the clans are definitely male dominated and many meetings are limited to the men. Taos people believe the preseivation of their culture is strongly dependent upon the maintenance of the clans. Therefore, they diligently encourage all their children to be initiated into one of the clans where they can learn the songs, legends and ancient religion of the pueblo. One of the efforts of the clans is to give the young members instruction and practice in the various dances and songs as the feast days approach. The principal feasts occur at Christmas with the deer dance, at New Years with the turtle dance, at January 6th with the Buffalo dance. The corn dances are performed in May, June and July and St. Jerome's feast is on September 30th. Today more than half of the Taos People live outside the pueblos, a trend which is a little worrisome lo the tribe. The pueblo itself was frozen to any further additions or changes about 15 years ago. Maintenance of the ancient structures is a never-ending task. All snow must be immediately removed from the roofs to prevent seepage and rotting of roof timbers. Each family is responsible for its own roof. All exterior walls are mud-stuccoed every summer. Though Rosita is alert and surprisingly agile for a person in her 90's, a scary fall on one of the ladders in 1979 convinced her granddaughter, Josephine Lefthand, that it was time for Rosita to leave the pueblo. Until that time Rosita was still climbing the ladders with her water and fuel. Presently, Rosita lives comfortably with Tom and Josephine in Ignacio. From time to time she returns to Taos lo visit her daughter and to attend the feasts. At home she still bakes bread and tortillas for her grandchildren. She only recently stopped dancing at the pow-wows. When the grandchildren try to tease her into joining the dances again, she tells them, "I've done my part. Now you do yours." P.S. Rosita is adjusting very nicely lo using thermostats, the electric range, etc. in her granddaughter's home. Shelby Smith - November, 1980 (Special thanks lo Josephine Lefthand for translating the inteiview) 150 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rosita Romero Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1980-11 Subject The topic of the resource Romero, Rosita; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Rosita Romero based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the November, 1980 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Romero, Rosita Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby; Lefthand, Josephine https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/31d04563d1957a7d824995c9fbffc64e.pdf 285bf5fb5a81c5de2149479d4f11532e PDF Text Text 'l ~ 'l ' J BESSIE FLORINE "Ma" (Glynn) SEIBEL 1 Bessie Florine Glynn was born in Osceola, Iowa, on August 31, 1894, the daughter of John and Antoinette Glynn. When Bessie was two years old, her family moved to Milwaukee where they lived most of the time until she was married. John, who was a steam shovel engineer, spent most of his time away from home working construction jobs or strip mining in Illinois and Indiana. As a member of a union John would work one job until it was finished, then he was bumped to the bottom of the list to wait his tum for another project. "It was like Santa Claus every time he came home" Bessie said. J '1 ,l l 7 ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) } } ) ) _) ) ..J __J ..J _) J J J .J ..J J ..J J .J J .J Milwaukee (1896-1920) was in many ways a delightful place to live. It was a big town but not a metropolis. Bessie remembers riding the streetcars, which went everywhere and the jitney buses (early versions of the taxi), vehicles of every description which would transport a passenger from any point in the city to any other point for five cents. When Bessie was old enough for school, her mother got a job as a fitter in a department store. Bessie became interested in active sports. She enjoyed ice skating and was a member of the girl's basketball team. "We were a good team as a rule, but we didn't do so well when we played South Side High. They were all great big Polish girls, so big you couldn't get under, over, or around them," Bessie recalls. The third sport Bessie enjoyed, and the one for which she showed the most promise was sassing the teacher. "I was never able to hold dignitaries in high regard unless they deserved it and most of my teachers did not deserve it," stated Ma. Milwaukee was and is the beer capitol of the world. In that time there was a saloon on every corner. "Ma" says she used to have nightmares about being caught by a drunk, but they never succeeded. Bessie had known Milton Seibel for a long time. He and she had attended the same schools for years. As the two youngsters grew up and entered high school, Bessie and Milton developed new eyes for one another. Bessie recalls being in the same assembly (we call it study hall today) as Milton. During those endless silent hours Milton occasionally wrote notes, folded them into paper airplanes, and when the teacher wasn't looking, he sailed them to Bessie. The system worked well until one afternoon the guidance system on one of the notes failed and it made a fatal flight onto the teacher's desk. Milton, of course, was kicked out of assembly, but that was only the beginning of his interest in Bessie. In subsequent years they dated frequently going to dances, shows and dining out. Sometimes they would hear Fritz Kreisler in a violin concert, or Madam Melba or Shuman Heinck. Afterwards they would choose a fine restaurant where they ordered all the fine Chinese food they could eat for twenty-five cents . "We didn't mooch in the back seat of a car," confides Ma, "because we didn't have a car, but we spent a lot of time sitting on the landing of the staircase in our apartment. The first time Milton asked me to marry him, I said 'no'. I remember it clearly. We were reading the Saturday Evening Post." BessiE: said no that time because America had just declared war on Germany and Milton had volunteered to go. "I didn't want to have a baby and be left alone to raise it in case he didn't come back." Bessie and all her sorority friends in Delta Sigma rolled bandages and knitted socks for the war effort. Bessie was knitting at home, at work, on the streetcars, everywhere she went. Milton was gone 22 months. He and Bessie were married as soon as he returned. The Seibels might have spent the remainder of their lives in Milwaukee had it not been for an aunt in Pagosa Springs who wrote glowing accounts of the opportunities of 151 �homesteading and ranching in southwest Colorado. Their parents and her sorority friends were appalled at the prospect of moving to the wilderness, but the Seibels were both working in Milwaukee and getting nowhere, so they were excited at the prospect of an entirely new life. They rode the train to Pagosa Springs in the summer of 1919 and bought 160 acres of cut-over dry land 10 miles northwest of Pagosa at O'Neill Park. The Seibels started a dairy farm, raised alfalfa and some wheat. Ma helped Milton in the field when necessary and did fancy work for cash. When Bessie's mother came to visit, life was still pretty rustic on the farm. There were no indoor toilets and all water had to be hauled from a soft water spring on their place. Mrs. Glynn couldn't understand why anyone would want to live in such