TexasCHLforum.com

Concerning pioneer women:

My father gave me a Colt 44-40 thumb buster that he had kept in his closet for years. It was my maternal grandfathers gun. My maternal grandmother gave it to my Dad upon my grandfather's death in 1953.

You could say my maternal grandmother was a pioneer woman. She died at 104. She came to Texas in a covered wagon. Her parents had left Texas for Kansas, but returned soon after my grandmother was born.

I asked her what she could tell me about the old 44-40. She remembered shooting it and said that she never had trouble shooting it, despite her size (about 5'1"). Like most farm girls, she could shoot well. It sure was loud, she said.

She said that whenever my grandad left the farm or was off of the property, she always got the old hog leg out and put it on the kitchen table.

Not that she mistrusted her neighbhors, she said, you just never who was going to ride up to the house. It was the custom to let strangers water their horses. She was born in the late 1880s, so when she was a young married women, people used horses for transportation.

They eventually left the farm and settled in Rockport, Texas where she didn't feel a need to keep the pistol on the kitchen table. But it was always handy.

People in those days were realists. They knew the gov could'nt protect them, and knew that there were bad folks who could ride up to a remote farm and do harm. The pioneers understood that and were prepared.

[/quote]