Journal Notes

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

Lucyle Richards tightened the grip she had on the rope attached to the flank strap tied around the steer she was about to ride. The monstrous animal underneath the ninety-nine-pound woman recognized by rodeo fans across the country as the most beautiful of all the professional cowgirls, waited anxiously for the chute to open. The steer was huffing and angry and Lucyle anticipated a rough time. The audience at the rodeo in Kilgore, Texas, on August 13, 1939, were excited to see the accomplished performer and they called out her name and cheered. She stayed on the back of the steer for more than a minute before being thrown head over heels at a distance of twelve feet. Lucyle was a bit shaken but she quickly picked herself up and waved to the crowd. They erupted in thunderous applause and she bowed in appreciation.

Born Lucyle Garms in Pushmataha County, Oklahoma, in 1909, to a Choctaw Indian mother and Irish father, her rodeo career began at the age of thirteen. Not only did she ride bucking steers and horses, but she was an accomplished trick roper and rider. She won the World Championship Saddle Bronc riding competition in Chicago in 1930 and earned additional titles for the sport in Boston in 1934.

Married a number of times, her husbands included rodeo stars Oklahoma Curly Roberts and T. J. Richards. “I like to take chances,” she told a Fort Worth, Texas, newspaper reporter in the summer of 1938. “That’s why I do what I do, riding vicious horses for a living. I’ve been riding the rodeo since 1929 – from Texas to London and back. It’s been a good life, lots of fun, but it has not been without its struggles – five broken ribs, a fractured chest bone, and innumerable bruises. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

During the 1940s, Lucyle’s time in the arena was overshadowed by the troubles in her personal life. In late April 1941, she was arrested for the murder of her fiancé, wealthy cattleman Frank Dew. The two had been romantically involved for more than a year when she suspected he had been seeing another woman. Lucyle showed up at Dew’s home to confront him over the matter and during their physical altercation, Lucyle pulled a gun from her purse. The pair wrestled over the weapon and Frank died shortly after being shot. Lucyle denied firing the shot that killed him and a jury found her not guilty at the end of a four-day trial.

At the conclusion of the court case, Lucyle left bronc busting to attend the Chennault Aviation Academy in Houston. After learning to fly she became an instructor. She was one of only four women instructors in the country in the special government training program. During World War II, Lucyle ferried bombers between the United States and England.

By 1951, the accomplished rodeo entertainer and aviatrix returned to the arena winning the Saddle Bronc Riding Championship in Oklahoma City and at Madison Square Garden in New York. Ten years later, she retired from riding and became a police officer in Yoakum, Texas.

In 1987, the woman described as a cross between Annie Oakley and Amelia Earhart, was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Lucyle Richards passed away in 1995 at the age of eighty-six.

To learn more about fearless women like Lucyle read

Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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When the five-reel western drama A Knight of the Range premiered in early 1916, critics praised silent film cowboy and cowgirl actors Harry D. Carey and Olive Fuller Golden performances.  Audiences were dazzled by the equestrian feats never-before seen in a motion picture.  “Stunts that are inconceivable of execution are performed before the all-seeing eye of the camera,” a review of the film in a Hollywood magazine read.  “Lovers of riding will miss the treat of their lifetime if they fail to see Western stars Carey and Golden work their magic on horseback.  Golden is one of the prettiest and most popular of film favorites.  Her long golden curls droop over her shoulders and her bewitching smile is as golden as an Arizona sunset; golden also is her disposition.  She will be a star as long as motion pictures are being made.”

Olive Fuller Golden was a rodeo performer who got her start in film in 1914 in a picture called A Sorrowful Shore.  Born on January 31, 1896, she came from a performing family headed by her father, famed vaudeville entertainer George Fuller Golden.  She traveled to Hollywood from New York in 1913 where she became an original stock player for director D. W. Griffith – along with Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and Harry Carey.   She starred opposite Harry Carey in her first film and the pair married two years after A Sorrowful Shore premiered.