circumstances, but Bessie felt then and still says, "It was all an adventure. The country was beautiful." Their farm was located about halfway between the ranches on the upper Piedra and Pagosa. Most evenings some traveler would stop for dinner and would bed down for the night. "Ma" enjoyed the company, but she did tell one rancher he couldn't come back without his wife. "I was tired of hunting stories. I wanted some woman talk." The first motorized vehicle the Seibels owned was a motorcycle with a side car. There were two kinds of rides on the cycle. Rough and dusty and rough and muddy. On one trip to the upper Piedra, the cycle bogged down to the hubs. Milton and Bessie had to stay the night with an old bachelor who lived nearby. Bessie had always enjoyed working in the field with the horses, but when Milton began buying mechanized equipment, she retired to the house. Besides the boys were growing and beginning to do their share of the work. Willard was first. Then Glenn, Ed and Don were born. The country schoolhouse for the area was nearby. Most years the schoolteacher would stay with the Seibels. Some of the school marms were first year teachers and were only 18 years old. "Ma" says the teachers were very interesting people and provided companionship and good conversation on the long winter evenings. In 1935 Milton and Bessie went into debt $5,000.00 to buy an irrigated farm near Arboles. It made Bessie very uneasy to owe a sum which at that time seemed so enormous. They raised hay, grains, pigs, sheep and cattle. Bessie had a large garden with two or three hundred tomato plants some years. There was lots of work and no vacations until 1952 when they stopped for a few weeks to take a trip to California and Montana and then back to Milwaukee to see old friends. After an extended illness, Milton died at home in 1961. "Ma" is a fine lady with a generous heart. Time has not dulled her words. She still has the same sassy tongue she took to school in 1910. "I have a tremendous memory forridiculous things," Ma states. If you don't believe her, just ask her for a song. Regarding work, she says, "I've graduated, but the word 'go' I like." Shelby Smith, February, 1974 152 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bessie Florine "Ma" (Glynn) Seibel Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1974-02 Subject The topic of the resource Seibel, Bessie Florine "Ma" (Glynn); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Bessie Florine "Ma" (Glynn) Seibel based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the February, 1974 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Seibel, Bessie Florine "Ma" (Glynn) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/cfbd84a625653ede51e5f41c0194e0f6.pdf 0badfd3b3ae315566b7f7aac8e9c15af PDF Text Text MARTHA LOUISE (Miller) SEMLER Martha Louise Miller was born near Kennan, Wisconsin, April 14, 1904. Her parents were Gustave Alvin Miller and Wilhimina Krate Miller, both of whom immigrated from Germany when they were teenagers. Gustave's family was fairly wea1thy. Therefore when he got to New York, he attended school to learn English. Wilhimina couldn't afford school when she arrived at Baltimore. "However," Martha recalls, "my mother spoke good English with no accent, while my dad, for all his schooling, always had a heavy German brogue." "Both my parents were naturalized citizens within a year. They met at the Amana Colony near Des Moines, Iowa, where they got jobs. Two years later they got married. Dad worked in a brewery, then took up farming first in Iowa then in northern Wisconsin where I was born, the youngest of 10. These are my brothers and sisters in order. The oldest was Minnie, then Emma, Ann, Marie (who died at age 2), Margaret, Augusta, Elvina, Ed, Paul, and Martha." "Dad farmed in the summer and was a logger in winter. I remember he saved the tamarack bark to sell to the tannery. No one ever irrigates anything in Wisconsin. Most of the time there's too much water. Our river bottom land was like a sponge much of the year. It was a trick to raise hay there. Only at certain times could we work and only with oxen. They never bog down. After the hay was cut we raked it by hand with wooden rakes with pegs for teeth. I can still remember my dad carving new pegs for the rakes." ) ) J ) _) _) .-.J J ...) J .....J ...) ....J _) ._J J "I never saw anybody ride a horse till we moved to Colorado. My brother even hitched an ox to our buggy to deliver cream - to town." "Wisconsin," Martha says, "is wonderful for wild fruit and nuts, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, etc., and hickory, hazelnuts, butternuts, chestnuts. We gathered two sacks full of them and put them in the attic of the woodshed to dry and cure. Every fall our neighbors cut and shipped box car loads of greenery to the cities for Christmas wreaths. My mother taught me to card and spin wool thread when I was 10. I wish I had a spinning wheel now. It was fun." "I might still be in Wisconsin if our doctor hadn't told Dad mother's health would be better at a higher altitude. Dad headed west, intending to go as far as Oregon where Emma lived. But in Denver, Dad met Mr. Hoffman who was looking for someone to manage the H&H Ranch south of Oxford. Dad agreed to take the job for 2 months to see if he liked it. After a month he sent for us. All that were left at home were Mother, my 2 brothers and me. I didn't like it at first. I was accustomed to a nice home with a lawn. I missed my friends. I attended the old, white school at Oxford. (It's been moved to Amy McCaw's place.) I met Horace and Ralph Buchanan, the Boyce girls, Jim and Jack Turner, John Gibert, the Hayden kids and many others. My first teacher was Myrtle Mcchesney from Allison. Later she married Anthony Morris. Soon we moved near the Pine River Switch to prove out some homestead land and stayed there until I was married at 15." ....J ....J ....) ._J 153 �Martha and Gustave Semler, whom she married in 1919, farmed near Oxford for a year then moved to Sable Canyon on Spring Creek. There Martha plowed with 3 horses, helped run the binder and shock and stack 45 acres of grain. Later they worked another place on Spring Creek which had regular irrigation. "We went to Ignacio about every two weeks for business or supplies. From Ignacio it took three and half to four hours lo ride to Durango if you had a horse with a good running walk." "I remember our mail carrier, Melvin Walker, drove a wagon with a cover over it and a stove inside. He arrived at our box at 4:00 p.m. and then had to go all the way back to Ignacio. Arthur Capell used a car when he took over that route." Martha had five children: Paul lives west of Ignacio; Herbert died at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital at the age of 22; Betty lives at Olathe; Bill lives north of Ignacio; and Michael lives at Sheridan, Wyoming. One summer when Paul was a baby, Gustave took a herd of Arthur Jones's sheep to pasture up near the Needle Mountains. In mid-summer Martha took little Paul on horseback to the camp. It snowed, rained and hailed every day. In late summer she helped move the herd back to Spring Creek. "I could pack a burro and move camp like a man, then." The Semlers lived in Durango, Dulce, and Ft. Lewis before moving to the Chromister Place one mile north of Oxford. This was depression time and life was very hard. For 