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This is my family object

My mother and father’s respective families illustrate many of the themes of American history from the mid 19^th century to the present. Immigration from Europe, western migration, farming, higher education, and military/public service has summarized the American experience in the last century and a half. Let me tell you about myself and my family.

My name is Robert Arthur Preston. I was born in Phoenix Arizona at Good Samaritan Medical Center on June 28^th, 1983. I was born during the Reagan presidency.

            My great grandfather, Arlie Hiram Preston was born in 1878 in Michigan. His father, Charles Preston, was born in 1851. Arlie’s mother was born in 1856, before the Civil War. In 1880 Arlie and his parents moved to Edna, Kansas where his father first farmed and later opened a livery stable (horses and carriages). In three generations the Preston family had moved from Connecticut to New York to Michigan and then to Kansas, as part of the western migration. In 1881 Arlie’s mother, Mary, died in a prairie fire. Arlie was sent to live with his aunt and her husband, Oscar and Ella Baird, who lived in Indiana. Mr. Baird was a school teacher and principal. In 1899, Arlie graduated from college in Indiana and went to teach school in Watrous, New Mexico, a stop along the Santa Fe Trail. In 1906 Arlie married Ida Caldwell in Frankfurt Indiana.

            Ida Caldwell was born in 1882 in Indiana, where her mother, Mary Russell Caldwell and her father, George Caldwell, had a farm. Ida had two older sisters, Elissee and Hattie, and a younger sister, Celia, who died shortly after birth. George Caldwell died a year after Ida was born. Ida, her sisters, and mother operated the farm until her mother, Mary, died in a fire December 28^th 1899. After the fire, Ida and Elissee moved to the area around Trinidad, Colorado, but Hattie stayed in Indiana because she was married. At first, Ida homesteaded near Trinidad and later taught school in the Trinidad area. After Ida and Arlie were married in 1906, they moved back to Trinidad where they both taught school. Ida Died in 1959.

Ida and Arlie farmed near Trinidad from about 1912 until about 1927. Ida’s sister, Elsee and several of Arlie’s female cousins in the Baird family also graduated from colleges around 1900, during a time that it was uncommon for women to have a college education. One of Arlie’s cousins moved with him to teach school when Arlie went to New Mexico in 1900. In 1941, one of Arlie’s cousin’s was killed on the Arizona, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In February, 2004 I visited the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and saw his name, Billy Baird, inscribed on the far north wall of the memorial hall that sits above the remains of the battleship Arizona. Arlie died in 1944; Ida in 1959. 

Juanita Kilgore’s grandfather homesteaded land in Oklahoma shortly after the Oklahoma land rush in 1890. “The homestead act of 1862 offered the first incentive to prospective white farmers. This act granted a quarter section 160 acres of the public domain free to any settler who lived on the land and improved it for at least five years; or a settler could buy the land for a $1.25 per acre after living on it for only six months. Approximately 605 million acres of public domain became available for settling. (Faragher, 529) Juanita’s grandfather was a soldier in an Iowa regiment during the Civil War. Her father, Charles Killgore, born in 1890, raised horses and cattle and homesteaded land in Colorado in 1912. Juanita’s Grandmother, Caroline, and grandfather, George Ellis, were farmers in Illinois. They later moved to Oklahoma. Charles and Grace Killgore, Juanita’s parents, lived in Branson, Colorado, homesteading from 1913 until about 1934. Then they moved to Trinidad. Marshal’s grandfather, Joseph Preston was also a farmer and logger in Michigan, as was his maternal grandfather, Hiram Dennison, who, for a time, also farmed in Kansas.

            Marshal C. Preston, my father’s father, was born in 1911 in Trinidad Colorado. Shortly thereafter, his parents (Ida and Arlie) bought a farm where his sister, Marjorie, was born and they grew up. Marjorie had a twin sister, Margaret, who died at the age of five when she got tangled in a barbed wire fence. The area around Trinidad at this time was very active in coal mining. Many minors worked in the area but wages were low and working conditions were harsh and unsafe. At least one mine had a serious cave-in where many miners were killed. Union organizers came into the area trying to unionize the miners. As a result of labor unrest, federal troops were sent to the Trinidad area. In 1916, the Ludlow Massacre occurred when some minors were killed by federal troops in a riot.

At about 1927, Arlie and his family moved to Primero Colorado, a mining town near Trinidad. In Primero, Arlie and Ida went back to teaching school. Primero was a Colorado Fuel and Iron company town. By 1927, fortunately, much of the labor unrest had passed, but the depression was right around the corner. Times were hard but both Arlie and Ida had teaching jobs during the worst of the depression. Marshal worked to put himself through school. In 1934, Arlie was elected superintendent of schools for Los Animas County.  It was fortunate that he was elected superintendent because, by this time many people had lost their jobs and jobs were very hard to find.

In the late 19^th century, the Preston’s and the Killgore’s not only traveled in time and space but also in education and public service. The Preston’s moved from Connecticut to New York, Michigan to Kansas, and Colorado to Arizona over the space of four generations. In that time they went from being farmers working the land to teachers and public servants such as school superintendents and army officers. Women got college educations at a time when women generally didn’t go to college and the men got advanced degrees when college educations were unusual. On my mother’s side, both the Erra and the Lowry families immigrated to the United States from Italy and Ireland through the great portal of Ellis Island. Those families went from poor immigrants looking for a better life to nurses, teachers, school superintendents and lawyers. The Erra’s and the Lowry’s also joined the western migration coming through New York, Ohio, and Louisiana on their way to California and Arizona. Along the way all of the parts of my family participated in or at least were observers to parts of the American experience from land rushes to homesteading through the depression, World War II into the turbulent sixties and the years that followed. The families participated fully in these interesting times. They farmed, they fought, and they served. They raised their families, worked hard, and shared the American dream. That was good!

click to see old newspaper clipping of my family records