Life in the Old West

I recently ran onto a short article my great-grandmother wrote in response to a call for stories of life in Custer County Nebraska by the pioneers who lived it. I just ran onto it recently, but the article itself appeared in a collection of accounts of early life in the Nebraska Sand Hills region which was published in 1936. I was fortunate enough to find a copy through an inter-library loan system. While I had the book, I scanned a copy of the article by my great-grandmother: “Early Experiences Leave a Thrill,” by Mrs. Wilber Speer.

Read more on Cow chips and drought — enjoying ‘good old days’ in Nebraska…

It’s very likely today that you can travel to graveyards throughout the Old West and find aging tombstones that have the message “died by the hands of the V.C.” carved into them. Perhaps you’ve seen them in your travels throughout the West if you’ve had an interest in genealogy and inspecting family burial plots.

I discovered just today, reading in Winfred Blevins’ “Dictionary of the American West” (I’ve mentioned the book before), that those tombstone messages carry an ominous history lesson. According to Blevins, the “V.C.” stands for “Vigilance Committee”: groups we have come to know as “vigilantes” — those people who took it upon themselves to hunt down the “bad guys,” and dispense the vigilantes’ version of justice — whether that was a shooting or hanging.

Read more on Old West tombstones with ‘V.C.’ carved on them conveyed somber message…