Wedding Wednesday – Jackson/Stewart

Ralph Stewart & Besse J. Jackson, married December 19, 1906 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“In 1906 a young man [Ralph Stewart], heeding the Railroads’ encouragement to populate the West and Government’s promise of homesteads, loaded all of his possessions – wagon, buggy, household goods, teams, cow feed, water and farm implements – into an “immigrant” railroad car in which he rode as caretaker for the stock, and left Oklahoma for his destination, Estancia, then in New Mexico Territory.

In December his Uncle, accompanied by his fiancée [Besse J. Jackson] from Newkirk, arrived by train in Santa Fe where the young couple were married.  After living a year northeast of Estancia they moved northwest of Mountainair and filed on a homestead near some old friends from Newkirk, Oklahoma.”

~ portion of transcript written by my maternal grandmother, Letha Rae Stewart Stephens on her memories of her parents.