Tag Archives: Tom Stout

The Stout Family Pictures Raise Questions

At some point late in their mother’s life, the Stout brothers and sisters gathered at the Stout farm in Guernsey County.  It was an important occasion, because Tom Stout came all the way from Wyoming, and Frank (John Franklin) Stout came from Omaha Nebraska.  Not only did the four boys have their picture taken together, but I also discovered another Stout family picture. That photo includes the aging Emeline Stout.  I have shown the picture of the Stout boys earlier, but mistakenly thought they might have gathered for Emeline’s funeral in 1905.  I now know the four brothers were together somewhat earlier than March, 1905, when Emeline died.

The Stout Brothers

The Stout Brothers

These Stout brothers are (clockwise from top left) Tom Stout, rancher from Wyoming; John Franklin (Frank) Stout, a lawyer from Omaha Nebraska, my great-grandfather William C. (‘Doc’) Stout from Holmes County, Ohio and Dr. George Stout from Guernsey County, Ohio .

How do I know  with such certainty the photos are from the same day?  The photographs were taken in the same studio in Guernsey County and framed in the same cardboard frames.  The three brothers who are in both photos are wearing identical clothing.i

Here’s the Stout family picture I just found, with Emeline and five of her seven living children, plus a son-in-law.

Emeline Stout Family late 1890s

Stout Family late 1890s. Labeled by Vera Stout Anderson: “1st Row, Uncle Tom Stout, Grandma Stout and W. C. Stout (Dad) 2nd Row. Uncle Frank Stout, Aunt Lib Cunningham, Aunt Sade Scott and Uncle Ed Scott.”

DETAILS

Great-great grandmother Emeline is squinting her eyes, because she had lost most of her eyesight later in life.

Judging by the leg of mutton or gigot sleeves on the two younger women, I believe this photo was taken in the last half of the 1890s. A velvet vertical trim adorns Aunt Sade’s double-breasted jacket . Aunt Lib’s outfit is even more elaborately adorned, with flaps extending out from the shoulder over the tops of the large gathered sleeves, light-colored embroidery trim on the jacket and collar, and a light-colored ribbon bow on her right side at the waist. It looks like she has a chain, but the locket is tucked inside her jacket.

The women look as though they are wearing winter clothes, however the four sons posed on a porch.  Perhaps that was not a real porch, but a staged set at the photographer’s studio? Whether they went to the studio for their picture, or the photographer went to Emeline’s farm, I am certain that the family portrait was taken in Emeline’s home. I can see a photograph on the wall which is part of my collection of old photos. Emeline also had a lovely patterned wallpaper on the wall.

Interesting that the two Ohioans are wearing the string bow tie, and the two westerners the large four-in-hand.

I am curious about the star-shaped dangle on a watch chain worn by rancher Tom.  I’m guessing it is the symbol of some fraternal organization.  Anyone out there have a clue?

One More Photograph

It was quite a day for photographs.  My great-grandfather, W.C. (Doc) Stout also posed for an individual photograph on that day.

Dr. Stout

Doctor William Cochran Stout, my great-grandfather

Besides not knowing the exact year of the Stout family picture, some mysteries remain.

The Photographer

Addison, Quaker City, it says on the front of the cardboard frame of the Stout family picture. Quaker City was the town nearest the Stout farm in Guernsey County, Ohio. Many times I get help dating pictures by looking at lists, particularly Langdon Road, that list old photographers. However, I have not found a reference on line, so know nothing about the Addison Photography Studio in Quaker City.

The Missing Siblings

Where was brother George in the Stout family picture?  Since he was a doctor practicing in Guernsey County, perhaps he was called out for a patient.

Where were sister Martha (Mattie) Stout Cunningham and her husband? They lived in Guernsey County.

Why was Aunt Sades husband the only spouse included in the family portrait?  It is quite possible that Tom’s and Frank’s wives did not make the long trip from out West, but W.C. Stout and Dr. George Stout and Lib Cunningham all lived nearby, yet their spouses are not pictured.

And the biggest question of all–what brought this family together?  It was not a wedding, nobody had died in the late 1890s, Emeline would have turned 70 in 1898. Could the family have gathered for her birthday? I’m missing something here. Something that was important enough to draw the entire family together, and commemorate the event with a photograph. Emeline’s 70th birthday seems the most likely.

Meanwhile, however, I have the photograph to add to the others of Great-great-grandmother Emeline Cochran Stout.

Emeline Cochran Stout

Emeline Cochran Stout, mother of Dr. Wm Stout. 1890s.

How I am Related

  • Vera Marie Kaser Badertscher is the daughter of
  • Harriette Anderson Kaser, the daughter of
  • Vera Stout Anderson, the daughter of
  • William C. Stout, the son of
  • Emeline Cochran Stout

William C. Stout is also brother to

  • Tom Stout
  • John Franklin Stout
  • George Stout
  • Elizabeth (Lib) Stout Cunningham
  • Sarah (Sade) Stout
  • Martha (Mattie) Stout

who are therefore my 2 X great-uncles and 2 X great-aunts.

All photographs are in the possession of the author.

 

Into the Wild, Wild West:Tom Stout

Thomas Albert Stout, 1855-1926

Young Tom Stout was restless. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but his plans did not include more school, and now free of his father, his dreams did not include working on the Ohio family farm, either.

Thomas Albert Stout was the fifth son of Emeline Cochran Stout and Isaiah Stout–the third living son when he was born on the Stout farm in Guernsey County, Ohio.  He was ten years younger than my great-grandfather, William Cochran Stout and five years younger than the 2nd living son, George Stout. He had one older sister and would have three younger siblings who survived infancy.

