https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/a9e7970740dd8b03dbec081255ce8cda.pdf 4fc42a2afaf116a1ccfa50d844dd03ef PDF Text Text MARY (Conroy) PATRICK & MARTHA (Conroy) POTTER Two small round faces stared big-eyed out of the train window at the bustling Union Depot of Denver. Streams of people were departing and boarding the train. Porters were pushing carts of luggage across the platform and hawkers were selling peanuts, apples, sandwiches, coffee and lemonade up and down the aisles of the coaches. The Conroys decided to stretch their legs. Mike helped his wife Lydia down the steps, then lifted down his 4 year old twin daughters Mary and Martha and his 5 year old son, Charles. Though ii was fall, Mary and Martha clearly remember a band nearby was loudly playing "In the Good Old Summer Time." The Conroys were enroute from one way of life to another. Nine years before, Mike, the son of a Manhattan, Kansas farmer caught the fever for the land run into the Cherokee Outlet. He was there on that hot day in 1893 with 180,000 others waiting breathlessly for the shot fired by the cavalry men along the border which signaled noon and the opening of the land run. Mike had a wagon and two white horses. His competitors, stretching along the border of this vast land both to the right and to the left to the horizons and beyond were mostly people like him hungry for land of their own. Most had horses and wagons, but some had sleek race horses, a few were astride highwheeled bicycles and a few with very determined looks on their faces were afoot. Mike was one of the lucky ones. He managed to slay fairly near the front of the raging sea of horses and to find a good piece of land. Others were not so lucky. Horses stumbled, wagon wheels shattered, gullies opened unexpectedly in front of racing throngs and swallowed animals, wagons and people. Men who staked opposite ends of a claim shot at each other to decide who owned the land. This northwest Oklahoma territory was a trying land to farm. When the rains came Mike was amazed at the crops it would produce, but it was heartbreaking during the dry years to see the wheat sprout and wilt and turn brown under the relentless sun. Mike sold his land in 1902 and decided to go to the mountains. After a brief rest the family reboarded the train. When they arrived in Pueblo, they visited an aunt for several days. The girls had never spent much time in a town of the size of Pueblo. On afternoon the girls were out playing hide-and-seek with their cousins and the neighbor children. Mary hid a little too well. Unfortunately when she ran across the corner of the block to hide, no one found her. By the lime she decided to return to the yard she had lost her sense of direction. Finally a man passing by look her to the right address. The remainder of the trip to Durango took much longer than expected. When the Conroys changed to the narrow gauge train at Alamosa, the sky was grey and threatening over the mountains. Snow was falling so hard at Antonito that the train was delayed several days. Most of the passengers including the Conroys lived on the train until the passes were cleared. Mike bought a dairy farm on Florida road east of Animas City. Though Animas City had only two stores, Mary and Martha liked to go there. Quickly they learned that Mike Kennedy, who owned the general store, was a pushover. The two little girls would mosey over to the candy counter and stare longingly at the display until Mike would ease over with a big smile and give then each a sample. "I suppose we were spoiled 132 �.., ~ 'I "1 'I "1 brats," admit Mary and Martha. "We always were babied and made over because we were twins." When the girls were 5 and Charles was 6, they all three started in the first grade at Animas City School. Good weather and bad their father put all three on the ) ) -) ) -) ) ) ') ) ) ) ) same horse for the ride down the valley to town. Animas City was the end of the line for the Durango Trolley. Whenever the family needed a better selection of goods they rode the trolley into Durango. Since Animas City had no high school, the girls went into Durango after grade 8. Both were members of the girls basketball team and both loved to dance. "Our parents were fairly lenient. They usually let us to go to dances and parties whenever and wherever we wanted to go." Being a twin was handy now and then, too. Once when Mary faced a stiff German exam, she let Martha who was a year ahead of her in German, sit in for her. Neither the students nor the teacher caught on. Both Martha and