August 20, 1619. Slavery comes to British America

The date isn't known with precision.  Only that it occurred in August.  But this date, August 20, is used as the usual date for the event when a slaver arrived off the port at Port Comfort, Virginia, carrying 20 to 30 African who were held in bondage and sold into slavery.

The event marked the return of the English to being a slave owning society.  Slavery had been abolished by the Normans after conquering Anglo Saxon Britain in 1066 and while it's common to see claims of other types of servitude, including involuntary servitude, equating with slavery, they do not.  Slavery is unique.

And late European chattel slavery, which commenced with the expansion of European powers into African waters and into the Americas, was particularly unique and in someways uniquely horrific.

Slavery itself was not introduce to African populations by Europeans; they found it there upon their arrival, but they surprisingly accommodated themselves to participating in it very rapidly.  Europeans had been the victims of Arab slavers for a long time themselves, who raided both for the purposes of acquiring forced labor, and fairly horrifically, for forced concubinage, the latter sort of slave having existed in their society for perhaps time immemorial but which had been licensed by Muhammad in the Koran.  Arab slave traders had been quite active in Africa early on, purchasing slaves from those who had taken them as prisoners of war, an ancient way of dealing with such prisoners, and the Europeans, starting really with the Portuguese, seemingly stepped right into it as Europe's seafaring powers grew.

Having waned tremendously in Europe following the rise of Christianity, European powers somehow found themselves tolerating the purchase and transportation for resale of Africans for European purchasers by the 15th Century, with most of those purchasers being ultimately located in the Americas.

The English were somewhat slow to become involved.  It wasn't clear at first if slavery was legal under English Common Law and the English lacked statutory clarification on the point such as had been done with other European powers.  Early English decisions were unclear on the point. However, starting with the 17th Century, the institution worked its way into English society, even as opposition to it grew from the very onset.

The importation of slaves to English populations was not limited to North American, but it was certainly the absolute strongest, in the English speaking world, in England's New World colonies.  While every European seafaring power recognized slavery by the mid 17th Century, the really powerful markets were actually limited to the Caribbean, English North American, and Portuguese Brazil.  European slavery existed everywhere in the New World, and no country with colonies in North America was exempt from it, but it was strongest in these locations.

And slavery as reintroduced by Europeans was uniquely abhorrent.  Slavery, it is often noted, has existed in most advanced and semi advanced societies at some point, but slavery also was normally based in warfare and economics nearly everywhere.  I.e., it was a means of handling conquered armies, conquered peoples, and economic distress.  The word "servant" and "slave" in ancient Greek was the same word for this latter reason.  In eras in which resources were tight and there was little other means of handling these situations, slavery was applied as the cruel solution.

But it wasn't raced based.  The slavery that the Europeans applied was. Even Arab slavery, which was ongoing well before the Europeans joined in and continued well after, was not based on race but status.  If a lot of Arab slaves were black in the 17th Century, that was mostly due to an environment existing which facilitated that. Earlier, a lot of forced concubine Arab slaves, for example, were Irish.  The Arabs were equal opportunity slavers.

Europeans were not.  European slaves were nearly always black, and even examples of trying to note occasions in which Indians were held as slaves are very strained.  And because it was raced based, it took on a unique inhuman quality.  Slavery wasn't justified on the basis that the slaves were prisoners of war that had fallen into that state, but that the state was better than death, nor were they held on the basis that they had sold themselves or had been sold into servitude due to extreme poverty, and that was better than absolute destitution.  It wasn't even justified on a likely misapplied allowance granted by Muhammad for slaves that were held due to war, and could be used for carnal purposes, reinterpreted (I'm guessing) for convenient purposes.  It was simply that they were black and, therefore, something about that made them suitable for forced labor.

And forced labor it was.  Servants in the ancient world had often been servants and even tutors.  While it did become common in North America to use slaves as household domestics, most slaves in North America performed heavy agricultural labor their entire lives.  It was awful and they worked in awful conditions.

And it tainted the early history of the country in a way that's ongoing to this day.  With opposition to its reintroduction right from the onset, but the late 18th Century it was clear that its abhorrent nature meant it was soon to go out everywhere.  Almost every European country abolished it very early in the 19th Century, which is still shockingly late.  It was falling into disfavor in the northern part of the British North American by the Revolution, in part because agriculture in the North was based on a developed agrarian pattern while in the South the planter class engaged in production agriculture (making it ironic that the yeoman class would be such a feature of the American south).  The pattern of agriculture had meant that there were comparatively few slaves in the north.  This is not to say it was limited to the South, however.  Slavery even existed in Quebec.

