One of the Hardest Things for a Little Girl to Do

(ONE OF THE FEW MEMORIES TOLD TO ME BY MY PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER)

Grandma Gates wasn't one for telling stories. She liked to live in the present. Yet this was an early memory she shared.

Mamie Tripp Gates remembered vividly saying good-bye to her father Rufus Tripp who was dying on October 25, 1900.  She was only five years old. Her twin sisters, Cora Dell and Nora Bell, were two years old. What a difficult loss for three little girls!

A loss of this magnitude would have made it so easy for this impressionable five-year-old to start down a road of painful resentment and self-pity creating an unlovable, bitter woman incapable of genuinely loving and caring for others. Instead this heartbreaking experience enabled Grandma Mamie Irene Tripp Gates to develop a heart of compassion and empathy visibly evident to her family, neighbors, and friends.

Below is the link to a photo of  the tombstone of Rufus “Dive” Tripp in the Ozro Falls Cemetery at Hewins, Kansas, in Chautauqua County. (This link states he was born in Newry, Maine, on April 6, 1858, but The United States Census of 1860 cites his birthplace as Illinois.)  Mamie’s father was only 42 years of age when he died.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=23860987

A Side Note: Mamie’s parents were married on March 2, 1892. Rufus was 34 years old and from Chautauqua County in Kansas. Nettie Venator listed Osage Nation as her residence with her age recorded as 20 years old. The marriage license application was filed in Chautauqua County in Kansas.

Rufus and Nettie Venator Tripp

He Was Paid for His Wheat in GOLD!

Edmund Gates, Sr. came to Newkirk and Ponca City around 1898-1900.  This trip was prompted because Edmund was disturbed because his brother John was getting a cut of the profit but doing no work on the Kansas family farm.
As a single man Edmund Sr. was working shocking wheat during the harvest here in Oklahoma Territory.  It seemed to him that every other door in Ponca City was a saloon.

Edmund Sr. was notified that the wheat crop he planted on the Gates farm near Garnett, Kansas, was ready to harvest. His neighbor in Kansas had a binder and Edmund shocked the wheat by hand.  He was so fast he had the shocking done about the same time the binding was finished. 

Here is a link to observe wheat being shocked:                              

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvUsdvCda04

Here is a link to see a horse-drawn binder at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO01Lg0kKFs

Edmund hired the threshing crew as well as someone to cook for them. He cleared around $350 from his crop.  When he sold his grain he was paid in gold.  It was too heavy so he converted the gold to bills.

Interesting Note: A troy ounce of gold was worth $18.98 in 1898. A troy ounce of gold is now equal to around $1,400. I calculated and had Edmund Sr. kept the gold and passed it down to his descendants, it would be valued at over $25,000!