HEAD 'EM UP, MOVE 'EM OUT!

You might say, to get somewhere, you have to come from somewhere. It's almost a Euclidean axiom of the human condition. Moses came out of Egypt, wandered around the desert for a Biblical amount of time, never made it to the land of milk and honey, but had some notable adventures along the way. But for Moses, Joshua would not have led the tribe into Canaan, and so on.

Let's ratchet back a generation and a half to a farm in western Maryland and then to a homestead or two in Kansas or Missouri. Albert Bell, son of Samuel Bell and Elizabeth Smith, breathed air for the first time on June 25, 1847 on a parcel of land near a little town almost on the Mason-Dixon line called Leitersberg not far from the much larger Hagerstown on the upper Potomac River. In 1849, Samuel and Elizabeth moved the family that by then included four children to Pleasant valley near Weverton also in Maryland.

By 1850, three female slaves appeared on the list of household members, possibly part of Elizabeth's dowry as she came from Virginia stock. When Samuel moved the family west in 1852 to Hagerstown, Indiana, the slaves must have been manumitted or sold. The naming of the Indiana town after the town in Maryland probably resulted from a vote taken among the Pennsylvania Dutch, mostly from western Maryland and south central Pennsylvania, who comprised the majority of the founders. There he farmed, fathered another four children and prospered until retirement. His children, like all the children in the community, were raised, schooled and churched in a German speaking Evangelical Lutheran congregation.


But this does not get us to Missouri. The War of the Rebellion, as as it was called then, the Civil War as we call it now, broke out with the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, when Albert Bell had not quite reached the age of 14. At least one of Albert's Bell cousins had risen to the rank of general in the Union Army, and other cousins received commissions in the Confederate Army. In 1863, Albert lied about his age and enlisted in the 9th Indiana Cavalry, 121st Regiment when just 16; left his father's homestead in Hagerstown, Wayne, Indiana; saw action in Tennessee and Georgia; was wounded and then discharged in Missouri at the end of the war. We know his name, rank and whereabouts for most of his life from census and military pension records.

In the army, Albert served under Lieutenant Colonel Eli Lily. Appalled by the loss of life due to poor medical equipment and care, Lily devoted his career after the war to building a large pharmaceutical company, which bears his name. Lt. Col. Lily has the mustache, but no beard, in the picture to the left.

After discharged from the army, Albert Bell met up and married Lucinda Metzger on September 28, 1871 in Lawrence, Douglas, Kansas. Samuel must have known Lucinda from his childhood days in Hagerstown, Indiana, where they both most likely attended the same German speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church and school. The Metzker family moved west to Missouri right after the civil war. Astute readers, like my brother, will notice three different spellings of Metsker in this paragraph. These are not typographical errors. The genealogical records contain instances of each variation, the kind of inconsistency that occurs with increasing frequency the further that we dig into the past. Just wait to see what happens when we try to trace the arrival and movements of the first Bell ancestors in Colonial Pennsylvania and Maryland!

Albert and Lucinda began to raise a family and had six children by 1888, all but the first born surviving to adulthood. Albert and Lucinda named them, in order of birth, Minnie, Charley, Victoria, Walter, Dudley and Vincent. In the picture to the left, Dudley appears on the far left behind the sitting dog and Charley next to Albert with the dog standing of its hind legs. Walter and Victoria fill out the line-up and Vincent may be inside Lucinda making the probable date of the picture 189 .

Charley Bell, born on September 28, 1874, probably struck out on his own before any of the others. Around the turn of the century, he joined up with the XIT ranch in Texas as a cowboy and went north on a cattle drive that ended at the rail head in Glendive, Montana. From there he spent some time on the XIT ranch in Dawson County, then became the first sheriff of McCone County, formed by carving off pieces of Dawson and Richland Counties in 1919. As of the 2000 census, McCone boasted a population of 1,977 people, 810 households, and 596 families. A sing once posted on the "city" limits of Circle, the McCone County seat tells the story of how it came to be.



