Dio's backstory, part two -- a west texas ranch wife

reposted from the Road to Deadwood Forum

Though Texas, both as a Republic and after gaining statehood, allowed slavery, Dio and Jack never held any enslaved people. However, on one occasion, Jack won a card game in San Antonio and to his surprise found that the pot included the papers of an older enslaved man named John Husar. Jack often commented that it proved to be the most expensive card game he ever won, as he promptly manumitted the man, and then he and Dio spent considerable time and money locating as many of John's family as they could and purchasing their freedom. A number of them, including John and his grandson settled near Jack and Dio's ranch.

Sepp, meanwhile, grew bored with ranching, and joined the Texas Rangers. He eventually wound up organizing and leading a mixed company of Rangers, made up mostly of Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas (traditional enemies of the Comanche), Tejanos, and a few radical German immigrants who had migrated to Texas after the revolutions of 1848. When Dio and Jack were having serious arguments, she would occasionally go riding off on patrols with Sepp's company of Rangers. It was during these excursions that she acquired the bad habit of taking a scalp--or other souvenirs--every now and then from a fallen enemy.

When the war came, Jack decided that he wanted to volunteer to fight for the Confederacy. Sepp at first wanted nothing to do with it, having a deep seated hatred for the wealthy elite slave-holding planters and ranchers that were at the pinnacle of southern society, but out of his friendship for Jack he decided to go with him and try to keep him from getting killed. One of Sepp's uncle in East Texas was helping to form the 3rd Texas Cavalry, so the two went and volunteered for that unit. As Sepp was educated and an experienced leader, he was elected to be an officer, eventually becoming a Captain. Jack served as his First Sergeant.

Sepp and Jack were in a number of close scrapes, but always made it through all right until May of 1863, when Jack was killed by Union artillery fire near Vicksburg. Sepp was wounded by the same shell. He lost an eye, and being in hospital when Vicksburg surrendered in July, he spent the rest of the war in northern prison camps: principally Camp Douglas in Chicago and Rock Island. During the course of the war, Dio had received exactly 5 letters from her husband, who--being illiterate--had dictated them to Sepp. No word from either of them came after mid-1863.

In the meantime, the State of Texas had pulled its ranger units away from the frontier in order to use them in the war effort against the North. The Comanches took advantage of this, pushing the line of settlements back almost 100 miles in some places, except in the area around Dio's ranch. Sepp's Tejano, Apache and Tonkawa rangers had all chosen to leave the Texan service and settled in that vicinity with their families. Their presence made it a relatively safe place, though to support and feed all these people, Dio had heavily mortgaged the ranch. When Jack didn't come back--and she was no longer able to keep up the payments, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In June 1865, a few of Jack's comrades arrived at the ranch to tell her what happened to her husband. They presented her with a battered blood-stained gray cap and she knew for sure he would not return. Dio began drinking heavily, and was unable to stop the foreclosure and auction of the ranch. She said goodbye to the people who had settled around her home and disappeared.

On the day of the sheriff's auction Sepp arrived, only to find Dio gone, and his old rangers and friends dispersed. Only a couple of the Tonkawas and John Husar's grandson still remained. He saw Jack's cap still lying on the kitchen table and took it with him. On the way out, he learned that the ranch had been purchased by a wealthy landowner who had managed to avoid serving in the war.

