The post today is a discussion between our grandfather Mose and his brother Trumon about Religion. These close bouts with death concerning our grandfather Mose, could have changed our history if he had died before his daughter Marcella (Belle) was born.
Judy had asked me where Blancetts had come from originally---somewhere in the writings it tells us that they were French. It could be from other information that I have about this family---I will share when I find it again.
"How I Got My Religion, by Trumon Blancett"
"It was this way, as I remember it. It was August 1862. Mose and I were camped on the Upper Republican river, some half mile south of where the town of Oxford now is. The buffalo trail crossed the river at this place. The buffalo followed these trails as they migrated back and forth from Texas to Wyoming. We were there for a few days to replenish our stock of dried meat. Each day, in the after noon we could see a great whirling dust in the north coming towards us. We knew what it meant. Sometimes there would only be hundred or more, in a mad rush for the water with their tongues protruding. We always climbed a tree until the rush was over. They would file into the river, filling it from bank to bank like sardines packed in a box. This stream was called the Republican river, but we never saw it any other way at this place, but a bed of sand some two hundred feet wide with a few streaks of water running over it. So many buffalo standing in the water made it look like it was running thru a cow yard. We had our camp under a tree that was convenient to climb in case there was a general stampede of the buffalo. It was about midday. We were lying in the shade of this tree about fifteen of these tired buffalo who had just finished a run of about fifty miles, came and lay down under a big tree not more than fifty feet away. I sat with my back against that tree watching these buffalo that seemed to be at perfect ease and comfort in the shade. I began to think who or what caused these twenty or twenty-five trees to grow at this particular place where they were so much needed. I knew to my knowledge that there weren't any other tree or bush within fifty miles of this place. I knew this was the only place the buffalo crossed the river. I kept thinking as I sat there. There were many things I had never thought of before came creeping into my feeble mind. Presently I shook Mose. He asked what I wanted. I says, "Do you think there is a God"? He raised on his elbow immediately, looked straight at me thinking perhaps the great heat of the day had caused a brain storm in my head. "How do I know (if) there is or is not a God."? There ought to be one somewhere that could reclaim this cursed desert. Why do you ask such a fool question? I says, "Who or what power caused these trees to grow here where they are so much needed? I think the same power that caused the buffalo, the Indian, the fowls of the air, caused these tees to grow for their protection." Mose would not agree with me, saying they just grew by chance. Presently we saw a great dust coming from the north. We knew what it meant, and ran and climbed a tree. They came on, rushing like a cyclone,with their tongues protruding--More than five hundred of these crazed buffaloes passed beneath us, piled into the river, blocking it from bank to bank. After they had quenched their thurst and quieted down, we climbed out of our trees. When Mose climbed down, he was converted,saying, "Only for those trees, we would have died before our time." We left that No-man's land the fall (of) 1862, have never had any desire to return to it, tho I am told there are prosperous farms and a good grain country and some timber growing thru western Nebraska and Kansas. When we let there had been no rain to speak of for two years. It seems that when the Pilgrims invaded that desolate country in the early 70's they must have found the real God of Old and beseached him to fulfill the promise that the rain should descend alike on the just and the unjust. Their green fields are ample proof that it did rain."
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