A new interest

May 2011



Last month Meghan Sarr Editor-in-Chief from True West Magazine contacted me because she was covering the auction that was held in Ponca City March12th.  I sent her a book in pdf and she used it for some quotes and to get a overview of Bessie. The article appeared in the May issue and she did a great job, here is a little bit of it....
I don't think it would be fair to post the whole article and lose a sale for the magazine.

"Spose Ma will think I am crazy
but this is a circus anyone need
not be ashamed of.

"All nice girls, no swearing or
anything rough, we are not allowed to
monkey with the boys at all. It could
not be stricter."

Bettie Herberg wrote this to her sister
Esther on April 29, 1911, in the same
month she began working for the 101
Ranch Real Wild West Show and two
days after she had written: "I do not
think I will stay as it is too hard for the
money there is in it, but will have to stick
with it for a while to pay back my fare."

Yet stay she did. A century later, almost
to the month, on March 12, "Buckskin
Bessie" spoke through her letters and
photographs to collectors gathered in
Ponca City, Oklahoma to bid on the 101
Ranch collection of Jack Keathly.
Letters written to Bessie from 101
Ranch showman J.C. Miller were
purchased by an International Fast
Draw Champion with the SASS alias
"Buckskin Bessie." Monica James, of
Glendale, Arizona, had rescued other
letters by Bessie before they were
almost carelessly disposed of after an
estate sale; inspired by what she read,
she wrote the historical biography of
the showgirl, Buckskin Bessie: Her
Lost Letters, in 2006.

It is hard to believe it has been six years since I published the book

 (see side bar) and amazing the coincide that the auction was held almost to the day 100 years from when Bessie joined the show. I did indeed purchase 10 letters Joe wrote to Bessie as well as letters that were written to Bessie's family from Marshall Blackwell (with the help of a friend). They did not reveal anything earth shaking but did shed a different light in a few situations. I have not decided yet as how to share this info as I do not intend on rewriting the book. I have had a influx of orders for the book and assume the auction has created a new interest.  I  just wished they would order them from my web site so I could personally sign them but I am glad to continue to share Bessie's story.

Gone but not forgotten

Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post about how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about.

It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in anyway.

Today will be my last post of Behind the Scenes.

Last week I ended by saying many unusual people and events came into my life while writing the book but there were also many mysteries that I could not solve, like what happen to the lady that originally owned the letters (Bessie's niece). I tried and tried to find her and my interview with her brother only made me more suspicious that she didn't just walk away from it all. What I wouldn't have given to talk with her.

Although I was clueless to the fame of the 101, I discovered that there were collectors that spent thousands of dollars for original 101 memorabilia and in fact I met one who allowed me to use some of his pictures of Bessie. The 101 ranch and Wild West Show was famous in it's day but it is a money maker today as well.

An original 101 poster sold for $25,000.00 recently.

Joe Miller's saddle that is on display at the Woolaroc Museum in Bartlesville, Okla. was just a glimpse of the unbelievable amount of money they had. Here are a few pictures

Solid gold and silver and the gems are all real.........what would the value of it be today? Why wasn't Bessie's saddle (a gift from Joe Miller that was to have matched) found in the rubble of the fire? Or any of the jewelry she had like the steer head with the diamond eyes she won in a relay race (picture of her wearing it in the book). Why did I unknowingly stand at the foot of her grave on the anniversary of her death on my first visit to Ponca City before I had even considered writing the book?

The web site for the book has a link available for people to share any info they may have or opinions, yet it remains relatively silent.........................................................................

I end where I started....at the foot of her grave.

Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post about how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about.
It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in anyway.


Travel was a part of Bessie's life even before she joined the Wild West Show and that in itself was unusual in the year of 1910. Most farmer's daughters were married off by the time we catch up to Bessie at 25 years old and most women were having babies, not applying for their own homestead (copy of actual document in book) and a career of stenographer (sample of it in a letter). This is just the beginning of this unique woman's life, a life that took her all over the world.

A family member found me through my work on the Herberg family tree on Ancestry.com. She had a postcard that was in a trunk of her Grandmother's with a picture of a cowgirl with her horse and the name, Buckskin Bessie. We communicated a lot while I wrote the book and she was a great encourager. She even went to the Hotel Piccadilly on her trip to London where Bessie stayed to see if she could get any information for me.