With the Revolution came the belief that slavery would go out, but it didn't.  By that time the American South had a huge black slave population.  Slavery would if anything become entrenched in the South, where most of the American black population lived, and it would take the worst war in the nation's history to abolish it.  So horrific was that war that even today the descendants of those who fought to keep men slaves sometimes strain the confines of history to find an excuse for what their ancestors did.  And following their Emancipation, the nation did a poor job of addressing the racism that had allowed it to exist.  It wasn't until the second quarter of the 20th Century that things really began to change, with the Great Migration occurring first, followed by a slow improvement in status following World War One, followed by a rapid one after World War Two that culminated in the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

But the stain of slavery lingers on in innumerable ways even now.  Having taken to slavery in 1619, and having tolerated it for over two hundred years thereafter, and having struggled with how to handle the residual effects of that for a century thereafter, we've still failed to really absorb the impact of the great sin of our colonial predecessor.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as our chlidren are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only."
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Rev. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963.

August 20, 1919. Salt Lake City to Orr's Ranch, 8th Cavalry in Mexico, White Russian amphibious landing at Odessa.

On this day the Motor Transport Convoy traveled from Salt Lake to Orr's Ranch

Conditions were bad.

Orr's Ranch wasn't a town.  It was a stop in the road.  A gas station, basically.

Meanwhile, news of the crossing into Mexico made the headlines again.

On the same day, White Russian forces conducted an amphibious landing at Odessa.

The Allies had withdrawn, and not under fire, on April 7.  On this day, the White Russians took the town on an amphibious landing.

And that, in 1919.

Chesterton on Socialism

The Socialist isn't wrong because he realizes things have been lawlessly scattered. The Socialist is wrong because he wants to sweep up all the scattered things into one monstrous heap in the marketplace instead of putting them back in their proper places all over the town

Chesterton

The Aerodrome:

The Aerodrome:

August 19, 1919. Trouble on the road and a big welcome in Salt Lake City, Trouble on the Border.

Salt Lake City in 1908.

While plagued with mechanical troubles, the Motor Transport Convoy made good time, doing 73 miles from Ogden to Salt Lake City in 8.25 hours.  Upon arrival, the command was treated to a parade attended by dignitaries.

The large celebratory nature of the arrival reflects the fact that upon arriving in Salt Lake the command had arrived at the first substantial city since leaving Cheyenne in eastern Wyoming, or perhaps even since leaving Omaha in eastern Nebraska.  They were arriving toward the end of their trek and while perhaps the worst was yet to come, getting to Salt Lake was a major accomplishment.

While the arrival of the Motor Transport Convoy was obviously a big even in Salt Lake and elsewhere, the big news on that day is that American troops were back in Mexico.

The occasion had been the holding for ransom of two American military aviators. A portion of the ransom had been paid and then the 8th Cavalry crossed the border at Marfa in pursuit of the Mexican bandits.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, on the same day the U.S. re-adopted the briefly adopted star roundel for its aircraft.  It had done this early in World War One but abandoned it in favor of one more closely resembling the device used by the British and the French, which made sense at the time.  Now it re-adopted its earlier insignia, just in time for the aviators to join the pursuit of their own captors in support of the 8th Cavalry, although the insignia used by those aircraft is unknown to us.

August 18, 1919. Echo to Ogden Utah. Traveling through the American Ethnic Map.

Ogden Utah in 1899.

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport Convoy left tiny Echo and traveled on to Ogden, Utah.

They were welcomed in Morgan, Utah, a town I'm not familiar with, and received two keys there, one to the town and one to the state.  At Morgan, they were addressed and welcomed specifically by a Mormon bishop and the Mormon Church Relief Society women, which is an organization that still exists.

This entry points out a bunch of interesting things, one of which is the inadequacy of the diary entries.  A reader of American Road would find that a lot of interesting events occurred on this extremely long 1919 trip, but most are omitted by the officer who was the daily diarist.  And of course they would be.  He was only summarizing the progress of the day, and the problems they encountered, as a rule.  Only when something really unusual comes up does it have a really good chance of being noted, such as when one of the enlisted men was married on a Sunday, although street dances and events involving the entire command are often listed.

This entry is only the second one mentioning a religious service organization, the first one being July 24, when the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization, was mentioned.  The command, up until yesterday, did normally halt on Sundays, when this stopped in this case without explanation.  Sunday is a day in the Army on which soldiers are normally given a day of rest which also acknowledges that in a Christian society, that's what most people also did.  At the time we're looking at here, 1919, the 40 hour work week was not yet the law, so a lot of people worked six days a week, although in rural communities, and the country was much more rural in 1919 than it is now, that was often a type of market day for rural dwellers which amounted to sort of a day off.    We would note that on the prior day the command didn't start moving until a little after noon, and almost certain the officers and men were dismissed until late after noon to attend church if they wished to.

In addition to what we've noted, church services are mentioned in the diary, up to this point, twice.  Once when in the Midwest a protestant pastor gave a service for the command, and then the Episcopal church service that involved the enlisted man who married.  And that takes us back to this entry.