Evelyn Cameron, a British expatriate and rancher, photographed the cowboys working for the XIT. Most of her collection can be viewed on-line at http://www.evelyncameron.com/. Two of her photographs show an XIT herd crossing the Yellowstone near Terry, MT and the XIT outfit working that drive.
For present purposes, Wikipedia tells us all we need to know about the origins of the XIT ranch:

"In 1879, the Sixteenth Texas Legislature appropriated 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km²) of land to finance a new state capitol. In 1882, in a special legislative session, the Seventeenth Texas Legislature struck a bargain with Charles B. and John V. Farwell, under which a syndicate, led by the Farwells, agreed to build a new $3,000,000.00 Texas State Capitol and accept the 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km²) of Panhandle land in payment.

The ranch started operations in 1885 and at its peak averaged handling 150,000 head of cattle within its 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of fencing. The ranch also erected 325 windmills and 100 dams across its land.

The famous XIT brand imprinted on the backside of the ranch's cattle arose from the low-cost, practical use of a single-bar brand being able to make an "X", an "I" and a "T" with a single heat iron (no custom-ordered shape being required!).




However timing was bad for the XIT as cattle prices crashed in 1886 and 1887. By the fall of 1888, the ranch was unable to sell its cattle and break even. The cattle on the ranch were constantly plagued by cattle rustlers and predators, especially wolves leading to further losses for the syndicate.

In 1901, the syndicate that owned the ranch, began selling off the land to pay off foreign investors as the bonds became due. By 1905, most of the land was subdivided, with large tracts being sold to other cattlemen and small amounts of land being sold to farmers. The last of the XIT cattle were sold on November 1, 1912, and land sales subsequently increased."

Once established in Montana, Charles encouraged his younger brother Dudley born December 20, 1887 in Carthage, Missouri, to join him. Most likely Dudley worked on the XIT ranch for awhile before he staked a homestead near another claim where the numerous Guelff brothers and sisters resided. Dudley may have met Elizabeth Guelff through one of her brothers, perhaps Nicholas who appears in this photograph with Charles and Dudley. Doris Bell's handwriting on the back of one print of this picture indicates that Dudley stands and Charles sits. Another print has handwriting of Elizabeth Bell on the back identifying the slouching cowboy on the right as Nicholas. Both prints are postcard pictures, the second one Dudley addressed in pencil to Elizabeth's younger sister Kathryn Guelff in Brockway, Montana, another metropolis not far from Circle. Doris Bell dates the picture "about 1916," three years after Dudley and Elizabeth married.



By 1916, two children had been born to them, Kenneth the oldest on November 21, 1914 and Lucille on January 18, 1916. Two more children came along in orderly succession, Gerald on September 19, 1917 and Doris on January 20, 1919. The family came about in sync with the annual spring planting with the children arriving on schedule after the fall harvest. A little over two months before Doris arrived, Dudley loaded up a wagon with sugar beets and headed off to the railroad station at Terry, Montana. Everyone in the house had the flu, but Dudley (as told by Doris) felt a little better and compelled to make the trip and the sale to cover a payment due on the farm mortgage. A few days later he died from an attack of the Spanish Influenza. On December 27, 1918, Charley Bell's wife, Merle Alberta Malvern Bell, also perished in the Spanish Influenza, leaving Charley with their only daughter, Joyce, one month past year fourth birthday. On the 26th of November 1921, Nicholas Guelff died of a botched appendectomy, leaving behind his bride of six years and their four small children. None of the surviving spouses remarried.

POSTSCRIPT: On December 5, 2007, a news item appeared in the New York Times reporting a recently published study on the transmission of the Spanish Influenza and other flu viruses based on, literally, an experiment on guinea pigs.

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter
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By GINA KOLATA
Published: December 5, 2007
Researchers in New York believe they have solved one of the great mysteries of the flu: Why does the infection spread primarily in the winter months?

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Times Health Guide: The Flu The answer, they say, has to do with the virus itself. It is more stable and stays in the air longer when air is cold and dry, the exact conditions for much of the flu season.

“Influenza virus is more likely to be transmitted during winter on the way to the subway than in a warm room,” said Peter Palese, a flu researcher who is professor and chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the lead author of the flu study.

