Grace McClure

The Bassett Women


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      The Bassett Women

      Grace McClure

      THE BASSETT WOMEN

      Swallow Press/OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

      Athens

      Copyright © 1985 by Grace McClure

      All rights reserved

      First printing 1985

      97 96 7 6 5

      Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ∞

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      McClure, Grace

      The Bassett Women.

      Bibliography: p.

      1. Women pioneers—Colorado—Biography. 2. Bassett family. 3. Cattle trade—Colorado—History—19th century. 4. Frontier and pioneer life—Colorado. 5. Colorado—History—1876-1950.

      I. Title.

      F781.B37M33 1985 978.8

      813’ .52–dc 20

      85–7143

      CIP

      ISBN 0-8040-0876-0 cloth

      ISBN 0-8040-0877-9 paper

      To Amy MacKnight Lube who opened the doors

       CONTENTS

       Preface

       Introduction

       Arkansas Travelers

       Brown’s Hole

       Cattle Fever

       Ranchers and Rustlers

       The Bassett Gang

       The Harvest

       The Survivors

       The Outlaws

       The Shooting of Jim McKnight

       Scars and Two Bars

       Hi Bernard

       Queen of the Cattle Rustlers

       The Drifting Years

       Cub Creek

       The Last Love

       Ann and Eb

       An Uncommon Woman

       Apricot Brandy and Chokecherry Wine

       The Cattle Trial

       A New Crusade

       Queen Ann of Brown’s Park

       Old Jose

       Requiem

       Appendix: “Confidentially Told”

       Notes on Sources

       Bibliography

       Locator Map of Brown’s Park Area

       Photographs

       PREFACE

      A good share of Western history is oral, based on stories of the old-timers passed from neighbor to neighbor and from one generation to the next. As these stories reached the printed page, they were only as reliable as the people who told them.

      The story of the Bassett women has been almost smothered under a blanket of these half-true legends. Seemingly, at times the truth about them and their neighbors in Brown’s Park has been deliberately distorted for the sensationalism that sells most readily to the tabloids. They have become almost unrecognizable over the years.

      Like other Western writers, I have relied heavily on oral interviews to guide my research in the courthouses, libraries and newspaper files of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. As I conducted interviews with the family and friends of the Bassett family, I promised no whitewash (nor did they ask for one) but only a balanced and authenticated account, substantiated by printed facts wherever possible.

      My first inkling of the distortion of the Bassett story came from Amy MacKnight Lube of Vernal, Utah, when she characterized her notorious grandmother Josie Bassett Morris as a “little brown wren.” Our first interview was painful: I was uneasy at bringing up family history which might be embarrassing to her, and she viewed my tape recorder and notebook with suspicion, knowing the damage caused by other would-be reporters. Our later friendship and understanding is a source of great pleasure to me.

      I interviewed three other members of the Bassett family: Elizabeth Bassett’s granddaughter, Edna Bassett Haworth of Grand Junction, Colorado; Arthur “Art” McKnight of Vernal, not a blood relative but the son of Josie’s first husband by a later marriage; and Edith McKnight Jensen, widow of Josie’s younger son, Chick.

      Other people to whom I talked and from whom I received material will be named in other sections of this book or in the notes at its end, but special mention should be made of three contemporaries