The earlier entry concerning the protestant minister lets us know that at that point they command was passing through part of the Midwest where protestant churches were well represented, which they still are today.  The appearance of the Knights of Columbus was in Marshalltown, Iowa, which is in central Iowa. Then, as now, Iowa had many heavily Catholic communities (my grandfather on my father's side came from one), and chances are Marshalltown was one.

This is unfortunately the point at which our data breaks down and, moreover, the point at which a really good map would be handy.  We'll get to maps in a moment, but I can't find one for 1919.

I can several that are more or less current, but they're also highly deceptive.  Probably the best of them is this one:

This map is likely the most accurate, maybe, as what it shows is religious affiliation today, in our own era, on the part of religiously active families. Another map can be easily found that demonstrates the same thing by claimed affiliation, and is largely the same, but this one shows something that's more subtle, but is still inaccurate.

For example, if you look at this you'll be left with the impression that Wyoming his heavily Catholic.  If you made that assumption, you'd be wrong.

What the map actually demonstrates, but without explanation, is that Catholics are largest group of single denomination church goers, and the map that shows simple affiliation, would do the same. But in reality, Catholics are outnumbered everywhere in Wyoming by Protestants, who collectively make up the larger group in both groups, but who are split into a lot more denominations.*

What you'll also see, and what brings us to this point, is the "Mormon Corridor", which is the gray area on this map centered in Utah.  That exists now, and it existed in 1919 as well.

Okay, before we go on to that, we better flesh out the story in 1919, which we only hinted at with Marshalltown Iowa.  I'd love to have a map like the one above for 1919, but it might also be deceptive.

As we've noted here before, the United States was founded by Protestant people.  This doesn't mean that everyone in the U.S. was Protestant from day one, particularly if we take into account areas that were settled by Spain and France.  But even in the English colonies there were always a small number of Catholics and a smaller number of Jews.  The Protestants, however, were not all of one faith even early on.  The Church of England dominated in most places, but there were other Protestant churches, often ones very much at odds with the Church of England, right from the onset.

Catholics really began to arrive in numbers during the mid 19th Century when large scale immigration occurred from Ireland and Germany, and then later from Italy.  Added to that were lands added to the American territorial domain that had been Spanish or French, which incorporated Catholic populations.  None the less, in 1850, just after the Mexican War which had shocked the Army into treating its Catholic enlisted men more fairly, the Catholic population of the United States was just 5% of all Americans. By 1910, however, it was 17%.

It was also concentrated in communities that strongly reflected ethnic heritage, and would be right up through the 1940s.  So, you could find heavily Catholic communities, often living in Catholic Ghettos, in large urban areas.  Irish Catholics were also well represented in certain types of agriculture, sheep being first among them.

This pattern of strong ethnic concentration existed, albeit to a much lesser degree, in the 20th Century as early as the first half of it.  This in part reflected earlier settlement patterns. So in some regions of the South the predominant church was Presbyterian, reflecting an early Scots Irish immigration.  Lutheran Churches were well represented anywhere Scandinavians or northern Germans has settled.  The Baptist Church, then as now, absolutely dominated in the post Civil War South, reflecting a large scale shift form the Episcopal Church following that war.  The Episcopal Church, however, was a very strong and large church and was the strongest church in the United States at that time, reflecting its early history and the fact that wealth often tended to concentrate in its membership.  Conversions from other Christian religions into the Episcopal Church, at that time, was common for economic and social reasons (it's really easy, for example, to find Army officers who were other religions becoming Episcopalians as their careers advanced).  The Episcopal Church today is a tiny shadow of its former self, not even getting a color in the map above, but it was a titan in 1919.

So what we've seen, but only barely, is that as this convoy traveled across the United States, it traveled across the ethnic and religious map of the United States.  Almost everywhere it went at first it would have been traveling through cities and towns where Protestant churches predominated and there would have always been an Episcopal Church wherever they were, and often a Presbyterian one.

Most of any size, by that time, would have had a Catholic Church as well.  Most of the areas they traveled through, moreover, were predominantly if not exclusively "white", although as frequent readers here know, racial categories are frankly suspect in many ways.  Only in Illinois, where the command stopped in Chicago, which experienced race riots that year, and on the East Coast, and in Omaha Nebraska, would they have almost certainly have seen American blacks.  And this in one of the years during which the Great Migration was in progress.

100% of the command involved in the convoy, being in the segregated Army, would have been white.

Drilling down a little further, however, some interesting things were now happening.

We've already noted Iowa. By that point of the trip the command would have been traveling through territory where a majority of the local residents were often Catholic, and predominantly of German ancestry.  Entering Omaha, however, they would have returned to a situation somewhat like that of Chicago in which there was a real ethnic diversity and a large black population.  After Omaha, the population was again white, but there would have been once again a fairly substantial, if not majority, Catholic population in many of the towns they were traveling through.  AS they were now traveling the path of the Union Pacific, whoever, there would have been an Hispanic community now in any town of size, which were few.