Two weeks later, four men--two Indians, an ex-Confederate officer, and a young Black man--were on the run for having killed a county sheriff, a bank owner and a well-to-do land speculator. But that's another story.... you probably want to know what happened to Dio.

~~~

Dio's backstory, part one -- on the edge of the Comanacheria

this is the first post in a series describing Dio's background, copied and slightly re-edited from the Road to Deadwood forum:

By now, quite of few of you probably know this tale as I talk waaaaay too much. But maybe I can tie some loose ends together.

As you see her now, Dio is a middle aged, recovering alcoholic confederate widow, slowly trying to rebuild her life.

Diogenes Aurelia Kuhr was born in 1831, in West Central Texas, on the edge of the region known as the Comancheria--the land ruled by the Comanche people. Her grandfather, Marcus Aurelius Kuhr, and her father were former "mountain men" who had come to settle in Texas when it still belonged to Mexico. Her father married an Irish immigrant girl, who bore two daughters and a son. Diogenes was the middle child, and was apparently her grandfather's favorite. He taught her a number of things, including how to shoot his old long rifle, to track and hunt, and to play the fiddle. Along with some of the boys from neighboring ranches, she learned even more about riding, shooting, practical medicine and the fine art of creative profanity from "Cap" Johnson, an old Texas Ranger who lived in the vicinity. After a raid in which her brother Harry (Heraclitus Kuhr) was taken by the Comanches (and we assume killed), Dio's father suffered a breakdown and lost interest in everything, including his younger daughter.

As her mother and sister then focused on looking after her father, Dio moved in with her "Papaw Marcus," and he took full responsibility for raising her. She also spent a good deal of time in the company of two of the boys whose families lived nearby: Jack Kuhr (a distant cousin) and Sepp Bogart. They became best friends and were almost constantly together until Sepp, the son of educated German immigrants and oldest of the three, eventually went east to Cincinnati to study medicine. Then, when Dio was 14, Marcus ultimately suffered a wound in a Comanche raid that proved to be mortal.

In 1846, when Dio was only 15, her parents and sister died from what was most likely cholera, and Jack, only a few years older than her, took it upon himself to propose marriage. With the dust from an approaching Comanche war party on the horizon, they were more or less married by the same old Captain of Texas Rangers who had helped Marcus teach them about shooting from horseback and how to swear.

Their first years together were very hard, with Jack turning to rustling to feed them (and he may have done some other things that he never got around to telling Dio about). She gave birth to a son at the age of 16, but the baby, "lil' Jack," was sickly and died when only a few months old. They did eventually get a ranch started, hired on some cowboys and vaqueros, and began to make a go of life not far from where Dio had been born. A few years after they had established their ranch, Sepp returned from the east and became a partner with them. They did fairly well, in between the usual frontier disasters and Comanche raids. It was during one of these fights that Dio had the experience of taking a Comanche arrow out of Jack's backside, an event that she never tired of describing, often in rather graphic detail.

stay tuned for part two....

~~~

Well, we might as well get this started...

a word from Dio's typist...

I guess I am on my way to being less of a cyber-luddite after all. I actually put my real self on Facebook recently (and no I ain't about to direct you to that, just because I'm trying to maintain some separation between the different worlds that Dio and "her typist" inhabit). And yes, I have signed up for that Twitter idiocy, though I haven't brought myself to actually use it yet. And hell, I have been wandering around in Second Life for over four years now.

And by the way, I just got Dio a new skin that looks a little less pale--it was probably originally made for goth-type purposes. Anyhow, I finally broke down and got her a more detailed skin, with a healthy outdoorsy glow, which seemed appropriate for a character whose backstory and present in-world lifestyle involves a good deal of outdoors activity.

Actually, I was always kind of afraid to change how she looked. She had that same skin since 2006 or so, and, well, shit, I suppose I was worried that altering her look might somehow change the persona. But being as Dio has taken on such a life of her own, I don't think anything I might do is going to make much difference in how she acts, talks, or what she might do to offend "civilized folks."

So anyway, yeah, another big step..starting a blog for Dio.

One of the reasons I'm doing this is because she has been character in a number of really good stories and rp sessions--mostly in the sim known as Deadwood 1876--and I am going to re-post some of those pieces here, over time. The Deadwood community forum is a great place, and I love posting there, but those old stories have kind of gotten buried. I just want to give them a little fresh air, let them run around in the sunshine for a few minutes, and see if anyone else might enjoy reading them. Not that I actually expect anyone to read this turkey, but hey...you never know.

I hope to hear from some of you who share my interest in the possibilities that Second Life offers for historical recreation...for having fun learning, exploring, and playing with stories from our collective past. Second Life is many things--and yes, for so many folks it is a festival of virtual consumption and unbridled lust--a pixelated vale of tears with drama queens, attention whores, self indulgent narcissists, cyber pin-heads (literally and figuratively), and some really, really creepy motherfuckers. And that's fine (other than the creepy bits). There is a place in our lives for recreational drama and everyone needs to get attention some time.

But there is also so much potential to really experiment and play with the realities we choose to inhabit....to engage one another, to connect, to learn and share and create. For those of us who love history and who have found this to be a way to tell stories--to be a part of storytelling in a very direct, improv theater sort of way...it's so much more than sex and shopping. Though yes, some of us find those elements of it worming their happily wicked way into the mix no matter what..but then we're just human after all.

So if you happen to pick up this bottle floating in the cascade of ideas and information and lies and wishful thinking that pours into your lap from your computer screen, I hope you enjoy reading the note inside.

~~~