9 months Martha milked 30 cows morning and evening. "My hands swelled to twice their size. It was too much work, but in a depression, you do what you have to do. I also broke horses to ride or to plow, for $25 per head. We lost the farm north of Oxford. From then on I raised and supported my children alone. We moved lo Ignacio. Paul was only 13, but we tried to farm the James place (where Candelaria subdivision is located). Next we lived on the Johannsen Place at Tiffany and ran the cream station for Shaefers. In the spring I dropped corn (planted) all day long for $.50. The older children and I worked at whatever we could to survive. When Paul went to the war, he sent us an allotment which made life easier." Today, Martha has 15 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren lo enjoy. She has a house full of mementoes and memories of her parents and of a life of pioneering in the north woods and the western mountains. Martha still has spunk and energy and a wealth of skills which she will share with others if they want to learn. She tells great stories, many of which we don't have room to tell here. Shelby Smith -- January, 1978 154 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Martha Louise (Miller) Semler Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1978-01 Subject The topic of the resource Semler, Martha Louise (Miller); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Martha Louise (Miller) Semler based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the January, 1978 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Semler, Martha Louise (Miller) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/e14e14edfb22871f56916380bf8cb06e.pdf 2105be8e535755314dfc28d91ec87934 PDF Text Text Ethel Smith I was born in Collbran, CO, Mesa County, September 1i 11, 1908. I went to a country school, one room school, and then I road three miles horseback to high school. And, I graduated from Collbran Union High School in 1926. [After high school] I started in school in Gunnison, CO, and I went five and half weeks. I road on the train from Grand Junction to Montrose, and then on to Gunnison. I was homesick at the end of one semester, so I went back to Grand Junction, and then on to Collbran in the fall. My parents sold their property and we moved to Missouri. I went to school at Missouri Teachers' College in Springfield, MO. My friend came down from Collbran to MO. In the spring we decided to quit school and go to Marysville to pick strawberries. We found out from the school that they needed teachers. So, we decided to take the teachers' exam. The last exam was on MO history-I looked at her [my friend] and she looked at me, and we got up and walked out. My folks came back to Collbran, after a year in MO. I took the CO state teachers' exam, and taught my first school north ofDebeque, CO. Then, the next year I went to Hayden and taught at a rural school on a cattle ranch. That's where I met my cowboy boyfriend. We were married in 1931. I taught at rural schools, here and there, for the next eight years. Then I taught my last year of school in Uravan. My husband was working in the mines down in Arizona, and our son was 18 months old. So I went down to AZ, and we lived there until 1944. In 1944, we traded our house in AZ for a ranch southeast ofBayfield, CO. My husband was in a later draft [for WWII], but he was "frozen" in the mines. He worked in the copper mines in Jerome, AZ. If you worked in that big copper mine, you were "frozen" [from the draft]. When we moved to CO, then he had to get an agricultural status or he would have been drafted. In the fall [of 1944 ?], somebody had heard that I had taught school. And, so, the school board came up and wanted to know if I wanted to teach at the Pink school, which was about two miles south of our ranch. My son was in the fourth grade [at that time]. I taught there for two years. Stuck in the mud, rode horse back. .. I taught all grades, one through eight. One of my students, who was in the fifth grade, sent me some pictures. I had one picture from when I taught there (from '44-' 45 and '45-' 46). She sent me some pictures, because she went to school there in '41-'42 and '42-'43. Then, I went to Bayfield. There [in Bayfield] I had the seventh grade. Then they unified the districts, and the students started corning in on buses from out towards Pagosa Springs. I had the seventh grade for two years upstairs in the old Bayfield building. When the gym was finished there were two rooms above it. So, I taught over the gym for nine years. You know, the kids never paid any attention to the noise, and I never paid any attention to the noise. There were basketballs-Bang, Bang, music downstairs (under the two rooms), but I don't think anyone ever said anything about the noise. �I did go to Mesa College in Grand Junction one semester, when we came back from MO. So, I had no college credits you might say. College teachers came from University of CO, CO State University, from Western State, from Adams State. There were classes at Fort Lewis [College], and I just started taking classes. So, in 1957 I had a degree: BA degree. They paid $1,000 more in Ignacio, and we were still on the ranch. So, it was about halfway between Ignacio and Bayfield, and I came to Ignacio. And, do you know the story about Benjamin Franklin paying too much for his whistle? Well, I paid too much for my whistle when I came to Ignacio [to teach]. It was the second year that Ignacio schools had been consolidated, and the buses had started to bring the kids in. At the end of the first week I told my husband I wasn't going back. I told the principal that I was not going back. I had one raunchy class: over age Spanish kids. They had been retained in the first grade, they had probably been retained in the third or fourth. At the junior high up here, if you failed two classes, then you were retained in that grade. I had Spanish kids (junior high) sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. Five teachers had resigned the year before. So, I told the principal, "I'm not coming back Monday," and he said, "Oh yes you are!" So, I went back on Monday, and a Mr. Ackerd from MO met me at the door. He said, "I'm taking that raunchy class of yours upstairs, and I'm sending you ninth graders that don't know enough to tie their shoes and come to school. You won't have any trouble with them." And, I had a tough principal, I'll tell you, a tough principal. I was in junior high [in Ignacio] until 1961. I saw a bulletin in the teachers' room that said there was an institute over at the University of Nebraska in Guidance and Counseling. I had no idea what it was all about. But, I applied for it, and I had told the superintendent that I had applied for it. And, he said, "Well, go ahead and apply for it, but you won't get it." That [the institute] was for second semester. I applied for it and was accepted. I called him [the superintendent] and told him I was accepted, and he said, "You can't go unless you get somebody to take your place." I was teaching math in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Jake Candeleria, who owns Candeleria Heights up here, went to high school with my son. He came up and said that he had just finished college at Adams State, and was wondering where Larry [Ethel's son] was. I told him that he was working over in Mancos, and Jack said