This is a photograph of my great-grandfather( George Washington Banta, center back) and his five sons. Ance (Anderson), Jim, Louie, Ace and Vaughn. G.W. Banta was a horse trainer and trader in Voca, TX and his sons were cowboys. (They were even mentioned in an article in Old West Magazine . . . The Cowboys of Voca). Not pictured are his four daughters; Fannie, Henrietta, Ala and Pearl. Ala was my grandmother and she was a cowgirl.
My grandmother spent so much time riding and rodeoing with her brothers, her parents were convinced she would never marry and made sure she learned a trade. She was apprenticed to a seamstress and was able to make a living by sewing clothes for others. She DID marry, however, and she and her first husband moved to Safford, AZ to run cattle. My grandmother and first husband had two sons, George and Warren, but after her husband died in the flu pandemic of 1918 she moved to Globe, AZ where she sewed clothing and worked for her sister Henrietta who ran a cafe. She eventually married my grand-father, Henry Thurber, and they moved to Mesa, AZ where my mother, Mary Ruth, and her sister, Lois, were born. Henry gave up card playing when he married my grandmother and took up barbering.
Horses and ranching never left my gram's bloodstream. She continued to cook pinto beans and corn bread and soak her toast in the hamburger drippings left in the cast iron skillet. She was the only one in the family who was pleased when I took up horseback riding and she left me her silver inlaid spurs.
.JPG)