Entering Wyoming they would have been entering a state which by today's standards is "white", but which featured considerably more ethnic diversity than might be supposed.  Indeed, Wyoming by some measures would have been highly diverse by the standards of the first quarter of the 20th Century, during which racial categorizations included many more divisions than they do now. At the time, as we've explored before, the predominant "race" in the country was the "Anglo Saxon Race", which was a much more limited definition than "white".  Racial discrimination was common against many more groups than blacks as well, with Irish, Italian, Greek, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, and so on, communities all being targeted, often highly openly, by various groups for discrimination.

And Wyoming was much more ethnically and ethnoreligiously diverse by 19th Standards than is commonly imagined.  Indeed, the southern portion of the state that the Lincoln Highway traveled through, which had been trailblazed by the Union Pacific Railroad, was distinctly so.

In entering the state the convoy first stopped at Hilsdale, a small farming community then, and an even smaller farming community now, where the ethnic and ethnoreligious nature of the state was quite unlikely to be apparent. But that may very well have started to change a bit upon entering Cheyenne, the state capitol.

Like most Midwestern towns of any substance, a strong element of English and Protestant British Isles heritage was, and is, apparent.  In the immediate downtown of the city, a very English Episcopal church had existed since 1888 and was modeled on the Stoke Poges church in England, sending a very distinct message.  Interestingly, the Episcopal Church, which had a Cathedral in Wyoming, did not choose Cheyenne as the Bishop's seat, which we shall shortly see.

St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

That English heritage was also shown in the very substantial downtown Methodist Church, which in those days was the Methodist Episcopal Church, reflecting that it had its origin as a movement within the Church of England. Their church dated to 1890.

First United Methodist Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  This would originally have been a Methodist Episcopal Church.

Probably more surprising, however, is that the Catholic Diocese of Wyoming had located in the state's capitol, and it had a very substantial new Cathedral.

St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The cornerstone of the Cathedral was laid in 1909, so the church was in existence in 1919 when the Motor Transport convoy traveled through town.  That the state, with its small population, already have its own diocese is telling, and reflects, more than anything else, an early Irish immigration into the state, although by 1919 the state already had strong Catholic Slavic and Italian populations and the beginnings of a substantial Greek, and hence Greek Orthodox, population.  Added to the Catholic population, moreover, was a substantial Hispanic population that lived all along the course of the Union Pacific and which was supplemented in the mid 20th Century by New Mexican migrants.

Wyoming had a Catholic population very early on in various forms, including New Mexican migrants who helped the Army expand Ft. Laramie, French Canadian fur trappers, Irish and German soldiers and convert Indians, the latter category being something that was very real but frequently forgotten about.** When the railroad came in the population very much increased in the form of Irish and New Mexican rail workers.  Coal development came almost immediately thereafter, and that very much increased the population in the form of Slavic coal miners.  Sheep ranching the added to the mix with a large influx of Irish sheepmen. At the point in time we're looking at, 1919, sheep ranching, coal mining and railroad work were all major industrial factors in the state.  This reflected itself in a vibrant Catholic Church in the state, although as noted, Catholic were and are an overall minority.

Much the same as noted above was reflected with the convoy crawled over Sherman Hill and on to Laramie.

The rather odd Ames Monument in Albany County dedicated to the Ames brothers and placed on Sherman Hill. The monument commemorated their role in the transcontinental railroad

Laramie, like Cheyenne, is one of the oldest towns in Wyoming, with the Gem City of the Plains having come into existence due to the railroad. That gave the town the same ethnic mix as Cheyenne with it being a bit modified by the early placement of the University of Wyoming there.  Somehow or another, and perhaps because of an English fascination with ranching that came along in the late 19th Century, it was strongly attractive to English ex-patriots at one time.  It's likely for this reason that it was, up until fairly recently, the seat of Wyoming's Episcopal Bishop.***

St. Matthew's Episcopal Cathedral in Laramie, Wyoming.

Buildings at one time associated with the Episcopal Cathedral in Laramie.

From Laramie, the convoy went through Bosler, Rock River, and on to Medicine Bow. The diarist didn't mention Bosler at all, no doubt because it is and was a very small town.  Most of what was likely in Bosler then is still there, which isn't much, but it's in much worse condition.  It's basically a crossroads into the Iron Mountain Range and probably a service stop on the Union Pacific.  Indeed, even now I'll occasionally see service cars parked on the tracks there.

Rock River, is a very small town as well, so I was surprised to read about the Red Cross Canteen that greeted the convoy there and served lunch.  Based on the photographs we posted, Rock River was really in its heyday at the time.

That day has really passed and so I can't give you any observations about the town now, other than that it remains there as a ranching town, I suspect, today.  I'm always amazed that it hangs on, neither growing or declining.  A Baptist Church has been built there within the last few years, but I'd be skeptical if there was a preexisting one.

