The Wandering Mummy - and a Giveaway

Elmer McCurdy had a desire for more in his life, but he didn’t truly become famous until he’d been dead for many years. Elmer was born in Maine in 1880. His early years were difficult and by the time he was a teen he began to drink heavily. He worked as a plumber, but often lost jobs because of his drinking.

At nineteen, he joined the U.S. Army and became a machine gun operator. He also trained to use nitroglycerin and do demolition. He received an honorable discharge in 1910 and met up with a friend who had also been in the army. He and the friend were arrested for having burglary tools in their possession, along with nitroglycerin. They claimed they were innocent and had no intent to rob anyone.

After being acquitted, Elmer began his very short life of crime. He wanted to put his knowledge of demolition to use and decided to join with some other men and rob a train. Elmer would blow up the safe. They had the nitroglycerin ready and were eager to get the silver coins the train carried.

The men stopped the train, but when Elmer put the nitro into the safe, he didn’t calculate correctly. He put in too much nitroglycerin and destroyed not only the safe, but also the silver coins. The men tried to scrape silver up from the wreckage, but had to leave to avoid capture. The robbers parted ways.

In 1911, Elmer joined with two other men to rob anther train. They thought they were stopping a train carrying cash, but ended up stopping a passenger train. The robbers came away with only $46 and a few odds and ends, such as whiskey, a watch and a coat. Elmer ended up with a bounty on his head and was tracked to a hayloft by three lawmen. Elmer was killed in a shootout the next morning.

Elmer in coffin.

This is where the story of Elmer McCurdy takes a bizarre turn. You would think he would be buried and that would be the end of the story, but that is not the case. Elmer’s body went to a funeral home in Oklahoma, but wasn’t claimed by anyone. The funeral home director decided to make a display piece out of Elmer. (At this time, displaying bodies wasn’t an unusual practice.) Elmer was embalmed so thoroughly with arsenic that he became a mummified corpse. For five years, the funeral director displayed Elmer in his window.

In 1916, a man claiming to be a relative of McCurdy’s claimed the body. Instead of burying Elmer, the man put him on display in a show, exhibiting him as the Oklahoma Outlaw. Thus began Elmer’s time of traveling exhibition. From being part of a carnival for people to view to being a display in the Museum of Crime, Elmer’s identity became lost. People forgot who he was and that he wasn’t a bizarre prop, but had once been a person, and was now a mummified human.

That all changed in 1976 during the filming of an episode of The Six Million

By Source, Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=2328848

Dollar Man. The episode, Carnival of Spies, included the use of a wax mannequin hanging from a gallows. During the filming the mannequin’s arm broke off and the workers discovered a human bone inside. An autopsy was preformed, during which they discovered a 1924 penny a a ticket for the Museum of Crime in the figure’s mouth. Those helped to find Elmer’s identity.

In 1977, Elmer was finally laid to rest in Guthrie, Oklahoma with great fanfare. In order to be certain Elmer stayed buried and wasn’t displayed again, two feet of concrete was poured over his grave. McCurdy wouldn’t be traveling anymore.

Have you ever heard of Elmer McCurdy? Have you ever visited a wax museum? The figures there can appear to be very real, but a bit macabre too. Leave a comment on my blog today to be entered in a giveaway for one of my books. I have pictured The Cowboy's Bride, but if you have that book, you may choose a different one. 

Nancy J Farrier is an award winning author who lives in Southern California in the Mojave Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. Nancy and her husband have five children and two grandsons. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats, and spend time with her family. Nancy is represented by Karen Ball of The Steve Laube Literary Agency. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

Women in the Old West

By Miralee Ferrell

I've written several books where the heroine was the owner of a ranch, her father recently died and she was forced to take over, or her father was an alcoholic and had let the ranch go. I love writing strong women in the Old West, but I've been asked before if women really did have the right to own land and run a ranch, or if they really lived such adventurous lives as I've written--so I thought I'd give you a few examples from real life.

