Fecundity vs. Ancestry.com: The Boedecker Story

Note, April 27, 2018.  The core idea of the following post, written three years ago, is entirely incorrect. It turns out that John Franklin "Bump" Boedeker, the man I knew personnally, was in fact one of the sons of moderatly famous Hank Boedeker. Bump produced two lines of offspring from two marriages. The Boedeker children I went to school with were from his second marriage. I have no idea who John Henry Boedeker, the reported post-WWI immigrant from Germany, was.


Google Earth shows a residence in Dubois on the southeast corner of Mercantile and Glendenning Streets. My Mother, Little Mike (her purported husband that year) and I lived there the year I turned 14.

In 1950 it had already acquired that dark, time-stained look of an old log house. In photos of Dubois taken in the early 1900s, it might be one of the buildings visible a couple blocks north of Main Street.

Google Earth also shows a new street curving up the hill east of town, connecting one recent development to another. Its name is Boedeker Street.

A nice gesture, I thought, for the Town to name a street after "Bump" Boedeker (pronounced Bedeker). After all, he hauled the mail and freight from Riverton to Dubois five days a week for years.

I knew the Boedekers well

Bump drove for the Barnes Truck Company. My grandfather was Cordon Barnes' partner.

Two of Bump's daughters, Nancy and Barbara, were my classmates in the seventh grade. I had a crush on Barbara.

For several months that winter I lived in one of Mrs. Boedekers' tourist cabins and boarded at her table.

The winter of 1950 I lived in one of the small
white tourist cabins, lower center of photo    

My mother and I had parted ways in October. Predictably, life with Little Mike became contentious. Mom came home one day and said, "Pack your stuff. We're leaving." I decided instantly. "No, Mom. This time I'm staying." We never lived together again.

 Old timers may remember Little Mike as the bartender at the Rams Horn. Big Mike tended bar at the Branding Iron. When winter set in Dubois became a two bartender town.

     Given my past connections with the Boedekers, it was gratifying to see that Dubois had recognised the contribution made by Bump and his family.

Hank turns up

Boedeker Butte today

(T-Cross Ranch)

Then I discovered that Boedeker Street was not named for Bump after all. It was named for Hank; just as Boedeker Butte, on the T-Cross Ranch, had been a century earlier.

Hank (Harold, 1859-?) Boedeker arrived in Wyoming via Illinois and Nebraska in 1883, eventually settling in the Dubois area.

Hank was a larger than life Wild West hero. As a lawman his historical apocrypha are enhanced because he shared the Wind River country with Butch Cassidy in the early 1890s.

One story, probably true, reports that as Town Marshall in Lander, Hank was among the party that escorted Cassidy to Ft. Laramie to serve a prison sentence for stealing thirteen horses near Meteetsee.

The man who disarmed Butch Cassidy

According to another story, Cassidy and his gang rode into Lander one day and were confronted by Hank, who asked them to surrender their guns for the duration of their visit. They complied reluctantly and only because Cassidy agreed.

This story is probably untrue. No evidence has turned up of a Cassidy “gang” frequenting the Lander area.

It is true that Cassidy and a partner, Al Heiner, operated a horse ranch near Dubois. And it is likely that not all the horses they sold had been legally acquired. At the time people commented that Butch and Al seemed to maintain a good inventory, regardless how many customers rode away on new mounts.

But when a pair of horse thieves ride into town, their effect isn't the same as a gang of train robbers.

Hank Boedeker, 1904

Hank and his trusty Winchester

In 1904 the Winchester Repeating Arms Company distributed a poster nationally. It was based on a photograph. Posed with Boedeker Butte in the background, Hank stands tall, left boot and rifle butt planted on a record bighorn ram. Hank was Winchester's Marlboro Man in those days.

Today much information can be found about Hank, both true and suspect. His biography comes to us from early first person reminiscences of people who knew him, and also from later accounts, casually collected; that is, from local sources with their familiar mixture of historical validity, misremembered details, melded events, and enhanced narratives.

Bump, however, lived on only in the memory of family and friends. His real name was John Henry Boedeker (1908-1996). He was an immigrant from Germany following WWI. History showed no further interest in him.

Families write family history

Then a few years ago, posts regarding both Boedekers started to circulate among sites like Ancestry.com. Their credibility diminishes as the number of greats in the space between my and grandfather multiplies.

The nickname “Bump” is sometimes attributed to Hank as well as John. Biographical details are conflated even though the two men were separated by a full generation and lived very different lives.

Rumors of dark family secrets are passed on, rife with speculation and not always clear regarding which Boedeker line was supposedly affected.

Reasonable but incorrect assumptions are made, such as declarations that Hank and Bump were father and son.

Chronological impossibilities are overlooked. For example, Hank could not have been both the post 1918 immigrant from Germany and the man portrayed in the 1904 Winchester picture.

Anachronistic suppositions turn up. For instance, the rumor of an STD in the family is supported by the accusation that Bump was "a truck driver," presumably someone on the road for days at a time.

Riverton to Dubois, 80 miles, was not a long haul, nor had long haul trucking even come to Fremont County in the 1930s and 40s. Bump slept in his own bed every night.

This historical confusion has an historical explanation.

When Hank Boedeker came to Wyoming in 1883, his wife had recently died. He was accompanied by two sons. In 1894 he married Margaret Adams of Lander who bore him nine additional sons, plus two daughters.

Thirteen offspring multiplied by a century adds up to many descendants, each having inherited their own particular understanding of the family history. Bump’s progeny, though not as prolific as Hank's, stirred their inherited memories into the mix too.

Dubois, 1940s. 

The larger building, upper right, was the two story log school 

where I attended seventh grade.

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

The Dubois Cave Mystery Revealed

Today Dubois is a town divided. A sagebrush covered ridge intrudes from the north almost to the river. In the early 1900s the town was only beginning to spread west of that ridge.

Dubois, 1913

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

The ridge terminates in a sandstone bluff just a few steps from Main Street. A conspicuous manmade cave was dug into the bluff at a time beyond remembering.

The mystery cave in downtown Dubois 

(http://www.marriageat10mph.com/

pyblosxom.cgi/kyle/trip/51-2009-08-05-02-20.html)

When I was a kid in Dubois in 1950, the cave was still closed by a grill that was bolted to the stone and padlocked. People did not know why it was locked or what it had been used for, nor who dug it or for what reason.

Local authorities have made several attempts, over the decades, to promote a back story that would interest tourists: a gold mine, a jail, and, more mundanely, cold storage are just three I've heard about. None are true.

According to my grandfather, Cody Simonson . . .

The old Branding Iron

(Wyoming Tales and Trails) 

In the early 1900s his father (whose full name I do not know­­) owned the Branding Iron Bar.

He was not able to secure his whiskey stock in a wooden building, with windows, on the outskirts of a Wild West town. His back room was broken into regularly.

The sandstone bluff stood immediately east of his bar and in full view of Main Street. He hired men to blast a cave into the soft rock, stack his cases of whiskey inside, and lock the gate.

The other bar in Dubois, the Rustic Pine. 

On Saturday nights the building on the left was a dance hall. 

On Sunday nights the door connecting with the bar was locked, 

folding chairs were set up, and a movie was shown. The whole town attended, 

regardless what film Bump Boedeker delivered with the freight that Friday.

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

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The Snow Shovel at the Top of the Pole