Many people and unusal things came into my life while writing this book................................

Behind the Scene

This is an ongoing post about how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about. It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in anyway.

A thought has to come before an action can begin and so it was with the concept of writing the book. I am not going to go through the hours and hours of thought and argument that I had with myself but came to the conclusion I would at least try to see if I could put some things in the order of a book.



I read everything I could get my hands on about the 101 Ranch and Wild West Show. I also read many books about writing a book and some of the most helpful were written by Dan Poynter, in fact two of his books, "Writing Non Fiction" and "The Self Publishing Manual", became my tutors.



Having the letters in order was key and I began to investigate different events that she mentioned in the letters...example: She mentioned going to to a Billy Sunday revival (famous evangelist) while she was in Cedar Falls, Iowa in 1910. I searched out Billy Sunday's web site and found that he indeed was there at this time.

I also discovered that I could obtain death certificates, copies of deeds and etc. because it had been over 60 years since the people had lived and so it began...........The long process of searching out the information and putting it together.

When writing non fiction, everything has to be documented and all things used from other people require a release form if you don't want to be sued. So many things to learn but fortunately there was no time limit and it was turning into quite an adventure.

Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post about how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about. It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in anyway.

Interestingly on Walking Prescott blog today she highlighted the town that I grew up in and the author who did the foreword for the book. That is information that is way out of the timeline of events as I have been sharing but couldn't resist:)
Back home from Ponca City with the letters in hand, minus the route cards, I find I have become rather attached to these letters and not sure about parting with them. Maybe this other lady who was going to write a book and I could work together..........................
I found her phone number and called...................... Yes, she had done a little research but it was some time ago and now she was married with a new baby to care for so basically writing the book was on a back burner somewhere. I was disappointed and back to square one. What do I do with these letters.........................
Jokingly I told my husband as we were driving in the car......."Well, guess I will just have to write the book myself", He didn't respond right away but then said....."Maybe you should". Up until that point I hadn't seriously thought about it. After all, I had never taken writing classes, never had dreams of writing a book and didn't have much of an imagination which I felt you would need to write a book BUT, what I did have was the LETTERS and a wiliness to research.

Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post about how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about. It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in anyway.The return address gave me Bessie's name so that is where I started. The program "Ancestry.com" was something I had and it was perfect for my endeaver. Very quickly I found a 1920 census that gave the names of all the Jonas Herberg family members and their ages at the time the census was taken. A current phone directory found on the internet had a listing for a Dale Herberg in Ruthton, Minn. so that was my first call. I introduced myself and told the woman who answered that I had these letters and asked to speak with Dale Herberg. His widow, explained he had just recently died. I felt horrible!!! but amazingly she was very curtious and concured that Bessie was his relative and that she was sure there were some things of hers stored in their garage. She gave me the name and phone number of another cousin, ________ Stevens, that lived in South Dakota. It took some time for me to build up enough courage to call this cousin but when I did.....she was very open and shared with me all sorts of things and gave me the name of yet another living cousin that was here in Arizona! Both of these cousins were the nearest relatives of Bessie and both were in their 80's at the time.
I then looked to see if I could find a phone number for the man in Ponca City from the news article that had the collection of Bessie's clothes. Found it! A phone call revealed that he was very interested in the letters so now I was not sure what to do............................................................
The only thing I knew for sure was that I did not want to throw away these letters and old photos.
My hubby found an upcoming competition taking place near Ponca City and said through the business, we could go and then take an extra couple of days to go meet with Jack Keathly. Talk about exciting............................................I couldn't hardly wait!

ps....I apoligize for any misspellings.....the spell checker is not working.

Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post of how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about. It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in any way.

