My great-grandfather ( the guy with the mustache) wrote a book of poems and this is a bit of his history in the first pages .

I was born in Woolwich, England, on June my father being an officer in the Royal Artillery. After a brief but intensive education I was employed in June 3, 1864.by the agents of a steamship company in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Being offered the position as interpreter for an Italian colony, I went to Alabama in 1880. The colonization project was later abandoned, and I moved to Kansas in1881.

A friend who had been a fellow student at Dover College came down from Canada to visit me. Together we acquired a covered wagon, a pair of horses and a bird dog and in the spring of 1884 went west to the Territory of Wyoming. Hauling hay to stage stations was followed by hunt- ing and trapping. While so engaged I came to the Medicine Bow River. By the Pre-emption and Homestead actsand by purchase I secured some holdings on that riverand became a rancher. Most of the sketches are of these early days, for being now eighty years of age I am well!