As we wrap up Ladies’s Historical past Month, it’s vital to make clear a number of girls who left their mark on Wyoming County.
In solidarity with the Nationwide Collaborative for Ladies’s Historical past Websites, the Wyoming County Historian’s workplace labored for years to put in three markers that includes notable historic girls inside the county. Amongst these girls have been Dr. Cordelia A. Greene, of Castile. This marker is in entrance of the Cordelia A. Greene Library, 11 South Most important St., Castile. One other is Susan Look Avery of the village of Wyoming in Middlebury and that marker is in entrance of the Wyoming Village Corridor. The opposite marker is at Warsaw Village Park and honors the Wyoming County Political Equality Membership.
The markers have been put in final yr as a part of the Nationwide Votes for Ladies Path.
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“It took me two years, from begin to end, from once I first utilized, till I lastly obtained them,” stated Cindy Amrhein, Wyoming County historian.
Greene adopted in her father’s footsteps in her holistic method to well being. For 40 years, she was the pinnacle of the Castile Sanitarium, the place the primary assembly was held to kind the Castile Political Equality Membership in 1892, and she or he was elected president. Greene donated funds to a number of causes she believed in, together with girls’s rights. She was a member of the American Medical Affiliation, the Girl’s Medical League of Western New York, and state Board of Charities amongst others. Actively concerned in training, she donated the land for this library in 1902.
In accordance with Amrhein, the marker honoring the Wyoming County Political Equality Membership “is there as a result of the ladies had a sales space on the truthful yearly between 1892 and 1918. The membership was based in 1891 by Greene, Look Avery, and Ella Hawley Crossett, one other notable lady within the motion from Warsaw.”
Crossett, of Warsaw, is a identified title within the trigger for a girl’s proper to vote, and a marker is devoted to her elsewhere within the village.
The Nationwide Votes for Ladies Path, which tells the story of suffrage for all girls, that extends nicely previous the passage of the nineteenth modification, has greater than 2,000 websites and rising. The target of the path is to “acknowledge and have fun variety of individuals and teams within the wrestle for ladies’s suffrage.”
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In accordance with data offered to the Path, the Girl’s Equality Membership of Wyoming County modified its title in 1901 to honor Look Avery, a suffrage and racial advocate, who was most identified for her work in Louisville, Ky., however summered in Wyoming.
After the nineteenth modification (1920), the membership continued to help the Wyoming neighborhood and nonetheless exists as a social membership at present. The membership held conferences at Village Corridor in the course of the suffrage marketing campaign.
Lydia Avery Coonley Ward (Susan Look Avery’s daughter) was one other notable lady.
“She was born in Virginia, however they moved to Wyoming County when her household purchased Hillside in 1858,” stated Amrhein.
In accordance with data offered to the Path, Hillside was a mansion initially constructed round 1851 to advertise the water remedy and was renamed Hillside when bought by the Avery household. Hillside was used as a summer season house for the household.
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“She (Ward) began a lady’s membership in Chicago the place she lived for some time however moved again to Wyoming County to Middlebury in 1911. It was an Inn at one time however is most notable for Ward’s operating an artwork faculty for younger artists. In addition they had performs, and writers who stayed there,” stated Amrhein. “Ward was a author herself. It was a notable retreat for artists. I’m undecided how lengthy she did that, she traveled too. She went again to Chicago to her son’s, when she died. The ebook she wrote known as ‘Chronicles of an American Dwelling’ is on-line at archive.org and is a good learn all about her life and about her mom, Susan.”
Charlotte L. Smallwood Cook dinner is one other notable lady. Charlotte was the primary feminine district lawyer in New York State. She – Madame district lawyer – was Wyoming County’s D.A. and considered one of lower than a handful of ladies to carry that place all through the nation in 1950.
She lived in a stupendous house on Buffalo Avenue in Warsaw along with her husband, Edward Smallwood, their son and later their daughter. The pair ran a profitable regulation workplace within the village. Charlotte attended regulation faculty at Cornell College and Columbia Legislation Faculty. She was informed she would make a very good prosecutor whereas she was making an attempt a case and from there Charlotte was motivated to run for the district lawyer place, representing the Republican celebration looking for “truthful play in native politics” beneath the motto “Vote for a Change.”
In accordance with the New York Occasions, she gained the election in Wyoming County “with 65% of the greater than 12,000 votes forged”.
“…There isn’t any cause why a certified lady can’t deal with the authorized finish of regulation enforcement,” stated Charlotte in the course of the 1949 marketing campaign.
