November 3

St. Hubert's Day.

Today is St. Hubert's Day.  That is, the day on the Catholic calendar honoring this Saint.

St. Hubert encounters the deer.

St. Hubert lived more recently, post Roman Empire, having been born in 656 and living until 727.  He was born in what is now southern France into a noble family, but was sent north to Paris at an early age.  Due to political turmoil, he was one of many who ended up it Metz as sort of a noble refugee and we need to keep in mind that France, as a solid political entity, didn't exist at the time. Anyhow, he married one Floribanne, daughter of Dagobert, Count of Leuven, and the couple had a son, Floribert, later the Bishop of Liege.  In this fluid political time, therefore, fate had taken Huber from Toulouse to Liège in an onward northern migration.

Hubert was not a religious man and that condition was amplified when his wife died giving birth to Floribert, a not uncommon fate for women at the time.  After that, Hubert took entirely to hunting in the Ardennes, living a solitary hunting life.  On a Good Friday, however when the faithful were gathering in Church in honor of that day (which is not a Holy Day of Obligation) he encountered a great stag and the it turned on him, cross between its horns, and spoke, saying:

Hubert, unless thou turn to the Lord, and lead a holy life, you shall quickly go down into hell.

It's hard to ignore a thing like that, to say the least, and Hubert dismounted from his horse and immediately, according to tradition, replied; "Lord, what would You have me do?", to which the reply came "Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you."  Hubert entered the priesthood and rose to the rank of Bishop of Liege, which he occupied until his death, at which point his priest son took over that position.  Both are saints.

According to the legend of his encounter, the deer also lectured St. Hubert on having higher regard for animals and engaging in human hunting practices, including taking old stags beyond their prime breeding years, and also to take sick or injured animals even if it meant passing up on a shot at atrophy.  There's more to it, but St. Hubert is accordingly still  held in high regard in Germany, Austria and France among hunters and ethical hunting principals taught in European hunting societies are attributed to him.

St. Hubert is the patron Saint of Hunters and is still celebrated in Northern Europe, where he is the patron of hunting associations.  In Germany, hunters celebrated this day as Hubertustag, pausing in the hunting season to honor St. Hubert.

As we had just referenced him in the post noted above, and we're further noting this day ourselves.

Seems like an appropriate thing to note in Wyoming.

1762         Spain acquired Louisiana from France.  So, as of this date, a small part of Wyoming that was previously French Louisiana, was Spanish Louisiana.  But not for long.

1812  The Robert Stuart party build a cabin in the Narrows, Bessemer Bend, region of what is now Natrona County. This primitive structure is generally regarded as the first European American cabin in Wyoming.  A monument to the cabin was until very recently located along the highway in the appropriate spot, but it was recently removed for road construction.  A later wooden sign, common for historical markers in Wyoming, once existed but was removed many years ago. That marker noted the cabin as the "first white man's cabin" and I've sometimes wondered if the verbiage was regarded as politically incorrect in later years.

The Stuart party did not occupy the cabin long as they found themselves on the boundary of a dispute between Indian tribes and the location was dangerous. They there decamped and relocated over 100 miles distant.

Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society and Some Gave All.

1868 Ulysses S. Grant won the presidential election over Horatio Seymour.

1890  The U.S. District  Court for the District of Wyoming went into session for the first time.

1890  Clarence Don Clark elected as Wyoming's first Congressman.

The nearly forgotten Clark was a New York born lawyer who had relocated to Wyoming in 1881.  The Republican from Evanston served two terms as Congresman and later served in the Senate.

1892  Henry Coffeen, Democrat from Sheridan, elected to Congress.  He would serve one term.

1896 William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency.

President McKinley.

This was the second Presidential election in which Wyoming's voters had a part.  Consistent with their populist swing in the prior 1892 election, Wyomingites gave the majority of their votes to the Democratic populist, William Jennings Bryan, who took 51% of the vote.  The Prohibition Party candidate that year only took .75% of the vote, with McKinley taking the rest.  Like the prior election of 1892, this Presidential election was showing the influence of major swings and upset within both parties.

 Willam Jennings Bryan.  

Bryan didn't ever succeed in being elected President, but he did become the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson and was briefly a Congressman from Nebraska.

1896  Democratic Governor John E. Osborne elected to Congress from Wyoming.  He would serve a single term.

1908 William Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan, handing Bryan another defeat.

By 1908 Williams Jennings Bryan was not only a fading star nationally, but also in Wyoming.  Taft had been the Vice President of Theodore Roosevelt, a wildly popular figure in Wyoming, and he took 55% of the vote.  Eugene Debs, the Socialist party candidate took 4.5% of the vote, with Bryan taking the balance.

