How To Use This Site




How To Use This Site


This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date.
Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

We hope you enjoy this site.

Friday, September 28, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: Col. J. W. Cavendar, a Casualty of the Great War. Who was he?

Col. J. W. Cavendar, a Casualty of the Great War. Who was he?

The September 28, 1918 Casper Daily Press in which we learn a fair amount about Joseph J. Cavendar.  What we don't actually learn from this paper is the true circumstances of his death.

From the Wyoming newspapers of September 27, 1918, we learned that Col. J. W. Cavendar had become a casualty of the fighting on the Meuse Argonne.  He was the commander of the 148th Field Artillery, one of the units formed out of Wyoming National Guard infantrymen (as well as the Guardsmen of other regional states, or at least the state of Utah.

But who was he?


It's pretty hard to tell.

What we know, or thought we knew, from the Cheyenne papers of the day is that he was an attorney, and they report him as a local attorney, and hence the problem.

Lawyers may rise to the heights of great fame during their lifetimes, and certainly the ascendancy to high positions has been common, including in a prior era to the command of Federalized National Guard units.  But after they are dead, they are almost always completely forgotten.  The fame of lawyers follows them into the grave.

From what we can tell, the Cheyenne papers that reported him as "local" were a bit in error.  He was a Georgia born attorney who had originally apparently been a shopkeeper. According to the Casper paper set out above, he came to Wyoming at first to enter ranching, but that must not have worked otu as he returned to Georgia and entered the law. After that, he came back to Wyoming, was admitted to the bar here, and then practiced for a time in Carbon County before relocating to Park County.  In 1912, as the newspaper above notes, he was elected as Park County Attorney.

A little additional digging reveals that he'd been in the National Guard for awhile.  In 1911 he'd been elected, as that's how they did it, as the Captain of the infantry unit in  Cody.  His wife was asked to speak for Spanish American War pensioners as late as 1921, in hopes they'd claim their pensions, so his memory remained that strong at least to that point.  Perhaps more interestingly, given that he was born in 1878, that raises some question of whether he'd served in the Army during the Spanish American War.  He would have been old enough to do so.

He was in command, at least for a time, of the Wyoming National Guard troops that were mobilized for the crisis on the Mexican Border and was a Major in the National Guard by that time.

So we know that Col. Joseph W. Cavendar was a Georgia born lawyer who had relocated to Wyoming twice.  He'd started life as a merchant, and then switched to ranching, then went back to Georgia and became a lawyer.  After that, he came back to Wyoming and ultimately ended up the Park County Attorney.  At some point he'd entered the Wyoming National Guard.  Given his age, he was old enough to have been a Spanish American War veteran and it would be somewhat odd, given his obvious affinity for military life, if he had not been.

At the time of his death he was fifty years old.  Not a young man.  And there's a ting, maybe, of failure to his life.  It's subtle, but it's sort of there.  The law was his third career and Wyoming was his second state of practice.

But perhaps that's emphasized by what we later learn.


Cavendar killed himself.

Indeed, what we learn is that on the very first day of the Meuse Argonne Offensive the Army found the fifty year old Park County Attorney, former rancher, former merchant, wanting and informed him that it was relieving him of his command and giving him the choice of returning to the United States to be mustered out of service or to be reduced in rank to Captain and return to service in that capacity.  Instead he walked over to the hotel where he was staying and killed himself with a pistol.  The Army, no doubt wanting to save his reputation, or perhaps worried that the relief of a National Guard officer (from a state in which powerful U.S. Senator F. E. Warren was. . . Gen. Pershing's father in law, was from) reported him killed in action.

Cavendar had been in front of a board that was reviewing National Guard officers and finding more than a few of them wanting.  Some were higher ranking that Cavendar.  By the time the true story broke, following the war, the sympathies were clearly on the relieved National Guard officers side and the action regarded as an outrage.

Was it?  That's pretty hard to say. Cavendar had been in command of his unit for a good five months at the time he was relieved. But that doesn't mean that his service had been perfect or that there weren't better officers, and potentially younger ones, coming up behind him.  On the other hand, the Regular Army was legendary for containing officer that had a strong, largely unwarranted, animosity towards the National Guard.  Indeed, elements of the Army had openly opposed making the Guard the official reserve of the Army in 1903, an action which if they had been successful in would have lead to absolute disaster during World War One.  Nonetheless, as late as World War Two the Army seemed to retain a strong animosity in some quarters towards National Guard officers and relieved many of them with no clear indication as to why.  No doubt some, perhaps many, warranted removal, but the Army seemed more zealous in its actions than facts warranted.

Whatever happened, apparently Cavendar couldn't bare what he regarded as the shame of it, or perhaps other things combined to push him over the edge. Whatever it was, he shouldn't have done what he did.  Indeed, followers of the blog on Canadian colones in the Great War would note that many of them were relieved and went on to be highly regarded.  Relieving officers in wartime isn't unusual, it's part of the service.  