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Charlotte was 26 when she ran for district lawyer. She served a three-year time period. She didn’t run for re-election because of the passing of her husband in 1952. After a memorable profession, throughout which, in line with the New York Occasions, “she prosecuted Wyoming County’s first capital homicide case in 40 years and argued the case earlier than the Courtroom of Appeals,” she handed away in 2013 at 90 years outdated.
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SHERIDAN — A four-year-old Sheridan, Wyoming girl is now able to move and speak after falling out of a two-story window earlier this month, landing her in a nine-day coma.
Serafina Blue Day, also known as Fifi, was life-flighted to a Denver hospital after she fell out of a two-story window and landed head-first on below on the concrete on June 10. She was playing at a friend’s house jumping on a bed near the window when she fell through the screen. This resulted in multiple injuries, including a traumatic brain injury.
Anastasia Harbour/Facebook
Serafina Blue Day suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling through a two-story window in Sheridan, Wyoming.
“I think, one of the most tragic things that you can experience as a parent,” said her mother, Anastasia Harbour.
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Fifi made progress on June 20 when she came out of her coma and was able to squeeze her mom’s hand and move slightly. But last week, she made even more progress as she can talk and move most of her limbs.
“The fact that she can talk and hear and see and move is a miracle in itself,” said Harbour.
Her mother has been by Blue Day’s side the throughout the whole process and said she is recovering acceleratedly.
“According to the doctors, when they’ve seen kids with her injury, some of them don’t wake up, and the ones that do take weeks and some of them don’t speak, some of them can’t move. Whereas she was kind of like a miracle. Cognitively, she understands everything,” said Harbour.
She has now been out of the ICU for a week, but recovery could take anywhere from six months to a year. It is uncertain whether or not some of her injuries will be life-long. Harbour is just grateful her daughter is progressing well.
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“That was really an emotional, amazing experience because I didn’t know if she ever would. I was prepared for that to be goodbye,” said Harbour. “I got to see her open her eyes and in this hospital, I’ve seen so many parents that don’t get that.”
While the road to recovery is long with an injured femur and neck and will have to relearn some motor functions, there have been glimpses of hope that she may one day be able to dance again.
“I feel like it’s totally possible that her whole personality will come back. Before the accident, she was a performer. She loved to dance and to sing and to play and be funny. And I’m not ready to accept that that’s gone yet,” said Harbour.
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Serafina Blue Day waves with her mother, Anastasia Harbour. Blue Day has been out of the ICU for a week.
Harbour says she is grateful for all of the support from her community and accredits her faith as a motivator through a difficult time.
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“I really do feel like that sense of community and encouragement and faith is what is making us all get through this. It’s what’s encouraging her because I genuinely do not feel like she’d be here if it wasn’t for everyone praying,” said Harbour.
The family is accepting donations through First Federal Bank, as they are prepping for spending months in the hospital while Fifi recovers.
You can donate by sending a check to the bank:
First Federal Bank & Trust 671 Illinois St. Sheridan, WY 82801
You can also donate by calling Krystle Baumgartner at 307-675-4059 or by mailing a check or going to either branch in Sheridan, or wiring money directly.
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Please use the name: Shawn Day & Annie Harbour FBO Serafina (Fifi) Blue Day
Tricky Riggle was a kind of cowboy showman in the vein of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. A low-rent version of those famed Western legends, bouncing from town to town on the rodeo circuit, barely scraping by until he settled in Wheatland, Wyoming, in the 1940s.
A crowd oohed and aahed during the 1952 Platte County Fair as Riggle performed a few of the signature rope tricks that earned him his nickname, culminating with his death-defying knife-throwing skills.
His lovely assistant was Frances Williamson. They had met that spring and began a relationship.
Among Williamson’s many services in Riggle’s act, she would stand obediently against a plywood backdrop as Tricky hurled knives at her. One by one the blades thwacked all around Frances, eventually silhouetting her curvy body.
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He’s gonna miss and kill her one of these days, spectators had to think.
Riggle would indeed kill her one day, but not with a knife. And he did not miss.
The little-known tale of Herschel Clay “Tricky” Riggle includes a double-homicide over a lover’s tryst and an 11th-hour commutation from the governor that saved the condemned man from the gas chamber. The politician’s soft-heartedness, some say, cost Gov. Milward Simpson his reelection bid.
To this day, hardly anyone remembers the details. Folks in Wheatland just don’t talk about it.
