Billy Dreams of Meeting Minnie

Summer of 1882: George William was a cowboy herding cattle for his father to fatten them up for the fall market. His words from his own autobiography are reprinted in blue: A good many things happened that summer, most of them pleasant, although it was a summer of long hours and hard work; but, after the cattle were settled on the range, we could dismount and rest beside our horses. I would often ride over to the section marker stake and sit there with my back propped against it, dozing in the sun while Beauty grazed beside me. I fell asleep there one day and had a dream of a girl on a white horse, who came riding over the hill, her hair billowing out behind her. She rode down the hill toward me and then turned and rode back up the hill.

Young George William Malcom Young Minnie Matilda Jane Humphreys

Later in September: …It was during this time, when we were staying pretty close to the herd that, as we were eating breakfast one crisp morning, a tall shadow fell across the fire. We all looked up startled, and there was Nefi standing before us. “Me come,” he said in his dignified manner. “Me come to smoke pipe with my friends.” We made him welcome, seating him by the fire and getting him food. He had traveled all the way from Pottawatomie, County, mostly by foot to talk with us and see Pa. He was, he told Pa later on, about to depart for the Happy Hunting Grounds, and he had come to bid him goodbye. He stayed around a few days riding a pony on the range bareback, Indian fashion, and we had some long talks together. I told him about my dream. "Squaw come,” he answered. I asked him about the Happy Hunting Grounds. “A man good, he in heaven all the time; he bad, he in hell all the time.” I have remembered those words and they have seemed to me as effective a sermon as I have ever heard.

Pa gave him a pony for his own, presenting it in a manner befitting a gift to a Chief and his seamy face was a pattern of pride. The next morning he and the pony were gone. I was inconsolable.

“He’ll come again,” Ma said trying to comfort me. “He didn’t look sick to me.” “No,” said Pa soberly, “he won’t come again,” and he never did.

To learn more about Nefi, Joseph Malcom’s Indian companion since his trapping days, see the Malcom Page of this web site.

November 1890 ….one afternoon, my father asked me to ride with him over on the West range. We saddled up and rode across the frozen hills until we reined up our horses by the corner stake. As we sat astride our mounts, surveying the wide winter landscape, two riders came over the nearest hill, a man riding a big red stallion and a slender girl in a dark green habit, sitting daintily on her sidesaddle. Her mount was a beautiful surefooted creature, black as coal with a white forelock. The girl sat her horse like a queen and the horse was the most beautiful animal I had ever seen. The riders came down the hill toward us then as they approached a steep flood washed gully at its foot, they veered off to the left and shortly disappeared from sight.

It was just as it had been in the dream I had long before. “Who are they?” I asked, hoping my interest would pass unnoticed. “Josh Humphreys and his daughter,” Pa replied, “She came home from College to teach the winter term at Center School (in Oto, Iowa).” We rode on, the horses’ feet beating out a tattoo as we went, but above the hoof beats, I seemed to hear Nefi’s words. “Squaw, she come,” Nefi had said.

The following narrative was written by Vincent Valentine Malcom, the eldest son of Billy and Minnie Malcom. My edits are in green print. My grandmother Minnie always referred to her husband as “Billy”. Thus the couple became commonly known as Billy and Minnie Malcom My edits are in green. Marla Hembree

"I have been asked rather often how it happened that my father met my mother. I really have no details, but I know she was riding each day to a little country school where she taught and he was riding cattle for his father in the same territory. He was a presentable young man and she was an eligible young woman in a territory where such people were not so far apart and it is hard to imagine them not meeting.

My father said the soil in Iowa was deep and rich and the grass was bluestem so thick and height that when you saw a rider coming toward you, you could not see the legs of the horse. That is why they called it a “Sea of Grass.” So in the summer of 1891, Young Will was 21 years of age, rode the sea of grass for his father and riding the same sea of grass was a young girl of 18 years who was riding from his home to the school where she taught, returning to home at night. How did they meet? Well, I don’t think they waited for a formal introduction. This was all OK for my father. Joe and Permelia had no objection. However, Josh and Emma were of a different mind. Josh thought that Will, who was earning $30 a month plus food, would not be able to support a woman and the children which would follow. Emma was not so concerned with the economics. She was concerned with the fact that her beautiful daughter after being properly educated in the classics and deportment was marrying an impertinent cowboy and thereby wasting herself."

Edited from another narrative written by Uncle Vince. Emma often bragged to her children and grandchildren of her background from “nobility”: "The girl Will courted and finally married was a woman of English descent. They had sprung from the upper class family in England, were given grants by the English King when they came to this country, were Torres and fled to Canada during the Revolution where they were again given grants of land. This applies to the maternal side (the Lakes) of Minnie’s family."

March 13, 1894: "As a matter of fact, the couple got married without a job, without prospects and with definite disapproval on the part of the wife’s parents. When he found that William could later care for his family, the father-in-law, Joshua dropped the disapproval and they became friends, but the mother-in-law, Emma was an outright enemy of William until her death, although that did not shorten her protracted visits to Minnie and Billy’s home over the years. Emma never got over her anger and continued to vent it on every occasion. If anything, her tongue grew sharper as she grew older. Will was always inclined to laugh at the old lady’s peccadilloes, but it was serious to Minnie and she would go to her bedroom and cry for hours at a time out of sight of the children.

William and Minnie stayed with the Joe and Permelia Malcom for a few months following the marriage."

It is no secret that there was a strong dislike and animosity between Emma Humphreys and George William Malcom which spilled over into their children’s and even their grand children’s lives and influenced their opinion of her. The relationship between Minnie and her mother was definitely soured after her marriage to Billy. The rift between them widened and never completely healed. No one I knew, including my mother, Maybelle Warren Malcom, liked Emma. Today, when my cousins and I discuss Emma, our feelings toward Emma still run strong or are cautious and ambivalent. The only one who spoke affectionately of her was my Aunt Fannie Maud Malcom, Emma’s first grand daughter. Vincent’s writings include a lot of bitter details concerning this stormy relationship not all of which I will include on this website. My Uncle Vincent asked Joshua at one time about Emma. Here is what he wrote. " I asked Josh about it at one time and he told me that Emma, is wife, was a good woman and when young had been beautiful but that she lacked the ability to reason and therefore had only prejudices that she had picked up during her life and continued to cherish them."

I have recently been sent a box of family history (photos, letters and etc.) from my cousin Sara, daughter of Donald Humphreys Malcom. Among them were letters written to Minnie from her mother Emma in 1937 and 1938 from Ravenscrag, Saskatchewan. They tell another tale of Emma. Open here to see a letter from Emma to Minnie.

Marla Hembree