that he was desperately in need of a job. He said, "I'm so angry with Mr. Powell (the superintendent). I went down to talk with him, and he said that he didn't have any job for me." I said to Mr. Candeleria, "Well, what's your major?" He said, "Math." So, I let him have my job so that I could go to the institute in Nebraska. That was in '61, and the institute didn't start until February. I was on my way the last day of January, and we didn't get out 'til the last of June. When I came back, Mr. Powell gave me the job to start a guidance program. After Sputnik, these institutes were set up by the government in science and math. After that ran the gamut, they thought that all of these people needed guidance and counseling. So, the government started these guidance and counseling institutes, and �they paid us $7 5 per week. I had no more idea of what I was doing than the man on the moon. But, I started the [guidance] program in elementary clear on through high school. Then I was high school counselor. The most that I did was to find out where money came from for kids to go on to school. And, I worked a lot with minority students. I worked with the Indian students a lot. Mr. Dietz, the superintendent at the time, called me and said that Mr. Scott was going to take the Indian students, he was to be my cocounselor and he would take the Indian kids. Mr. Dietz told me to set up meetings with the students and find out who wants to go to Mr. Scott; who was Navajo married to a Ute. He never got an Indian kid, I got all the Indians and he got all the white kids. I would say to them, "why don't you go to Mr. Scott?" They replied, "we don't want to work with an Indian." I retired in '74. I have belonged for many years to Delta Kappa Gamma, an international teachers' organization. They send out a bulletin, and in one bulletin they advertised for a social studies and English teacher at Navajo Community College. You know, I didn't even know what a resume was. You never heard of the word "resume". So, I sent an application in, but they hired a teacher from Canada who had had ESL [English as a Second Language training]. In two years, shwe decided to go back to Canada, anfd the chairperson at the college asked me to come for an interview. I was substituting at the high school [at the time], so I didn't go [for the interview] until spring vacation. I was hired, and was there for 20 years. Well, I'm 95 now and I stayed there 'til I was 88, I'll let you do your math. I came home every two weeks for 20 years. And, you know, I never thought anything about the roads, I never had a flat tire-I couldn't have changed it ifI did. I had my first one up here about two months ago. I have the one son, and he left school when he was a junior and went into the Navy. His ship helped to evacuate the French when they were leaving Indochina. There was a French soldier who had been there for seven years, hadn't been home for seven years, and he traded Larry a gun for a can of beans. He said they were starving. And then, he helped evacuate the Chinese-Cheng Kaichek, you know? He has a lot of pictures. He has a picture of a little girl, who had died, and they dressed her, put her in a chute, and buried her in the ocean. He has pictures where the ship was just crammed with Chinese. He went in when he was 17 and got out three years later. After he got out he went into an agricultural program. He had a friend, who had a shoe shop, and he persuaded Larry to learn to do shoe repair. So, Larry went to Denver (he was married then), to the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, which is a famous school. He went there almost a year, and came back and had his shoe shop. Then he wanted to learn how to make cowboy boots, so he sent to Oklahoma to a junior college. He was there almost a year, then came back. We had the shop over here where the Peddler's is located. My parents farmed, dad was a good farmer. My dad came from the Indian Territory in 1898. He sold his farm, and his older sister, his older brother, and his older sister's daughter and her baby came to Glenwood Springs (on up from Grand Junction). �In the middle of the winter they came to Glenwood Springs, and the climate is about like Durango. I don't know how they got to Collbran, but he played the violin or he played the fiddle, and that's where he met my mother. My mother was born in Boulder. She was 34 when I was born. She was 28 when they were married and my dad was 37. We can't find anything out about my dad's ancestors, because we didn't listen. I didn't listen to my dad. And, I didn't know until long after he was gone, but he grew up with blacks and Indians. I didn't know that after the Civil War, the blacks were encouraged to settle in Oklahoma, to homestead in OK. But, what I remember was they would swim in the creeks, and there was a small pox epidemic. They would line up along the banks and keep the Indians and the blacks from going in the water. Because, you know, then they wouldn't break out, and a lot of them died. There was an old, old Indian who lived up from where my dad lived, and it wasn't derogatory then to say "nigger". My dad always called him "Nigger John", and never thought anything about it. But, the reason my dad came to CO, he had an older brother who came to the San Luis Valley (over by Alamosa). I don't know why [the brother] came to Alamosa. There he met a Mormon woman, got married, had 12 children over the years, and moved to Collbran. I don't know why he came to CO [the older brother?]. But, people did move about. I have a book on both sides of my mother's family. All I know is that she was Pennsylvania Dutch, but German from way back. My grandmother's grandmother, I think it was, her husband was killed by the nobility in Germany. She escaped, she had an older child who had come to America, but she escaped into France and Switzerland. A single woman couldn't come on the ship to America, so she married a Hessian soldier. But, she couldn't pay the passage for her youngest child, so he was bound out to somebody for the passage. My mother's maiden name was Strock, my maiden name is Barker. I joined the D.A.R. [Daughters of the American Revolution] about 35 years ago. I can go back on either side of my mom's family: her father was a Tylson, and her mother's side, which was Strock. But, Strock had been three different spellings: Strauck, Strack, and Strock. So, it was easier to go back on her mother's side, on the Strock side. My grandfather was English. I go back to the Mayflower on the English side. My genealogy goes back to when they first came to America, and that was the first generation. I'm about the eleventh generation, I think. There is a Tylson reunion in NY every year. They have Larry's name and my sister's four children's names. I had one ancestor who fought at Valley Forge, it could have been a Tylson or a Strock. My dad was born in Coles [?] County, Illinois. His dad was a horse trader, so they moved from one place to another. I can remember that my dad had a brother named Red, because my dad said that he was the only redheaded one in the family. He also had a brother who settled in MO. There was a big family in the Barkers. My son looks like a Barker in the face: they have thin noses and faces. There are no fat ones in that family. My grandson, Kenny, has red hair, and will be 24 on the 31 st of January [2004]. He was born on my way to Nebraska. �I know that this house was hauled up here in 1948 [the house was ordered from a Montgomery Ward catalog]. Thank God that the woodwork has never been painted-this is the original woodwork. There are doors in this house you can't believe. I think there are about 11 doors in here. Interviewed by Michael Miller, Americorps*VISTA for the Ignacio Historical Society, December 9th, 2003. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael Miller Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/ Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2003-2004 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of twelve biographies written by VISTA worker Michael G. Miller of prominent people in the Ignacio community. Based on interviews conducted by Miller between December 9, 2003 and March 15, 2004. Some contain the additional attribution "for the Ignacio Historical Society." Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Miller, Michael G. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ethel Smith Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2003-12-09 Subject The topic of the resource Smith, Ethel; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Ethel Smith written by VISTA worker Michael Miller and based on an interview conducted by Miller on December 9, 2003. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Smith, Ethel Extent The size or duration of the resource. 5 pages https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/ecf8d7f5636288f8a6c6cab0f6196a03.pdf cff9bfc4dad5a4a503331e418395da42 PDF Text Text ri ~ 'l 'l 'l "J 'l l 'l ) ') l J -, l } ) ) ) Afterword (about the Author of most of these Stories) I blame my maternal grandparents, Edmon and Delia Throckmorton, for provoking me to write the short biographies in this collection. Ed and Delia were true covered wagon pioneers who homesteaded a farm in SW Oklahoma. When they entered that vast empty land in November of 1893, there were few neighbors and the nearest place to buy anything was the suttler's post 60 miles away at Ft. Reno. I loved to ask questions and listen to them talk about those days. They were the most interesting people I knew. Interviewing the older people in the Pine and Piedra Valleys was, perhaps, my way of bringing back those pleasant visits with my grandparents. I was born in Enid, Oklahoma in 1938. My dad Carl Smith was an expert mechanic and later service manager at the Chevrolet Agency. My mom, Orpha, was a newspaper reporter and later a tissue tech working with the pathologists at our hospital. I acquired a teaching degree at college, but the most fortunate thing that happened there was meeting a beautiful girl named Roberta Davidson, who became my best friend. We were married in 1963 ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ..J ....) ..J ..J _J _J _J _J _J ...) .._) In 1970 we bought several wooded acres with a log home in the Florida Valley near Durango. There we began to reenact in a small way the pioneer life of our grandparents. We built a cellar to store the produce from our garden, learned to harvest honey from our hives, raised pigs and milk goats and kept a colt for the enjoyment of the children. Raising such a large garden required lots of time and help -- so much so that on one bright, warm day our youngest, Brad, announced when he grew up he was going to find a job in the shade. He later did so. Adjacent to our property were several hundred acres of forested 8.L.M. land. This was our playground for hiking, mushroom hunting, flower identifying, berry picking, snow shoeing, cross country skiing, sledding, wildlife watching and Christmas tree cutting. In 1975 our family grew a bit when Roberta and I adopted a beautiful five-year-old girl from the reservation area. Annette's mother was Gladys Reddick who had died in 1974. With her cheerful and sprightly personality she has been one of the lights in our lives . During most of our years in La Plata County I worked for SUCAP, as a program director writing grant applications and doing the start-up and management of a variety of programs. I was there from September of 1973 until May of 1983. In time I became well acquainted with many of the members of the tribe as well as their Hispanic and Anglo neighbors. Our monthly newsletter, The Thoughtful Years, contained announcements of up coming events, news written by Charlotte Jones and Liva Pacheco and short biographical sketches of the Pine River people For twenty years Roberta was a full time stay-at-home mom, expert in all house and garden and culinary and child-rearing skills. About the time our youngest reached the age of 16, both of us decided to begin a second teaching career. For this we chose ..) ...) .._) I..) 183 �to work in Cortez. For the next 18 years Roberta taught French and I taught English once again. Art, our oldest son, received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas and currently is a research professor in nano science at Ohio University. Our daughter, Annette, is raising five little ones and is now a nurse specialist assigned to care for the many people of our area who suffer the after effects of working in uranium mines. Our youngest son, Brad (the one who wanted a job in the shade), received his law degree at Yale and currently works at one of the premier law firms in New York City. ) ) ) ) Roberta and I both retired from our teaching careers in 2003. Volunteer work has taken over part of our lives. We soon learned it wants lo take over all of it. So we are occupied with church events, projects for our Cortez Cultural Center, planning tours for an archeological preserve near our home, resuming watercolor painting, playing my violin, trying to stay toned and fit, and going on vacation as often as possible. In November of 2004 I was fortunate to survive a serious complication from a routine surgery. With a new awareness of how fragile life can be, I am very happy lo be here to write this little autobiographical sketch. Reading and editing these stories has once again reminded me how rich and wonderful it was to work in Ignacio. I wish to thank Donna, Manuel, Liva, Sally, Margaret, Claudelle, Phoebe, Hazel, Alice, Carmen, Joyce, Margie, Robert, Freddie, Gisela, Adela, the Arboles Honor Camp boys and many others for supporting everything I tried to do. I was always proud of them for the tender kindness they bestowed on the senior citizens and the disadvantaged people in this community. With warmest regards lo all, Shelby & Roberta Smith 184 1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Autobiography Subject The topic of the resource Smith, Shelby; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Autobiography by Shelby Smith included as afterword in his book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley." Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Smith, Shelby Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/0a0923b51a97ffe89e05da47dc0ea3e8.pdf 93d4ec610dadd4a746e54a36c2874330 PDF Text Text ~ ~ 'I ~ ~ ,, ' } 1 ) l ) 1 1 ) ) } ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) SUNSHINE (Burch) SMITH (TAV-NEE-JA-GET) Sunshine was born on October 20, 1916. Sunshine's parents loaded her and her luggage into their buggy and drove slowly to the railway station south of Ignacio. She was very excited and a little frightened to be going so far from home. Haskell Institute, a secondary school for Indian children was located in Lawrence, Kansas. With the help of the B .I.A. superintendent, Sunshine was enrolled at Haskell. She rode the train to Alamosa and in the evening boarded a Union Pacific Pullman for Kansas. After supper a porter approached her and said, "Little girl, your berth is ready." Sunshine slept, occasionally awakened by the roar of passing trains and the screeching of brakes as the train stopped in small plains towns. In the early morning hours, the porter came to her berth and said, "Little girl we're almost there." Sunshine dressed quickly and in a few minutes the train stopped and let her off. She was greeted by two girls from Haskell who told her they were to be her big sisters until she was settled in the new school. Haskell was a wonderful place. There were Indian students there from dozens of tribes all over the country. There were Senecas, Otoes, Pottawatomies, Pawnees, Creeks, Papagos and many more. Sunshine enjoyed the school band and the football team (which beat the University of Kansas) and especially enjoyed the "Indian Club." The club was intended to preserve Indian history and culture. It produced pageants depicting Tribal history for fairs and other public events. Sunshine says Fritz Box was there and was a member of a band called the "Night Hawks". Sunshine worked part time in a hospital in Lawrence and considered going on to nursing school. One of the nurses in the hospital took such a liking to Sunshine that she even offered to pay her way through nurses training in Independence, Missouri. Sunshine's parents, however, had other ideas. They decided she had been far away from home long enough. She spent the summer at home and after considerable thought, decided to go to college at the University of New Mexico. ) J _) _) ...) ..J J J J J J ...) J J J ...J ....J ...) Sunshine took many courses in Home Economics and Art, but the course she enjoyed most was probably horseback riding. She had to act a little inexperienced to get into the course, but the truth was Sunshine had ridden horses all her life and loved it. As a child she had ridden a horse to school in good weather and bad. The Ignacio School had a stable where the horses could eat their oats and rest for the ride home. By the time school was out both students and horses were "feeling their oats". Sunshine recalls, "We often raced our horses all the way home." Her love for horses and riding was a natural outgrowth of her family's race horse ventures. John Burch owned several race horses, hired men to train them, entered them at Cortez, Farmington, Montrose and Monte Vista and made good money at it. His best horse was called Bumblebee. Sunshine remembers crying to ride Bumblebee at the age of 8 or 9. Except for learning to jump horses over fences and hedges, the horseback riding course at the university served mainly as recreation. In the summers, Sunshine earned money working in the Ed C. Taylor Hospital in Ignacio. Later she worked at the hospital at Towaoc. Francis Buck was the secretary for Superintendent Mcspadden. Whenever he would come to Towaoc, Francis came, too, and she and Sunshine would have a good visit. Sunshine went to Indian School (Ute 1 55 �vocational) and was Assistant Matron to small Navajo girls. She then went back to Business School at Haskell. After graduation in the early 1940's Sunshine moved to Muncie, Indiana, and worked for the Owens-Illinois Glass Co. which made land mines. She made friends with a group of ladies who began talking about joining the W.A.C.'s. Finally, they talked themselves into joining. Basic training at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, was in the heat of mid-summer. It included K.P. duty and drill on a blistering parade ground. After basic training Sunshine was given the blitz courses for surgical technician. From there she was stationed at a hospital on Staten Island, New York. She well remembers the damp cold of that winter. P.O.W.'s were imprisoned in a nearby compound. "Every morning one of the prisoners was sent into our barracks to build our morning fire." Sunshine worked a while at a hospital in Utica, New York, and then was sent back to Staten Island for convoy duty. This was a 24 hour duty to receive the sick and wounded who were arriving back in the U.S. Some of these man had been involved in the European war for years. "Many of them cried when they got off the ships, they were so glad to be back in their own country. Some would ask to be taken off the stretchers so they could kiss the ground. We would get them settled in the hospital and then allow them one free phone call to their folks. It was all a very emotional and touching experience." After this Sunshine was given training in occupational therapy, the field in which she worked until she was discharged in 1945. By then she had reached the rank of T-4, Technical Sergeant. Sunshine was very happy to return to Ignacio. "The thing I missed the most was the mountains.'' She worked for a while at the girl's dorm and while there became acquainted with a fellow doing construction work and painting on the campus. Sunshine and Diamond Smith were married and soon afterward move to California, but not just to California - to Hollywood. They lived in Hollywood Hills overlooking the whole beautiful metro area of Los Angeles. She wouldn't mind living there again if it were as clean and uncrowded as it was then. In 1947 sunshine's only child Gayla was born. They lived in San Diego and in Bullhead City, Arizona, for a while before coming back to Ignacio. In 1950 Sunshine was elected to the Tribal Council. II was in interesting transitional period for the tribe. During the preceding decades the BIA superintendents had managed the affairs of the tribe in a paternalistic way, expecting the tribal council to act merely as "yes" men. About this time the council changed this. They began meeting separately rather than under the watchful eye of the BIA. Soon they began to act independently on all matters related to tribal policy and welfare. Sometime during 195254 the Southern Ute Tribe won their land claim case and was awarded a very large sum of money. It became the job of Sunshine, Eddie Box, Fritz Box, Jack Frost, Julius Cloud, Sam Burch and others of that period to create a program for administering the money. Of all the work required during those years it's obvious Sunshine is most proud of one idea she put forth. It was her idea to set up a trust fund for each Ute child. The youth in the tribe are still benefitting from her foresight. Sunshine is bilingual, and an inspiration to many. She was a dancer and still dances occasionally. Sunshine has worked for the Tribe all her life and is still very active. When 156 �""'\ "") ~ } J ' 'J J ) l ,l } ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) J J .J .J ...J J she was younger, she did beading and made dancing costumes for her grandchildren. She has had Tao Chi training. "Diamond was a good baker," she said, and they owned the "Cornbread Feather Cafe" in Ignacio during the oil boom. She's seen lots of changes. She said, "At one time there were few buildings and now it's so different". Ignacio had "out houses" and no sewers. She also said the Tribe developed it over the years and now it's hard to find an outhouse. She got electricity in 1959. Sunshine stated it "brightened up the place." She said