In 1872, when Tom was 17, his father Isaiah Stout died and was buried in the family graveyard on their farm. Tom’s brothers seemed focused on goals. His younger brother, Frank (John Franklin) wasn’t sure where he was heading, but he knew it involved more education after high school (or common school as they called it.) The oldest brother, Will, had graduated from medical school and George was attending medical school in Cincinnati and preparing to come back to Guernsey County to practice.

That left Tom to run the farm, which to this ambitious teenager must have sounded like a big bore.

 

Tom Stout

Tom Stout, Charles Bohm Photographer, Denver CO. 1872

Young men of his time were following Horace Greeley’s advice from 1865 to “Go West Young Men.” And coming from pioneer stock that had migrated either from Scotland to Ireland or from England to Holland and then to the Eastern United States and west to Ohio, he decided to keep the westward movement going. Tom took a train as far west as he could go– Colorado –where he got a job working in freighting. The first rail line reached Denver in 1870, but since it did not cross the Rockies, there was still plenty of freight going by mule and wagon.

After a year in Denver, Tom moved on to Idaho, “involved in railroading” according to the History of Wyoming, Vol. 3 (1918).

I would love to know what Tom did for the railroad. It was very early days for railroads in Idaho which was still a pretty wild place.  At any rate, he heard about homesteads available in Wyoming. The railroad was headed that way, and with it would come growth. The Indian wars seemed to have been settled and the state was bursting with opportunity.

In the early 1880’s, he moved on to the town then called Mandell (population 281).  After the railroad arrived and the town changed its name to Sheridan, it grew faster than prairie grass in a rainy spring. By 1900 nearly 10,000 people called Sheridan home.

Tom staked out a claim just a bit south of Sheridan and spent a couple of years building the first irrigation ditches in the town. By the Spring of 1884, two years after the railroad arrived,  he became a landowner, farming and raising cattle on his own land.  It seems he was working too hard to take time for a social life but around 1887, when he was 32, he met a young lady whose family had recently moved to Wyoming from Kansas. They were married in Johnson County, Wyoming, just before Johnson County was split and Sheridan County created in 1888. His bride, Minnie Vance, was only 18.

Wasting no time, the couple had a son, Frank Perry Stout, in 1888 and a second son, Harry Oscar Stout was born the following year (Minnie had brothers named Perry and Oscar). Wanting to ensure that his children would have good educations, Tom moved his family into Sheridan while continuing to run his ranch. There he bought (or more probably built) a house right in the center of town–behind the courthouse.

Uncle Tom Stout, the rancher, Photo taken in MIles City, MT

Uncle Tom Stout, the rancher, Photo taken in MIles City, MT Circa 1885

Tom, or T.A. as he was known in Wyoming, kept building his empire until it stretched over 7000 acres.  And although the musical Oklahoma says “The cowman and the sheepman can’t be friends”, Tom was both, switching over from cattle to sheep about 1903.

In 1898, Emeline Stout, Tom’s mother, turned 70 in Ohio and the four Stout brothers and their three sisters gathered. They had a portrait made -the sons of an uneducated farmer who had all achieved respect in their communities through professional accomplishments–two doctors still in Ohio and a lawyer and a prosperous rancher who had gone West.

Tom Stout and HIs Brothers

The Stout Brothers. Back: Tom and Frank, Front: Doctors George and William

Tom was to marry again in 1891, and have another son, but that is another story…which you can read in “Tom Stout’s Second Wife.”

That 1918 Wyoming history book, in the flowery language common to those early 20th century history/biography books, said that Thomas A. Stout recently retired with an income that “not only supplies him with all the necessities but also with many of its luxuries.

Tom Stout died in Wyoming in 1926. Thanks to that Wyoming history, I have a sketch of Thomas Albert Stout. Well, okay, it is a bit flowery, and every person described in the book seems to be a paragon of virtue, but here’s Tom/T.A.

After telling us that he is a member of the Methodist Church, Lodge 520 BPOE, and the Sheridan Commerce Club, and that he “votes with the Republican Party and strongly endorses its principles,”, the history closes with a description.

“(Mr. Stout) stands for those things which are most worthwhile in community life and is actuated by a spirit of progress and advancement in all things that he undertakes whether for the upbuilding of his own fortunes or the advancement of community interests.”

Not bad for a mixed-up teen from Guernsey County, Ohio.

Relationship

Vera Marie Badertscher

Daughter of Harriette Anderson Kaser

Daughter of Vera Stout Anderson

Niece of Thomas Albert Stout

Notes on Research

  • History of Wyoming, Vol. 3 (1918), edited by Ichabod Sargent Bartlett, pg. 245-6. Available on Google Books.
  • Family photographs  with inscriptions, in the possession of the author.
  • BLM land transaction records for Wyoming.
  • Eureka Herald and Greenwood County Republican, (Kansas), 23 Jan. 1891. Marriage license: Thomas A Stout and Mattie Worley. Greenwood County. (From newspapers.com)
  • From Ancestry.com:
    • Kansas, County Marriage Records, 1811-1911. Marriage License application for Thomas Stout and Minnie Vance, 1887
    • Montana, County Marriage Records, 1865-1993. Marriage license for Frank P. Stout, child of Thomas Stout and Minnie Vance.
    • United States Census, 1860, Oxford, Guernsey, Ohio; 1870, Wills, Guernsey, Ohio; 1880, Wayne, LaPorte, Nebraska; 1900, 1910 and 1920, Sheridan, Wyoming .
    • Sheridan City Directories, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1915, 1916,1919, 1920, 1927 and 1933.
  • Sheridan Municipal Cemetery Records available at Find a Grave.