Wheatland in the ’50s
“Romper Room” and the “Johnny Carson Show” debuted the year a real-life posse was formed in southeastern Wyoming, engageing in a three-day manhunt for a killer on the run.
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It was 1953. Swanson introduced TV dinners, Marilyn Monroe was a Hollywood sex symbol and Hugh Hefner debuted a magazine called Playboy.
America was coming of age, but the West was still as wild as ever.
In early spring that year, tiny Wheatland — population 2,300 at the time — was rocked by a double-homicide. On March 28, 1953, Riggle held a smoking gun in the doorframe of a local café as his fiancée and a local ranch hand who paid her too much attention both hit the floor dead.
Riggle would later claim he remembered nothing of the shooting. A jury didn’t buy it. This was the same Tricky Riggle that was found guilty of taking a shot at a county sheriff in a bar in 1946. Again, over a woman.
“Most of the trouble I’ve gotten into was a result of dirty deals from women,” Riggle once told his court-appointed psychiatrist Dr. Joseph F. Whalen.
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How the participants met their fates that Saturday night is a story as old as time. Jealous rage, a jilted lover and an unstable middle-aged gun owner crazy over a woman he couldn’t have. It was a recipe for murder.
Tricky Comes West
Give Riggle some credit, he followed his childhood dream. Two weeks before graduation from high school in Macedonia, Iowa, Riggle struck out for the Wild West to become a cowboy.
By 1920, he started rodeoing, riding bulls, broncs, whatever. He was good but not great.
It was on the circuit he met up with rodeo legend Lucille Mulhall who had taken over her father’s famed “Mulhall Wild West Show.” Under Mulhall’s wing, Riggle concentrated more on the entertainment side, specializing in trick roping, knife throwing and becoming a general rodeo clown.
Riggle married briefly in 1927. Not much is known about the four-month marriage other than Riggle stating later that he found out his new bride was not yet divorced from her previous husband. Tricky’s distrust of women was further solidified.
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Riggle continued his novelty act sideshow, which included a three-legged horse, for about two decades until the early 1940s. When not rodeoing, he supported himself doing various ranch work in Wyoming.
In 1946, Riggle had his first major brush with the law. During an argument with a peace officer over a woman in a bar, Riggle took a shot at the lawman.
Riggle was sentenced to five to six years in the state penitentiary in Rawlins for felonious assault. He served 31 months before being discharged in 1949.
Riggle returned immediately to Wheatland, where he took a job at the local lumber yard owned by Charles Perry. He did some plastering, flooring, general lumber work, stacked lumber, loaded trucks and the like. He was a hard worker, but his fellow employees found him “mentally abnormal,” saying he was moody and would often talk to himself.
He kept his nose to the grindstone until he met Williamson in spring 1952.
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A newspaper clipping reporting on Tricky Riggle’s appeal of his death sentence for killing his fiancée and a male friend in a fit of jealous rage. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
A report in the Billings Gazette on how Tricky Riggle was allowed to have animals in prison. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Tricky And Frances
Riggle fell hard. He courted the widow and operator of the Mountain View Camp in Wheatland, eventually coaxing her to join his part-time rodeo sideshow act.
During the relationship, Tricky brought up marriage, but Frances was reluctant. She had been married twice before and wasn’t looking to go that route again at age 53, according to a niece.
Riggle later described the relationship as troubled but, despite him calling Frances a “woman of low character,” he genuinely liked her and wanted to marry her.
“I loved that woman and I thought we could make a go of it,” Riggle said.
Williamson, on the other hand, appeared to be stringing Riggle along. At least that’s what Riggle came to believe at some point, according to testimony given at his Wyoming Supreme Court appeal July 31, 1956. She would spend time with other men, causing Riggle’s jealousy to be aroused.
Riggle also said Williamson would often demand money from him and threatened to charge him with rape if he didn’t pay up.
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Sometime in early March 1953, Riggle got into an argument with local ranch hand Walter Akerblade at Williamson’s apartment. Riggle informed Akerblade that he and Frances were to be married soon — they set the date for March 28 — and tossed Akerblade out of the room.
That set the stage for Saturday, March 28, 1953. Riggle was in a jovial mood at work that day but distracted. His coworkers remember him making some mismeasurements on a few windows, which was not like him.
“I got off work at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. I drove to my room and washed and changed clothes,” Riggle remembered. “I put on a striped pair of brown pants, a blue shirt, a clean jacket with a fur collar. These were my best clothes. I also had my hat and was going to pick Frances up and go to Lusk.”
