Casper Tribune-Herald, 1934
Evidence piles up -- Throughout the week of June 15, excited headlines screamed of the presumed solution to the previous week's top story. "MRS. COMBS ARRESTED
"WIDOW FACES FIRST DEGREE MURDER CHARGE
"In a startling climax to investigation into the murder of S. S. Combs, his widow, Mrs. Hazel Combs, was placed under arrest. ... A warrant charging the first degree murder of the former (Casper) city attorney was served on the slight, steel-nerved woman. ...
"(Combs) had been shot five times at such close range that powder burns were left by some of the shots. ...
"Prisoner Visibly Shaken When Shown Weapon
"To the rear of the (Combs) cabin, about 50 feet distant, is the outhouse where an important discovery was made. Beneath fresh wood ashes ... was found the revolver with which, the officers said, the murder was committed. It contained six empty shells. ...
"MURDER WEAPON IDENTIFIED
"EXPERT LINKS REVOLVER WITH BULLETS FOUND
"Insurance Collection Is Held Motive
"... Mr. Combs was husband No. 4. ... He was an attorney who represented her in divorce proceedings against husband number 3. ... Harley Atwood, the second husband of Mrs. Combs, died ... from asphyxiation by gas, when a coffee pot boiled over on a gas stove in the room where he lay asleep on a couch
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Followup to the Combs murder, discussed below
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Modern Transportation
On Tuesday of this past week I drove 140 miles to Rawlins Wyoming, worked all day, and returned home that evening. 140 miles isn't a long distance in modern terms. My route took me past Independence Rock, where I stopped at the rest station as I always do. Then, resuming travel, down the Oregon Trail a ways further, and then across some desert country to Ten Mile Hill, a huge topographic rise just outside of Rawlins. Then into Rawlins, whose Union Pacific station is depicted above.
I have no idea if this station is still there. A lot of Rawlin's older buildings are. Rawlins itself, still on the main line of the UP, has seen some very hard times in recent years, but it seems to be rebounding, it's recovery fueled, as it were by natural gas exploration, as well as some wind energy development.
When I wrapped up my work, I turned around and was home in the early evening. A typical day's work for a litigator in Wyoming. It was an enjoyable trip really. Armed with my company supplied Ipod, I finished the book on tape version of Alexander Hamilton for the third time, and listened to a selection of episodes of "The News From Lake Woebegone".
I was to return to Rawlins on Thursday. I didn't, as I came down with the flu. Before somebody asks, no I don't know if it was the "Swine Flu". Whatever it was, it was fast moving, and I am over it now. I crawled into work on Thursday, but a partner of mine very graciously volunteered to take my place, so he repeated by Tuesday travel on Thursday.
I was very grateful for this, as I had a motion hearing in Douglas Wyoming, fifty miles a way, on Friday. I went home on Thursday and slept most of the day. The next day, however, I was back on the road to Douglas.
The courthouse depicted above is no longer in use, and I don't even know where it was. Douglas has a nice new courthouse, built, I think, in the 1970s, or maybe 80s.
This trip too was pleasant and uneventful, except for loosing my motion (rats). On the way to Douglas, I listed to an Ipod interview of H. W. Brands, speaking about Franklin Roosevelt. On the way back, I finished up the last downloaded News From Lake Woebegone I had.
What's the point of this? Modern easy of travel.
Could I have done this a century ago? I doubt it. Even had I owned a car in 1909, there's no way that I could have traveled to Rawlins and back in a day. I wouldn't have tried. It would have been much more likely that, if I had to do that, I would have taken the train from Casper to North Platte NE, and then switched on to the UP line and rode to Rawlins on Monday. I'd have stayed over in Rawlins Tuesday evening. I wouldn't have been able to have a back to back event in Rawlins and Douglas, in all likelihood.
But what does that mean? In part, it probably means that a lawyer, in this context, a century ago, would have gone to Rawlins on a Monday, and came back on a Friday. On Wednesday, he probably wouldn't have had much to do. Perhaps, were it me, I would have gone down to Parco for amusement. If I had to go to Douglas for Friday, I would have had to catch a night train.
What about, say 1939. I could have driven then, road travel was much improved. Even so, it would have been a bit of a brutal trip.