Mary decided to become teachers. College training was not required in those days, but it was necessary to pass a stiff exam. Martha taught in the Waterfall School in the Animas Valley and then moved south of Ignacio to teach the Harvey School. While there she boarded with the Fred Harvey Family. "Sometimes we still visit Mrs. Harvey in Durango. She's about 92 now." Finally, Martha taught at the Hood School 4 miles NE of Elmore's Store uniil she was married. ) ) ) ) ) Mary's first school was the Fairview School near Oxford. Then she went to Holder School on Spring Creek, Mason School on Florida Mesa and finally she taught at Morrison South, north of Ignacio. As it is today school teaching was a satisfying, but very demanding job. Mary and Martha frequently opened their schools for dances and box suppers. "Most of our dance music was accompanied by piano and violin. Guitars were not too common at dances then." } ) _) ) _) _) _) J _) ..) ..J ..) ...) J J J ....) J ...J .J Both Martha and Mary admit to a string of beaus during those years, but when asked for names and more details, they replied, "Let's leave that out. 11 One episode they will tell (minus the boy's name). Martha had a date to go for a buggy ride with a certain young man. The afternoon of the ride Martha became very ill and asked Mary to go in her place. "He will never know the difference," Mary recalls. Beyond this, they each admit to one feller, their husbands. Martha met Marvin Potter at a Grange Meeting at the Morrison School. They were married in Durango on December 14, 1919. "We drove out to Ignacio in a horse and buggy on what must have been the coldest day of the year. It took 6 hours and was nearing evening when we arrived." The Potters have 4 children. Donald lives in Montrose. Jean Mcclanahan lives in Ignacio. Stanley is in New Jersey, and Irvin is in Dallas . When Mary was 22, she met Leslie Patrick at a dance. She and Leslie were married in Durango on June 4, 1922. After the wedding ceremony, they rode the train to Ignacio and as soon as they arrived at the farm , Leslie put on his boots and went right out to irrigate. "That's the way life was then, 'l Mary says. "We had to work like the dickens. We milked cows, separated the milk and sold the cream. We never could make a living just from the farm. Leslie always had to have another job as ditch rider, or carpenter or something else to earn enough." The Patricks have 2 children. Lee Patrick lives in Gallup, New Mexico and Eleanor Stansberry lives in Basalt, Colorado . 133 �During the long winter months of the 1920's the Potters and the Patricks came to town regularly to play basketball at Burns Hall. The ladies enjoyed it as much as the men. "Getting there was the hardest part. Sometimes the road would be a string of mud holes. Everyone but the driver would have to get out and push." In the spring and summer it was baseball. Marvin, Leslie, Louie Morris, Fred Robinson and others the ladies have forgotten, were on the team. "In 1926 both our families went on a wild goose chase," the ladies recall. "We packed up and headed for California. In Los Angeles one of the men got a job on the docks; the other drove a team." After a few months the Potters moved on to Fresno where they had relatives, but it was suffocatingly hot in the summer. Finally, after visiting relatives in Oregon for a short while, both families decided to return to Ignacio. "None of us ever seemed to feel at home out there. When we crossed the Colorado line west of Dove Creek, Leslie stopped the car, jumped out, threw his hat in the air and let out a wild yell of joy. That's just how glad we were to get back to Colorado." Martha and Mary started life together 76 years ago. Now that Marvin and Leslie are gone, it seems right that they are together again sharing life and memories. When asked what they think about being twins, they both reply, "It's great having a double. I'm sure we've always been closer because of it." Shelby Smith - May 1974. 134 � 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 Mary (Conroy) Patrick and Martha (Conroy) Potter Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1974-05 Subject The topic of the resource Patrick, Mary (Conroy); Potter, Martha (Conroy); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Mary (Conroy) Patrick and Martha (Conroy) Potter based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the May, 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 Patrick, Mary (Conroy); Potter, Martha (Conroy) 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