Wedding Day
Whether Williamson agreed to go to Lusk (where she had family) to be married that Saturday is a matter of contention. Truth was, when Riggle stopped in at the Top Hat Bar in Wheatland that night around 6 p.m., Williamson was already drinking and talking with several other men, including Akerblade.
“When I came in, I saw Mrs. Williamson with these men in the bar. I came in and sat down at the end. She didn’t look at me,” Riggle later recalled in court. “Then Akerblade left her, and I walked over and asked her if she wanted a glass of beer. I asked her if she was ready to go.”
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Eyewitness John Burke saw it differently.
Burk testified that Riggle came in and laid his hand on Akerblade’s shoulder and said, “You son of a bitch, I told you to stay away from her or I would kill you.”
Williamson reportedly asked bartender Jerry Sparks to throw Tricky out for harassing her. She did not want to go with him to Lusk. Sparks had a word with Riggle and told him he could stay as long as he behaved himself.
Sparks recalled Riggle mumbled angrily to himself for about five minutes and left around 7:30 p.m. Riggle said he went home to eat and stopped at the post office, where he picked up a $3 check for back income tax.
Riggle returned to the Top Hat around 7:45 p.m., cashed the check with Sparks and tried again to get his fiancée away from the men she was with.
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“I was feeling blue then and I asked her again and she refused,” Riggle said. “Akerblade and Randall had gotten her drunk on whiskey and beer, and I think Elmer Greenlee. I thought I could get her in my car and get her away from the bunch that was getting her drunk. I knew she would go.”
Greenlee later testified that Riggle and Sparks got into a little confrontation when the bartender threatened to throw Riggle out.
“Try it and you’ll be dead before you make it over the bar,” Riggle reportedly said.
John Burk also testified to the fact that Riggle was livid about being stood up. He heard Tricky tell Frances if she did not quit fooling around with Akerblade he would kill her.
“He was angry and he looked wild,” Burk added.
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Riggle again left the bar and returned to his 1937 Chevrolet parked outside.
Shots Fired
Minutes later, Riggle bumped into his fiancée, still with Akerblade and another man, on the sidewalk outside the Top Hat Bar around 8 p.m.
Joseph Ferguson overheard Riggle make a threat to Akerblade who responded, “Anytime.”
Riggle then turned to Williamson and said, “As for you, Frances, I am through with you.”
“Yes, I am darn glad of it,” Williamson shot back.
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The party went to the nearby Angle Café to get something to eat — all except Riggle, who returned to his vehicle for a .22 semi-automatic rifle he kept in the back seat.
Riggle would later say, “I saw them sitting there laughing. I don’t know what happened from then on. I just went to pieces and don’t know what happened. I last remember seeing them laughing before I blacked out.”
Riggle stood I the doorframe of the café, raised his rifle at Akerblade and exclaimed, “God damn you, I told you I was going to get you.”
Ferguson tried to interject, “Tricky, cut it out.”
The first bullet passed through Akerblade’s outstretched hand and hit him in the cheek. Akerblade staggered back into the arms of Ferguson as Riggle pumped four consecutive shots into his chest.
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Riggle turned to Williamson who was still sitting on a stool in disbelief. Four more shots, all to the chest, two striking Frances in the heart. She was dead before she hit the floor.
Riggle ran out the door and fled in his car. He sped east out of Wheatland, struck a telephone pole and nearly broke it. Riggle somehow managed to continue on until he put his car into a ravine.
Riggle testified later this is where he “came to.” He grabbed his rifle, left the car and walked across a few open fields before coming upon a house being built by his boss at the lumberyard, Charles Perry, for his brother Willard.
Riggle hid there for the rest of the night and all day Sunday.
Meanwhile, within 15 minutes the Platte County Sheriff’s Office had thrown up several roadblocks from Wheatland to Lusk.
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Sheriff Ben Brown organized a volunteer posse that included a plane flown by George Nelson with John Phifer as his spotter.
The all-points bulletin buzzed over the state’s new two-way radio system, never used before that.
But more than 48 hours of searching turned up nothing.
Gov. Milward Simpson, shown here with his wife Lorna, commuted two death sentences for Tricky Riggle. He lost his bid for reelection, which many have said was because of his saving Riggle from the gas chamber. (Wyoming State Archives)
Surrender And Conviction
On Monday, March 30, 1953, Perry’s project manager Dick Dockter came to the house Riggle was hiding in looking for some putty he had left behind on the jobsite. Riggle stepped out of the closet he was hiding in.