I suspect this also shows that, while travel is easier, life is faster paced. Probably nobody would have tried to schedule back to back travel plans like this "back in the day". Now, I'll often travel up to 600 miles in a day. If something is no further than 300 miles away, I don't stay, usually. That certainly wasn't the case at one time.
History of Natrona County
Granted, it is one of the dullest books ever written. But what an amazing tribute to the internet in that what is truly a rare book is so easily available in this form.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Dual Careered lawyer
"Three Wounds in Head and Two in Body of S. S. Combs"
Recently retired Casper City Attorney Sewell Stanley Combs, 50, was found shot to death in his car June 10 at his ranch near Granite Canyon.
"The bullets that literally riddled his body were fired by a 'cowardly murderer' who shot the unsuspecting victim in the back of the head and body," a sheriff said.
Combs' widow, Hazel, "(h)er face ... drawn by grief, her eyes tortured by unshed tears and sleeplessness ... seemed overnight to have aged many years. She was haunted by the knowledge that while she lay asleep in their ranch home between Alcova and Leo, ... her husband was brutally murdered in his car--not a quarter of a mile away! ...
"The position of the body and other details indicated ... that Combs had been ... unaware of the menace hovering over his life when the assailant, in the back seat, shot him through the head, then emptying the gun as the man's body slumped over. ...
"Credence was ... given today to the theory that he was slain by an assailant harboring a bitter, personal grudge. ... This theory was a source of mystification, ... it being heard on every side: 'We didn't know Stan Combs had an enemy in the world.' ... Rumor was rife today that the trail of the murderer had led to Casper.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Casper, Natrona County, 1909
"A Dozen Will be in Service During This Summer.
"... J. P. Cantillon, superintendent of the Wyoming & Northwestern railroad company, ... was the first of Casper's citizens to start the fashion. Mr. Cantillon owns a Pope-Toledo, 20 horse power. ... (T)o its use is due the fact that very few of the ranchers about here now have any teams that are afraid to meet an auto in the road. ...
"C. M. Elgin ... has a Chalmers-Detroit 30-horse power," which he drove to Casper after purchase. "The time made on the trip ... (was) eighteen hours and forty-five minutes from Denver.
" ... M. N. Castle (Shorty) owns a 20-horse power Reo . ... (He) deserves credit for a new mixture ... for fuel for his machine, but he only used it once, and says that he will never do so again if he can help it. ... (H)e ran out of gasoline and could procure no more, but the ranch where he stopped had plenty of coal oil. Shorty tanked up with the coal oil and the mixture ... sufficed to run him into town, a distance of twelve miles."
The Reo in question appears here.
J. V. Puleo, on this topic on the Society of the Military Horse website, posted an interesting photograph of a little newer Reo here.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Transportation, Early 20th Century
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Niobrara County Courthouse
__________________________________________________________________________
Postscript.
Transportation, late 19th Century
A modern highway map shows as distance of 211 miles from Worland, in the southern half of the basin, to Rawlins, and 293 miles from Cody to Green River, but modern transportation systems are not remotely like those of 1879. In practical terms, Green River and Rawlins were further from the Big Horn Basin in 1879 than they are now from Outer Mongolia, and criminal prosecution was nearly impossible.
There were no roads leading south from the basin, only trails. At least one yearly trip to the Union Pacific had to be made, though, because in the early 1880s this was the nearest railhead, the only real opening to a market to sell cattle and get supplies. E. W. Copps declared that the cattle drive from Buffalo to Rawlins, a trip that did not require a traverse of mountains, took eighteen days. Coming from the basin, however, a cattle owner first had to get out, and any exit required going over an 8,000-foot pass, such as Birdseye Pass or Cottonwood Pass; thus, David John Wasden's estimate of six weeks for a round trip seems about right. Of course, the return trip, when cattle were not being driven, did not take as long but was still arduous. Owen Wister describes a 263 mile excursion from Medicine Bow "deep into cattle land," a trip taking several days by wagon, while "swallowed in a vast solitude." His description sounds like a journey north into the Big Horn Basin.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Tuesday, April 13, 1909. The Aadna Massacre.
