TWELFTH GENERATION

2365. William Crandell BOWLSBY^{(10145) (5327)} was born on 13 Apr 1872 in Madison Co., NE.^{(10146) (10147) (10148)} He died on 31 Dec 1954 in Jackson, Wy. ^{(10149)(10150) (10151)} He was also known as. Notes from Dewey Lee Bowlsby Grandson of William C. Bowlsby
Dewey speaks of William being quite the Card.

William loved flowers, so he let the word get out that he had passed on. Flowers started comi ng to the house. He says the reason he did it was, he wanted to enjoy them while he was a liv e, for he couldn't when he was gone.

Years ago when the Telephone came into the Basin, everyone was on one party line. When the ph one would ring, eventually all the women would be on to listen in. William loved to get the w omen to argue within their selves. He would call one of them up (and of course the phone ring s so you know most of them was on the line listening in) and let it slip that so and so sai d this about you, then so and so would say she did not, then the fight was on. William woul d sit back and laugh while the women would bicker, then hang up.

Note from Deanna Bowlsby:
You ask about Millie 's last name, it seems like everyone has their own version of the spelli ng but I have their original Marriage certificate and it is spelled Millie A Boomar on the ce rtificate, also I don't know if it is a mistake but they wrote William Crandel Bosby. it i s in the same hand writing of the justis of the peace.

Note Deanna Bowlsby:
William had two different colored eyes. One brown and one blue.

He was married to Millie A BOOMAR on 25 Feb 1895 in Sheridian Co. NE. ^{(10152)(10153)} He married a school teacher after Millie died and had no children from
second marriage. Another sheet says he was born 13 Mar 1871 or 1872.
Another sheet says born 1873. Millie A BOOMAR ^{(10154)(5327)} was born in 1876 in Haysprings, NE.^{(10155) (10156)} She died in 1953 in Pueblo, CO. ^(10155) She was also known as. ^(10157) Note from Deanna Bowlsby:
You ask about Millie 's last name, it seems like everyone has their own version of the spelli ng but I have their original Marriage certificate and it is spelled Millie A Boomar on the ce rtificate, also I don't know if it is a mistake but they wrote William Crandel Bosby. it i s in the same hand writing of the justis of the peace.
Note: Claude Swain
Boomar is the correct name. William Crandell BOWLSBY and Millie A BOOMAR had the following children:

+4382 i. Arthur William BOWLSBY^{(10158) (5327)} was born on 13 Jun 1897 in Haysprings, NE.^(10155) He died on 25 Apr 1993 in Bondurant, WY.^(10155) He was also known as.^(10155) Notes from Deanna Bowlsby
Arthur William Bowlsby had seven wives, some of the names are unknown. Family Rumor is that h e had three wives before Evelyn Beasley.

Index to Davis Funeral Home Records
Riverton, Fremont County, Wyoming
Compiled by Cheryl E. Belding
BOWLSBY, Arthur William 25 Apr 1993


<http://www.jacksonholenet.com/column/westwyo/banty.htm>
A Note from Jackson Hole Net
When I was a kid we had a neighbor named Banty Bowlsby
Banty Bowlsby (Arthur William Bowlsby)
I have always admired welders. You know, those guys with the greasy clothes and the little qu ilted hat. They are usually seen kneeling amid a cascade of sparks and a pile of sharp piece s of steel, looking through a piece of glass so dark and disorienting that any normal perso n would need a dose of Dramamine to keep from filling that hood with his lunch. I have know n a lot of them. All were half artist and half plumber while some were all artist. They hav e a genius for turning a rough soapstone sketch into something very functional, and often ver y beautiful. They seem to represent the finer mechanical arts. I have known men who were geni uses with bulldozers, road graders and draglines but their palettes were limited and the stro kes as broad as one can imagine. Even the roughest looking man can be touched with a bit of g enius. When I was a kid we had a neighbor named Banty Bowlsby. He was a rancher from a plac e called Bondurant, not too far from Jackson Hole, and even now it is as unlikely a place a s one might imagine that genius would set its dainty foot. The Hoback River runs down from th e Gros Ventre and Wyoming mountain ranges and meanders through the valley where the little to wn is set. Except for the fact that a famous mountain man, John Hoback, lent the river its na me, just about its only other claim to fame is the "Bondurant Barbecue" which is held at th e church on the last sunday in June. If you want meet the real folks who inhabit this part o f Wyoming, turn up at the barbecue and you won't be disappointed by the lack of real characte rs. No spandex and Air Jordans there, just a bunch of nieghbors who don't get to see one anot her very much the rest of the year. Anyway, Bandy was one of those guys who made just abou t everything that he needed. He made his own steaks, hamburger, jerky, knives, leather goods , and just about anything else for which he could scrounge up the material. He made me and m y brother our first pair of skis, from scratch. He took a 1x6 inch clear pine board, plane d it down at each end and shaped the front with the traditional ski point and included a litt le tit. He then boiled the front quarter of two of the boards overnight in a boiler and, whe n the wood was pliable, wound a piece of wire around the little tit on the front of the boar d and bent the tip back. He passed the wire to where he had placed a screw and wound it there . Left to dry, the board stayed in that position and the screw and wire were removed. He the n had us put on a couple of pair of big wool socks and stand on a one-inch board, where he ou tlined our feet. Those were coped out, placed in the middle of the ski and screwed down. Ban ty then split conveyor belting and nailed it around the edge of the board, forming a boot, wh ich he then trimmed and laced so it fit snugly around our feet. After punching out holes on t he top of the boot he cut the legs off old canvas work pants and laced those to the boot. Th e idea was that you stuck your leg into the pants legs, slipped into the boot and then tied t he pants leg around your own leg below the knee. The fit of the boot wasn't real snug but, th en again, it wasn't tight enough to break your leg when you fell on your butt. Once we had o ur skis we needed a system to steer with. Easy. Banty cut and trimmed a pole about eight fee t long and we were ready for the hill. The idea was that if you wanted to turn left you dragg ed the pole on your left side and the same for the right. Stopping was accomplished by rearin g back on the pole and throwing all your weight on it. In a real emergency you could even sti ck the pole between your legs and sit back on the pole. This could lead to complications, tho ugh, and when one had suffered the painful consequences of placing the pole imperfectly, we b oys repeated the emergency braking procedure only when convinced that death was the only alte rnative to applying it. As I sit here on this cold winter night, sorting through these memor ies of Banty, it occurs to me that the strongest recollection from back then is the smell o f the Bowlsby kitchen. In those days it was a common enough compound of odors. It came from , first, from the work clothes hanging at the door. They smelled of winter ranch work-sweat , grease, diesel, manure, mud, and much more. At the kitchen door that smell met, and mingle d with, the odors of whatever was being prepared in the kitchen. And in the Bowlsby kitchen t hat could be just about anything! In addition to the aroma of the wood-burning stove and Mrs . B's rolls and elk roast, there might be the odor of bear grease rendering in the warmer an d home brewed ski wax burping politely above the hot water reservoir. Also, Bandy might be bu tchering a quarter of an elk on the kitchen table, with cats lapping up the blood splotches o r daintily picking up suet morsels from the floor. Throw in Prince Albert pipe tobacco smok e and you have a potpourri that one might find bulging the windows of some Alaskan cabin, bu t it's probably long gone from this state. And too bad. Where the hell was I? Oh yes, nativ e geniuses. Anyway, Banty was one of those guys. The fact that he could do all that stuff tha t I've been talking about didn't make a genius, as such. He was clever, resourceful, and al l that but there was something else that convinces me, all these years later, that the man di d have something of the genius about him. One day I walked over at the Bowlsbys and Bandy wa s working away on the damnedest contraption I had ever seen. He'd taken a motorcycle apart an d mounted the motor, handle bars and suspension on top of a toboggan which had its middle mis sing. "Whatcha doin?" I asked, and probably wiped my nose. "Oh, a deal for gettin around o n the snow." He turned to a long piece of split conveyor belting to which, about every twelv e inches, he had bolted lengths of angle iron 18 inches long. "Gimme a hand," he said, an d I helped him drag the belting over to the toboggan and line it up. He pulled the stuff aro und some rollers and sheaves which were attached to the scavenged motorcycle which was attach ed to the toboggan with its guts gone. I am no genius myself, God knows, so I can't tell yo u exactly how all this was engineered. However, I can tell you that, about two hours later, B andy got on the damn thing, kicked over the motor, goosed the gas a bit and took off across t he snow. It was beautiful. It wasn't very pretty but it was beautiful. He'd invented the sno w machine, and I was there for its first test run. Now, they say that ideas are out there i n the ether and that all you have to do is reach up and pluck 'em; patents have been awarde d to two men on the same day who came up with the same idea thousands of miles apart. Televis ion is one of those ideas. Some others say that if a working man has a good idea he's bound t o get separated from it by someone with money who will leave him with a pucker in his short s and nothing more, and that's true too. Why Bandy didn't get rich and famous off his idea i s a question for the gods. Or the lawyers. I don't know myself, but I can tell you that in th e winter of 1953 I watched a bald headed man with a twinkle in his eye leave on a Rube Goldbe rg contraption and come back from a run across a field of snow one happy little genius. Need less to say, Jackson Hole now has its share of snow machines. What with them, skis, and snowb oards, winter is serious fun around here. Some of the most spectacular snow machining in th e world can be had in this area. You can even arrange for a trip through Yellowstone in a sno w machine caravan which will take you past wintering buffalo, coyotes, swans, elk and maybe , just maybe, a wolf or two. So bring a credit card, a camera, and your bun warmer. And if yo u run into Banty's spirit out there in the mountains tell him little Johnny Horton sent you . And thank him for the skis. Jon Horton

The short history of organized skiing starts back in the 1880s
<http://www.jacksonholenet.com/jhhsm/>
Last month I was talking about native geniuses, especially Banty Bowlsby. I wrote that he ha d made me my first set of skis and that got me to thinking about skiing here in the Jackson a rea.
Oh yes, skiing in the 1930s. There were a lot of people who were pioneering the sport in th e area and one of them was, again, Banty Bowlsby. He and the Hicks brothers, Sam, Ed, and Joe , were known as the "Hoback Boys." As teenagers, they had started a business delivering mai l and other items to the snowbound ranches in the Hoback Canyon, Bondurant and even up to th e Hoback Rim. They were excellent racers and fearless jumpers who put together ski "circuses " which included jumping through rings of fire and the like. They performed in Jackson and i n Sun Valley, as well. Remember, these guys were doing this on home made skis with no ankle s upport and single poles eight feet long.
One of Banty's innovations (native genius again) was to replace the base made from a concocti on of pine gum, wax and elk tallow with a base made from melted phonograph records! Those o f you who are familiar with the hard material those museum-piece 78s were made from will appr eciate the technical leap that represented. Designed to resist the action of a chrome steel s tylus needle, it was the only material available in this snowbound corner of the country in t hose years.
Other people deserve to be mentioned here, like Neil Rafferty, Fred Brown, Jack Yokel, and Gr over Basset. In the 1930s, they were the ones who were laying down the base for the multi-mil lion dollar business that skiing represents in Jackson Hole. There activities were, naturally , pretty homely when compared to what was going on in the eastern US. It was going to take so mething more than the activities of a few rustics to grab the attention of the valley's monie d gentry.
Here in Jackson there was a lot of interest in the new skiing techniques which were being imp orted from Europe to the rich-kid colleges back east. The inclusion of skiing in the 1936 Oly mpics brought the sport to international attention and when an Olympian, Betty Woolsey, move d to Jackson it added a lot of cachet to the winter recreation scene. It took Neil Rafferty , one of the rustic native geniuses, to propose the installation of a rope tow on Snow King M ountain, behind the town. The new Jackson Hole Ski Club organized a meet and invited some Alt a, Utah racers to compete with the locals and people from Sun Valley. They called it the Tri- State Meet and it was a great success. Skiing had found its way uptown, even though it wa s a very small town it represented a long way from the recent "pioneer" days of delivering ma il and milk.
But do not be discouraged, if you don't mind doing a little traveling on your own, there ar e hundreds of square miles around Jackson just waiting for a set of cross country or telly tr acks. It may not be 1806, but there's still a lot of room for someone to wander the still, wh ite country with a high heart.
Jon Horton
+4383 ii. Sylvia BOWLSBY^{(10159) (5327)} was born in 1900 in Madison Co., NE. She died in 1980 in Meridian, Id. ^(10155) Married 62 years
4384 iii. Della BOWLSBY^{(10160) (10155)(5327)} was born on 16 Sep 1900 in Madison Co., NE.^(10155) She died on 15 Jul 1966 in Greatfalls, Mt. ^(10155) She was also known as.^(10161) DELLA BOWLSBY 16 Sep 1900 15 Jul 1966
(none specified) 517-60-4968
59632 Boulder, Montana

He was married to Alma ALLENDAR in Phenix, AZ. Alma ALLENDAR^{(10155) (5327)} was born on 15 Oct 1880.^(10162) She died in Sep 1976 in Phoenix, Maricopa, AZ.^{(10155) (10162)} ALMA BOWLSBY 15 Oct 1880 Sep 1976
85020 (Phoenix, Maricopa, AZ)
(none specified) 520-38-7294 Wyoming