running water in the house was "something, because before we had to carry it in." When asked about the old days, Sunshine says there were more farmers and more livestock in the country. More people grew wheat and oats and other crops, and neighbors helped one another. She remembers fondly their neighbors - the Washingtons, Joneses, Stones, Holinsons and others. "My father would help them with their harvesting and then they would come help him with his. We didn't think of our neighbors as Anglos or Indians, just as people. We had no trouble and we were happy." The greatest improvement in the area since the 1920's according to Sunshine has been the roads. Pavement and graveling has made a great difference in convenience. However, one old time means of travel she misses is the sled trips to town in the winter. The whole family would bundle up in coats and blankets and go into town for shopping. She recalls a few differences in the town. Practically the whole block where the city hall and the Texaco station are today was a corral and hitching area for horses and buggies. A meat market stood where the Shell station is and the old Post Office was located where the Phillips now live. Diamond died in December, 1991 . Sunshine now lives with her grandson. She has 5 grandchildren and they all lived with her while attending high school. She has served on the many tribal committees. Some include the Cultural Board, Health Board, Sunshine tells her grandchildren "you don't know how easy you have it". She told them she had to bring in wood and do lots of chores that don't have to be done today. Sunshine is very active today. Besides serving in various capacities of the Tribe, including the Constitution, the Ute Dictionary, and the Committee of Elders, she joins the other seniors in Eldercize and travels often. She is a pleasure to be around . Started by Shelby Smith (October, 1974) Ended by Karen McKay-Wright _) ..) ._) .._) J J ..) ...J J ._j ...J J 157 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sunshine (Burch) Smith Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1974-10 Subject The topic of the resource Smith, Sunshine (Burch) Description An account of the resource Biography of Sunshine (Burch) Smith based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the October, 1974 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Smith, Sunshine (Burch) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 3 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby; McKay-Wright, Karen https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/d090cf0e649e1d5f565558f0c0ea6cb4.pdf 086e1682c965008ac72b124f0d4607d1 PDF Text Text EUTERPE TAYLOR The room was small and dusty and very dark. Some broken desks and piles of books were stacked near the rear wall. A small indistinct form sat very still on the floor. The little girl had cried hard for a long time. Now only an occasional soft sniff was heard. Euterpe was 8 years old. She had been enrolled in the Ute Agency Boarding School for a year and a half. Ordinarily "Terpe" was very shy, but this evening at supper when the little boy at the next table put 3 green peas in his spoon and neatly flipped them across the room to smack against another boy's face, "Terpe" couldn't resist the lure of a little deviltry. She was aiming her third spoon of peas when the matron grabbed her arm. Isolation in the dark room was only one of the punishments the matron had reserved for misbehaving children. Administering punishments for cause or often for no cause seemed to be the chief interest of the matron. Though the memories "Terpe" has of her experiences with the matron are unhappy ones, perhaps some good came of it. As the years passed something in the shy little girl stiffened and strengthened until she became outspoken and courageous, willing to stand up for her rights and for her family and friends. Though Terpe's parents lived nearby (their farm site is now the north part of Ignacio), they put her in the boarding school. They wanted her to get a good education, which at that time largely meant learning to speak English. On the first day of school Terpe couldn't speak one word of English or of Ute. Though Terpe's mother was a full-blood Ute, she talked Spanish at home and at the age of 6, Spanish was all Terpe knew. But children learn fast and soon she could speak three languages well. She still does. When Terpe was 8, her father, John Taylor, built a house on John Green's place north of town and moved his family there. Terpe got to attend the Allen Day School. She liked it much better than the boarding school partly because she got to live at home. The memory of the day the doctors came to Ellen Day School is still with her. A small pox vaccination in 1908 was no gentle pricking of the arm. The doctors of that time felt it necessary to make many crisscross slashing cuts on the upper arm to insure the vaccination took. "We were all whooping and hollering and screeching. I felt like I had been branded." Terpe went to school until she was 15, then she stayed at home to help with the work. Terpe had always had to work hard at home. At 6 she was cooking and sewing diapers for her little brothers on the treadle sewing machine. At the age of 11, she cooked her first Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, pies and everything. For entertainment Terpe liked nothing better than dancing. She enjoyed both the ceremonial dances of the Utes and the social dances of the Spanish and the Anglos. "When we had a dance, we didn't quit at midnight, it lasted all night." When Terpe married Joe Valdez, she had no idea she would get to raise 20 children, 7 of her own and 13 nieces, nephews and grand children. If it was needed, there was always room for one more. The whole group worked the gardens and shelled peas and snapped beans and cooked and canned. It took a lot of work to provide for so many for so long, but Terpe says, "We always had enough." 164 �r') r') "I "l ., 7 ) l 1 ' '' ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) When Terpe's father, John Taylor died in 1935, he lacked two weeks of being 100 years old. How he came to be a respected participant in the affairs of the Southern Ute Tribe is a fascinating story. John Taylor was a black man, born a slave in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1835. He was sold in the slave market to a Kentucky Plantation owner and worked there for many years. At the outbreak of the Civil War, John, who was 26, ran away to join the Yankee Army. Four years of horror followed. John was assigned to an artillery company to load the cannon. There were times when the dead and the suffering injured were all around, times when the Johnny Rebs were close, times when the Yanks would run in fear, but not John. "I didn't run," he told his children, "I didn't want to be a slave anymore." When the war was over, John traveled west. He lived in Raton for a while, then moved to Tierra Amarillo where he married a Spanish girl and had several children. A tragic epidemic of small pox killed all his family. Moving on west, John lived among the Navajo for a while before coming into Colorado. He quickly learned to speak Ute. Since he could already speak Navajo, Spanish, Apache, English, French and Italian, John Taylor soon proved to be a valuable translator for the Southern Utes. In 1895 John and Kitty Cloud decided to