ONE
NIGHT
IN A BAD
INN
A True Story by
Christy Leskovar

Copyright © 2006 Christy Leskovar

APART
ONE
The Forsyth Episode

CHAPTER ONE

It happened during the first week of March 1913. Grandma was eleven years old at the time. She and her mother and brothers and sister were living in Forsyth, a small railroad and ranching town on the banks of the Yellowstone in Rosebud County, Montana. Her father, Arthur Hughes, still lived on the ranch, the land they had homesteaded eight miles west of town. On Tuesday of that week, Arthur hitched the horses to the milkwagon and drove into town. He stayed the night at the family home in Forsyth and returned to the ranch the next day. Before he left, he told Tom, their hired man, to come out on Saturday and help him with the fence. He said he’d be back in a few days with a load of hay for the cow.
The next was a normal day. Grandma and her brothers attended school. Her mother, Sarah, went to work at the Northern Pacific lunch counter. That evening Sarah and Tom played cassino until Tom went to bed. Sarah stayed up later and finished her mending by the light of the fire. Then she went to bed. It was after one o’clock.
Then on Friday, as they did every morning, ranchers across the valley pushed back their curtains and looked out at the day to see what Mother Nature had delivered during the night. In her fickleness, she had already brought snow, rain, and sleet that week. Today—nothing. It was clear. But as one of those ranchers peered across the prairie, where yesterday he had seen a house, today he saw a blackened patch of rubble.
Sheriff Moses went out to investigate. That’s when he found the body and the rumors started.

The man who lived in that burned down ranch house was my great-grandfather Arthur William Frederick Hughes. He was born at sea on March 16, 1871, aboard a clipper ship sailing across the South Pacific from Australia to Wales, the first child born to William and Mary Hughes, the former Mary Price. It must have been a fright-filled labor and delivery for Mary, her first child and born on a ship at sea no less. Why and for how long William and Mary were in Australia, I don’t know.
Once in Wales, they settled in a house on Cross Lane in or near Llandovery, a quaint farming village on the northwestern edge of the Brecon Beacons in South Wales. It was a verdant, damp land of rolling hills and narrow valleys wrapped in perennial mist, lending an air of mystery to the place and perhaps providing fodder for all those legends and superstitions, of which there were many. Whether you cotton to such things and are convinced that bad luck is sure to come to those who fail to obey the decrees of superstition, or whether you dismiss all that and simply attribute life’s misfortunes to life’s misfortunes, Arthur’s started very early in life.
By the time he was five years old, Arthur had three younger siblings. His mother had her hands full, so she sent him over the hill to live with his grandparents. He wasn’t there long, maybe a year or two, when his grandparents died. For some reason, Arthur didn’t go back over the hill to live with his parents; instead, he went, or was taken, to the dreaded workhouse, the paupers’ refuge, said to be awful by design so as to discourage anyone from such a fate. The workhouse was to be no better than a laborer’s dwelling: if no smoke came from the working man’s chimney in the dead of winter neither should it from the workhouse. The old, the orphaned, the insane and infirm, the feeble-minded, all of the destitute lodged at the workhouse, as well as vagrants and some able-bodied poor. Some workhouses had crude beds pushed tightly together; in others, the sleeping space was simply an open area filled with straw surrounded by a curb or a wooden sleeping platform, not one for each person mind you, a community sleeping area, the only separation being of men and women.
Children such as Arthur attended school either within the workhouse or at the town school, and if he went to school in town, he walked there garbed in formless workhouse attire to serve as a constant reminder of his wretched station.
Whether these children should learn to read and write was a subject of debate in nineteenth century Britain. Were the poor to be educated, they might rise up as the rabble had in France, argued one side. It will only lead to rick burning. Why should workhouse children go to school when most laborers’ children do not? Education would give workhouse children an advantage—it wouldn’t be fair. Educate those children so they won’t remain burdens as adults, argued the other side. Teach workhouse children only to read, not to write, came back as compromise. The countervailing argument, this from the Poor Law commissioners, was: children who learn to read should also learn to write. The debate ended in 1870 with compulsory education.
Arthur’s mother learned to write. I don’t know whether his father did. Of all the women in our story of her generation, Mary Hughes is the only one who learned how to write. I don’t know about most of the men.
When Arthur was around ten years old, the workhouse apprenticed him to a family named Rees who employed him as a farm servant. He lived on their farm. At some point, Arthur was sent to a paupers’ school for boys which was in another part of Wales. What was unusual about this school, for Wales at the time, was that it was a Catholic institution. There Arthur Hughes learned to read and write in English and Welsh, and he learned to be a stonemason and bricklayer. He was baptized a Catholic, though whether that was before or while he lodged at the school, I don’t know. When he left the school, probably as a young teenager, he migrated to the coal-rich Rhondda Valley, a place he was certain to find work.