The Adna Massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which would kill over 20,000 people, commenced. Ottoman troops would participate in it.
The revolution was backed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who sought to regain the absolute power. It wouldn't go well for him.
What would become the University of North Carolina was photographed.
Last prior edition:
Monday, April 12, 1909. Doc Powers falls ill.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Monday, April 12, 1909. Doc Powers falls ill.
Michael Riley "Doc" Powers, catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics and a physician, became seriously ill during a game. He'd ultimately die of peritonitis a few days later, after three intestinal operation. He blamed his condition on earthing a cheese sandwich during the game, while some though he'd been injured straining to catch a foul ball, or by crashing into a wall during the game.
He was 38 years old at the time of his death.
I’m guessing the cheese sandwich was right. Having been a victim of the dreaded gasoline station sandwich, and having witnesses my son virtually rendered comatose due to one, I think Doc was right.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Sunday, April 11, 1909. Tel Aviv founded.
100 Jewish settlers living in Jaffa founded a 12 acre village located in sand dunes, dividing the property into 60 lots. It was called Ahuzzat Bayit, but only for a year, after which it was renamed Tel Aviv.
Last prior edition:
Saturday, April 10, 1909 Finnish, Métis Tragedy, and Arctic Tragedy.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Saturday, April 10, 1909 Finnish, Métis Tragedy, and Arctic Tragedy.
Czar Nicholas II approved a recommendation that "laws of general Imperial interest concerning Finland" be enacted by the Duma, in which Finland had a single representative, rather than its own legislative assemble. It was part of the process of Russification of the country which had commenced in 1899, reversing the original imperial policy put in place in 1808 when Sweden had lost Finland to Russia.
The Finn's have inhabited Finland since at least 9,000 BC, and probably longer. The first references to it as an entity come from Catholic sources in the 12th Century as the Church began to Christianize the country, but it had no real political organization. It came under the control of Sweden the following century, with Sweden losing it to Russia in the Finnish War of 1808-1809. The Russification policy, something the Russians have exhibited ever since the 19th Century wherever it has control, and which effectively continues to the present day, would result in the Finnish independence movement.
Canada opened up the Métis lands in Alberta to homesteaders. 250 claims by French Canadians were registered on the first day.
Professor Ross G. Marvin of Cornell became Admiral Peary's Eighth Arctic Expedition's only fatality when he drowned, maybe.
His body was found floating and appeared to have gone through thin ice, as reported by Inuit guide Kudlookto. However, in 1926 Kudlookto claimed he had shot and killed Marvin, either because Marvin had started acting irrationally, or because Marvin refused to let Kudlookto's cousin, another member of the expedition, rest. Peary's daughter (as you'll recall his sons were by his native mistress and were left up in the Arctic in the abandoned care of their mother), discounted the story, although how she would know what happened in reality is another matter. Presumably from information supplied by her father.
It's hard to imagine why Kudlookto would make the story of killing Marvin up, although people do odd things.
He had been on a prior expedition. He was 29 years old at the time of his death.
Cipriano Castoro, the former President of Venezuela, was forcibly ejected from Martinique by the French.
Last prior edition:
Friday, April 9, 1909. Establishing Mother's Day.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Friday, April 9, 1909. Establishing Mother's Day.
South Dakota became the first state to officially recognize Mother's Day, with a proclamation by Gov. Robert S. Vessy that designated "the second Sabbath in our national memorial month of May" for the same.
This followed the first church service recognizing the day, which had been in 1907 as prat of Anna Jarvis' effort to establish the holiday, which she had been working on since 1905. The first service for the day was at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.
This brings to mind something we posted last week:
Blog Mirror: Family Values
Last prior edition:
Thursday, April 8, 1909. Creation of Japanese Corporations
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Thursday, April 8, 1909. Creation of Japanese Corporations
The Japanese Diet passed a law for the Japanese equivalent of corporations.
The United Kingdom and France accepted the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Wednesday, April 7, 1909. A busy day for the Tafts.
President Taft issued an executive order that deaf mutes and deaf persons be allowed to take the civil service examination.
Some of the Tafts went riding.
Helen Taft became a professor of history and college dean.