Dr. Palese published details of his findings in the Oct. 19 issue of PLoS Pathogens. The crucial hint that allowed him to do his study came from a paper published in the aftermath of the 1918 flu pandemic, when doctors were puzzling over why and how the virus had spread so quickly and been so deadly.

As long as flu has been recognized, people have asked, Why winter? The very name, “influenza,” is an Italian word that some historians proposed, originated in the mid-18th century as influenza di freddo, or “influence of the cold.”

Flu season in northern latitudes is from November to March, the coldest months. In southern latitudes, it is from May until September. In the tropics, there is not much flu at all and no real flu season.

There was no shortage of hypotheses. Some said flu came in winter because people are indoors; and children are in school, crowded together, getting the flu and passing it on to their families.

Others proposed a diminished immune response because people make less vitamin D or melatonin when days are shorter. Others pointed to the direction of air currents in the upper atmosphere. But many scientists were not convinced.

“We know one of the largest factors is kids in school — most of the major epidemics are traced to children,” said Dr. Jonathan McCullers, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. “But that still does not explain wintertime. We don’t see flu in September and October.”

As for the crowding argument, Dr. McCullers said, “That never made sense.” People work all year round and crowd into buses and subways and planes no matter what the season.

“We needed some actual data,” Dr. McCullers added.

But getting data was surprisingly difficult, Dr. Palese said.

The ideal study would expose people to the virus under different conditions and ask how likely they were to become infected. Such a study, Dr. Palese said, would not be permitted because there would be no benefit to the individuals.

There were no suitable test animals. Mice can be infected with the influenza virus but do not transmit it. Ferrets can be infected and transmit the virus, but they are somewhat large, they bite and they are expensive, so researchers would rather not work with them.

To his surprise, Dr. Palese stumbled upon a solution that appeared to be a good second best.

Reading a paper published in 1919 in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the flu epidemic at Camp Cody in New Mexico, he came upon a key passage: “It is interesting to note that very soon after the epidemic of influenza reached this camp, our laboratory guinea pigs began to die.” At first, the study’s authors wrote, they thought the animals had died from food poisoning. But, they continued, “a necropsy on a dead pig revealed unmistakable signs of pneumonia.”

Dr. Palese bought some guinea pigs and exposed them to the flu virus. Just as the paper suggested, they got the flu and spread it among themselves. So Dr. Palese and his colleagues began their experiments.

By varying air temperature and humidity in the guinea pigs’ quarters, they discovered that transmission was excellent at 41 degrees. It declined as the temperature rose until, by 86 degrees, the virus was not transmitted at all.

The virus was transmitted best at a low humidity, 20 percent, and not transmitted at all when the humidity reached 80 percent.

The animals also released viruses nearly two days longer at 41 degrees than at a typical room temperature of 68 degrees.

Flu viruses spread through the air, unlike cold viruses, Dr. Palese said, which primarily spread by direct contact when people touch surfaces that had been touched by someone with a cold or shake hands with someone who is infected, for example.

Flu viruses are more stable in cold air, and low humidity also helps the virus particles remain in the air. That is because the viruses float in the air in little respiratory droplets, Dr. Palese said. When the air is humid, those droplets pick up water, grow larger and fall to the ground.

But Dr. Palese does not suggest staying in a greenhouse all winter to avoid the flu. The best strategy, he says, is a flu shot.

It is unclear why infected animals released viruses for a longer time at lower temperatures. There was no difference in their immune response, but one possibility is that their upper airways are cooler, making the virus residing there more stable.

Flu researchers said they were delighted to get some solid data at last on flu seasonality.

“It was great work, and work that needed to be done,” said Dr. Terrence Tumpe, a senior microbiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. McCullers said he was pleased to see something convincing on the flu season question.

“It was a really interesting paper, the first really scientific approach, to answer a classic question that we’ve been debating for years and years,” he said.

As for Dr. Palese, he was glad he spotted the journal article that mentioned guinea pigs.

“Sometimes it pays to read the old literature,” he said.