Life in the "Wild West"

 

I guess I should explain my reluctance to call Bill Paul “Grandfather” or even “Pappa,” as my mother referred to him. He died in 1930, long before I was born, so I never knew him. By the time my mother was old enough to remember much, he had become an alcoholic and was usually excluded from family events. His oldest son Willie provided most of the financial support for the family, moral support for Mamma, and parenting for the younger children. It wasn’t always that way though. For the first fifteen years of his marriage he was successful, wealthy, and shared an active social life with Mamma and the older children. Since I’ll be writing about that period of time for the next couple of posts, I’ll refer to him as “Pappa.”

 

Pappa, sitting at his desk, about 1920

 

After Mamma and Pappa, were married in 1898, Pappa became a rancher. He had bought some stock with some of his inheritance, and had gone in with a rancher named Byars. He was an expert horseman, competing in rodeos in roping, and he worked on the ranch as a foreman over the other cowboys. See my book, “Wenonah’s Story,” for more detail.

After a year or two on the ranch, Pappa was thrown from a horse, and suffered a temporary paralysis of his legs. Since he was no longer able to work as a cowboy, he and Mamma moved back to Pauls Valley.

Pappa’s brothers in law, George and Charles Brooks, Lillie and Kittie’s husbands, were both in real estate, so he decided to try his hand as a real estate broker. Pappa already had several Chickasaw allotments in his immediate family and all his relatives had allotments as well. He was outgoing and likeable, so buying, and selling property was an easy transition for him. Soon he owned several rental houses and was even building buildings. He built the First Baptist Church, the Masonic Lodge, and a large building down town. I remember as a child walking past it. It had “W. H. Paul” printed on a frieze across the top. Mamma and Pappa soon became wealthy. The couple entertained often, and took vacations to Arkansas, Texas and Colorado.

The summers were hot in Pauls Valley, so Mamma started spending the summers in Colorado. They stayed with Mamma’s “Sister Ada,” who lived in Colorado Springs with her husband, Robert Freeman, and they lived in Colorado Springs, so they stayed with her. I have a picture of Mamma at Seven Falls with her family at the time – Willie, Homer, and Victoria. Notice Mamma’s fancy dress.

 

Victoria Paul with children: Homer, William, and daughter Victoria at Seven Falls, Colorado, about 1908

 

 My mother described Mamma’s sister Ada as being kind of glamorous, wearing fancy clothes. She was also very pretty. She gave Mamma a housecoat that was covered with feathers, purple, if I remember right. Wenonah said that Mamma never wore it. I guess she thought it was too ostentatious for Pauls Valley.  

 

Sister Ada

 

The Paul family owned half a square block just three blocks from downtown, with horses, cows, chickens, a barn and a servants quarters, with a live in maid and housekeeper. Willie, the oldest son, got his grandfather, Sam Paul’s farm as an allotment. When he was older he worked the farm himself, but during the early years Pappa hired a man to farm the land for a share of the crops. Pappa wasn’t interested in farming. My mother said that she never saw him in work clothes. Every morning he got up, put on a suit and tie and walked downtown to his office.

Contrary to what you see in the movies, the people in small Oklahoma towns, at least in Pauls Valley, were very cultured and sophisticated. Mamma went out visiting once a week. She would have one of the boys hitch up the buggy an then she would visit one or more of her lady friends. She had a calling card she would leave if a friend was not home, or was unable to accept visitors.  On other days, ladies would come to visit Mamma. She had a parlor at the front of the house just for that purpose. Visitors would knock at the door. The maid would answer and accept the card. If Mamma was receiving visitors, they would be ushered back to the parlor and served tea or coffee. And if Mamma was busy they would just leave their card.

 Whenever Mamma and Pappa would go out, they always dressed up. Like I said before, Pappa always wore a suit and tie, and Mamma had fancy dresses too. She ordered them from catalogues, and she hired a seamstress to make alterations. Once a dress she ordered never came and, according to my mother, Wenonah, Mamma swore that the postmaster’s wife had intercepted it at the post office.

Just as Grandmother Lumpkin predicted in her letter to Mamma quoted in my last post: “you will have everything that you desire without having to work and make it.”

I’ve puzzled over where this elegant life style came from. These are the sort of customs I associate with 19^th century British society, not the American western frontier, but I think it came from Mamma’s parents. They had both been raised in the old South, where the ideal was to have servants to do all the work. Even though Mamma had grown up in a pioneer family, living on a farm, in a log cabin, she had still been taught to live the life of an elegant lady.  

More about that in my next post.