The third Taft child, Robert, not pictured here, went on to become a U.S. Senator from Ohio.
Last prior edition:
Tuesday, April 6, 1909. Peary claims the North Pole.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Tuesday, April 6, 1909. Peary claims the North Pole.
Adm. Robert E. Peary, Matthew Henson, Ootah, Ooqueah, Egingwah, and Seegloo, reached the northernmost point of their expedition, which Peary believed to be the North Pole. They would remain there for thirty hours.
They would learn, upon their return, that Frederick Cook had claimed the prize of reaching the North Pole first already, although his claim could not be substantiated. In 1989 the National Geographic Society determined that Peary had dome within 5 miles of the North Pole, which may or may not be close enough if it really matters.
The claim of who was first led into a bitter contest, in which Peary prevailed. Cook went on to a sad life, going into the oil business in Texas and Wyoming, where he'd be accused of fraud. He was convicted, after which his Texas claims proved to be in one biggest oil pools in the state. He died in 1940, at age 75, after having just been pardoned by Franklin Roosevelt.
As noted, I'm not a fan of Peary's. Ironically, the US flag he hoisted at the presumed pole had been sewn by his wife, whom he was cheating on in the Arctic. Peary quit talking about his trip after he took questions he received to be hostile. He died, leaving an abandoned family in the Arctic, at age 63 in 1920.
As or the first, Cook could well have been first, or not. Same with Peary, depending upon how you determine the pinpoint spot. It seems reasonably to say they were both pretty close to the North Pole, which in the context of the time, may be close enough.
The first undisputed trip to the North Pole was made in 1968.
Last prior edition:
Monday, April 5, 1909. Sensational news.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Monday, April 5, 1909. Sensational news.
A hoax with long legs started on this day when the Phoenix Gazette published "Explorations in Grand Canyon: Mysteries of Immense Rich Cavern Brought to Light" claiming that S. A. Jordan of the Smithsonian Institute had found a network of interlinking tunnels filled with Egyptian artifacts and mummies. The entire matter was a hoax, but the Internet, amazingly, has kept it alive.
Seemingly all of it, including the names of the discoverer, were simply made up by reporters having some fun.
Last prior edition:
Friday, April 2, 1909., The Spring Creek Raid.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Friday, April 2, 1909., The Spring Creek Raid.
The Spring Creek Raid.
Arrests soon followed and five of the assailants were ultimately charged with murder. Two turned states' evidence. The trials were not consolidated and only Herbert Brink's case went to trial. To the surprise of some, he was convicted by the jury. Due to prior trials for the killing of sheepmen being both unsuccessful and unpopular, Wyoming took the step of deploying National Guardsmen to Basin to provide security for the trial, which proved unnecessary. The conviction was the first one in the area for a cattleman v. sheepman murder( Tom Horn had earlier been convicted for the 1903 killing of Willie Nickell, but that killing took place in southern Wyoming.
The killings were, quite rankly, uniquely cold blooded and gruesome, involving shooting into the wagons and setting them on fire. Because of that, and the Brink conviction, the remaining four charged men plead guilty, rather than face trial. Two plead guilty to arson, and two to second degree murder.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Thursday, April 1, 1909. Leaving Cuba.
American troops left Cuba where they had been since 1906, due to the Second Intervention in Cuba which saw the US intervene, which it had a treaty right to do, over an attempt to overthrow an elected government.
A law banning the importation of opium into the US went into effect.
In the United Kingdom, the Children Act 1908 went into effect, establishing juvenile courts, registration of foster parents, prohibiting children, under the age of 16 from working in dangerous trades, purchasing cigarettes, entering brothels, or the bars of trading pubs, and prohibiting the consumption of alcohol, for non-medicinal purposes, before the age of five.
The US polar expedition saw Robert Peary, Matthew Henson, Ootah, Ooqueah, Egingwah, and Seegloo, set off from a point 153 miles from the North Pole as their last supply team turned back.
As noted earlier, I frankly miss the point of these polar expeditions, and I think Peary was a louse.
The local agricultural newspaper, the Stockgrower and Farmer, was out. I'm only putting up the first two pages, but it was a very well done ag newspaper.