Indeed, I can't find any evidence of an earlier church in Rock River at all, which doesn't mean that there wasn't one there.  But Rock River may stand for something else in this journey, which is the sort of loose religious views that characterize Wyoming, which has long been one of the states where individuals are among the least likely to claim a religious affiliation. There's much made of "None's" in the news now, but in much of wide open Wyoming, once you pass into ranch country, that's been sort of vaguely common for a long time.  It's not that people don't have any religious beliefs, but rather that they're unformed and no particularly allegiance is tightly claimed by many people.  Indeed, a scene based on this was included in Owen Wister's The Virginian, which was published in 1902.

If so, this is a good place to mention the novel, as Rock River is down the road, quite some ways, from the next town, Medicine Bow, where the novel starts off.

If Rock River isn't the beginning of the wilder Wyoming (maybe Bosler is for that matter), Medicine Bow certainly is.  By that point the travelers were solidly into real ranching country and had been for many miles.  In 1919, they were also into sheep country  Medicine Bow was likely more of a happening place in 1919 than it is now, but it was a ranch town then and it remains one now, although then the Union Pacific stopped there and hence the hotel got its start, a start that was about to be boosted by the improvements that were soon coming to the Lincoln Highway.

The Virginian Hotel and the Union Pacific depot in Medicine Bow.

Once again, the diarist didn't bother to mention the next town the convoy went through, Hanna.  Hanna was a coal mining town at the time, and was right up through the 1980s.  It's a mere shadow of its former self now, even though it was a going concern back in the 1980s.

Memorial in Hanna Wyoming to its World War One veterans.

Hanna was based on coal, even though sheep ranching was a major industry in the area. It's World War One memorial shows that in a few exotic names showing up on it, men who went overseas and were probably returning to the continent they were from in order to fight in that continent's giant war.

It was a site of prior sad 20th Century loss in and of itself, having suffered two horrific early 20th Century mine disasters.

No. 1 Mine Disaster Memorial.

The next place mentioned was Ft. Steele, which was nothing but a railhead at that time.  It was also a giant sheep shipping location, confirming the extent to which the convoy had left farm country, and cattle country, and was in sheep country.

Current railroad bridge at Ft. Steele. The concrete foundations were built in 1910.

Perhaps it was oddly familiar to the men to camp in what had been a military post, albeit an abandoned one. The only current residents were associated with the Union Pacific.

Bridge tender's house at Ft. Steele.  The bridge tender watched for fires, although I'm sure he had other duties as well.

After Ft. Fred Steele came Rawlins, another Union Pacific town with a strong sheep industry as well.  Like the other substantial UP towns we've mentioned, Rawlins had an ethnic and ethnoreligious nature that was similar to them.  A substantial Catholic Church had been built in 1916 as a result.

St. Joseph Catholic Church in Rawlins.

Just a couple of blocks away was a much older church, however, the 1882 France Memorial Presbyterian Church.  Presbyterianism at the time was very strongly associated with the Scots and Scots Irish, and often indicated that people of that background were in the community.  I don't know if it does in this case, but I suspect it does.  Indeed, the Presbyterian Church in Casper was founded about the same time, and at the recommendation to the founding Presbyterian minister that he relocate himself there from another Wyoming town he intended to found a church in, as "Casper was a Scotch city".  

It wasn't, but that there were enough Scottish people in those towns, or Scots Irish, or people of Scotch descent, so that somebody could say it, and a substantial church be built, says something.

Both of those churches represent changes in the fortunes of those denominations over time. . . maybe. The France Memorial Church is now a Baptist Church, a denomination whose fortunes have risen in the Protestant world over time, although it is still most strongly represented in the American South.  Casper's First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1913, changed its name only a couple of years after it celebrated its centennial.

From Rawlins they went on to a stay in the Red Desert and the next day traveled on to Point of Rocks, Rock Spring and Green River.  All of those towns where mining (and ranching) towns.  

Rock Springs indeed contained an ethnic makeup formed from every European nation where mining occurred, with the Welsh, Poles, other Slavs, Italians and Greeks all prominently represented there. As it was also a railroad town, like Green River, which is very nearby, it also had a strong Irish community.

The ethnic character of Rock Springs was so strong, in fact, that the Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne had provided the town with two churches, one for the Irish population and the other for the Slavic one.  That latter church reflected that in its name, Sts. Cyril and Methodius.  It's first pastor was a speaker of Slavic languages, which is in part no doubt why a separate parish was established.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church, Rock Springs.

And the Greek Orthodox Church, which is not well represented in Wyoming overall, also built a church nearby.

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, Rock Springs Wyoming.

And then they crossed an ethnoreligious divide.

The Mormon Corridor, from Wikipedia Commons.  CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1059487

There's no solid line or fence or anything of the type, but after Rock Springs and Green River the convoy entered into a new ethnoreligious region of the country which they would remain in for the next several days, which is referred to as "The Mormon Corridor".

Now, as we've set out as we've moved along, the command had moved through and between a lot of different religious and ethnic communities in their long trail across the United States.  And in 1919, those differences tended to be sharper than they are now.  Indeed, in areas that where Catholics were present but a minority, even in Wyoming, they were often subject to prejudices.  In much of the Midwest and even part of the West, such as Colorado, the Klu Klux Klan was on the rise, and at that time it borrowed from some Protestant religious themes and it was sharply anti Catholic and anti Jewish, as well as being anti foreigner and anti black.  So if you stayed anyone area, which they of course did not, you'd surely have noticed this, unless you were too acclimated it all to do so, after a fairly short time.

And as we've also noted, self segregation was a real feature of the era, with ethnic communities very sharply segregating themselves into ethnic communities.

And here you would have started to see that.

Americans of an historical mindset are generally familiar with the Mormon Church, which I understand doesn't really like to be called that, in a very general and often inaccurate way.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is the name by which it calls itself, is one of several churches that all have their origin in their founder, Joseph Smith.  Most Americans outside of the West sort of generally suppose that Mormons are sort of like really strict Baptists, or something, other than that they may have tolerated polygamy at some time.****

In actuality the LDS are a very distinct and unique religious community and were, at one time, even fairly distinctly represented by the inclusions of some unique ethnic qualities in that that there were an unusual number of Mormons of Danish extraction.  We're not going to try to make this a history of the LDS, but what we will note is that the history of the existence of the Mormon Corridor stems from their migration on the Oregon Trail starting in 1847 and lasting until 1869.  The story is complicated but its roots lay in the fact that there was very strong animosity between Mormons and about everyone else in that time period and they understood to relocate themselves under the leadership of Brigham Young.

As noted, the story is complicated and it in fact involves a split in the Mormons themselves over doctrinal issues, with one branch, the "reformed branch" choosing more conventional Christian tenants and the larger branch choosing to accept some very controversial ones, which included polygamy.  It was polygamy more than anything else that caused enormous tension between them and their neighbors and it was in fact illegal everywhere in the United States.  As ti was however a tenant of the Mormon faith they persisted in it and relocated to the Salt Lake Valley, starting as we noted in in 1847.

The migration is often imagined to have settled all the Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley, or alternatively in Utah, but that's also untrue.  The concentration of the migration was the Salt Lake Valley, but fairly early on Mormons also settled a wide swath of country that is depicted in the map set out above.  This then causes a demographic feature in Wyoming where, while they are minority faith, they are hte majority in some communities.  The convoy was traveling through those communities starting with Lyman, which was noted but only barely so in the diary.  The next Mormon community they traveled through in Wyoming was Evanston, after which they traveled on to Echo, leaving the state.  They'd remain in it the Corridor for the next several days.

But how much did they notice the different ethnoreligious nature of where they were?  Perhaps not all that much really.  They moved every day.  By this point in time the Mormon had long ago abandoned polygamy, although it was also the case that as late as he early 20th Century some of it was tolerated in the Mormon community, so if they were inclined to notice that, which we can doubt that they would have been, they wouldn't have noticed that.

And other things which some folks notice today, they also would probably have not have. The food certainly would have been standard American fare for the era.  People often note that Mormons abstain from alcohol, coffee, tea and smoking.  Prohibition was on, however, and indeed Prohibition had received real support from the Mormon Church in Wyoming when it was adopted.  It had also, however, received widespread support from the Catholic Church in Wyoming, which had no tenants against drinking.

And interestingly enough, Mormon restrictions on smoking, drinking, and the consumption of tea and coffee were less pronounced at the time than they are now. They were frowned on, but they were not frowned on in a really strict sense at that time.  While its only a guess, my guess is that these practices were less observed on the fringe of the Mormon Corridor than in its heart, for obvious reasons. Be that as it may, it's certainly always been possible, or at least was in this era, to buy coffee in Salt Lake and it was probably not all that hard to buy tobacco either.*****  An observant person would have likely have noticed that there weren't very many people smoking or drinking coffee, however.  Nobody should have been drinking alcohol anywhere as it was illegal in the places we've recently been talking about, such as Wyoming, and wartime Prohibition remained on in the U.S. for unclear reasons.

One thing that soldiers might have noticed, and which they would notice today, is that Mormons are as a rule very clean cut and modestly dressed, although all of society was much more modestly dressed then as opposed to now. Travelers to locations like Utah State University today are often struck by the lack of tattoos and how clean cut everyone is.  That did have some impression upon people at the time as well as even the very eccentric Unitarian Californian Everett Ruess remarked on it, principally in regard to young Mormon women, before he disappeared forever in the Utah desert.  But, as noted, a higher standard of personal appearance existed a century ago in general, as opposed to now.

But would they have really noticed any of this?

Well, probably some.  We'll see.

And I'd guess that you would.  I've traveled as a soldier to Oklahoma and to South Korea.  I'm a student of such things, but things were different in both of those places in ways that were hard not to notice.

But on the other hand, driving through for just a day, and in 1919, many of these things might not have been all that noticeable.