In 1916, Olive signed a contract with Universal, where legend has it, she introduced her husband to John Ford and helped convince the studio executives to let Ford direct pictures.  Until that time Ford had been a stuntman and assistant director.  She acted in John Ford’s film The Soul Herder in 1917.  She then retired from films and helped manage Harry’s career and raised a family.  Shortly after her husband’s death in 1947, Olive decided to come out retirement.  She appeared in a number of movies including Gunfight at the O. K. Corral, The Wings of Eagles, and Two Rode Together.  The most memorable film in which Olive appeared was Ford’s The Searchers in which she played the mother of Vera Miles and her real-life son, Harry Carey, Jr.

Olive died in March 1988 at the age of ninety-two.

To learn more about these fearless cowgirl stars read

Along Came A Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of Rodeos and Wild West Shows

The Doctor Was A Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier

Coming February 2024

Historian Enss (The Widowed Ones) profiles in this colorful account 10 of the first female physicians on America’s Western frontier. She portrays them as highly determined individuals, whose resolve not only saw them through the medical schools that resisted admitting them, but also through the treatment of recalcitrant patients (“Doctors were few and far between in the unsettled land,” she writes, and yet “for a time it seemed most trappers, miners, and merchants would rather suffer than consult a woman doctor”).

Among the “lady physicians” and “hen medics,” there was Lilian Heath, a pioneer of plastic surgery who in 1886 mended the face of a man who’d shot himself in despair (she told him he looked better after her 30 surgeries than before); Emma French, the 16th wife of a Mormon who received the midwifery training common among her sister wives; and Bessie Efner, who was seduced to Wyoming by boosters of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, only to find that the men were unwilling to see her—her first patient was a horse she cured of colic.

Between the brief biographies are insightful notes on topics such as treating influenza, sterilizing patients, and extracting bullets. Readers who enjoyed Campbell Olivia’s Women in White Coats will want to check this out. (Feb.)

Early Comments about the Bill Tilghman book scheduled for release in fall 2024.

Zoe Tilghman, my grandmother, was a truly remarkable woman – a pioneer, horsewoman, musician, linguist, student, educator, writer, poet, wife, mother. When she married Bill Tilghman she also became an eyewitness to the important part he played in Oklahoma and the developing West. Chris Enss and Howard Kazanjian have done an excellent job of capturing her life.

Suzie Baerst

This unique “story within a story” reveals the challenges and triumphs of being married to one of America’s most prominent western lawmen.  The colorful exploits of William “Bill” Tilghman, as told through the equally fascinating story of his wife Zoe, present the reader of this book with an exciting and insightful “edge of your seat” experience!

Wyatt McCrea – Actor/Producer

“Gritty, violent, magnificent and noble describes America and the early lawmen who made the frontier safe for expansion. The authors do a masterful job of unpacking the life of revered lawman Bill Tilghman through the words and prose of his second wife, Zoe Tilghman a scholar, mother, poet and remarkable woman in her own right. This husband and wife team were one of America’s early power couples.”

Eileen O’Neill – Former Head of Discovery Channel and TLC

Who was lawman Bill Tilghman? He did not have the dime novels that made Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill famous, nor Stuart Lake who spun the life of Wyatt Earp into fame. But he was one of the greatest lawmen of all. Tilghman now has history documentarians Chris Enss and Howard Kazanjian to show us details about the man from his own notebooks and from his talented wife Zoe’s own hand.

Wayne Tilman – Bestselling Author and Bill Tilghman’s Relative

The Went That-A-Way

In celebration of the new book coming out entitled The Doctor Was a Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier and the impending holiday, this tale of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s demise seemed fitting.

On Wednesday, January 25, 1911, physicians across the world gathered at the great hall at the Academy of Medicine in New York to honor America’s first woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell.  The tenacious pioneer in the fight for the right of women to study and practice medicine had died nine months prior to the event honoring the contributions she made to the field.  The audience was composed largely of women all of whom owed a debt of gratitude to Elizabeth Blackwell.

