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Show ' ' "" - i ' ' : k i I ; B" - V 5 fT ,,y v H 'W"Xt?v A'' 7 -r yii.:, x, t r ly J i. r0yal CANADIAN Air Force Cadets who are fc Slting in Vernal are bottom row, Paul Desjar-djns Desjar-djns Capt. John Hientz, escort, David Murray, Lamont French and Lee Parent and top row, Jacqueline Martens, Joann Cah ill, Lonise Cop-picus, Cop-picus, Ruth A. Ireland, and Hattie Cooper. lyy , &yF .wyf i.. - - y y fv -T VERNAL CIVIL AIR Patrol Squadron include Gabe Pteifer, Rich May, Jim Snodgrass, David Andreasen, Craig Good, Jim Snarr and Joe May. Genealogy Research of the West Early events in Vernal vicinity By Kerry Ross Boren Sometimes the research of history reveals little-known but disconnected events which seem to fit nowhere in the scheme of things, but contain interesting in-teresting information, behind which a story must exist. Some are worth recounting. Back near the turn of the century, Kine "Turpentine" Hatch of Vernal caught a ride up to Diamond Mountain with Jim Freestone and was dropped off at his cabin. There were no witnesses wit-nesses to the event, but clues at the scene revealed that while Turpentine was shaving, someone ambushed and killed him. The "someone", as it was disclosed, was a Kentuckian named Lamar and his companion, "Little Dick". Frank Swain happened to be sheriff at the time and investigated the crime, important im-portant to him because Turpentine Hatch had been his uncle. Although circumstantial evidence showed the criminals to have been the killers, they were freed for lack of evidence and there was talk of lynching in Vernal. Not many details of this event have come forth. There are probably some yet alive w ho remember it. While sheriff of Uintah County, Frank Swain had some unusual encounters. en-counters. One occurred during the 1920's when John Dillinger was reportedly seen in the Vernal area. Frank received a telegram causing him to institute roadblocks and apprehend the FBI's "most wanted" if possible - a big undertaking for a small town sheriff, but Sheriff Swain was up to the task. He trailed his man to the Vernal movie theatre and cordoned off the area. He waited for the man to come out, but instead he sat through the second show. , Sheriff Swain then decided not to wait and entered the dark theatre, took a seat behind his man and placed his gun to the rear of his head and told him to move out of the theatre quietly or he would blow his head off. When they reached the exit, the man properly identified himself as a local worker who had had a tiff with his wife and had gone to the movies, only to be frightened out of his wits by the sheriff!! Ironically, Dillinger was shortly thereafter shot down in front of a movie theatre in Chicago by other lawmen. A familiar character in Vernal for many years was the old Negro, Albert "Speck" Welhouse (sometimes called Williams). Speck had been a slave in the south, had gone West as a cook, had been held up while driving a stagecoach loaded with tourists in Yellowstone Park by none other than Jesse James and had many other adventures. He was lodged in jail in Deadwood, South Dakota at the time the Sundance Kid and Kid Curry made their famous escape from that place, and rode behind Sundance on a work horse for many miles and ended up in Brown's Park. For many years Speck operated the old Jarvie Ferry and later the Crouse Ferry on the Green River. At one time, for no apparent reason, Charles . Crouse, while fording the river on a I horse behind Speck, reached around and disembowled the black man and dumped him in the river. Mrs. Crouse rescued Speck and sewed him up and nursed him back to health, but he suffered from the wound for the rest of his life, and died eventually as an aftereffect after-effect of it. When Butch Cassidy, Elva Lay, Matt Warner and Lew McCarty robbed an old Jewish merchant of his wares -clothes, hardware, jewelry, etc. - Speck was in on the crime and aided in steering the old Jew in the right direction from the ferry. Butch rode to the ferry after the robbery and asked Speck if there was anything he wanted from the robbery, and Speck remarked that he could use a pair of socks, his had holes in them. "Butch done give me a whole bale of them!" Speck later grinned with delight. Speck died of an overdose of morphine in the Hatch home in Vernal. Unrelated and little-known incidents; there are so many. It is not generally known, for example, that Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Matt Rash and Isom Dart, all notorious rustlers, legally registered the now famous "Wagon WTieel" brand at Hahn's Peak, Colorado to cover the "K" brand of Charley Sparks' rustled cattle! The brand was later used universally by cattle rustlers throughout the West to blot out other brands. Many disconnected events surprise even long-time residents of this area. A good example is to be had in the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, that notorious old scoundrel behind the disastrous World War I, owned one of the largest ranches in the Uintah Basin at the turn of the century! A little known visitor to Vernal just prior to 1912 was none other that the famous western writer, Zane Grey. Under careful cover - for he was even then quite famous - Grey came to Vernal to gather material for his forthcoming for-thcoming book "Union Pacific" from men who had been around in 1869 when-the when-the tracks were laid through Wyoming. After residing as the guests of the Hatch and Swain families for a brief period, Grey then crossed the mountains, moun-tains, did some fishing, then resided in the old "Uncle Jack Robinson" cabin at Linwood while he interviewed other oldtimers of the Linwood-Manila-Green River-Rock Springs region. Many of the people and locations used in his book "Union Pacific", while the names were changed, are drawn from these sources. sour-ces. Disconnected events - never enough for a complete account, but far too interesting and important to discard from the pages of history. |