Around age twenty, Arthur succumbed to the lure of the New World. He secured a job caring for the children of a large family readying to make the passage. His pay for looking after the children during the voyage was his fare. They landed at Quebec on June 21, 1891. That October, Arthur entered the United States through Niagara and made his way to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Wilkes-Barre was a major town in eastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal mining region. Coal fueled the economy in the nineteenth century and demand for it was great. Though it was found in many places throughout the country, anthracite coal was not; eastern Pennsylvania was the only place it was mined in the United States. Anthracite, also called stone coal, was particularly valuable because it burns cleaner and more efficiently than the more abundant bituminous (soft) coal. The Pennsylvania coal companies recruited Welsh coal miners because they were skilled at mining anthracite in Wales. Consequently, when Arthur arrived, Wilkes-Barre and its environs were full of Welsh people. It was the most Welsh town in America. Arthur easily found work as a stonemason.
By now, Arthur had grown into an attractive young man, his face adorned with a long, drooping, dark brown mustache, as was the fashion of the day. His blue eyes exuded youthful cockiness which deepened into confidence as his reputation as an accomplished craftsman grew.
After three years in Wilkes-Barre, Arthur decided to become an American citizen. His decision to set down roots was no doubt influenced by the financial opportunity the New World afforded him; however, he may have been moved not only by his head, but also his heart, and further enticed to stay by his friends the Thomases, more specifically, by their daughter Sarah.
The father, William Thomas, was born December 15, 1846, in Llantwit Major, a small, whitewashed town of narrow, meandering streets near the mouth of the River Severn in the very south of Wales. When grown, William migrated to the prosperous coal fields of South Wales. There the sometimes bartender, sometimes bricklayer, sometimes coal miner met Ann Price Davies. Ann, called Nancy, was the daughter of a mine superintendent and, in that class-conscious world, a giant step above William’s station. Apparently this did not matter to Ann, for she married William anyway. Ann’s father used his influence with the mining company to be sure his son-in-law advanced, and in time he did.
Ann and William first lived in Cymbach Aberdare, a place where it was said the people learned “to drink beer like water.” Later they moved further south to Trebanog near Llantrisant, in the Rhondda Valley.
Babies came quickly: first Thomas, named for William’s father, then Isaak, named for Ann’s father, and on January 20, 1875, Sarah was born. She was named for Ann’s mother. When Ann went to town to register Sarah’s birth and was asked to sign the registry, she marked her X.
Though babies still came every sixteen months or so after Sarah—ten in all though only six would live to adulthood—they were all boys for a long time. For eight years, Sarah was the only girl, and she was her father’s pet. She was also his favorite companion. When William came home from work, he would take her by the hand, and the two walked up the road to the nearest tavern. Little Sarah would sit by his side, and when he had a drink, she had a drink, of the same.
One theory is that the Thomas family’s immigration to America was at Ann’s behest. Ann Thomas was determined to raise a genteel lady in Sarah, but that was no easy task. She found her daughter to be a difficult, headstrong girl. The fact that the child was often intoxicated did not help matters. The family would go to America leaving Sarah behind in finishing school. This would separate William from Sarah, thereby eliminating Sarah’s opportunities to drink. After several years, the school would deliver a refined, tempered, young lady back to her mother. That was the plan.
William was the first to immigrate. He arrived in December of 1886. Ann joined him in Wilkes-Barre soon after bringing the three youngest children with her: Simeon, Joseph, and Mary Ann, ages nine, seven, and three. Eleven-year-old Sarah stayed behind in Wales to finish her schooling, as did her elder brothers, Thomas and Isaak, ages fifteen and thirteen. Sarah attended school in or near Brynmawr, so possibly that’s where the family was living when they left.
While Sarah and her brothers continued their schooling in Wales, Ann and William and the younger three children settled into the middle strata of Pennsylvania’s coal mining world.
Up, up, up at the top of this world were the coal barons. They owned the mines, were American born, lived in stone mansions and attended stone churches along Franklin Street. They were Episcopalians and Presbyterians.
