William Tribble

Sometimes an ancestor will just grab hold of you and you can't let them go...for whatever reason.  I keep coming back to William Tribble,  Amy Margaret (Duel) Tribble's husband.  I spent a good portion of yesterday working on trying to verify his death and looking for his parents.  Amy, who went by Margaret, is my Great Grandmother Bertie (Duel) Pattee's sister.  I have been in touch with a descendant of William and Margaret's for quite a few years.

One of the stories she told me was about William.  Here is the story told by my cousin

"Margaret was twice widowed.  She and her first husband were living out on some land, I'm not sure where, and they didn't have their own well and had to get water on the neighbor's land.  The kids would go and haul the water home every day.  One day, the neighbor met them, and said, if they wanted any more water, they should just send Bertie and not the boys.  She was somewhere between 10 and 12 at the time.  They ran home and told their parents, and William Tribble, their father, went to confront the neighbor.  The neighbor met him at the fence with a rifle or a shotgun, I'm not sure which.  The neighbor got belligerent and stuck the barrel of the gun right on William's chest, and he grabbed the barrel with his right hand, and was shoving it off, when it went off right over his heart.  Margaret and Bertie had to go out with a quilt to drag home his body.

Right after that, Margaret loaded up the kids and everything into a buckboard wagon and moved West.  I do not believe she remarried any time soon."

********* Update*******

Right as I was writing this post and messaging my cousin to get the ok to post her story, I get a call from the very nice lady at the Thomas-Wilhite Memorial Library in Perkins, Payne, Oklahoma, who has been helping me with my research today.  The death of William was to have taken place there in July 1900 and I called looking for some record or newspaper article in regards to what happened.  I called first thing this morning, I talked to Alison (the very nice lady helping me) and she informed me that she would look but that newspaper's for that time period were very spotty.  She also checked the Perkins County Death Index and didn't find anything.  Things were not looking hopeful when she emailed me again to tell me she was unable to find any newspaper's for Perkins at that time period.  And that they probably wouldn't even be available with the Oklahoma Historical Society as a lot of those papers were "lost" before they could be archived.  I had decided that I was not going to be lucky today, and was feeling a little bummed but very grateful to Alison at the library for helping me in the first place.

I decided to write about how I was going to move forward with this research, when the best phone call today came in.  It was Alison, with some very wonderful news!! She said that she was frustrated with the holes in their collection and decided to take a little time and see what she could find from the other collections they have for the towns nearby, when she hit paydirt!! Yay, for her going the extra mile for me.  And this my friends is why I always say to "kill them with kindness" in regards to asking for help.  If I had been cranky or treated her like it was her "duty" to help me, she may have not gone that extra bit and helped me with this.

So you want to know....what did she find??? A front page article in the "Ripley Times" dated 20 Jul 1900 "That Murder at Perkins: W.J. Tripple (that is the spelling in the paper) Shot and Instantly Killed by Mr. Albright"   OH MY!!! Could we really have found an article verifying the death of William Tribble? Why....yes I do believe we have!! Everything fits, so the mis-spelling of William's last name is not to troubling. Alison was kind enough to read me the article over the phone and oh my....what details! They have one public scanner that I guess is not the best and she was worried that it would degrade the quality of the paper to scan or fax it.  But she very happily offered to put the copy that, she was able to make, in the mail for me.  I will hopefully have it by Friday! I can't wait.

Always....ASK! The probability that there would be an article in the local newspaper, that would have been saved was low.  But I took a chance and asked anyways...I mean really the worst they could say is no.  I asked and I received.  You never know what is out there, and there is only one way to find out.  Don't be afraid to call the museums, libraries and even the recorder/clerks office at a local courthouse.  Even if they can't help you, they most likely know who can.  I have spent hours calling recorder's office's all over North and South Dakota looking for records.  Most of the time, they are polite and helpful.

My next step.....since in the article it states that Mr. Albright was taken to the jail in Stillwater, which wasn't far away, I will try the Stillwater Public Library.  Alison from Perkins said that they are very helpful there.  I sure hope there is more in the papers there, since he hopefully had a trial.  I want to know what happened to the cranky Mr. Albright also.

Can't wait to share the newspaper article with you.