December, 1887: Sue Sanders, who lived with her invalid mother and sister in a log cabin near Huckabay, described life after her father died: “Fannie was 12 years of age and I was seven when we took over all the work on the farm . . . By the middle of December we had the whole crop harvested, and things looked pretty good. Ma thought we had enough meat salted down to last until spring, and there was plenty of corn for meal. We had hilled up sweet potatoes to keep them from freezing, first digging a deep hole and lining it with straw and corn fodder. We also had winter turnips and enough feed for the stock.” But this was the week that the family’s mortgaged livestock was confiscated “so our debt kicked back on us as debts always do, and hit us mighty hard.” When Sue was older, she took a job waiting tables in a Thurber cafe. Listening to conversations about the new oil fields, she started a business delivering equipment to the wells from Texas to Oklahoma. She died a millionaire.

Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1939.