{"id":74028,"date":"2019-07-31T06:19:06","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T12:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=74028"},"modified":"2019-07-31T18:23:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T00:23:29","slug":"sharing-something-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/31\/sharing-something-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing Something Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s post is more about people than it is about birds. Far more. But they&#8217;re <em>my people<\/em> and they&#8217;re important to me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>First some background. I covered some of this several years ago in another post but for all this to make sense I need to bring readers back up to speed. It&#8217;s a long, detailed, convoluted and tragic story but I&#8217;ll be as concise as possible. Still, it&#8217;s a lot of reading and it won&#8217;t be everyone&#8217;s cup of tea. But it&#8217;s my cup of tea and if nothing else I have family and friends who will be interested. Besides, I wanted to make an &#8220;official&#8221; record of some of this new information so it wouldn&#8217;t be lost forever. I hope you have the fortitude to get through it but if not it&#8217;s perfectly understandable.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My great grandfather Joseph Smith Dudley was a farmer and freighter who hauled mining supplies in wagons from Utah to the Montana gold fields in the 1870&#8217;s. Each trip took months so he hired a young man, Henry Wadman, to tend to his farm while he was gone. Henry and Joe&#8217;s wife Matilda had a long-term affair during Joe&#8217;s many extended absences and in what turned out to be a gunfight in 1879 Joe killed Henry. Joe was charged with murder but after a five day trial in Salt Lake City he was found not guilty by reason of self defense. I know most of the details about the incident because I have all the old newspaper accounts of the trial and they were very extensive. Apparently no one in my modern family knew about the incident until I uncovered it while doing research on my family history. As you can imagine it was a bit of a bombshell to my generation of Dudleys.<\/p>\n<p>There was significant bitterness in Utah over both the incident and the verdict (Mormon vs. non-Mormon, warring newspapers etc.) and it never seemed to die down completely. Joe and Matilda divorced and Joe remarried but after a time Joe&#8217;s &#8220;fine brick house mysteriously burned down in the night&#8221; (to quote an old newspaper article) and eventually he packed up and moved his family, including his son and my grandfather Devere Snow Dudley, out of state and out of country to Hill Spring, Alberta, Canada where he bought another farm. He returned to Utah fairly often to visit family and friends but he lived out the rest of his life in Hill Spring where he&#8217;s buried.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"74029\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/31\/sharing-something-personal\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"558,900\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon MG3600 series&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"joseph smith dudley and family 1889 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-74029 size-full\" title=\"joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"558\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley.jpg 558w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley-186x300.jpg 186w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley-93x150.jpg 93w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/joseph-smith-dudley-and-family-1889-ron-dudley-400x645.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 558px) 100vw, 558px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Joseph Smith Dudley (&#8220;Killer Joe) and family, 1889<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ok, this photo is part of what I&#8217;m so excited about. Two days ago I received a treasure trove of old family photos, some of them very old and this is one of them. I already had a copy of this photo but it wasn&#8217;t labeled so I didn&#8217;t know who was in it. All I knew is that it was probably important to the family. But the photo I got this week was the original and writing on the back confirmed for me who these people are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The man is my great grandfather Joseph Smith Dudley (Killer Joe) when he was 38 years old. He would have been 28 when he killed Henry Wadman.<\/li>\n<li>The woman is Joe&#8217;s second wife Isadore Snow and the mother of my grandfather Devere. Isadore (Dora) was a daughter of Lorenzo Snow, President of the LDS or Mormon Church.<\/li>\n<li>The baby is my grandfather Devere. He was born on 12\/30\/1888 so this photo was taken in 1889.<\/li>\n<li>The curly-haired little boy on the left is Devere&#8217;s older brother Joseph Smith Dudley II (my folks always called him &#8220;Crazy Uncle Joe &#8211; long story&#8230;). As an adult he actually named his own son after himself so that makes three Joseph Smith Dudleys in three successive generations. So you can see why I use nicknames for all the Joseph&#8217;s, like Killer Joe and Crazy Uncle Joe, in an effort to keep them straight. I mean no disrespect, none at all.<\/li>\n<li>The older girl in the background is Devere and Crazy Uncle Joe&#8217;s half sister, Ada (Mary Adeline Madsen) from a previous marriage of their mother Dora.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This photo has been driving me bat**** crazy for years because I didn&#8217;t know who these folks were. I was afraid that information was lost forever.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"28155\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/27\/why-im-thankful-on-thanksgiving-and-always-for-my-nomadic-dudley-ancestors\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"630,900\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"joseph smith dudley, ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-28155 size-full\" title=\"joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley.jpg 630w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley-105x150.jpg 105w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/joseph-smith-dudley-ron-dudley-400x571.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is Killer Joe as an older man, probably about 1915. He looks very different at this age and without his beard (I posted this photo once before).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So how did I end up being born and raised in Montana if Killer Joe (great grandfather) and then Devere (grandfather) lived in Alberta up through most of the 1920&#8217;s? In 1929 Devere apparently became disillusioned with life and farming in Alberta, sold the farm to his brother Crazy Uncle Joe (I have the original hand-written contract) and moved about 50 miles south (as the crow flies) where he bought a farm on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Cut Bank, Montana the following year. Eventually my father Wayne Dudley and his brother Floyd (sons of Devere) bought the farm from Devere, split it up between them and then expanded the acreage of each farm, where they raised their families, including yours truly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"68554\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/25\/american-white-pelican-counting-coup\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1100,733\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"montana farm-4313 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley-1024x682.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-68554 size-full\" title=\"montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1100\" height=\"733\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley.jpg 1100w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/montana-farm-4313-ron-dudley-400x267.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here we see the Montana farmhouses and outbuildings of both families (I took the photo sometime in the early 1990&#8217;s if I remember correctly). I was raised in the house marked by the blue arrow and Uncle Floyd&#8217;s house is the larger remodeled one on the left. Most of our actual farmland is behind me and\/or out of frame to the right (over 3000 acres combined). Hill Spring, Alberta is about 50+ miles over the right side horizon. The &#8220;badlands&#8221; in the foreground (what we always called the Crystal Hills) is where we had many adventures as kids exploring, riding our horses, collecting quartz crystals and finding bits of fossilized dinosaur bone. The badlands extend for a mile or so behind me and to the left.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see the Dudley uncles, aunts and cousins lived very close to each other and were like one big happy family. We still are, those of us that are left, partly because we have a lot of shared family history. And we actually like each other!<\/p>\n<p>The red arrows in the photo mark some of the oldest granaries on the farm, built by grandpa Devere and then later my Uncle Floyd and my father Wayne. Those ancient granaries are unused today except by&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"44936\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/09\/owls-and-plumicorns\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,720\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 40D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1244143373&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;400&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0025&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-44936 size-full\" title=\"great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley-150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley-400x320.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>the resident Great Horned Owls that have lived and raised their families in them for decades. This is the mated pair of adults with the smaller male on the left. You knew I&#8217;d have to end this post with birds, didn&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<p>I often have existential thoughts related to my family history and my own existence. If Joe hadn&#8217;t killed Henry Wadman and fled to Alberta to escape the notoriety my dad would never have met my Canadian mother, Lorna June Prince. In that case I wouldn&#8217;t even exist.<\/p>\n<p>Food for thought for the entire Dudley clan.<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>PS &#8211; I want to make it clear that I don&#8217;t see Killer Joe as a villain, far from it. When you know all the details he really had no choice but to defend himself. According to testimony of multiple witnesses at the trial Henry Wadman was completely out of control. One example is the fact that witnesses testified that Henry threatened to murder Matilda and &#8220;drown all her children&#8221; if she told her husband Joe about the affair.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s post is more about people than it is about birds. Far more. But they&#8217;re my people and they&#8217;re important to me.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/31\/sharing-something-personal\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,361,405],"tags":[4649,2608,102,2338,2897,4645,159,3948,4644,4646,1518,4647,4648,220,4240,267,2339],"class_list":["post-74028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-family-farm-in-northwest-montana","category-great-horned-owls-owls","tag-ada-dudley","tag-blackfeet-indian-reservation","tag-cut-bank","tag-devere-snow-dudley","tag-dudley-family-history","tag-floyd-dudley","tag-great-horned-owl","tag-henry-wadman","tag-hill-spring-alberta-canada","tag-isadore-sina-snow","tag-joseph-smith-dudley","tag-lorenzo-snow","tag-mary-adeline-madsen","tag-montana-2","tag-murder-trial","tag-ron-dudley","tag-wayne-dudley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/great-horned-owl-1767b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-jg0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}