The first and one of the most remarkable is Margaret Heffernan Borlund. Margaret was one of the first women cattle drivers in America, an Irish Immigrant, daughter of John and Julia Heffernan. After her husband's death she assumed full responsibility for his estate, a large cattle ranch. She left the physical labor to her hired hands. She bought and sold livestock. By 1873 she had 10,000 head of cattle. In the Spring of 1873 she left her home in Texas with two sons, both under 15, a 7 year old daughter, and a younger granddaughter and a group of trail hands. After successfully reaching Wichita, Kansas, her destination, she suddenly was consumed by an illness known as "Trail Fever." Which included congestion of the brain. She soon died and her body was returned to Texas for burial.

One of the most unusual that I've stumbled across, and one that's similar to a Western I wrote (Love Finds You in Sundance, Wyoming) concerns Charley--Charlotte--Parkhurst. Only in my book, the woman posing as a man stopped doing so after a few years, and regained her feminine role. Charley never did. 

Charley Darkey Parkhurst, born Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst (1812–1879),[1]

Illustration by Brian Selznick

also known as One Eyed Charley or Six-Horse Charley, was an American  stagecoach driver, farmer and rancher in California. Born and reared as a girl in New England, mostly in an orphanage, Parkhurst ran away as a youth, taking the name Charley and living as a male. She started work as a stable hand and learned to handle horses, including to drive coaches drawn by multiple horses. She worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, traveling to Georgia for associated work.

In her late 30s, Parkhurst sailed to California following the Gold Rush in 1849; there she became a noted stagecoach driver. In 1868, she may have been the first female (though passing as a man) to vote in a presidential election in California.[1][2] At her death, it was discovered that she was female, as was the fact that she had given birth at an earlier time.[3]

Another sturdy, widowed pioneer woman who traveled from London to America

to find a better life for her children was Elizabeth Simpson Bradshaw. She and her five children, the youngest only 6 years of age, walked across the American prairie pushing all her family possessions in a handmade, wooden handcart. Many were the heart rending scenes she witnessed of death and burial. At one place, fifteen souls were buried in one grave; another time, a two year old girl was buried and the wolves were digging for her body before they were out of sight. Some of the men stood guard over the graves as long as possible to keep the wild animals away. After much tribulation, Elizabeth, with all of her children still living, arrived at her destination, the Salt Lake Valley. There in the West she made her home, reared her children, and is honored by her posterity.

I've yet to write a book about a woman outlaw, although my Sundance book touched the fringes with the heroine having grown up in an outlaw gang, then escaping at the age of 18. But this post wouldn't be complete without a woman outlaw--I give you Pearl Hart.

Pearl Hart, née Taylor, (c. 1871 – after 1928) was a Canadian-born outlaw of
the American Old West. She committed one of the last recorded stagecoach robberies in the United States; her crime gained notoriety primarily because of her gender. Many details of Hart's life are uncertain with available reports being varied and often contradictory. 

The robbery occurred on May 30, 1899 at a watering point near Cane Springs Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Globe.[7] Hart had cut her hair short and took the highly eccentric act, for a Victorian Era woman, of dressing in men's clothing. Hart was armed with a .38 revolver while Boot had a Colt .45.[2] One of the last routes in the territory, the run had not been robbed in several years and thus the coach did not have a shotgun messenger. The pair stopped the coach and Boot held a gun on the robbery victims while Hart took $431.20 and two firearms from the passengers. After returning $1 to each passenger, she then took the driver's revolver. After the robbers had galloped away on their horses, the driver unhitched one of the horses and headed back to town to alert the sheriff.[9]

Miralee Ferrell started her writing journey in 2005 and her first book, The Other Daughter, was published in 2007. Since then she’s become is an award-winning, multi-published, best-selling author with 12 books in both women’s contemporary and historical romance, along with four middle grade girls’ horse

novels. She lives with her husband in the Columbia River Gorge, loves country life and enjoys taking research trips for her historical settings. She’s taught workshops at library and writer conferences, spoken at churches, historical societies and multiple women’s groups, and looks on her writing as a ministry. Miralee is a past president of Portland ACFW for 5 years, and a licensed lay-counselor through the American Association of Christian Counselors.

You can learn more about Miralee by visiting her blog/website and signing up for her newsletter all at THIS Location. 

Miralee would love if you'd join her on her Facebook group where you can interact one-on-one HERE