Grandpa Barwise never kept a diary as far as I can determine. All I know about the trip and why it was made come from newspaper accounts in Wichita Falls, Texas, the city he founded. People seldom report facts of their lives because, who would care really. Only after 50-100 years do facts become interesting and important to the new generation.
Grandpa told a Daily Times reporter who asked why he took his family from Missouri to Texas that he did so for his wife's health. What? Seems impossible today in the community near St. Louis. Not strange when you recall the huge progress made in science and medicine. St. Charles County at the conflence of three great rivers--the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Illinois--was a marshy area where mosquitos flourish and, in turn, malaria was a threat to anyone living there.
There is also a chance that Joseph Barwise himself was infected--with wanderlust. courage to go somewhere just to see what's there. Why Texas? My conjecture that it was wide open and being settled by adventurers and ambitious types. He had been in the Union Army during the Civil War. Who knows? In the modern vernacular, maybe he just wanted a "piece of the action." He got it. He had some money from the sale of his land in Missouri where the soil is rich and productive, so he invested it in the red clay dirt of North Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment