John Mahaffie

Further posts in this series:

Bart Mahaffie Part II — Childhood and education

Rule, Colo. 3.12.19

Dear Chas:

I received your letter a couple of weeks ago, but have been busy and didn’t notice how long it had been. Cattle are pretty thin and have to be watched mightily closely to see that they get to feed and don’t stray too far.

The loss has been very light, think I’ve only lost about 10 so far and if the weather will just partly behave from now on there should not be much more loss but most everything is thin now, even the range horses are weak so of course the cattle are bound to be thin.

I was in town last week and got the Heckler papers straightened out and ordered the abstracts. I expect that I’ll buy that land this spring, as he is going to leave and I can’t afford for anyone else to get the place. There are several places around me that are going to be for sale as soon as they are “proved up” and they are sure making me figure. Don’t want to buy anything that I can get a lease on.

Yes, I’ve been getting a novel every once in a while, and am ashamed ashamed that I’ve never even acknowledged the receipt of them but I always write in a hurry so forget about them. The Four Horsemen didn’t come but the W______ did come about that time. I’ve started to read it but have not finished it yet. Have not had much time for reading in the past month.

Do you expect to visit Oklahoma this summer? It is probable that at some yet uncertain date I’ll go down there to get me a housekeeper. There is no definite date yet other than before summer, for it is doubtful yet when I can get away. But if it is convenient and can be figured out far enough in advance I’d like for you to be there.

Must get to bed.

Yours,

G B M Jr.

George Barton “Bart” Mahaffie, by 1919 having lived almost five years alone on his remote southeast Colorado homestead, was joking in this letter to his brother, that he wanted to “get me a housekeeper.” He meant he wanted to marry his sweetheart, Marye Traylor, and he wanted Charles to be there. Bart had lived alone almost 5 years on 480 acres of rough, dry, grazing land in southeastern Colorado, a bachelor rancher.

When I was six or seven, I remember my Great Uncle Oscar Beatty Mahaffie visited my grandparents at their Washington, DC home. It was the mid-1960s. Uncle Beatty and my grandfather, Charles, sat in the upstairs front room in large armchairs, Beatty about ten feet away from my Granddad, two grey, balding old men. They were “visiting,” which for old men like these, prairie-raised, meant sitting almost silent, sipping liquor, and immensely enjoying each other’s company.

But there was a brother missing, George Barton “Bart” Mahaffie. It’s hard to imagine him there. He died of the Spanish Influenza in 1919 at 29, young and in his prime, on his remote Colorado ranch.

The old pictures show the young Bart as an athlete, uniformed and with his teammates, as a scholar at Kingfisher College, and later, branding cattle or on horseback, on his Colorado ranch.

Bart died with most of his potential ahead of him. He endures for me as a tragic story. Yet I have fixed him in my mind as that young man from the old pictures, in his prime. The occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Influenza of 1918 made me think of Bart. I wanted to remember more than the tragedy, so I will tell the story of his life as far as we can know it.

Bart Mahaffie in the winter of 1919

In the late winter of 1919, Bart Mahaffie, aged 29, was hard at work on his ranch in rural southeast Colorado. Winters there were hard. He was at work “proving up” his homestead claims. That meant gaining title to free Federal land by living on it and improving it for stockraising and agriculture.

Bart planned to marry Marye Traylor of Elk City, Oklahoma that May and bring her to his ranch. The lonely bachelor’s life on the ranch would soon be over. He would have a partner to help him build his life in Colorado.

Marye was the daughter of W. E. Traylor. Her father had operated a Hobart, Oklahoma grocery in the mid-1910s. Marye, born in 1892, she was three years younger than Bart, but likely knew him from Hobart High School, or social events in town.

Marye was an accomplished young woman. She played basketball at Hobart High School. The Hobart papers noted her piano playing at weddings, performing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March for the bride and groom. Later she had a long career in business, working as a book bookkeeper and office manager. It’s not hard to imagine her being integral to Bart’s success as a rancher.

Despite the hard winter, Bart could look forward and see his dreams coming into view.

The Spanish Flu of 1918

The Spanish Influenza hit hard in the U.S. the fall of 1918, particularly among massed and returning troops from World War I. Emerging in 1917, it was at first a mild flu; three days of fever, cough, and runny nose, and then a rapid recovery. But the flu virus, which mutates quickly, turned deadly in the summer and fall of 1918. It became a global, deadly pandemic, killing 20 to 50 million people, worldwide, and 675,000 in the United States. The biggest share of its victims were young adults. The lucky got the infection early, before it mutated. They were then protected against the new strain.

A public health chart of deaths from the Spanish Flu, 1919

The Spanish Flu’s symptoms were fever, nausea, aches, and diarrhea. Many victims developed severe bronchopneumonia. Patients would have dark spots on their cheeks. The body under attack by the virus overran with immune response, attacking most aggressively in the lungs. Victims turned blue with a lack of oxygen as their lungs filled with a frothy, bloody discharge. They drowned in their own fluids before treatment could save them.

The flu spread easily and quickly. Doctors could not keep up. People often died before they could get help, but medical help was limited in any case. The flu had no direct treatment, with no antiviral medicines were yet developed. Doctors were not even clear that the disease was viral.

The flu in Colorado

The first cases in Colorado came in late September 1918, with a spike in infections at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The most deaths worldwide were that fall as well.

Mary Allen Hurd, grew up on a neighboring ranch to Bart’s. Years later she remembered: “the flu epidemic came along killing lots of people. Laughing Joe Smith knew there was a couple of new families who lived in a half dugout. He rode over one morning to see if they were all right. He saw stock in the corrals with cows bawling so he went to the house. This couple had four small children and a brother and his wife who lived there also had four small children. Laughing Joe Smith asked the children where their parents were and they said, ‘They are asleep and we can’t wake them up.’ So Joe went in and they were all dead.”

Later posts in this series:

Bart Mahaffie Part II — Childhood and education

Bart Mahaffie Part III — To Colorado for land of his own

Bart Mahaffie Part IV — The flu reaches the 500 Ranch

Previous posts in this series:

Bart Mahaffie Part I — Introduction

Bart Mahaffie Part II — Childhood and education

Bart Mahaffie Part III — To Colorado for land of his own

The winter of 1918-1919 in southeastern Colorado was especially hard, as Bart wrote in his March 12, 1919 letter to his brother Charles. (The letter is at the front of Post I [LINK] in this series.)

Bart did as other ranchers in the area did when heavy snowfall covered the forage. They burned thorns off cactus with a gas torch or held the pads on a pitchfork over a fire, and fed them to the cattle. Mary Allen Hurd ¹⁾Mary Allen Hurd grew up near Bart Mahaffie’s ranch in Colorado and knew of Bart. An upublished collection of her reminiscences has circulated in Las Animas County, and I’ve drawn on it and cited her in these posts recalled how the cattle happily ate the cactus pads hot. It was often all they got, and some still succcumbed to hunger during the hard winters.

But Bart wasn’t discouraged. He had 480 acres in two homestead claims. He’d done the work to prove them up, building his house and improving the land.

Bart wrote to Charles about getting more acreage, with plans to acquire his neighbor George Heckler’s 320 acres. Heckler, an older man, was proved up and planned to sell. Later records also show Bart was working to get 320 further acres from Cleveland Hersom, another neighbor.

That summer meant he’d get married to Marye Traylor and bring her to live on the ranch. The house was ready, expanded with a proper addition. With a bigger ranch he could earn more to support a family.

And at last the March days flirted with warmer temperatures and the snow was melting. The day he wrote Charles, the temperature reached 70 degrees. There was reason to be encouraged.

The flu reaches Bart

But the Spanish influenza virus was waiting for Bart. The historic epidemic looked to be over after its awful surge in the fall of 1918. But it had one more rampage and Bart was among its targets.

He did not contract the flu until March of 1919. He was unfortunate to be among is last deadly wave of victims that came that winter.

Living on a remote ranch kept him from getting the infection sooner. Of course he did business in town. Trains brought people and goods from other places. They readily brought the virus. And the homesteaders in his corner of Las Animas County were a community that visited and helped each other out with ranch work. Even a bachelor making his living alone on a ranch had occasion to be with others and to risk the infection.

Word of Bart’s illness

We don’t know how Bart alerted someone that he was sick. The flu tended to come on quickly. He may have felt ill during a day when he saw others, or a neighbor may have come to check on him. Someone soon came to help and alerted Bart’s family in Oklahoma. Bart would have seen others get the flu and probably knew about the symptoms and his prognosis.

Mary Allen Hurd recalled that the ranchers were far from doctors. They had to make do with whatever they knew how to do for each other.

George Heckler, Bart’s neighbor, was the knowledgeable veteran among the settlers. It’s possible it was George who first saw to Bart when he took sick.

Mary Allen Hurd recalled how George knew old remedies and how to make Mountain Sage Tea for congestion and other symptoms. She said “it either killed or cured.” But those remedies could do little when the flu hit. Not even doctors had much to offer when Bart took sick.

Late on Wednesday March 26, 1919, Bart’s parents, Doc and Mollie, got a telegram, probably arranged by a concerned neighbor, alerting them to Bart’s illness. They left by train on Thursday morning to go to him. The folks in Hobart knew Bart well, and his illness meant a short mention, “Bart Mahaffie Ill” in the Hobart paper, the Republican.

Based on the timing, we can assume that Doc and Mollie got to Bart’s bedside by the 27th or 28th. At least their presence could be of comfort to him.

Bart only had treatment for his symptoms and some comfort from not being alone in his rock house. But the ravages of the flu’s attack on his lungs meant a short, but excruciating decline, no doubt abject fear, and death. Gravely ill, he held on for two days longer, but succumbed on Saturday March 29th.

By the next Tuesday, April 1, the Hobart Republican story headline was “Body in Route Home.”

Bart’s funeral lagged until his oldest brother, Charles Mahaffie, could arrive from Washington, DC. The Hobart Republican wrote: “Scores of people attended the service to pay their last token of tribute to one of the most popular young men who ever lived in Hobart.”

Bart was buried in the Hobart Rose Cemetery.

Aftermath: those he left behind

Doc and Mollie, the August after Bart’s death, closed up their house in Komalty outside Hobart and sold their stock for what was an indefinite move to Rule, Colorado and Bart’s ranch. As Bart’s heirs, the ranch was now theirs to manage.

Bart had died before his Colorado claims were officially “proved up” which would normally happen after requirements were met and three years had passed.

The two patents on his original claims show an issue date of October 7, 1919, which means his heirs, namely Doc Mahaffie, his father, presented proof of qualification, and took ownership.

Doc and Mollie went to Colorado complete that process and the transaction acquiring George Heckler’s place and Cleveland Hersom’s land.

The ranch was remote and the house small, a far cry from the substantial lifestyle and busy town they were used to. They were in their mid-60s, late to take up a life in a rough, remote place like Rule.

Doc may have had his eye on making Bart’s ranch big enough to be attractive to a buyer, or just saw opportunity in the additional land to be had cheap from frustrated homesteaders.

What became of Marye Traylor

Doc, Mollie, Marye Traylor, and Beatty Mahaffie, March 1920

After the death of her fiance, Marye worked as a bookkeeper in an ice plant in Elk City, Oklahoma. For a time after Bart’s death, Marye and her family kept in close touch with the Mahaffies.

She moved to Oklahoma City in the late 1920s. By 1930 she was heading her own household there, living with her father, sister, and brother in law. She worked as a bookkeeper at the Wetherbee Electric Company.

By the late 1930s, she had married a co-worker, Ernest Tanner, a foreman and salesman in the company. They moved to El Reno, just outside Oklahoma City. Ernest started his own business, Tanner Electric Co. in El Reno.

Marye was active in the El Reno community, a member of the Center Grove Home Demonstration Club, but also the El Reno Business and Professional Women’s Club, serving on its executive committee. Ernest died in November 1954.

Surviving her husband, Mary lived to 101 years. She died in 1993, and is buried in El Reno.

The ranch to the present

After Bart died, his family made a number of land transactions to finish out purchases Bart had set in motion with two neighboring ranchers, and perhaps to consolidate a more valuable and salable ranch. Doc and Charles were both savvy about money and investment. Both had loaned Bart money or guaranteed the notes he promised the men he transacted with for land.

Between land that Bart had acquired or planned to before he died, and transactions completed after he died by Doc and Charles, the holdings grew to 1120 acres in Las Animas and Baca Counties, Colorado.

Bart Mahaffie’s ranch ultimately included these three parcels

The land stayed in the Mahaffie family, owned by Bart’s brother Charles until his death in 1969. It then passed to his wife and later his son. Mark and Kimberly Wilson, whose family had long leased the land from the Mahaffies, bought it in 2009, and continue to raise cattle there.

Afterword

So many homesteaders in that dry, tough corner of Colorado tried and gave up. Bart had the makings of success and a fiance that had business savvy and drive of her own. We see what Bart was able to do on his own, and can imagine what Bart and Marye could have done together. In learning all we can know to know about Bart and his intended wife Marye, I’ve come to believe they not only would have made it, but would have thrived.

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