November 30

1782 Britain recognizes US independence.

1803 Spain cedes Louisiana to France, including, of course, that part which is now Wyoming.

1810 Oliver Fisher Winchester born.

1856  Martin's Cove survivors arrive in Salt Lake City. 

This event, often sort of off hand stated as having happened in the dead of winter, actually, as this date attests, occurred much earlier and for a much briefer period of time than imagined. The handcart company was in fact detained at Martin's Cove for only five days.

Of course, saying "only five days" presents that, in part, from a modern view.  The handcart company was travelling shockingly late in the year.  Travelling by handcart was an arduous affair under any circumstances and was poorly provided for by this point in their journey. Wyoming is subject to blizzards much earlier than early November and Martin's Cove itself is fairly high altitude at approximately 6,000 feet.

The number of Mormon immigrants that died at Martin's Cove during their storm enforced delay is actually not know, but at least 145 members of the 500 person company died en route to Salt Lake, although not necessarily all of them in this singular event.

1869  Woman's suffrage bill sent to the Territorial House.

1914  International  Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union #322 chartered in Casper.

1916:   The Cheyenne Leader for November 30, 1916: A National Guard Casualty
 

Only meriting a small entry at the bottom of the page, we learn on this day that Wyoming National Guardsman Pvt. Frank J. Harzog, who enlisted from Sheridan, died in Deming of encephalitis.  He was to be buried at Ft. Bliss, so he wold never make it home.

Too often soldiers who die in peacetime are simply forgotten; their deaths not recognized as being in the service of the country. But they are.  Indeed, the year after I was in basic training a solider who was in my training platoon, a National Guardsman from Nebraska, died in training in a vehicle accident.  A Cold War death as sure as any other.

Thanksgiving Day, 1916
 

November 23 was Thanksgiving Day in 1916.  Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation to that effect on November 17, 1916.

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

It has long been the custom of our people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation. The year that has elapsed since we last observed our day of thanksgiving has been rich in blessings to us as a people, but the whole face of the world has been darkened by war. In the midst of our peace and happiness, our thoughts dwell with painful disquiet upon the struggles and sufferings of the nations at war and of the peoples upon whom war has brought disaster without choice or possibility of escape on their part. We cannot think of our own happiness without thinking also of their pitiful distress.

Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do appoint Thursday, the thirtieth of November, as a day of National Thanksgiving and Prayer, and urge and advise the people to resort to their several places of worship on that day to render thanks to Almighty God for the blessings of peace and unbroken prosperity which He has bestowed upon our beloved country in such unstinted measure. And I also urge and suggest our duty in this our day of peace and abundance to think in deep sympathy of the stricken peoples of the world upon whom the curse and terror of war has so pitilessly fallen, and to contribute out of our abundant means to the relief of their suffering. Our people could in no better way show their real attitude towards the present struggle of the nations than by contributing out of their abundance to the relief of the suffering which war has brought in its train.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this seventeenth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixteen and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-first.

It must have been a stressful one for a lot of people.  War was raging in Europe and a lot of Wyomingites were serving on the border with Mexico.  The local economy was booming, and there were a lot of changes going on in the towns, but due to the international conflict.

1918  November 30, 1918. Americans enter Germany for the first time, Villa threatens Juarez, Wyomingites get Reserve Plates, Teenage Bride Mildred Harris Chaplin rumored to be planning a visit home, No beer for New Years.

The first Americans to cross into Germany, November 30, 1918.  1st Division.  Wormeldauge Luxembourg to Winchrenger Germany.

On this date in 1918 the U.S. Army entered Germany from Luxembourg.

Gen. Campbell King, left, in Luxembourg on this date in 1918.  King was Harvard educated before attending becoming a lawyer in Georgia.  He entered  the Army in 1897 as a private and was commissioned an officer in 1898.  He was a Major entereing World War One and was breveted the rank of Brigadier General and served as Chief of Staff of the Third Army.  He retired as a Major General in 1932 and lived until 1953.  The officer on the right is an unidentified Marine Corps officer.  Note the much darker uniform and the different pattern of overseas cap, with that type being the type that would later become the service wide pattern after the war.

Headquarters for the occupation force remained, on this day, in Luxembourg itself.

Cheyenne residents read Gen. Pershing's address to his troops and the Governor was demobilizing the Home Guard.

And Wyoming was introducing its coveted "reserve plates" for motor vehicles, in which you could get the same license plate number every year (at a time in which you received new plates every year. . . which was the case at least into the 1970s).

In the other Cheyenne paper readers learned that yes, Villa was threatening Juarez again. So he'd returned from near defeat back to threatening and was back on the very top of the front page yet again. . . just as he had been prior to World War One.

Mildred Harris Chaplain at approximately this time. Her stardom was in ascendancy at the time but her life was is in turmoil.  She's married much older Charlie Chaplain at only age 16, something that would have wrecked both of their careers in and of itself in the present age, under the false belief that she was pregnant.

Cheyenne was hoping for a visit, we also learned, from Mildred Harris, now Mrs. Mildred Chaplin, who had turned 17 years old only the day prior.

In Casper the headline, like on many other papers, dealt with Woodrow Wilson's decision to lead the American peace delegation, something that was not a popular decision with Congress.  Casperites also read of the terrible massacre of the Jews in Lemberg (Lvov) by the Poles.

Casperites also were reading of the disbandment of UW's military training unit.

Casperites also read, in the other paper, Pereshing's Thanksgiving day address.

They also read that the Kaiser was that no longer.

And suds for New Years would be no longer as well. The committee that had suspended brewing as of the first of the year declined to rescind its order now that there was peace.

Boxing match in Archangel Russia between enlisted U.S. and French servicemen, November 30, 1918.

1920  Bureau of Reclamation commences construction of electric power plant at Buffalo Bill Dam.

1927   First day of Fremont County Turkey Show in Lander.  Attribution, Wyoming Historical Association.

1943  The price of coal from Rock Springs was raised $.20 per ton, a fairly substantial climb in that era.  Coal was an extremely vital source of fuel in this time period, although petroleum oil was supplanting it in many ways.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1946  Barbara Cubin, Congresswoman from Wyoming, born in Salinas California.

2012  Wyoming Whiskey releases the first batches of its bourbon whiskey.  The product is the first legally distilled whiskey to be made in Wyoming.  It's not the first whiskey to be distilled in Wyoming, however, as Kemmerer was a center of illegally distilled whiskey during Prohibition.