Far below the coal barons, though far above the work-a-day miners, were the mine bosses of which William Thomas was one. They were mine superintendents, assistant superintendents, fire bosses, and so on. Many were Welsh. There was a special skill to undercutting anthracite with picks which the Welsh knew how to do since they mined anthracite in Wales. The American coal barons hired Welshmen to train their workforce; hence, the Welsh filled out the mine management ranks. They were Calvinist Methodists or Welsh Presbyterians which are two names for the same sect, one with a Presbyterian structure and Methodist theology. The Thomas family attended the Welsh Presbyterian Church in Wilkes-Barre, known as the big white church on the corner to its members and as the mine bosses’ church to those who worked for its faithful. As late as the 1950s, services were held in Welsh.
Still well below in the economic strata were the miners who loosed the coal from the earth, carted it above ground, and sent it down the breakers. Many were immigrants from Poland, Ireland, Italy—generally Catholics—and also from Cornwall, Wales, and other European lands. The coal barons had their churches, the mine bosses had their church, and the miners had theirs. They were three distinct and separate worlds.
A year after Ann and William settled in Wilkes-Barre, Ann gave birth to another son, William George. At that time, it was the fate of many little boys in coal country to go to work at the colliery as soon as they were able. When the miners dug or blasted the coal loose from the earth, rock and slate came with it, and after it was carted above ground, these had to be removed. Boys as young as eight did this dirty work. They sat in a perennial cloud of coal dust plucking slate and rock from the coal as it bounced down the breakers. These children labored ten hours a day, six days a week, but this would not be the fate of William Thomas’s sons. They would enter the workforce only after they finished their schooling. William George would not be a breaker boy, he would be a “scholar.” In fact, as the rest of the family immigrated, and the children grew up, and Sarah’s brothers went to work in Wilkes-Barre, for the most part, they did not work in the coal mines. Her sister, Mary Ann, became a teacher.
Two and a half years after he immigrated, William Thomas made his declaration of intention to become an American citizen. The next year sons Isaak and Thomas joined the family in Wilkes-Barre. The last to immigrate was Sarah, when she was around sixteen or seventeen years old. Arthur may have brought Sarah to America for the Thomases; he knew them in Wales. He and Sarah came to this country around the same time, though I don’t know the exact date Sarah immigrated. As a child, she had urged Arthur to join her family when they went to America. “My father will get a job for you,” she assured him, so possibly it was not the lure of the New World but the lure of Sarah Thomas that brought Arthur Hughes to America.
As for Sarah’s sojourn at the finishing school, the school did its job, at least in part. When Sarah stepped off that train in Wilkes-Barre, Ann Thomas greeted a poised, impeccable in appearance, young woman who practiced social graces with the confidence of a well-bred lady—when she wanted to. Not the school, nor Ann, nor anybody else could suppress Sarah’s wild nature. Sarah would not be tamed because she did not want to be. As unyielding as the most belligerent stallion, her will would not be bent by anyone.
“I told you not to drive that horse at top speed!” Ann Thomas scolded, finger wagging, every time Sarah returned after racing off like a Fury in the sulky through the busy streets of Wilkes-Barre. Wherever Sarah was going, she wanted to go fast. The sulky at top speed was her preferred mode of transportation, hardly a lady-like posture for a Victorian woman whose full skirts were to be always to the ground, never revealing a bit of—dare I say it—leg. However, when bedecked in her finest hunter green gown, hat, and cape, Sarah left the sulky behind and proudly drove the buggy led by her matched team of a mare and gelding. The jet black horses were outfitted as regally as their driver with long plumes affixed to their halters. Altogether the ensemble made a smashing appearance.
It was in Wilkes-Barre that Arthur began to court Sarah. They first met when he worked for the Thomases as their hired man in South Wales. Sarah was a rambunctious child then who lingered near the stables whenever he was working. Now she was a comely young woman, full of gaiety and fun. She was also a cultivated woman; as an accomplished vocalist, she had given her own concert. Arthur was enchanted, so much so that he may have fallen in love with a fictitious woman, succumbing to “the first mistaken impulse” of an “undisciplined heart” as Dickens put it, or did he delude himself into thinking she’d settle down once firmly ensconced in marriage and motherhood.
By this time, the Thomas family had lived for several years in a comfortable three-story home on the edge of town across the street from the Empire Mine. It was to this house that Arthur Hughes came to call to ask William for Sarah’s hand. William said yes, Arthur could marry his daughter, and they were married on August 4, 1897, in the Thomas family home, the pastor of the Welsh Presbyterian Church presiding. Arthur was twenty-six and Sarah was twenty-two. They settled in a house on Northampton Street, a few blocks from the Thomases. Their first child was born ten months later on June 11,1898. Sarah named him William George after her little brother who died of pneumonia the year before. She dutifully noted the details of her son’s birth in the family Bible: it was on a Saturday at five o’clock in the morning.