Well, anyhow, now we know more about Cavendar than we did, sad story though it is.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Friday, August 17, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: Albert Nelson and D. C. Nowlin. Folks we owe. A ...

Lex Anteinternet: Albert Nelson and D. C. Nowlin. Folks we owe. A ...: Last week I put up a photograph of Harry Yount, a legendary frontiersman who is sometimes claimed to be the first Game Warden in Wyoming. ...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: Bells of Balangiga to depart



Bells of Balangiga to depart

Gen. Jacob Smith inspects the ruins of Balangiga a few weeks after the battle there.


The Bells of Balangiga, war trophies from the Spanish American War, are going back to the Philippines, according to a government press release.

The bells have long been a matter of contention between the United States and the Philippines.  The 9th Infantry, which took the bells, maintained that it was ambushed in the locality, where it was garrisoned, and the bells symbolized its defense of itself from a surprise treacherous attack.  The Philippines have asserted the battle represented an uprising of the indigenous population against occupation and that the conclusion of the battle featured the killing of villagers without justification.  Both versions of the event may be correct in that it was a surprise attack on a unit stationed in the town and, by that point in the war, 1901, it had begun to take on a gruesome character at times.

Whatever the case may be, the bells, from three Catholic Churches, have long been sought to be returned.  Two of the bells are at F. E. Warren Air Force Base, which which the 9th Infantry had later been stationed at when it was Ft. D. A. Russell, and a third has been kept in Alaska.  It would appear that they're now going to go back to the churches from which they came in the Philippines, almost certainly accompanied by at least some vocal protestations from Wyoming's representation in Congress, I suspect.  As the current Wyoming connection with the 9th Infantry, let alone the Philippine Insurrection, is pretty think, it's unlikely that the average Wyomingite, however, will care much.  Indeed, while it caused its own controversy, a former head of a veteran's position in the state came out for returning the bells the last time this controversy rolled around a few years ago.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The End Of A Fully Local Paper

Lex Anteinternet: The End Of A Fully Local Paper: The classic view of the newspaper press. . . now really a thing of the past.  The inky, largely all male, domain of the those who put th...

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The summer that wasn't.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The summer that wasn't.: Uff, and heavy duty rain storms two days in a row: Lex Anteinternet: The summer that wasn't. : Great, two days of mild heat (seriously...

Friday, July 13, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Four: Yep, on to volume four.  Volume three reached the point where a single update took up an entire first page, so it was time to add a new vo...

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Some Gave All: Wyoming Capitol Rotunda Statutes: The Casper Star...

Some Gave All: Wyoming Capitol Rotunda Statutes: The Casper Star Tribune reports that. . .

allegorical monuments will be going in, in Cheyenne.

The Capitol prior to reconstruction commencing.


They will not, however, be topless.  Not even partially.

The statutes, representing hope, courage, justice and truth, will be created by Delissalde Designs of Denver, after a competition on the same. They will all be female figures.

The announcement that they won was made last week.  Reports have it that they female Truth shall have a peace pipe, female Courage will have a snake wrapped around her leg, female Justice will have copies of the U.S. and Wyoming Constitutions.  I don't know what Hope will have.

Other than clothes.  There was apparently some concern that the figures were a little scantily dressed.  Senator Eli Bebout, for example, made a specific inquiry about this.

This is oddly reminiscent, FWIW, in regards to the selection of the State seal over a century ago. A legislative committee worked on that only to have a sitting Governor substitute a competing design that had a central female figure appear on the seal he liked better who was topless.  Not that this was uncommon at the time.  Nearly every allegorical character used in art has been female and, probably as they were created by male artists looking, at least subconsciously for an excuse, they were very frequently topless.  Even a century ago, however, that made some uneasy, including male legislators, and the original Wyoming seal that was chosen featured a fully clothed figure, only to have a Governor sub it out. When that was discovered, that was pulled, and treasury notes issued commemorating Wyoming for a time had a figure that had been chosen by the U.S. Mints (yes, that is plural and it was referred to that way at the time) rather than something we'd chosen ourselves.  We subsequently got around to the current design.

It's odd to think that we'd repeat that event over a century later, but perhaps its even odder, in the context of the times, to consider that allegorical figures remain principally women and that the artists submitting designs would, by default, figure that allegorical female figures might bear a closer resemblance, both in form and degree of clothing, to Kate Upton than Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but some things simply don't change much, it would seem.

Well, Hope, Justice, Courage and Truth will be on the cupola of the new Capitol rotunda, gazing down at the public.  The public, gazing back up, will have no excuse for exercising prurient interests.

Monday, June 18, 2018

Friday, June 15, 2018