“Are you scared?” Riggle asked Dockter.
“No,” Dockter replied.
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“Did I hurt anybody?” Riggle asked.
“Yes, you killed ’em,” Dockter answered.
“Oh my God. I might as well blow my brains out,” Riggle said.
Dockter convinced Riggle to stay put while he went to get their boss, Perry.
“We’ll figure this all out,” Dockter assured the killer.
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Dockter returned with Perry, who also brought Don Sherard, an attorney who would eventually represent Riggle. They convinced Riggle to turn himself in.
During the ensuing trial, Sherard tried for an insanity plea on behalf of his client. It was true Riggle had experienced numerous head injuries in his rodeo career and later on the job in the lumberyard. Some of the injuries caused him to suffer total amnesia for several days at a time, forgetfulness, irritability and awkwardness, his lawyer said.
Dr. Joseph F. Whalen, superintendent and medical director of the Wyoming State Hospital at Evanston, testified to Riggle’s mental condition.
“He did not indicate any serious illnesses or injury,” Whalen concluded.
Herschel Clay “Tricky” Riggle was convicted of two counts of premeditated murder. After a failed appeal in July 1956, he was set to be executed in the gas chamber Wednesday, Sept. 5, 1956.
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Wyoming State Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Blume, in striking down Riggle’s appeal, stated that, “The defendant is guilty of a serious crime. He killed not only one person, he killed two. That accentuates the fact that if defendant had a fair trial, as we think he had, no sentiment or sympathy on our part should permit him to escape the penalty which the law decrees.
“It is not he alone whom we must consider. We must consider society as well. A warning must be given that to take another’s life is dangerous to the one who takes it. We have too many killings.”
Riggle Spared
The April 2, 1953, edition of the Lusk Herald shared the shocking news of Williamson’s death: “Lady Murdered at Wheatland Sister of Local People,” the headline proclaimed.
Both Williamson and Akerblade were laid to rest April 1, Williamson in Greenhill Cemetery in Laramie, Akerblade at Wheatland Cemetery.
Appeals pushed Riggle’s execution to March 28, 1957, but eventually he was out of options. His attorneys petitioned the governor as a last-ditch effort to spare their client. Just 13 hours before Riggle was to face the gas chamber, he received a stay of execution from Governor Simpson.
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“I have always been opposed to capital punishment. I doubt that it is a deterrent to crime. Terrible and revolting and indefensible as was Riggle’s crime, taking his life cannot atone for the murders, nor lessen the grief of the victims’ survivors. It merely adds one more life to the toll of the tragedy,” Simpson said in a statement.
“Riggle’s punishment is God’s prerogative. Only God can finally adjust the balance between justice and mercy, and I am commuting the sentence of Clay Riggle from death to life imprisonment,” the governor added.
Simpson’s action drew both positive and negative feedback. Speculation continues today on whether the decision cost Simpson his bid for reelection in 1958.
Simpson faced other political challenges, including controversies over the proposed route of Interstate 90 and cracking down on gambling in Teton County, but Riggle’s attorney was convinced that sparing his client’s life was key reason he was not reelected.
Riggle Lives To 80
Simpson’s commutation of Riggle’s sentence included the stipulation he would not be eligible for parole. He would spend the rest of his life in confinement.
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Riggle carried out his sentence at the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston. According to the Riverton Roundup, he was later transferred in 1963 to the Honor Farm in Riverton where model inmates are allowed to work with horses.
A story in the Billings Gazette on June 9, 1964, under the Show Business section stated: “Murderer Returns to Training Animals.”
Riggle was gifted a Pomeranian by the prison warden, Lenard Meacham, as well as a 5-month-old colt. Riggle trained both animals to perform tricks and gave performances occasionally for fellow inmates and their families.
In his later years, Riggle developed diabetes and had a leg amputated. He was confined to a wheelchair and eventually transferred back to the state hospital, where he died Oct. 6, 1981, at the age of 80.
Riggle requested to be buried in Rock Springs, where he was laid to rest at Rest Haven Memorial Gardens on Oct. 12, according to the Daily Rocket Miner.
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Contact Jake Nichols at jake@cowboystatedaily.com
Herschal “Tricky” Riggle is buried in Rock Springs, Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
The grave of Frances Willaimson, killed by her fiancée Tricky Riggle on March 28, 1953, in Wheatland, Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
The grave of Walter Akerblade, gunned down by Tricky Riggle in 1953 in Wheatland, Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)