It must be understood that although I am trying to give a of a step by step view of the writing of the book, it must be condensed because the whole process took over two years, so although I may simply mention something it may have in reality took days, weeks, or even months to accomplish it.
My questions abounded, I was full of them. One afternoon while talking with my step-son about all this he says....."Mom, there were two old photo albums on that garbage pile......oh, my heart just sank........but another miracle, he went searching and found them!!!!
As I poured over the letters that spoke of different people I searched through the old photo albums to see if there were any matches...there were. (Special note: always write the names on the back of your photo's) It took a long time to figure it all out but eventually I began to piece it together. The next step was to buy the letters and old photo albums from Teen Challenge. No, they hadn't seen them as having any value and didn't really have them for sale but it was the right thing to do, so I set a price and wrote them a check.
The question of why these things were thrown out after being saved for so many years haunted me. I mean in the photo album there were family pictures, wedding pictures and all sorts of things. I felt pretty sure that whoever had been saving them must have died or become so disabled they could no longer make choices.............but what if there were immediate family who they belonged to?
Finding the family tree.........................................................................Ancestry.com

Behind the Scenes

This is an ongoing post of how the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters" came about. It is posted every Monday and the original was posted in Jan. 2008

No part of this information may be reproduced in any way.

My step-son was part of a group called "Teen Challenge". This is a Christian drug and alcohol rehab program. One of the many things they do to help raise funds, is go out to estate sales when they are completed and sort through and remove all the things that have not sold. Their pay for doing this clean up is that they can keep what they think they can sell at their on going carport sale. While at one of these estate sales, my step-son saw a Manila envelope with letters spilling out over the top of a garbage pile. The bright red letters of the return address on many of the letters said "101 Wild West Show" and he noted that the postdates were very old. He decided to take them back to his room and check them out before they were thrown away.

Now my step-son is a real pack rat and often brought things home for us to keep for him so when he hauled these letters home I did not pay any attention to them until my husband said, "come look at these letters, they are really old and postmarked from all over the world". The two of them were debating over who they thought the woman was that wrote the letters and etc. and I said "You guys are just wasting time, you can't even begin to figure out who this woman is without reading these letters in the order they were sent"! One of my strong points is organization so I went about putting them in order...the problem is that I also started reading them and the more I read the more I wanted to read. I was hooked, they were fascinating.

I didn't think I would find anything but went to the computer and googled Buckskin Bessie (her show name)... low and behold some info popped up. There was a newspaper article in Ponca City, Okla. stating that a man there was displaying his collection of Buckskin Bessie's personal things! Who was this man? How did he know her? What all did he have of hers? Would he want these letters? Was she famous? What was the 101 Wild West Show?

Will be continued...............................................................................

Behind the Scenes

I am fascinated with what makes things tick. A good example is the musical I recently went to see "Menopause the Musical".

No part of this information may be reproduced in any way.

It is easy to simply sit and enjoy it but I am always wondering...who had this idea? How did they decide to produce it? Who did they employ to help them? How long did it take? What all was involved to get it on stage? How long has this been running? How many states has it run in? How much has attendance increased? How many people are returning from a previous showing? How much money do these performers make? How do they maintain home and family and be on move all the time? Do they change the show and if so how often? How did they pick the performers?
These type of questions can apply to anything...a new building, a restaurant, a museum the local library, a housing project, Sea World and on and on and even the writing of a book. As some of you realize I have written and published the book "Buckskin Bessie - Her Lost Letters". I don't like tooting my own horn so I will direct you to the Jan. 10th post on "Fools Rush in" where Granny gave it a very generous review.
To quote a fellow blogger (Thumper thinks out loud) " I am a published writer. Note I did not say "author". To be an author I would have to had major sales, drink with my pinky stuck straight out, and have done a stint at Betty Ford". I don't even think writer is the best match for me....maybe investigator would be my perfect fit because you see this book is a two year investigation inspired by a stack of very old letters found on top of a garbage pile at an estate sale. The creation of this book is a story in itself and so I have decided to make Monday a "Behind the scenes day" and share some of that very strange process that took place.
First glimpse..................................
I never had a yearning to write a book. Truthfully, I always thought you would have to have an intense imagination to do so and I know I do not possess one or that you have had an exceptional life, like that of crime or fame and etc. and I don't. Now, I like true stories but most of those, especially historical, are really rather boring to me. They tend to just give you dates and actions and I need feelings:) So writing was never on my list of "I want to".
Check in next week........................................................................