Title: Adventurer Reminisces. C.R. Thomas, 91 Monday, Recalls “Lustiest” Era in America
Book/Periodical: Grand Rapids Press
Locality:
Date: approximately October 1953
Page:
Repository: Jan Fisher?
Detail:
Adventurer Reminisces
A Grand Rapids man who once shared a tent with William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody when both were Indian scouts in the Dakotas, will be 91 years old Monday.
Charles R. Thomas of 878 Sixtieth St SE, who enjoyed every minute of the “lustiest era in American history” as a circus roustabout, a lumbering man, a railroad worker and a cattle rancher, will be feted with an open house from 2 to 4 pm Sunday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Martin Hoorn of 883 Sixty-First St. SE.
Thomas, who lives alone and does his own cooking and housework, left his farm home in North Dorr when he was 18 to join a circus. He lived in the life of an adventurer from then on.
Recalls Highlights
Some of his experiences: running logs down the Mississippi river, negotiating with members of the Blackfoot Indian tribe when the Redmen were enthusiastic about going on the warpath, holding in one arm the most famous midget who ever lived and the midget’s wife in the other and carrying them through a milling circus crowd, being wiped out by hoof and mouth disease as a cattleman in Texas and Tennessee.
These were highlights. But brighter memories for Thomas are events which occurred while he was pursuing what was one of the roughest, toughest occupations in the world – lumbering in Michigan and Minnesota in the 1880’s.
Government Estimator
Thomas was a professional lumber estimator for the government and he says he can still tell within a few board feet how much lumber is in any given 80 forest acres. In this capacity he lived six years in northern Minnesota in the woods with another man, closer to Indians than any whites. It was here he rode logs down the Mississippi.
“But the Mississippi log runs were tame, compared with those on the Muskegon river,” says Thomas. He recalls the time he mounted his first log on a Michigan river run – and promptly fell in. It was far from funny, Thomas says, trying to survive in a rushing river full of grinding, bumping logs. But when he dragged himself out, veteran lumbermen just laughed and told him to try a smaller log next time. Small logs, he learned, were far easier to ride than big ones.
It was during his lumbering days in Michigan that Thomas became the friend of a famous rowdy of that brawling era, “Silver Jack” O’Driscoll, who had built an almost legendary reputation for proficiency at gouge-as-gouge-can fist-fighting.
Wasn’t Half Bad
And Thomas wants to do a little something toward sweetening “Silver Jack’s”memory. “He wasn’t half as bad as people thought,” says Thomas. “He was always decent to me.”
Thomas stayed two months with the circus, which he joined in Kalamazoo. It was, of course, P.T. Barnum’s “Greatest Show on Earth”.
One day, when Thomas was standing near the stable tent, watching a huge crowd gather around a circus barker across the way, he felt a tug at his sleeve. It was Mrs. Tom Thumb, wife of “General” Tom Thumb, the midget who was Barnum’s headline attraction for years. The midget’s wife, even smaller than her famous husband, wanted Thomas to carry her and the “General” through the crowds so they wouldn’t be trampled on their way to another tent. Thomas complied, carrying “General” Tom Thumb on one arm and Mrs. Tom Thumb on the other.
“They were cute little rascals,” Thomas recalls.
After leaving the circus, Thomas drove mules for grading work on the now defunct Clover Leaf Railroad between Toledo, Ohio, and St. Louis, Mo.
Then came a stint as Indian scout in northern Minnesota and the Dakotas where the Blackfoot Indians were “feeling their oats in deadly fashion.”
The night he spent with Buffalo Bill, says Thomas, didn’t leave much of an impression. “He was just another scout then,” he says. After enough adventure to fill an ordinary lifetime, Thomas came back to Michigan and immediately entered the lumber trade. He was a lumberjack, a buyer and a transporter, in addition to being an estimator. When the lumbering era began to fade after the turn of the century, Thomas, then married, bought a cattle ranch near East Jordan.
In 1921, when his wife’s health failed, he moved his family to southern United States, where he engaged in cattle-ranching in Tennessee and Texas.
At one time, he says, he had a sizable outfit, but hoof and mouth disease, on one of its periodic rampages, struck down his herd and for the next few years Thomas and his family lived in almost every state in the southwest while he worked at a variety of occupations.
In 1931, the family returned to Grand Rapids where Thomas was employed by a local contractor. He retired for good in 1933.
Thomas’ wife, Iva, died in 1947. He has two daughters besides Mrs. Hoorn. They are Mrs. James St. Arno of Detroit and Mrs. Harry Hine of Cadillac. He has a son, Robert of Detroit, also 11 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.