Hugh and Robert Walter in America
Hugh Penny Walter
Hugh Penny Walter and Robert Leach Walter were sons of
.
Both Hugh and Robert emigrated to the USA as had
their elder brother Albert who died in the US Civil War (see ).
Hugh Penny Walter aged 5 is listed in the 1851 census at Greenhill Farm. In the 1861 census he is working as a baker for
Henry and Annie Priscilla Harris at Kilmington village (Mere District). Annie Priscilla was born in Foddington, Babcary and her
grandmother was a Mary Walter who married Edward Ing. By 1871 Hugh had moved to Llantrisant, Glamorgan, Wales - near his brother David.
He was working as an iron miner and lodging with Mary Ann Knight (born in Bath, Somerset), a dressmaker at Tymawr. He emigrated to the USA (after his brother Robert) and bought
a 160 acre farm for US$50 in ,
Kansas on 23rd May 1887. Hugh subsequently sold the farm and in the 1920 census was in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his nephew, Claude and his wife. The 1920 census
(taken later that year in Kansas) also shows him in Medicine Lodge with Elmer Hagerman. He died in
1927 and was buried (with?) Robert in ,
Medicine Lodge (see below).
Robert Leach Walter, born 1846 is listed in the 1861 census at Greenhill Farm. He emigrated to the USA in the early 1870s,
landing in Philadelphia and moving to Illinois, then Missouri. He married Isobel Orina Greer (1844-1905), born Ripley, West Virginia (north of
Charleston) in Montrose, Missouri* in 1878 and had four children, two of whom survived infancy:
(1880-1963) and Claude Edward
(1884-1935). In the mid-1880s Robert decided to settle in Kansas (Hugh was already there). He travelled by covered wagon while Isobel and the
children went by train to Kingman (NE of and west of Wichita), travelling the rest of the way by wagon. In old age Susie recalled
this as very frightening because of the threat still posed by Native Americans.** In the 1895 census the family are listed as living in
Medicine Lodge with their son-in-law. Isobel died of liver cancer at Susie's home in 1905. She had a sister Mrs T.C. Stewart also in Deerhead and a
brother in Emporia (between Wichita and Kansas City). In 1909 Robert married Emdina Robb who died in 1911. Robert then moved in with Hugh and
died in 1919. He and Isobel were buried in ,
Medicine Lodge, Kansas.
Claude Edward and Coy Walter (c. 1888- ) had no children. He moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma (723 North St Louis Avenue) and died in
1935. Susie Greer married (born Winchester, Indiana) in Deerhead Township in 1894.
Elmer was a teacher. He lost a leg to bone cancer but continued and died in 1929. Susie ran the
, Barber County (7 miles SW of Medicine Lodge). They had six children, all born in Medicine Lodge. Two sons died in infancy in
January 1903 and November 1904. The four who reached adulthood were:
(1895-1918) who died from a shell blast in France () at the end of the
First World War; (1897- ) who moved to Napa, California; Sybil (1899 - ) who married [?] Lake and moved to Dumas, Texas; and Margaret Eunice
(1906-1984) married James William Giles (1904-1983) and remained in Medicine Lodge long enough for her son
(b.1925) to graduate from school there but subsequently moved to Amarillo, Texas.
Isobel's sister probably married into the Stewart family from West Virginia living in Deerhead and identified in the 1895 census as
(1845-1903), his wife A.M. (1845 - ),
three children aged between 12 and 15 born in West Virginia - Katie (later Mrs G.W Phillips), Charles Ross and George - plus M.F. Stewart (1859- ) possibly
Thomas' brother or nephew. In 1889 this man married Annie Larkin (1862- ) from Kansas and they had two children: Sarah Z. (1892- ) and
Bessie (dates unknown).
Jim Giles was a vital source of information about the American connection.
[* Montrose, Missouri did not exist until the advent of the railroad.
** The Treaty of Medicine Lodge had been concluded in 1867 between the US Government and the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and Apache peoples.]
Background: Life in Kansas 1886-1920
The winter of 1885/6 had been bad; the summer of 1886 was very dry with numerous grass fires.
The heat held until October. The first major blizzard occurred in mid-November, the second three weeks later.
There was further atrocious weather for ten days in the middle of January and again at the end of the month.
Many people and millions of cattle died as a result of the storms. In western Kansas, only 500 cattle from a herd of
5500 remained alive. Dodge City's Daily Globe reported in January 1887 "Within a few miles of here, no less
than 500 cattle have drifted to the river, where they perished in attempting to cross, or drifted up to the fences,
where they remained until frozen to death. A gentleman from a ranch south of here reports seeing cattle on his way
up that were still standing on their feet frozen to death" (quoted in Dee Brown, The American West).
Conditions continued to be extremely difficult for Kansan homesteaders. The summer of 1890 saw
the rise of the Farmers' Alliance; a revolutionary political movement started in Texas that also involved
non-agricultural rural workers whose livelihood depended on farmers (such as teachers and doctors). The main demands
were for monetary reform (including free silver coinage), regulation of large landowners and higher taxation on
railroads. Leading Alliance figures from Kansas included farmer "Sockless" Jerry Simpson and former teacher and
farmer's wife Mary Elizabeth Lease, a highly successful speechmaker: "The people are at bay. Let the bloodhounds of
money who have dogged us thus far beware. What you farmers need is to raise less corn and more hell" (quoted in
Dee Brown, The American West). In elections that year Kansans gave extensive support to candidates from the
Alliance (one senator, four congressmen and 91 state legislators). These victories led to calls for establishment of
a People's Party which achieved most success in Kansas in the presidential election of 1892.
By 1896 conditions were improving. "The prosperous years between 1896 and 1920 ... served not only to
quieten the farmers' complaints and send the Populists into oblivion, but also to 'lay the basis for the next era of
farm depression'. By the end of the First World War the farmers were again undertaking speculative expansion, and
again were only too easily exposed to the destructive effects of a new period of over production and falling prices,
credit restriction, and fore-closure" (Philip S. Bagwell and G.E. Mingay, Britain and America: A Study of Economic
Change 1850-1939).
Last updated July 2009.
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