1911  Chevrolet enters the automobile market.

1933 John B. Kendrick, U.S. Senator from Wyoming, and sponsor of the Kendrick Irrigation Project in Natrona County, died.  Prior to being elected Senator, he had served as Governor.

1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt re-elected in a landslide over Alfred M. ''Alf'' Landon.

Franklin Roosevelt took 60% of the Wyoming vote in 1936, up from 56% in 1932.

1936  Henry H. Schwartz, Democrat from Casper, elected to the U.S. Senate.  Schwartz served one term and was defeated in his reelection bid.  The Ohio born lawyer practiced law in Casper.

Henry H. Schwartz

1942.  Lester Hunt, DDS, the sitting Wyoming Secretary of State and a Democrat narrowly defeated Governor Nels H. Smith.

Lester C. Hunt.

Hunt would serve as Governor for two terms before going on to becoming Wyoming's Senator.  He killed himself in 1954 after Washington D. C. policy picked up his son in 1953 for soliciting a male prostitute.  The scandal was kept quiet for awhile, but political opponents threatened to use it against him as a threat to keep him from engaging in a 1954 bid for office.

In the Senate Hunt had been an opponent of Joe McCarthy.

In the same year that Wyoming went from Republican to Democrat for the Governor's mansion, the state went in the opposite direction for the Senate.  Edward V. Robinson defeated incumbant Harry Schwartz.

Robinson.

Robinson's election was part of a nationwide treand that year that saw a Republican increase.  He's serve only one term and lose a bid for reelection.  He was Welsh and had served in the British Army in the Boer War and is little remembered as a Wyoming politician.

1958  Gale McGee was elected to the U.S. Senate.  He was the first, and so far the only, University of Wyoming instructor to be elected to the U.S. Senate.   He was a Democrat.

McGee fit into another era in Wyoming's politics in that he was able to be elected as a Democrat and, perhaps even more surprisingly, the Class 2 Senator position was occupied by a Democrat at the time that McGee was elected, making both of Wyoming's Senators Democrats.  He served from 1959 until 1977.  That he was elected in the late 1950s is surprising to recall, because his somewhat flashy sartorial style really fit in with the early 1970s.  Nonetheless his service stretched all the way back to 1959 and he was sworn in as  Senator by Vice President Richard Nixon.  After being defeated for a reelection bid in 1976, a campaign which he was largely absent in, he was appointed by President Carter as the Ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Politically McGee was slightly liberal, but remained a popular Wyoming politician.  His defeat in 1976 was attributed by the national media to his opposition to the Vietnam War which was almost certainly incorrect.  McGee did oppose the war, but his seat remained safe throughout it.  There has been some speculation that by 1976 he no longer wanted to remain in the Senate but for one reason or another ran anyhow.  That would be more consistent with his campaign that year against Malcolm Wallop in which Wallop was allowed to run a nearly unopposed campaign.  McGee was the last Senator from Wyoming to be a member of the Democratic Party.

The Post Office in Laramie is named after Senator McGee.

1964  Lydon Johnson elected President.

 Johnson was the last Democratic Presidential candidate to receive the majority vote in Wyoming, receiving 56% of Wyoming's vote that year.

1964  Teno Roncolio, a Democratic lawyer originally from Rock Springs, but living in Cheyenne at the time, elected to Congress.

Roncolio would only serve one term from his 1964 election, and then attempt a run for the Senate.  His Senatorial run was unsuccessful and he would regain his position in the House in 1970.

Roncolio's 1964 election meant that two out of the three members of Congress (House and Senate) from Wyoming were Democrats, an event which would be almost inconceivable today.

Roncolio received the Silver Star while serving in the U.S. Army during World War Two for heroism in the invasion of Normandy, and he was one of the sources interviewed by Cornelius Ryan for his Book "The Longest Day."  Roncolio was the last member of the Democratic Party to be elected to Congress from Wyoming.

1999  Aaron McKinney convicted of the murder of Matthew Shepard the year prior.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2016  Buffalo (Bison) were returned to the Wind River Reservation by the Eastern Shoshone tribe. The introduced buffalo were ten in number.

2020  Joe Biden was elected President, defeating incumbent Donald Trump, although in a race that could not be officially called for days due to it being so close. The election also featured an enormous vote tally, exceeding any prior election.  Kamala Harris was elected Vice President, becoming the first female Vice President in U.S. history.

Joe Biden as Vice President.

In Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis was elected to the office of Senator, becoming the first female Wyoming Senator.  Liz Cheney was reelected to Congress.  The race was remarkable in that all the major candidates for Congress were women for the first time in the state's history, with Cheney facing female challenger and Native American Lynette Grey Bull and Lummis facing University of Wyoming professor Marev Ben David.

Cynthia Lummis.

The race also saw a Libertarian elected to the state's legislature, the first time a member of a third party has been elected to a Wyoming state office for a century.