Ricardo
Ricardo is in De Baca
County five miles south of
US 60 on the AT&SF RR, ten miles SW of Ft. Sumner, NM. Post office 1908 – 54.
AT&SF Deopt
at
Photo
furnished by Ray Thompson.
The following story is used here with permission from Ray Thompson. This was the
Madison Todd family and they are listed in
Ricardo, NM in the 1910 Federal Census.
It is placed here as a first hand account of early life in
be used only for home Genealogical research and is not to be reproduced
in any form
for profit without written permission From Ray Thompson.
Copyright ©
1989 by Ray Thompson
The following pages contain
excerpts from the book,
“Our Little House on the
Prairie”
by
Zorene (Todd) Thompson
This book is an account of life on a homestead near
Ray M. Thompson
raymackt@comcast.net
http://www.raymack.com
Chapter 1
…………..
I was born,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 2
We Move to
…………..
On
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Finally
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My father’s sister, Mary Todd, decided to “move west” with us, and
accompanied my mother, Judson, and I on the train as soon as father wrote that
our living quarters were ready. We
boarded the regular passenger train in
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mother, Judson, fathers sister Mary and I, finally reached
Farwell, Texas on the Texas/New Mexico border, and right across the line from Texico, New Mexico.
For the life of me, I can’t remember if we spent the night in Farwell or
Texico, but I do remember that it was my first time
to spend the night in a hotel.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ricardo
I think it was the middle of the afternoon before we reached our
destination and saw Ricardo for the first time.
When we arrived in Ricardo in 1908 it had a post office,
blacksmith shop, hotel (of sorts), a nice general merchandise store, a
barbershop and probably a few more establishments that I don’t remember. I do remember that there were four or five
saloons…something we kids had not seen before.
In the center of the town a well had been drilled and equipped with a
windmill, trough for stock to drink, and an elevated tank for a water
supply. There were also a few residences
in town, but no school.
Our
The first homes built by many of the homesteaders were earthen
“dug-outs” built at least partially under ground. Some of them had one or two rooms of lumber
built above the under ground cellar.
Some one (probably
our doctor) advised our father that his health might improve faster if we lived
in tents, and this is what
Stickers!
As soon as we reached our tent home, Judson and I were ready to
get outside and play,.. Since we were used to going bare-footed in
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No “Witchers” Need Apply!
The second major phase in establishing our new home (after father
put up our tents) was having a well drilled,
I remember hearing a neighbor say we would need a professional “water witcher” to use his “divining rod” to locate the spot where
water would be found. I also remember my
father’s reply, “I will do no such thing!
I know where I want my well, and that’s where it will be drilled.” Sure enough the drillers did find water in
that spot! The well then had to be
“cased”, and the wind-mill tower erected.
In the meantime, water was brought up to the surface with a bucket and
rope on a pulley. This was hard work and
water conservation was a top priority.
We had always had “soft” water in
Snow On the Prairie
One incident happened that winter that I will always
remember. I was awakened early one
morning by mother’s excited voice and looked up to see the top of our tent
sagging down, very low over our heads.
Through the tent covered ridges we could see the sun shining, but the
light inside our tent was different, and there was an eerie feeling in the
air….I remember father jumping out of bed and rushing to the door. When he tried to open it, a great wall of
snow fell inside the tent! Without any
warning, a heavy snow had arrived during the night, but now the sun was shining
as though it was mid summer! We were all
in a hurry to get outside and see this new world! Father had a hard time getting out of the
tent, because of all the snow that was pressing against the outside door. Sometime during the day, father shoveled the
snow out so we could have paths to the well, the barn, the
out-house, etc. This made the
paths into little “canyons”,
wide enough so that Judson and I could pull our little
wagon. Amazingly, as the snow melted
over the next few days the paths remained dry!
I can still remember the fun
Judson and I had playing through those canyons of snow, on dry land…. To this
day that is the deepest snow I have ever experienced.
Spring wasn’t a good time for our tents, for the wind begin to
blow…Day and night it blew and along the top of our wooden walls our tents
began to split. Finally
, we had to move into a rented shack and plans for a new house had to be
made.
|
|
Out of the blue (as far as I can remember), a survivor from the
terrible Personally I could never understand why such a high roof was
built. In fact, I had a suspicion that
my folks were not too pleased but they never discussed it in my hearing. |
Chapter 3
Early Days in Ricardo
…………..
Community Service
Our father was active in the community life of Ricardo. He was
elected to serve on the first school board (he was almost 30 years old) and
gave a lot of his time and effort to get a school house and other improvements
for our
little town. He was the first Justice of the Peace for Ricardo. (I can't
remember if he was elected or appointed.) I recall only a few events that
required his official attention as a "JP".
I well recall the most tragic occasion for which father was called
to serve as a "peace officer"… it began late in the day. Two men from
Ricardo came to our homestead to tell father of a killing; father was needed to
arrest the killer. One of father's friends (a young lawyer) had been shot and
killed by the wife of the Agent for the Santa Fe Railway Company. The story was
that the young lawyer and his girl friend had been hunting rabbits on the
Agent's property. The Agent's wife saw
them going into the field and
became angry, because she thought some cows belonging to the
lawyer's girl friend were also eating grain in the field. She followed them
with a loaded gun, confronted them, and killed the young man instantly. We were disturbed (and yet terribly excited)
that our father had to go arrest the killer. The plan was for father and two
deputized friends to accompany the prisoner to
Mother worried when told that the group would have to spend the night in Vaughn,
and go on to
No one knew the address of any relatives of the young man who was
killed. I remember that some years later, after we moved to
…………..
7
We Move Back to
…………..
Our Cemetery
When we lived in Ricardo we had no funeral home. When a death
occurred, neighbors made the casket and did all the necessary things for
burial, including a prompt grave-side ceremony. At first we did not even have a
cemetery, but our
father deeded a plot of land on the southeast corner of our claim for this
purpose. Father's young lawyer friend was the first burial in the new cemetery,
but when we left Ricardo there were three graves, all marked by home-made
wooden markers, and all personal friends of our family…
a sad spot on our "Lonesome Prairie". (See map in
chapter 2.)
Since moving to
On another visit ( 1980, I believe),
accompanied by Barbara and a mutual
volunteered him to take us to the cemetery in their pickup. Barbara and Miss
Jennie elected to stay at the ranch house, but Christine and I climbed into the
young man's pickup and off we went!
We had a very enjoyable visit with the young rancher, as he drove
us over a very bumpy and dimly defined road to the old cemetery. When we
arrived, I was glad to see that it was enclosed by a nice wire fence and that
the wide gate was well marked, "
I will always remember this trip in a special way… the surprising
vitality of Miss Jennie in her 90-plus years, and the kindness of the rancher
and his son. That's the way I remember all the people from my early days in
Ricardo.
…………..
END
OF EXCERPTS
(The young lawyer who was killed
was BRUSNAHAN, C. Frank,
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