They'd definitely note the desert. . . that was coming right up.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*Those doctrinal differences in the Protestant community would have been more sharply observed by various Protestant denominations at the time, but it should also be mentioned, as it will be below, that there were and are a fair number of Wyomingites who are simply "unchurched".  This is often noted as a new trend in much of the United States, but it is not in Wyoming.

**As a total side, and very little recalled, Catholic conversions by Indians were substantially high enough that some well known Indians became Catholic at some point of their lives.  Red Cloud, the famous Sioux chief who won the only Plains Indian War against the United States, was a devout Catholic after settling on the Reservation, as was his wife.  Sitting Bull, surprisingly, was also a Catholic, although the state of his devotion is something I'm not aware of. 

Other Christian denominations also had a substantial number of Indian converts. Both the Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church had missions on the  Wind River Reservation in Wyoming at this point in time.  There was some Mormon representation as well.  Protestantism as an institution was strongly represented in the actual administration of the Reservation at the time in a way that would likely be regarded as improper now.

***The administrative offices of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming have been moved to Casper.

****I'm not going to get into churches that look back to Joseph Smith and retain polygamy, which is a controversial subject that would be a huge diversion.  Suffice it to say, the number of people who adhere to some sort of church that looks to Joseph Smith and which retain polygamy is small and is very likely signficantly outnumbered by the Community of Christ, which at one time called itself the Reformed Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter Day Saints, which not only does not contain polygamy but which has many conventional Christian beliefs while retaining some LDS beliefs.

*****And indeed by this time, Salt Lake had a large Irish and Greek community.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18, 1941.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18: 1941  One hundred Casper men and boys enrolled in the Wyoming State Guard.  State Guards were the wartime replacements for the National Guard, which had been Federalized in 1940, and therefore was no longer existent, now being part of the U.S. Army.  The mission of the State Guard was to provide the services to the State that the National Guard did in peace time.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

Woodstock, Day 4. August 18, 1969

By the early morning hours of the forth day of Woodstock, the crowd was tiring of the event and began to leave at first light.  Still, some remarkable acts played as the crowed dwindled.

Oddly enough, Roy Rogers was originally thought of to play the final number, which was to be Happy Trails, but he declined.

Johnny Winter.  I don't think very many remember the young Winter as performing at Woodstock, but he did, along with his brother Edgar.

Blood Sweat & Tears, who went on at 1:30 a.m.

Crosby Still, Nash & Young.  I've never cared for this band in any sense, and their Woodstock performance is no exception.

Paul Butterfield Blues Band. This band had been a blues band at one time but no longer was. Still, they opened with the blues number Born Under A Bad Sign which was most famously performed by Eric Clapton, who did not play at Woodstock.

Sha Na Na. This 50s revival band went on at 7:30 a.m.  It's odd to think of them even playing at Woodstock and its particularly odd if its considered that their hyped up nostalgic performance was revising music that was only a decade old.  Almost nothing about their performance seems to fit the era in which they were performing.  They preformed twelve songs in 30 fast minutes.

Jimi Hendrix.  Hendrix was the closing act as he insisted on the position, which unfortunately put his epic performance at the point at which the crowd had very much dispersed.  He played for two hours, playing nineteen songs, much longer than the few songs that are generally shown when Woodstock is recalled, and started off with his rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, one of fifty times he was recorded playing the national anthem.  A lot of his songs were played back to back with no interruption between them whatsoever.  His last song, Hey Joe, was played as an encore.

Hendrix had sought this position as it was the position of honor in a performance, the best band gong last.  He may well have deserved that honor in spite of the diminished crowd.  His rendition of
The Star Spangled Banner ended one of the newscasts nightly news that day, as I can recall watching it and asking my father what the event was.  The performance was genuinely epic, which is all the more amazing as Hendrix had been at Woodstock the entire time up until his performance and had not slept at all.

Best post of the week of August 11, 2019.

The best posts of the week of August 11, 2019.

1919 Motor Transport Convoy

So, if in terms of combating Russian influence in the election cycle, there's one simple thing you can do. . .

The Spring Creek Raid.

Woodstock

“Pathfinder Dam site; view looking up the North Platte River showing the dam site,” 8/17/1905

Series: Photograph albums, 1903 - 1972. Record Group 115: Records of the Bureau of Reclamation, 1889 - 2008.

August 17, 1919. Evanston to Echo, Utah.

On this day in 1919 the Motor Transport Convoy left Wyoming and entered Utah.

The 17th was a Sunday. This is remarkable as the Convoy's command chose not to stay in Evanston, Wyoming that Sunday but simply pushed on.  No day of rest for the convoy.  That had happened only once before in their trip, and on that occasion it had pretty clearly occurred because the convoy had experienced delays due to road conditions and mechanical problems.  Here there's no evidence that had occurred. 