Their second child, Hector Osiris Dundonald Warren, was born eighteen months later on December 9, 1899. He also arrived quite early in the morning. Sarah named him after a military commander who carried all or some of those names.
Their third child was my grandmother Aila Mae, born August 21, 1901. She arrived at the very convenient hour of four o’clock in the afternoon—even in the womb, she was considerate. As an adult, she would take great pains never to inconvenience anyone. Her name had three syllables beginning with a hard A and hard I and was pronounced A (as in say)–EYE–la. Sarah said she named her after an Armenian schoolmate in Wales. Another time she said she read the name in a book. Aila was the third child and first daughter born to the third child and first daughter. Sarah was very superstitious and she no doubt had a superstition about that.
One month after Aila was born, she and Hector and Bill were christened at the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre.
Sarah’s brother Isaak was also married, and he and his wife, Ella, had a two-year-old daughter named Catherine; however, Grandma never spoke of this little cousin which makes me think the Hugheses and Thomases didn’t see much of them. She did mention Uncle Ike, but never Aunt Ella or cousin Catherine. Ella was born and raised in Pennsylvania and no doubt had lots of family around to occupy her time, but she was also Irish, and as such, it’s a very good chance she was a practicing Catholic, meaning she and Ike would have been married in the Catholic church and their daughter baptized Catholic. To Sarah, this was anathema.
Since little Catherine wasn’t in their lives, when Aila came along she was the first baby girl in a long time that the Thomases had all to themselves, there being no pesky Hughes in-laws around to compete for her affection, and they took full advantage of the situation. As she said herself, “I got more than my share of the good things of life.”
To put it mildly, they doted on her, and who wouldn’t want to. She was adorable. She was also willful—a willfulness rightly directed that one day would serve her well. She never appeared idle, always alert and on the verge of something, ready to pounce or run or play. She inherited her mother’s dark hair and dark eyes, and she was a beauty. She wore pretty clothes, had a nurse to care for her and lots of uncles to coddle her, and coddle her they did. Her favorite was tall, red-haired Uncle Tom, Sarah’s eldest brother. Uncle Tom would come to the house, stand at the gate, and whistle. As soon as she heard him, Aila would burst out the door and scamper down the steps, shoes in hand, her socks black with coal dust. Tom would bend down and slip her tiny shoes onto her tiny feet. Then he would straighten and say, “Come along, Princess,” and Aila would stretch up her arm, he’d take her by the hand, and they walked, rather Tom walked while Aila pranced, to the corner store where Tom bought a cigar for himself and a piece of candy for Aila.
Even more wonderful to Aila than Uncle Tom was her precious grandmother Ann Thomas. By the time Aila was old enough to remember, Ann was as round as she was tall, four feet ten, due to dropsy, but that did not slow her down one bit. Out she went and often. Two men carried her on a chair to and from the buggy. Ann knew practically everyone in the Heights, their Welsh neighborhood. She was a formidable woman who commanded authority. When she threw an order from the porch, those sons minded, as did everybody save Sarah. As talented and hard working as Arthur Hughes was, his ascent to foremanship was hastened by Ann Thomas’s shear force of personality.
From the time Aila took her first steps, Ann was teaching and molding her to be a proper little lady. Aila was only too happy to emulate her grandmother.
“Come along, little gal,” Ann would say whenever she readied Aila to go with her for a ride in the buggy. And when not going somewhere with her grandmother, one of Aila’s uncles was scooping her up and lifting her onto his shoulders and taking her for a walk, or he was taking her for a ride on his horse, he’d prop her in front and away they’d go. The entire extended family picnicked together on the banks of the Susquehanna. Music was ever present, somebody singing or playing an instrument. Aila’s world was filled with her grandmother, her uncles, and music. It’s my impression that she was a spectator in her mother’s life.
When Aila was around three years old, Arthur moved the family across the river to a little hamlet called Dallas, and while living there, on September 13, 1904, Sarah delivered a baby boy. They named him Arthur Franklin and called him Archie.
Then one day a few months later, Arthur up and announced that he was moving his family again, this time even further west—all the way to Montana! It might as well been the moon. Ann Thomas was aghast. How could he even think of taking her precious granddaughter off to that wild uncivilized place. She insisted that Arthur leave Aila behind with her. He wouldn’t hear of it.
It was a sad parting for many reasons. Ann probably knew that she and her little granddaughter would never see each other again, and they didn’t. Two days before Thanksgiving the following year, Ann Thomas died.