Duel Family

One of the biggest problems with getting sick...well besides the sick part...is my inability to function and write.  I love my work and love writing about it.  But when you are not well, that all gets put on the back burner.  I have a ways to go till I am fully well but I am going to work on being better at getting some work done on the computer even while I am down. :D No worries though I will be up and at 'em in no time at all.

So that is this week's excuse on why I haven't posted in a while.... lol ;)

Two weeks ago, after my last post on William Tribble and his murder, I heard from a "cousin" that I have not met before or even knew of.  His name is Rick Hall and he contacted me with some information on the murder of William Tribble.  He is related through Margaret (Duel) Tribble's brother George Alvin Duel.  George Alvin is his Great Grandfather.  This makes us third cousins. Rick was able to provide me with some more newspaper articles on the death of William Tribble and the following trial of V.H. Albright.  Such a sad tale. Mr. Albright was found guilty of the murder of William Tribble and sentenced to just 4 years! That is crazy to me, for the murder of another person but times were different then.  I think Mr. Albright might have appealed his verdict and it might have gone to the Supreme Court but more research is in order, for me to tell you how much time Mr. Albright really did serve in the en.

Rick has also been so generous in sharing some amazing photo's with me.  And we are planning on working together to break down brick walls.  One of the photo's he shared with me I already had BUT I had a photo copy of a photo copy.  That picture was posted on ancestry.com by another cousin related through George Robinson Duel's first wife.  They had two daughters together and then for some reason George left her and she remarried his brother.  There is more work for me to find out what happened there.  Well, so the photo I have was a good photo just not very clear.  Then I received the one from Rick and it is very beautiful. 

Beautiful! Right....  George and Amy Duel are front right side.  Above them are their daughters Margaret (second from the right back) and Bertie (far right), George Alvin Duel is back far left.  I am not sure which one is which of the other three boys but they are Dexter, Heenan and Manford. 

While researching Dexter, I met one of his descendants and am hoping that she will be able to tell me eventually which one is Dexter.  She is working on getting some family photo's that her Grandma had.  I hope that she is successful, as she wants to preserve them.  I am a full believer in sharing family photo's so that no matter what happens, there is always a copy floating around.  See a photo I have posted and want a copy? Feel free to take it or email me and I will send you one. :D  Preservation is key to these precious gems.

When I did have time, I have been working on George Robinson Duel's children.  I did spend a little bit of time on his first two daughters with his first wife Sybilla.  And I had just moved on to Dexter (while waiting to hear from the Stillwater Library) when I heard from Rick.  In what little time I have had on the computer that has been the focus of my research, Dexter and his children.  Tonight, I got a little side tracked but I will tell you all about that in another post. :)

Ripley Times

Well just as promised I received the newspaper clipping in the mail today from the Ripley Times dated 20 Jul 1900 about William Tribble's murder.  And it has such detail in it.  I was so excited to be able to come home and share this with my Dad, who is here for a little visit.  He said that he had never heard this story and then started talking about how his family didn't really talk about this kind of stuff.  His family didn't really talk about much on either the Adamson or the Pattee side.  The only story I ever remember hearing anyting about is the story of my Grandpa Ralph Adamson....but that's a different post. ;)

So here it is a copy of the article....big THANK YOU to Alison at the Thomas-Hilite Memorial Library in Perkins, Oklahoma for going the extra mile.  Wonderful!!

If you would like a copy of this article please just shoot me an email and I will more than happy to share!

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.