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Illuminations, Epiphanies, & Reflections
Family Trees
The
Hanks
Edith Elizabeth Hank Wright, 1887-1978
Edith Elizabeth Hank was born in Ogden, Utah in 1887, the youngest
child of Caleb R. Hank and America Brown. Her father, Caleb, had
settled in Ogden after owning ranches in Idaho and Nevada, however at
the age of 62, he once more felt the urge to return to the range.
So in 1898, the family left city-life in Ogden and traveled 385 miles
northeast to start a horse ranch near Thermopolis, Wyoming.
 They left Ogden on the Fourth of July in
1898 and spent the next thirty
days on the road with two freight wagons, one buggy, and two cows. The
trip began inauspiciously as not even twenty miles from Ogden, a hired
driver allowed one of the wagons to drift off a canyon road near
Huntsville, Utah, and it overturned in a ditch. Although the wagon
wasn't severely damaged, furniture and provision were scattered, and
everything was covered with strawberry jam and honey that had spilled
from huge earthenware jars. Luckily, Caleb had just purchased a
"new-fangled" jack, similar to an automobile jack of today. Using
it, the family was able to right the wagon, make repairs, repack, and
return on their journey within five days. After the accident,
Caleb sent the driver packing, and America drove that wagon the rest of
the way.
 Upon their
arrival, the family found that there were no houses
available to rent or purchase, so they temporarily made their home in a
tent on the east side of the Big Horn River, and in time, they
moved into a large house in town. Although
refrigeration was non-existent, the Hanks did have fresh beef on a
regular basis from a small herd that they kept at their horse
ranch. The
staple meat of their diet, however, was sage chicken, also known a
sage hen or sage grouse. The birds were everywhere, in flocks so
dense that they
could be hunted without rifles. A person would walk through a
grassy
field and as hundreds of the birds would begin
to fly, four or five
could be knocked down with one swing of a long stick.
While the Hanks spent part of their summers at their ranch about twenty
miles to the southeast, most of the time they lived in town, where Edith
attended school. Initially, the school only went up only to the
fifth
grade, but once Caleb's eldest daughter finished high school in Utah,
she was pressed into service as a second teacher for grades six through
eight. The school, itself, was a one-room frame building with
homemade
desks that seated two and was heated with a coal burning stove.
Since there was no high school in Thermopolis at that time, Edith
returned to Ogden for grades nine through twelve, returning home in the
summers. After graduating she worked for the only lawyer in town,
C.W. Axtell from New York and then at the bank.
 In 1913, Edith
met and married Walter S. Wright, a surveyor/engineer working for the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. At the time, Wright was
engaged in laying the final track connection between Casper, Wyoming
and Billings, Montana. The CB&Q route passed through the Wind
River Canyon, a site of exceptionally tough, Precambrian, igneous
rock. The Wind River cut such a narrow slice through this rock,
that Wright was unable to parallel its banks with his tracks, and
it took extensive drilling and blasting over several years to create
usable tunnels and roadbeds.
During this time,
Walter and Edith, were able to acquire a small two-room cabin in
Wind River Canyon where they
lived during the work. In time,
Wright was re-stationed at Thermopolis and then at Casper,
Wyoming.
In Casper, Edith and Walter lived in converted boxcars
that the railroad provided as homes for its workers. While in
Casper, the Wright's two daughters, Dorothy and Elizabeth, were
born. Sometime in 1919, Walter disappeared.
Although nobody is sure where he went or why he left, Edith always said
she figured that he decided "He just didn't like us anymore, and he
left."
So,
Edith and her daughters returned to Thermopolis from Casper where,
after spending some time living with Edith's mother, America, they
moved into a large house at the outskirts of town that had once been
owned as investment property by the family. Edith returned to her
job at the bank and then became a county clerk and eventually, the
deputy treasurer. In the late 1920s, she ran for the office of of
County Treasurer and won the election. Following her term of
office, Edith opened an abstract title company in Thermopolis until she
died in 1978.
Edith's youngest daughter, Elizabeth, who is my wife's mother, left
Thermopolis during World War II and worked for the federal government
in Washington. There she met and married a sailor, Edward L.
Miller, who remained on active duty following the war's
conclusion. Edward received a commendation from Admiral Nimitz
for his service aboard the USS Balboa
for his maintenance and operation of the boat's fire control system
that was instrumental sinking ten Japanese ships that totaled over
20,000 tons.
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