get married. John was 40 years older than Kitty and her family thought it was madness for her- to marry such an old man. Age, however, is a relative thing. John and Kitty were married for 40 years, and had 15 children, the last of whom was born when John was 81 years old. He told his children many stories of his experiences, some of which Terpe remembers. "He would often sit with a far away look in his eyes, singing "Marching Through Georgia" or other songs of the war. Sometimes he would cry when he would tell us of the death and horror of the war. And always he would say he didn't ever want any of us to have to fight in a war." Today Terpe is approaching 74 years of age. She looks and feels like a much younger person. Anything she could ever do, she can do today. She is just as able and willing to offer help, counsel and encouragement today as she was 40 years ago. _) ) .J _) .J _.J ..) ..J .J J J J J J ..J J J J ._) Terpe misses the wagon days and especially the train. "I like cars, but the wagon days were better. Life was calmer and more fun then. Anyone going to Durango rode the train and once there you could ride the street cars from one end of Main to the other for ten cents." A beautifully carved Love Calling Flute hangs on Terpe's wall. It was made by Herbert Coyote and is a treasured gift. In the days long past the young men of the Utes carved their own flutes. On the long summer evenings they would sit among the trees or on a hill above the home of the girl they loved and call to her with the haunting, compelling songs of the love flute. Terpe says the sound of the Love Calling Flute carried a long way on the still air of the evening. "They were the saddest songs I ever heard. When I was a little girl they always made me cry." The songs are. gone from the hills, but the memory of them and of the old way of life lingers on with Terpe and others of her generation. Shelby Smith - April, 1974 165 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Euterpe Taylor Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1974-04 Subject The topic of the resource Taylor, Euterpe; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Euterpe Taylor based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the April, 1974 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Taylor, Euterpe Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/a6c0aefe2871cc310917de5bb2cef570.pdf c02c19a5d0164a1d3ce7bdd5e79a2795 PDF Text Text EUGENIO AND MARIA (Baca) VALDEZ "I was born in Chama, Colorado, 4 miles east of San Luis in the San Luis Valley on November 15, 1895. My parents, Serafin and Tonita Valdez were farmers, raising wheat, peas and livestock. My father's parents were originally from Los Ranchitos, N. M. near Espanola, but migrated into Colorado before my father was born. I have four brothers and two sisters. That does not count several others who died before they were grown. When I was 7 years old I started to school at Chama. During the school term I stayed with my mother's parents, Trinidad and Juanita Sanchez, whose farm was close to school. Every morning the school janitor fired up the pot-belly stoves in each of the three rooms. At the end of the day each teacher had to sweep the classroom. Mr. David Gaul was my first teacher. All of us were Spanish speakers. They tried to teach us English, but it didn't work too well. Every text book was in English. We would sound out the words and Mr. Gaul would translate. It was slow work and not too interesting. But we enjoyed the baseball games and other activities at noon and during recess. Also we helped pass the time of day with mischievous pranks during the school day." "After seventh grade, I stayed home to help my father with the farm work. I did this until I was 25 years old. If I had any extra time, I worked for wages on other farms. When I was about 16 years old, my father hired Albino Baca and his family lo herd sheep. Little did I know I would some day marry his daughter, Maria Inez, who at that time was only a 7 year old girl. I never saw Maria again until 9 years later, two days before our wedding." "When I was 25 years old, my parents decided it was time for me to get married. They thought over the possibilities and remembered Albino Baca's daughter must be about old enough to marry. The custom of parents arranging their children's marriages was a very old and traditional way, but I had no objections. A little after Christmas my mother and father hitched up their buggy to pay Albino Baca a visit. He lived on a farm near Red Wing, Colorado, a two day journey across the mountains through La Veta Pass. The wedding was arranged. I went to San Luis to buy a wedding dress, shoes and other clothing as a gift to my bride. This also was an old tradition for the groom to present as a gift to the bride. It was also customary for the groom to present the bride with a trunk full of beautiful clothes just before the wedding. On the 16th of January, 1920, my parents, my grandparents, an aunt, and an uncle and I loaded up two buggies and began the trip to Red Wing. About half way over the mountain was an abandoned saw mill where we camped for the night. The next day, when we arrived at Red Wing, the families were introduced and my uncle took his buggy on to the home of a friend several miles to stay the night. I went lo our buggy to bring the trunk to Maria, but found it was missing. My dad headed back to the saw mill, thinking we had left it there. After he left, my uncle returned because he had found the trunk in his buggy. I got on a horse to catch my father. By the time I overtook him and returned lo Red Wing it was midnight. "I was very pleased with my parent's choice. Maria was very pretty and was well trained. Even though she was young, she could cook and sew and everything else a wife needs to do. We were married in church on January 20, 1920. We took her two little brothers who were ages 3 and 7 home to raise. Maria had taken care of them since their mother died." 166 �"At first we lived in a house provided by the farmer I worked for. Two years later I built a two room adobe house on my father's land. Maria and I had seven children. They are Leonardo, Rudolfo, Eugenio, Adela, Liva, Ignacio and Ben. Her little brothers were Isaac and Frutoso. In 1940 we moved to Florence where I worked on the turnip and onion farms. Just as soon as one crop was harvested, we planted another as long as the season lasted. Maria died in 1943. I moved to Center and lived there until 1958. In 1958 I married Rose Green and we moved to her farm east of Ignacio where I raised cattle and goats until I retired. Rose died in 1977. I stayed on the farm until 1978 when I moved to the senior citizen apartments north of Ignacio where I still live." Taken December, 1979 -Shelby Smith ) ) ) .J .J J J _) ..J _J ...J .J .J _) J J ...J J ..J ....) 167 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Eugenio Valdez and Maria (Baca) Valdez Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1979-12 Subject The topic of the resource Valdez, Eugenio; Valdez, Maria (Baca); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Eugenio Valdez and Maria (Baca) Valdez based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the December, 1979 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Valdez, Eugenio; Valdez, Maria (Baca) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby