Tag: Luce

My great grandparents Wilford “Bill” Luce (1864-1948) and Essie Wilson (1878-1927) got married October 24, 1898 in Champaign, Illinois. So, where did a Wyoming rancher meet this woman from south central Illinois?

I’m afraid I might have been responsible for a bit of erroneous information here. I answered an email off the cuff many years ago, saying I seemed to remember they met in Chicago when Bill was back east selling cattle.

It would have made sense. The Chicago cattle market was huge. If there was ever a reason for a Wyoming man to be in Illinois, that’s where he would have been and what he would have been doing there.

Ever since I said it, I’ve had a nagging feeling I might have got it wrong. And, I did.

Now and then, I’ve wondered if maybe Bill and Essie really met at the 1898 World’s Fair in Omaha. That would make sense too. Omaha was also a big cattle market, and it’s not hard to imagine Essie and her mother might have come to Omaha for the World’s Fair.

But, no. That’s wrong too. My grandmother had a story about going to the World’s Fair, but it was the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco. Bill and Essie were long since married. They took their children. It was big deal.

Now I’ve come across my old notes. I see I’ve misremembered the story. According to my grandmother, Vivian (Luce) Swanstrom, her parents Bill and Essie met “at the stock show in Denver.” [1]

The National Western Stock Show is a huge event here in Denver. It takes place every January. Just finished up 2026 last Sunday.

As I do a little digging, I find some interesting background. The National Western Stock Show dates back to only 1906. Bill and Essie were already married then. They married in 1898. Instead, they must have met at the National Stock Growers’ “National Exhibition of Range Cattle,” the precursor to our modern stock show.

Denver had convinced the National Stock Growers Association to hold their 1898 annual convention in Denver. This Exhibition wasn’t planned to be an annual event. It was just a gathering to celebrate the closing of the National Stock Growers’ Convention that year.

The Exhibition was held January 27-28, 1898 at the Denver Union Pacific stockyard grounds near the railroad lines at the South Platte River, north of downtown Denver. Over the years, these stockyard grounds evolved into the famous Denver National Western Complex.

As I research the 1898 Exhibition, I see it was notable for a riot. A barbecue was planned, but tens of thousands of people descended on the stockyard and overwhelmed the food supply. I don’t remember anything about a riot in Grandma’s story, although it would be fun to imagine Bill and Essie meeting in the middle of it. More likely they met at some social occasion.

Why was Bill there? Because he was a cattleman from Wyoming. They typically shipped their cattle to Denver for sale. It was cheaper than shipping to Chicago or Omaha. He’d drive the cattle 60 miles south to the cattle yard at Opal, then ship them to Denver for sale.

Why was Essie there? According to my grandmother, Essie and her mother were visiting “cousins in Denver.” I should know which cousin, but I’m not finding it. I think it might have been Essie’s cousin (her mother’s nephew) John Siegler Howe (1857-1943). He and his family moved to Montana not long after this, but I haven’t found a record of him in Denver. I need to dig in again and get this figured out.

I hope this sets the record straight. Bill and Essie met in Denver, not Chicago. They met in January. Some kind of courtship ensued, then in October of the same year Bill traveled back to Champaign, Illinois and married Essie in the local Baptist church.

1. I also remembered another piece wrong, here. I thought I remembered Will Luce married his third wife, his former housekeeper, Amanda (Sizemore) Short (1887-1979), when they were in Denver for the Stock Show. I’ve often joked he cheaped out on a honeymoon. Turns out they were married in Denver on March 3, 1930. The stock show is always in January, so they must have made a special trip for their wedding after all.

The connection annoyed my very proper grandmother, who used it as as example of why people shouldn’t do genealogy. Nevertheless, I dig into the story from time to time.

This woman was Dorothy (Tarter) Luce (1878-1952). She was daughter of Jefferson Sharp and Mamie Bair. Bob Tarter, the rustler, was actually her step-father, not her father.

Today, I’m looking into Old Bob Tarter. Here’s rough outline from Daniel, Wyoming – The First Hundred Years 1900 – 2000:

“Soon, Bob Tarter was no longer thought of as a good neighbor and an upstanding citizen of the Teton Basin. He was described as being a notorious cutthroat and accused of requiring others to do the dirty work in his rustling operation while he got away with the spoils. Some of the settlers may have been suspicious of Bob’s ranching activities prior to these events. Undoubtedly, word would have reached Idaho that Bob’s brother Dan had been arrested for stealing horses.

“It became known that Bob Tarter’s primary source of income involved two, seperate groups of men. One unit roamed the country gathering horses, while the second unit remained at the ranch. The islands in the Snake River were used to conceal the horses. The rustlers also had a hideout on the east side of the south butte. From that elevation they could survey much of the surrounding country. Bob’s operation extended to Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Oregon and Idaho. His gang took cattle and horses from the Whitney Idaho (just below Preston) area and shipped them from Corrine, Utah or took them north to Montana. At times, these outlaws were so bold as to butcher the rustled cattle, take the beef to the owners homes, and offer it for sale.”

Bob and his family subsequently moved to Baker County, Oregon. Bob and his brother Dan Tarter got into a fight over a horse in 1893. Dan shot and killed Bob. The family story is that Bob’s gravestone used to have a ball on the top but after Daniel got out of jail he went and shot off the ball.

I find this one news item about the shooting:

Slew His Brother for a Horse.

PARKER CITY, Or., June 16. – News had reached here from Eagle Valley that Dan Tarter shot and instantly killed his brother Bob Saturday night. The brothers quarreled over the possession of a horse. Bob was the leader of a notorious band of horse-thieves who operated in the Teton Basin in Idaho for several years. Dan has served a term in the Washington penitentiary for horse-stealing.

The Arizona Republican; Phoenix, Arizona. June 17, 1893; Page One.

Today, I found just a bit more. Dan was apparently charged with 1st degree murder, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He appealed. The Oregon Supreme Court overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial. State v. Tarter, 26 Or. 38, 37 P. 53 (Or. 1894).

The court’s analysis gives us a bit of information about the incident. The horse they fought over was a filly named “June.” Bob and Dan’s mother bequeathed the filly to their sister May Lloyd. At the time of the killing, “the defendant [Dan] was in the possession of a mare or filly entrusted to him by his mother to deliver to his sister May Lloyd, and the deceased [Bob] at the time was attempting to take said property from him by force, with intent to convert the same to his own use feloniously.”

There must be more to the story, although it’s not clear from the court record what happened. “The testimony of defendant, and also of his sister and William Barnard, who were eye-witnesses to the shooting, was to the effect that the deceased was the aggressor, and that he was armed with a pistol; that he swore he would kill the defendant, and at the same time was reaching for his pistol; and that he was in the act of drawing it, to carry such threat into execution, when the defendant drew his pistol and fired.”

On the other hand, “testimony for the state tend[ed] to show that the deceased was unarmed and not the assailant, when the affray began; that he made no hostile demonstration toward the defendant, and committed no overt act, but that the shooting was deliberate and premeditated.”

It seems there was bad blood between the brothers at the time of the shooting. The court’s analysis includes a question of whether Bob had threatened Dan, which might have shown Bob was the aggressor, whether Dan knew about the threats or not. “Then followed several questions aiming to show that the deceased proposed to the witness to go with him, raise a posse, and hang the defendant and some others.”

Perhaps arising from the same incident, “The record shows that after the witness testified that he had talked to Robert Tarter, the deceased, a good many times shortly before the shooting, and just after tbe difficulty of the Tarters with Holstine….” The reference is probably either to George Holstine or his brother James Holstine, both of whom lived in Union County.

It would be interesting to find more about the events that preceded the shooting.

I haven’t been able to determine whether Dan was re-tried or what the verdict was. I’m guessing he got off. The Oregon Supreme Court reversed his conviction in 1894. He re-married in 1899 in Union County, Oregon, then he appears on the 1900 census in Custer County, Montana, and on the 1910 through 1930 censuses in Harding County, South Dakota.

Before the publication of Charles Banks’ History of Martha’s Vineyard in 1911 one of the two leading suggestions for the father of immigrant Henry Luce was Thomas Luce, of Charlestown. The other leading suggestion was Harke Luse.

These two men were attractive candidates because their surname matches and they lived in the same general area a generation before Henry Luce. That is, either of them could have been Henry Luce’s unknown father.

Wilford Litchfield, writing in 1901 says Remember Litchfield married about 1670 “Henry Luce (sometimes Lucy),[1] who may have been a son of Thomas Luce of Charlestown [Massachusetts]” (Litchfield, 34).[2]

Litchfield seems to be taking his lead from genealogical compilations by John Farmer (1829) and James Savage (1861).

Farmer says, ““LUCE, THOMAS, Charlestown, had a son Samuel, b. there in 1644. This name is very common at Martha’s Vineyard” (Farmer, 184).

Savage says, “LUCE, OR LUCY, HENRY, Rehoboth 1668. THOMAS, Charlestown, had Samuel, b. 1644, says Farmer, to wh. I can add nothing, but that he prob. rem. soon. The name abounds at the Vineyard. One LUCY, at Portsmouth, m. Mary, d. of William Brooking, and had Benjamin” (Savage, 3:119).

Banks says, “There was a Thomas Luce in Charlestown, according to Farmer (Gen. Dictionary), who had a son Samuel b. 1644, but of whom nothing further is heard. It is probable that this was Lewis” (Banks, 2:55 n.2). Banks dismisses Thomas without further investigation, not for any inherent improbality, but apparently only because he building a case for Henry Luce’s origin at Horton, Gloucestershire.

In the absence of any firm evidence, Thomas Luce has remained an attractive candidate for Henry Luce’s unknown father. Henry’s birth has been estimated about 1640, based on a 1644 birthdate for his wife Remember. If Thomas had a son Samuel born in 1644, he could conceivably have had a son Henry who would have been the right age to be our Henry Luce.

Unfortunately, we find no record of Thomas or Samuel corresponding to Farmer’s information. Charlestown records show a Samuel, son of John Lewis, born in 1641,[3] but not a Samuel, son of Thomas Luce, born in 1644.

Thomas Luce of Charlestown is a ghost. There was no man of that name. He seems to have be an invention or mistake.

1. Litchfield claims to have been the first to identify the wife of Henry Luce as Remember Litchfield.
2. A word of caution: many Internet sources have turned Litchfield’s information into a fictional tree, where Henry Luce was a merchant and farmer born 1630 in Gloucester to Thomas Luce (1600-1670?) and Sally Monson.
3. “Samuel, son of John Lewis & Margaret his wife, b. 24 (4) 1641” (Vital records of Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1:5).

Sources

• Banks, Charles Edward. The History of Martha’s Vineyard. Vol. 2. Boston: George H. Dean, 1911.
• Farmer, John. A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New England. Boston: Carter, Andrews, & Co., 1829.
• Litchfield, Wilford J. The Litchfield Family in America, 1630-1900. Southbridge, Mass.: W.J. Litchfield, 1901.
• Savage, James. Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. Vol. 3. Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1861.
• Vital records of Charlestown, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850. Vol. 1. Edited by Roger D. Joslyn. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1984.

Revised Aug. 28, 2025.