Between the Lines: Family History and Quirky Stories From Our Forgotten Past

  A Gold Rush Family Compilation A crude beachfront gold miners' "kitchen" - "Flapjacks, beans and bacon."Sketch appeared in the 1892 San Francisco Examiner .     When I was a little girl and learned about the gold rush, I thought it was fascinating. But I thought, “Not my family.” In most families – at least judging by shows like “Finding Your Roots,” and conversations with friends, family stories are forgotten in a generation or two. Most people do not know the names of their great-grandparents by heart – or at all.       So it was in my family. Five of my eight great-grandparents were immigrants. So I assumed my family as a whole had not been in America for long. Reading about the Puritans and the pioneers moving west, or events like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, Indian wars, I always thought, “Not us. Not my people.”       I was completely wrong. Of Dad’s four grandparents, his grandfather Clyde’s family came to America in 1635. Mom’s grandmother, Ma

  A 1914 advertisement from the Belvidere, Illinois newspaper for a boy's first long pants. There is a rite of passage that has disappeared in just the last few generations. For a boy, getting his first long pants meant he had entered puberty, that he was joining the world of men. It was a time to be celebrated, a time for a little teasing, perhaps some hazing from peers. But it was looked forward to, and later remembered fondly. Mack and Jack Patchett, two of my grandmother's cousins, in about 1907. Note the bows on Jack's shoes and his "Little Lord Fauntleroy" curls. Mack is just a few years away from his first long pants. Baby Clothing It’s a fairly recent trend to have gendered baby clothing, and a very recent trend in which babies and small children are dressed the same as adults. Look at photos prior to the 1920s and you’ll see boys and girls up to age three or four dressed in, well, dresses. Both were typically wearing long white gowns similar

                       McKinley "Mack" Barbour, Weston County, Wyoming in 1919   “Mack Barbour, nationally known rodeo man…needs no introduction.” Goldendale Sentinel (Goldendale, Washington) “Veteran show director and one-time bucking horse champion,” The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon) “Mack Barbour has produced great rodeo shows throughout the United States and in Europe. His cowboys and stock are tops!” Medford Mail Tribune (Medford, Oregon) “[Mack Barbour has] the top rodeo stock in the nation…numbering more than 300 head of bucking horses, Brahma bulls and wriggling roping calves.” The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California) “Mack H. Barbour, the man who provides tough and sometimes wild rodeo stock for all the nation’s top rodeos,” Record Searchlight (Redding, California)      A lot of Mack Barbour’s life can be told through the headlines of newspapers in Kansas, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Nevada.       There were the Wyoming days when he was young, he