Born in Bristol, England on February 3, 1821, Elizabeth immigrated to America in 1832 with her parents.  Her desire to attend school and study medicine began at an early age.  Elizabeth was twenty-six years old when she was admitted to New York’s Geneva College in 1847.  She had applied to twenty institutions before being accepted as a medical student at the prestigious university.  The male students there believed Elizabeth’s request was a joke and agreed to let her attend the classes based on that idea, but the daring young woman was not playing around.  She prevailed and triumphed over taunts and bias while at school to earn her degree only two years after enrolling.

While in her last year of school, she treated an infant with an eye infection.  As she was washing the baby’s eye with water she accidentally splattered the contaminated liquid in her own eye.  Six months later she had the eye removed and replaced with a glass eye.  Hospitals and dispensaries refused to admit her to practice at their facilities and she was denounced by the press and from the pulpit.

After graduating in 1849, Elizabeth found herself socially and professionally boycotted.  Public sentiment was so against her for pursuing a career in a field deemed unladylike that she could not find a place to live anywhere in New York.  Using funds given to her by her family she built her own home.

In 1854, she borrowed the capitol needed to build the first hospital for women in the country.  Most of the patients she worked with were poor.  Patients were charged a mere $4 a week for services that would cost them $2,000 at another facility.  Elizabeth also founded the Women’s Medical College of New York and when the Civil War broke out she assisted in launching the Sanitary Aid Association.  In addition to maintaining her practice and creating benevolent community services, Elizabeth also wrote a number of books on the subject of medicine.  Two of her most popular titles were Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession for Women and Essays in Medical Sociology. 

By the turn of the century Elizabeth Blackwell had retired from medicine and returned to England.  In the spring of 1907 she was injured in a fall from which she never fully recovered.  She died on May 31, 1910 from a stroke.  The epitaph below the Celtic cross which marks her grave at Kilmun Churchyard on the Holy Loch, near Clyde, includes these words:  “The first woman in modern times to graduate in medicine (1849) and the first to be placed on the British Medical Register (1859).

Thank you to Women Writing the West for this incredible honor.

What a great weekend at the Will Rogers Medallion Award program! Seeing good friends, spending time with accomplished Western authors, poets, and filmmakers, listening to Craig Johnson, NY Times bestselling author and creator of the Longmire series, share tales of his early days in the business, and the announcement that the Will Rogers Medallion Award will officially be moving to the Will Rogers Museum in Oklahoma made the event complete. I returned to California late last night with these items and feeling grateful for the recognition The Widowed Ones and Along Came a Cowgirl received.

What an amazing time in Colorado promoting The Widowed Ones: Beyond the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The lecture series ended last night at the Tesoro Cultural Center. The setting was spectacular and the sold-out crowd made the event memorable. The highlight of the trip was receiving the Willa Cather Award for Scholarly Nonfiction work from Women Writing the West for The Widowed Ones. Thank you Women Writing the West. I’m extremely grateful for the honor.

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The Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder

On July 18, 1911, under a blue and cloudless sky, the murderers, burglars, rapists, and confidence men that made up the Death Row All Stars emerged quickly from the baselines of the baseball diamond at the penitentiary and spread across the practice field for their first game. Warden Alston and a host of other prison officials, as well as inmates were on hand to watch.  Inmates craned their necks to see the action from their barred windows and cheered the players on as they whipped the ball from base to base. Warden Alston had supplied the team with gloves, bats, and uniforms, and the ball club looked like a professional team.

It was evident after practicing with the other men on the team only a short while that Joseph Seng was an exceptional baseball player. News of the talented addition to Alston’s All Stars spread quickly throughout the area. Patrons who frequented the Turf Exchange, the Senate, the Elkhorn, and other watering holes in Rawlins, Wyoming, speculated on how well the team would do against more established ball clubs in the region. Inmate and captain of the Death Row All Stars’ George Saban encouraged such talk whenever he made stops at the saloons as part of his duties transporting items to and from the prison accompanied by prison guard D. O. Johnson in the penitentiary wagon. Security was always lax where Saban was concerned. He came and went from tavern to tavern as he pleased and boasted about the baseball team he helped manage.

