Charles C. Roberts and I were married

Edith L.Crawford Carrizozo,N.Mex. Words-1350 MAR 7 1938 [2nd?] PIONEER STORY 

Charles C. Roberts and I were married in Mason Texas, September 2, 1875. Mr. 
Roberts was a farmer when I married him. He was also a minute man, one who 
helped the rangers fight the Indians. In 1873 or 74 he helped in one of the 
last fights with the Indians. It took place on Pack Saddle Mountain, about 12 
miles from Llano Texas, on the Llano River. They killed most of the Indians 
and got some of their bows and arrows and a lot of Indian trinkets. We left 
Llano Texas in May 1880, with our three children in a covered wagon drawn by 
two horses. We had all of our provisions with us. There were four other 
families and six single man in our crowd. Each family had a covered wagon. We 
camped out at night and when we made camp the men always made a circle with 
the wagons and put our horses inside the circle and the men took turns 
standing guard. All the men always wore six shooters and some of then wore two 
guns. Each man had a rifle that always hung on the back of the wagon seat 
where they could reach it in a hurry if they needed to, for we were always 
expecting the Indians to attack us at any time. We had heard so many stories 
about the Indians killing the white people who were coming west, and we were 
scared to death all the way out here.

The women did all the cooking. We made sour dough biscuit and corn meal 
dodgers and baked them in dutch ovens. We used what wood we could find but 
most of the time we used cow chips to cook with. The only fresh meat we had on 
our trip was what we killed on the way, cotton tail rabbits and antelope 
mostly. Once in a while we would buy a piece of fresh meat from some of the 
big ranchers. When we struck the Horse Head Crossing in the Pecos River the 
men caught some cat fish. We were almost starved for water when we

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sighted the Pecos River, but when we got to the bank of the river and saw the 
water was as red as blood, what a disappointed bunch we were. He had to let 
the water settle before we could drink it and then it was awful tasting and we 
did not like it. We had to be awful saving with our drinking water an it was a 
dry year and there was not many watering places. We carried our water in kegs 
tied to the side of the wagons. Mr. Roberts had the man who carried the mail 
in a buck board from Government Springs Texas to Fort Stocton Texas, to bring 
us a keg of drinking water each trip while we were camped on the Pecos resting 
up. 

All the soldiers at Government Springs were negroes. Every time we came to 
good water we would lay over and rest for a day or so. The women would wash 
and clean things all up and the men would hunt. We did not see any buffalo or 
Indians on our trip. We had cow hides swung under our wagons where we carried 
all our pots, pans, shovels and tongs. I still have one of the rawhide bottom 
straight chairs that I brought with me on that trip to this country in 1860. 

One day while crossing the plains we could see some travelers coming behind 
us. When they got close enough for us to see them it was a bunch of Mexicans, 
driving burros to two wheeled carts with canvas tops. We were all scared to 
death until they stopped and some of the men folks went back to see what they 
wanted. They had a very sick man and they did not know what to do with or for 
him. My husband stepped up to the cart and saw that the man had cramp colic, 
so he came back to our wagon and asked me if I had any medicine that I could 
give this man to relieve the pain. I had a bottle of Jamaica ginger, so I 
fixed him up a dose of that and Mr. Roberts gave it to him and it releived him 
in just a little while. They were all so grateful to us and just could not 
thank us enough for what we had

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done for their sick friend. 

From our stay on the Pecos our next stop was at Roswell New Mexico. Roswell 
consisted of one family, a commissary blacksmith shop. There were five big 
cotton wood trees. It was noon when we got there and that night there was the 
hardest rain that I ever saw fall. The thunder and lightning was terrible and 
we were all scared to death. The water rose to the hubs of our wagon wheels 
and we thought we would be washed away at any minute. The next stop was at the 
Casey Ranch on the Hondo River. We bought butter and eggs from them and they 
gave us a lot of milk. We traveled on up the Bonito River, which was a 
beautiful sight to us. We passed thro Lincoln and Fort Stanton and on over to 
Nogal Canyon. We stayed here two months and the men prospected for gold. While 
we were here a baby girl was born to Mrs. Irwin, one of the women in our 
crowd. We fixed her a bed under a big pine tree, of pine needles. We put her 
feather bed and some quilts on the pine needles and she was very comfortable. 
She named the little girl "New Mexico". 

We went from Nogal Canyon to Lake Valley which was not very far from Silver 
City. It was a mining town but we did not do any good there so we went on to 
Georgetown New Mexico, which was on the [Membres?] River. We did not stay 
there very long and came on back to White Oaks, New Mexico, which was a small 
mining town at that time. We stayed there until April 1881 and Mr. Roberts 
decided to send the children and me back to Llano Texas while he scouted 
around looking for a place to locate. An old man by the name of John Duncan 
(we called him "Uncle Johnny" ) took us back to Texas in a covered wagon. We 
passed through Lincoln New Mexico the day Billy the Kid killed his guards and 
escaped. We went through there in the morning and he killed them at noon.  

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We made our own candles out of beef tallow and wicks out of spun cotton 
thread. We had our own moulds. Our candles gave out before we reached New 
Mexico so we tore up old cotton rags and made what we called grease lamps by 
putting the rags in a tin can and pouring lard over them. They made a good 
light for one wagon and we depended on our camp fires for light before going 
to bed. 

I brought my Bible along with as and at night I would read my Bible 
and we all would sing sacred hymns. Sometimes the men would sing cowboy songs. 
Mr. Roberts went back to Lake Valley New Mexico, after he sent us back to 
Texas and staked out a mining claim and did his assessment work on the claim 
and waited around for awhile to see if he could sell his claim for big money. 
He got homesick and sold his claim for ten dollars and started out horseback 
for Texas. He made the entire trip to Llano Texas by horseback. We stayed in 
Texas for five years. When we returned to New Mexico at the end of that time 
we found that the claim Mr. Roberts had sold for ten dollars, turned out to be 
one of the richest which was struck at Lake Valley.

Narrator: Mrs. Alice Roberts, Aged 78 years. Carrizozo New Mexico. 

Credit: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project 
Collection.

Lincoln, Grant

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