Having said that, the convoy did get an unusually late start that day, starting at 12:30 p.m.  While the diarist doesn't note it, chances are high that the late start was in order to allow men to attend local church services before the motor march was resumed.

The convoy experienced a plethora of problems, including the Lincoln Highway now being a bad mountain road as it crossed over from Wyoming.  Carbon buildup in a cylinder was plaguing a Dodge, which is interesting in this household as the same thing recently afflicted one of our Dodge pickups.  The engine of the Class B truck that was a machine shop was shot.

Echo Utah is a little tiny town today, and must have been the same in 1919.  By stopping in Echo, they were effectively camping.

Woodstock, day three

On day three of Woodstock, the following bands played:

Joe Cocker, whose With A Little Help From My Friends cover, is one of the best remembered numbers from the concert.  He went on at 2:00 p.m.

Country Joe and the Fish, who uniquely played twice during the concert.  Their first performance was not scheduled.

Ten Years After.  Ten Years After was one of the most notable of the British blues bands and some regard its performance at Woodstock as the best performance of the concert.

The Band

Woodstock, day two.

We've already noted the commencement of the giant Woodstock music festival in 1969. This day was day two.

On this day the music opened at 12:15, and the following acts played:

Quill

Country Joe and the Fish, whose performance is well known for the Vietnam Rag.

Santana, whose performance was one of the best and whose drummer, 20 year old Michael Shrieve, was the youngest musician to preform by some accounts.

John Sebastian, who was not on the bill but actually in attendance but who was asked to play to make up for dead space by the promoters.

Keef Hartley Band

The Incredible String Band, who had refused to play due to the rain the prior day.

Canned Heat

Mountain

The Grateful Dead

Creedance Clearwater Revival  CCR later wrote Who Stopped the Rain concerning the concert.

Janis Joplin

Sly and the Family Stone, who also had one of the best performances of the event.

The Who

Jefferson Airplane, who concluded at 9:40.

August 16, 1919. Steep grades for the Motor Transport Convoy, the 35 miles between Fort Bridger and Evanston Wyoming.

Evanston, Wyoming's well preserved downtown.

Mountainous terrain became the challenge this day for the Motor Transport Convoy, as it passed from Fort Bridger to Evanston Wyoming.

A 12% grade is incredibly steep.

Former Union Pacific roundhouse in Evanston, Wyoming, now a museum.

In other vehicle news, the first automobile race at the Orange County California Fair was held.

Back home, Frank Hadsell was so impressed with the recent cover photograph on the August issue of the Wyoming Stockman Farmer, he was hoping to buy fifty copies.

Woodstock. August 15 through 18, 1969

If, as we've defined it, the 1960s as a decade began on March 8, 1965, when the Marines waded ashore at Danang, Republic of Vietnam, and ended on August 9, 1974, with the resignation of President Richard Nixon, then the mid point, and the high point, in more than one way occurred on August 15 through 17, at Woodstock, New York.

Original anticipated Woodstock lineup, which proved to be somewhat inaccurate.

Woodstock was a giant undertaking, and one for which nothing whatsoever went right, by any measure.  It's both justifiably celebrated and somewhat inaccurately remembered, as any giant event of this sort would be.

Intended from the onset to be a very large music festival, of which the 1960s featured several, it grew totally out of control and the producers soon lost control of the event, making it a free concert in the end.  It became more than that, and in some ways came to define the 1960s counter culture movement.

It may very well also mark the high point in Rock and Roll music. At this point in time, Rock and Roll still very much showed its blues roots and the music, while not as serious as a rule as the blues, reached its high point in being serious music.  Outlandish clothing had already come in, but after this point Rock and Roll would start to be highly gimmicky, something it has never recovered from.  Within a few years it would no longer be as serious, or be taken as seriously, as it was at this point.

On this day, the following acts played:

Richie Havens, who went on at 5:07 p.m and played for nearly two hours, and who was early on stage as Sweetwater, the opening act, had been stopped and delayed by the police.  Havens was a folk musician.

Sweetwater.  This band was a large ensemble, which some Rock bands of this period were, and is little remembered today. Being omitted from the Woodstock movie and the band's sort career no doubt contributed to that.

Bert Sommer.  Sommer isn't well known today, but he received the first standing ovation at Woodstock for his cover of Simon and Garfunkel's America.

Tim Hardin

Ravi Shankar, who played through the rain.

Melanie, was 22 years old at the time and who went on after the Incredible String Band declined to play in the rain.  She was invited as Woodstock's producers had an office in the same building which she did and was better known in Europe than the United States at this time.  One of three female acts at Woodstock, she later wrote her first hit song, Lay Down, Candles In The Rain, based on the concert.  Her career would later be virtually defined by her 1972 song Brand New Key, which was a song that came to her when she broke a vegetarian fast to have a hamburger at McDonald's after a twenty seven day fast.

Arlo Guthrie

Joan Baez, who was six months pregnant at the time and who concluded the first day's acts at 12:25.