One of the most striking photos taken recently at the site where the Lovewell and Poole families spent summers hunting gold in Wyoming, seems at first to be just an interesting picture of some rocks.
However, far from being run-of-the-mill rocks for Lovewell history buffs, these form an outcrop which once overlooked the home-base for prospecting and mining operations of the Josephine Lode, named in honor Walt Poole’s wife and Thomas Lovewell’s daughter, Josephine Poole.
Today the outcrop still makes a good place to stand for an overview of the spot where, 120 years ago, visitors from Kansas dug holes in the earth and crossed their fingers, while someone back at the cabin stood over a wood-burning stove frying bacon for the hungry crew.
Providing a sense of scale, that’s the top of Phil Thornton’s head in the lower right-hand corner of the picture at the top of the page, while what appears to be a camping blanket adds a microscopic dash of red in the distance of the photo to the left.
The same sort of tingle that must have gone through Phil as he stood atop that rock, was waiting for me recently when I glanced at the front page of the Lovewell Index for November 27, 1914.
In the midst of news items about who was shucking corn for whom and what the Rebekah Lodge ladies were up to, there were brief notes about a couple of interesting social calls as the holiday season got underway.
I had stared at the two items for only a moment before it dawned on me that everyone who was mentioned was somehow a relative of mine, although it took me a moment to figure out exactly which “Bill Logan” the story referred to.
Besides having been one of the town’s two blacksmiths, James William “Bill” Logan had also served as Lovewell’s Police Judge, and in spite of their occasional political differences, remained one of Thomas Lovewell’s closest friends even after moving his family and his forge from Lovewell to Formoso in 1903.
The group who accompanied the 63-year-old widower from Formoso would have included his son William Finley Logan, known as “Will.” Will Logan had married Thomas Lovewell’s granddaughter, Lilly Robinson. The last child born to Thomas’s daughter Julaney, Lilly had lived with Thomas and Oral Jane for several months after the death of her mother in 1894. She now had four children of her own: Irene, William Lloyd, Ruth, and baby Vera.
Thanksgiving visitors at the nearby Will and Emma Alice Simmons residence included their daughter Sarah Switzer, her husband Jake, and one-year-old Alice. Heading the other contingent of visitors at the Simmons house was Stephen Lovewell, a recent widower. His late wife Villa Viola Lovewell and his hostess Emma Alice Simmons were sisters, two of the fifteen or sixteen children attributed to Adam and Elizabeth VanMeter. (For more about the VanMeters see “A Somber Celebration”)
Stephen would have brought his six children to the feast: Cecil Rhodes, Orel Elizabeth, Edna Myrtle, Dolly Fern, Leonard Stephen, and Thomas Willard. Orel and Edna, who were old enough to handle the kitchen chores at home, probably contributed side-dishes to the holiday spread.
In attendance at the two visits I count one great-great-grandparent, three great-grandparents, four grandparents, five aunts and uncles, and numerous cousins, of some degree.
I’m glad I invited myself.