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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 pioneersColoradoBiography. 2. Bassett family. 3. Cattle tradeColoradoHistory19th century. 4. Frontier and pioneer lifeColorado. 5. ColoradoHistory1876-1950.

I. Title.

F781.B37M33 1985 978.8

813 .52dc 20

857143
CIP

ISBN 0-8040-0876-0 cloth

ISBN 0-8040-0877-9 paper

To Amy MacKnight Lube who opened the doors

CONTENTS

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 Browns 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.

Through Amy Lube I met and interviewed her parents, Flossie and Crawford MacKnight of Jensen, Utah, and her brother and sisters: Frank McKnight of Vernal; Betty Eaton of Craig, Colorado; Belle Christenson of Encampment, Wyoming; Dorothy Burnham of Bountiful, Utah; and Jane Redfield of Salt Lake City. The life blood of this book came from the MacKnight family, and my gratitude is profound for their endless courtesy and patience.

I interviewed three other members of the Bassett family: Elizabeth Bassetts granddaughter, Edna Bassett Haworth of Grand Junction, Colorado; Arthur Art McKnight of Vernal, not a blood relative but the son of Josies first husband by a later marriage; and Edith McKnight Jensen, widow of Josies 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 of the Bassett sisters. First and foremost is Esther Campbell of Vernal. Although younger than Josie and Ann, she was a close friend to both of them in their later years. Her recollections of them, her collection of their personal letters to her, and her voluminous files of written material have been invaluable. Then there is Hugh Colton, a Vernal attorney still in practice. He was not a personal friend of Josie, but his recollections are one of the high points of my story. Mr. Colton referred me to Joe Haslem of Jensen, Utah, who knew both Josie and Ann, and who has earned the right of a good neighbor to speak of the sisters faults as well as their virtues.

Much important material comes from the sisters themselves. In her old age, Josie taped several interviews with the personnel at Dinosaur National Monument, who kindly opened their files to me. Josies own descriptions of her childhood, her neighbors, and some of the more lurid episodes in Browns Park history have given the spark of life and authenticity to what others have said about her and her family.

Ann Bassett Willis has left even more material, for she turned to writing in her later years. The most accessible of her memoirs is the autobiography entitled Queen Ann of Browns Park which appeared serially in 1952 and 1953 in The Colorado Magazine, the official publication of the State Historical Society of Colorado. The beginning chapters of another book, Scars and Two Bars, were published in The Moffat Mirror of Craig, Colorado, in the 1940s, and many of her letters and fragments of unpublished material are still in existence. Anns writings are a mixture of truth and fiction. She idealizes and embroiders upon her childhood in the interests of a good story. I have felt more comfortable with Anns stories when I have been able to find corroboration for them, and have used discretion in quoting her material.

A story based on tradition and hearsay should be presented for just what it isa story of ordinary people who played extraordinary roles in the settlement of the west. The story does not lend itself to the precise and scholarly footnotes that are possible in biographies of persons who lived extensively in the public eye. Rather than clutter the text with source references, I have described the origins of my information in more generalized chapter notes at the end of the book.

I make no apologies for my speculations as to the motives, inner thoughts, and reactions of my characters. These are based on a certain amount of logic and an equal amount of intuition. This intuition comes almost automatically after many months of research and Bassett talk with a variety of people, some of whom loved the Bassett women, some of whom disapproved, and others who withheld judgment. As we talked, a shrug of the shoulder, a slight hesitation, an outpouring of emotion, or a side-stepping of a question gave me valuable clues.

The research for this book was pleasure. In the following months of the drudgery of putting it on paper, I was sustained and assisted by the editing and comments of my son Stephen McClure, my daughter-in-law Judith Flagle McClure, and my friend Marile Creager. Joseph D. Wells of Northridge, California, generously shared his editorial and publishing expertise. My debt to them is surpassed only by my gratitude to William L. Tennent of the Museum of Western Colorado and Dr. Gene M. Gressley of the University of Wyoming, not only for their willingness to check my book for historical accuracy but also for their enthusiasm and encouragement.

During the pre-publication period I have been supported magnificently by the Ohio University Press/Swallow Press editorial staff. However, they threw me into panic when they asked me for a map. My final thanks will go to Fred Tinseth, who rescued me with his imaginatively conceived and painstakingly executed drawing of Browns Park and the surrounding countryside.

GRACE MCCLURE

Tucson, Arizona

November 1984

NOTE

The seeming discrepancy in spelling the family name which appears in this paragraph will appear throughout the book. Crawford always insisted on the Scottish MacKnight. All others, even his son Frank, held to the McKnight used by Crawfords father.

INTRODUCTION

In the towns along the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad in southern Wyoming, and down in the cattle country in Colorado and Utah, the locals still tell stories about the Bassetts. And when they do, they are talking about the Bassett women, those unorthodox and controversial Bassett women, compared to whom the Bassett men are almost shadows.

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