Interesting old documents

[Dave]

Last year the daughter of a former owner stopped in. She had spent a lot of time here when her parents owned this place. The wife and her exchanged information. So today a package arrived from that lady. A note in it said her mother had passed away and in going through her mom's papers she found a bundle of papers on this place. She sent them to us. The first page is a patent on the homestead for this property dated in 1884. The last document is from 1924. I looked very briefly at the nearly half an inch thick of old documents. I saw one where a 22 year old woman who inherited the place was declared insane and was in a state hospital. Several pages of someone being placed in guardianship of this place as an asset of the insane lady. Another where the owner died and who and how they went about appraising his assets, the ranch and 150 head of cattle. This is going to be some interesting reading of a little piece of the history of our property.

 

[faster horses]

Very seldom does old history documents pass to the hands of the current owner. You will enjoy learning the history of your place. Please share with us some of what you find.

 

[Dave]

Found one where they gave a right of way for a ditch. It says the ditch will carry no more than "200 miner inches" of water. How much is a miner inch of water? Interesting stuff.
I looked it up and did the math. A miner inch has different definitions. The one I used is 1/50 of a cubic foot per second. I came up with enough water to spread 1 inch equally over 9.5 acres in 24 hours.

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

Found one where they gave a right of way for a ditch. It says the ditch will carry no more than "200 miner inches" of water. How much is a miner inch of water?

2244 gallon per minute total, 11.22 gal/miner inch. That's a lot of water.

 

[Dave]

2244 gallon per minute total, 11.22 gal/miner inch. That's a lot of water.

The definition I found varied from 1/36 to 1/50 of a cubic foot per second. Which definition depended on which state you are in.

 

[greybeard]

1 cubic foot of water weighs 62.4lbs.
62.4lbs x 16 oz=998.88 oz. 998 oz ÷50=19.96oz.

 

[GoWyo]

Should be about 5 cubic feet per second (c.f.s.) according to this source: https://www.convertunits.com/from/miner's+inch+[AZ,+CA,+OR]/to/cfs

In Wyoming the standard surface water irrigation appropriation is 1 c.f.s. per 70 acres, so 5 c.f.s. would be the appropriation for 350 irrigated acres.

 

[TCRanch]

That's awesome, @Dave. The previous owner of our ranch gave us the abstracts dating back to the late 1800's and it hadn't been surveyed since 1879 when we bought it in 2007. Lot of interesting reading and yes, documented drama.

 

[BFE]

These things are really interesting. A little piece of land I bought in 2000 was in the same family since deeded by the state in 1818. That's a long run.

 

[Hippie Rancher]

that was really nice of her. just about the time my mother tossed a four drawer file cabinet of old papers we really wished we had some of them back. she kept a good representation, but I wanted to really dig into trying to figure out how many head ran on the place back then. (been in the family since late 1800's)

 

[Dave]

Several place in the documents say that the place is about 1/2 a mile from the post office. I am about 5 miles from where the post office is now. But I know that the post office wasn't at that same location back then. I have a book written by an old timer here that talks about a house he lived in with his wife in the 30's. He says that house is the building that is now the post office.

 

[Hippie Rancher]

this place used to be POBox 4, then in the late 1980s they moved the Post Office to a new building about a quarter mile away. now we have a 3 digit number. kind of aggravates me. would have liked to have acquired a section of those old wooden boxes too. no idea who ended up with them.

 

[D2Cat]

We have papers showing Indian Chief Baptist Peoria owned the land that is now one block from the town square.

 

[Dave]

this place used to be POBox 4, then in the late 1980s they moved the Post Office to a new building about a quarter mile away. now we have a 3 digit number. kind of aggravates me. would have liked to have acquired a section of those old wooden boxes too. no idea who ended up with them.

The post office here started here on April 22, 1865 as Express Ranch. In July of 1879 the post office moved to Weatherby which is about 9 miles southeast. In November of 1884 it came back but they dropped the Express and just known as Ranch. On February 28, 1902 it became Durkee. I have a list naming all the post masters from 1865 until 1987. The old wood post office boxes from the Weatherby post office are on display in the Durkee community center, which is the old stone built one room school house which was built in 1911.

 

[faster horses]

Would Weatherby gun manufacturing be descended from the Weatherby you mentioned?

 

[Nesikep]

Interesting documents for sure
Our place was first homesteaded by a chinaman in 1886, it's Lot 29 in our district, the previous property we looked at was Lot 27.. I think the guy died, it went back to the gov't, then in the early 1930's the McPhee's bought it, our house is the one they built out of 2nd hand material back then... the old tools we've found and such really tell you they were "dirt poor".. the house was 2x4 wall with no insulation, Foundation? what's that? it's a couple logs! we've since done a lot of renovations to it, new windows, 2x6 insulated walls, etc
One of the McPhee daughters and grandaughters stopped in years ago, they gave us a really nice tablecloth and a few old pictures

 

[sstterry]

We have a program in Tennessee called the "Century Farm Project". It is to honor and give some limited protections to farms that have been continuously operated by the same family for at least 100 years. About 20 years ago I got all of the documents together so that my parents would have that status.

It is always interesting what you can learn from old deeds and documents. The original deed for the farm was in 1887. But there are other records showing that our family had been on the land since 1867. We were here before the present county was formed.

 

[Dave]

Would Weatherby gun manufacturing be descended from the Weatherby you mentioned?

I have no idea. It was a gold rush town/community. Only thing there now is a rest stop off the freeway and 3 very widely scattered houses. There is a hill between here and there called Gold Hill. I assume there were some hard rock gold mines on that hill.

 

[faster horses]

Interesting documents for sure
Our place was first homesteaded by a chinaman in 1886, it's Lot 29 in our district, the previous property we looked at was Lot 27.. I think the guy died, it went back to the gov't, then in the early 1930's the McPhee's bought it, our house is the one they built out of 2nd hand material back then... the old tools we've found and such really tell you they were "dirt poor".. the house was 2x4 wall with no insulation, Foundation? what's that? it's a couple logs! we've since done a lot of renovations to it, new windows, 2x6 insulated walls, etc
One of the McPhee daughters and grandaughters stopped in years ago, they gave us a really nice tablecloth and a few old picturesView attachment 14100

It would be interesting to see Before and After photos of your house. Do you have any?

 

[Nesikep]

It would be interesting to see Before and After photos of your house. Do you have any?

It didn't change too much.. don't have many really good pics of it.. here's some more recent ones