Betting on baseball was commonplace in 1911, regardless of its legality. Partnering with a drifter named George Streplis, a man who had been arrested in March 1911 in Wyoming and held over for trial on gambling charges, Saban had plans to capitalize on the trend of betting on baseball games by urging patrons at saloons in Rawlins to bet heavily on the Death Row All Stars. Any ideas Saban had about placing bets on the penitentiary ball club were tabled, however, until he knew how long Seng would be at the Rawlins facility. He didn’t want to gamble on the team if Seng wasn’t going to be at the prison long enough to play with the All Stars. An appeal of his sentence had been filed with the governor immediately; on June 15, 1911, Governor Carey responded favorably to the appeal, and, on July 18, 1911, the Chief Justice Board of the state Supreme Court granted a stay of execution in his case.

The stories of the men who took to the field were varied. Shortstop Joseph Guzzardo had killed a woman in 1908 while shooting at a man who was threatening his life. Eugene Rowan, the first baseman, had been convicted of breaking and entering and attempted rape in Cheyenne. Right fielder and catcher James Powell had attacked a young woman. George Saban had pled guilty to three killings. And catcher and fielder Joseph Seng had been sentenced to death for the murder of a man in Uinta County.

Every time a player came to bat and slapped a ripping fastball on the nose for a solid hit to left field or someone snatched up a red-hot grounder and heaved it to the proper base to get an out, the All Stars forgot they were little more than caged creatures. The focus was the game. It was their path to righteousness.

To learn more about George Saban, Joseph Seng and the other players who made up the

Death Row All Stars read

The Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder

A few years back I did a documentary for the BBC with actor and knight Sir Tony Robinson and in the photos taken after the shoot of the two of us I look like Ruth Buzzi if she were stung by a thousand bees.  Seriously, I look like Andre the Giant’s sister in ALL of the pictures.

I’ve always been big. My father used to try and console be about my height and general size by assuring me that I wasn’t fat just big boned. The last I looked there were no bones in the area in which I’m most concerned. But the effort, Pop, was most appreciated.

Now physical exercise is not the answer. Years ago, I remember watching a beefy President Bill Clinton exercising. He was living proof that physical exercise could be a complete waste of time. The more he jogged, the bigger he got. I recall thinking, if this guy is reelected, the leader of the free world will be Bib the Michelin Man.

I do notice I’m suffering from a chin crisis as I get older. If I don’t keep my head above sea level when pictures are taken, I resemble the dinosaur that got into the jeep with the lost traveler in the first Jurassic Park movie.

When I think about it, the only exercise program that has ever worked for me is occasionally getting up in the morning and jogging my memory to remind myself exactly how much I hate to exercise. Well-meaning friends have suggested I start walking. Walking? If it’s so good for you, how come my mailman looks like Jabba the Hut with a quirky thyroid?

I’ve thought about joining a gym, but honestly, I think they’re too complicated. You know, there’s nothing quite as humiliating as finishing a thirty-minute workout on a piece of gym equipment only to have the instructor tell you you’ve been sitting on it backward.

Growing up I wished I looked like David Cassidy’s sister Laurie from the Partridge Family. She was cute and a model in addition to being an actress. Models and movie stars are the aesthetic benchmarks against which we measure ourselves, regardless of how unattainable their beauty may be without access to personal trainers, extensive cosmetic surgery, and pharmaceuticals. Ask any little girl what she wants to be when she grows up. Chances are she won’t say president or astronaut or doctor. Chances are she’ll say “Supermodel.” I know I did. I also wanted to be a standup comic and marry Christopher Knight from the Brady Bunch. It’s safe to say I had different goals than Madame Curie or Joan Didion.

What does it say about our culture when Einstein’s original draft of the theory of relativity fetches less at auction than what a flat-line electroencephalograph Giacometti statue gets to stroll down a runway? And for crying out loud, isn’t it about time we passed an absolute edict forbidding these women from uttering the words “Modeling is hard work.”

I choose not to go gently into that saggy night! But what’s a giant to do?