Peter Quin Bridges

This story begins, for me at least, on a summer evening in late July, 2022. I was headed west on Highway 114, headed for Seymour. It was just before sundown, and I was in a bit of a hurry to arrive, hoping to have a look around before it got dark.

About a half mile before reaching town, I came upon a road sign, just off the highway. It was small, with the standard background color–‘Highway Green‘–and with the standard white font–‘Highway Gothic’. It’s the kind of sign that you might just ignore, especially if you’re in a hurry, except for the single word written there: “Cemetery,” along with an arrow, pointing left, up FM 1286.

Hmm. A cemetery. Maybe I should turn up there and check it out, I thought. Or maybe I should just go on into town.

What would you do?

And please don’t say ‘it depends.’ Everything depends. We know that already. Embrace the constraint of this binary choice, then choose, then ask yourself the ‘why’ of your choice. What are the motivations for why you travel–they will likely have influenced your choice on whether to go ahead as planned or make the detour. What is your level of wanderlust?

When working on this project, a lesson I’ve learned–and yet seem to keep forgetting–is that ‘being in a hurry’ just doesn’t work out so well. First, the expansive distances out here will mock your haste–and yes even if you’re driving 80+ as most do. And second, there’s just a lot of assumptions being made: you’re assuming that whatever it is that you’re headed for, in such an ‘all-fired hurry,’¹ is going to be better, more interesting, or more rewarding than what you assume you’re passing up.

I’m not much of a gambler, so for me the choice was not too difficult: cemetery.

That afternoon I had traveled the 34 miles from Olney^[1]…with a stop at the DQ there for the obligatory chocolate malt, with extra malt, please and thank you., northwest on Highway 114, through Megargel, Westover, and finally into Seymour, where I planned to stay the night.

About a half mile before reaching town, there’s a sign just off the highway, one you might overlook. It’s small but official, what traffic engineers call a ‘guidance sign’ but it’s effect on me was more like that of ‘invitation.’ In the standard color: ‘Highway Green‘ and in the standard font: ‘Highway Gothic’ it reads: “Cemetery” with an arrow pointing left, up FM 1286 (Ogden Road).

“Oddity” = “Opportunity”

What’s your reaction when you see something odd? Not threatening or dangerous, just unexpected. Like an odd-shaped cloud, for example, or the neighbor’s new dog–a breed you don’t recognize. Could also be an odd sound, or smell, or even an unexpected thought that pops into your head.

Are you the more curious type, who stops what you’re doing to learn more? Or the less curious type, who offers up a ‘Huh’ and then gets on with your day?²

It depends, I suppose, on how busy you are, how important or interesting that particular oddity is for you. For this project, it’s proven useful to remind myself that in general, people–and certainly not ‘things’–don’t set out intentionally, to act or to be ‘odd.’ The implication is that whenever I experience something as odd, it’s often me: I’m the odd man out. In other words, it’s less their oddity, and more my non-understanding.

And if you’re willing to put yourself into this mindset, on the way from Dallas to Lubbock, or anywhere, really, then every oddity is also an opportunity, at the very least (although not an obligation), to learn more about people and places and things before you that, by definition, you don’t (yet) understand.

Century-old headstones shaped like tree trunks

So would it strike you as odd, as it certainly did me, to find among a perfectly ‘normal’ cemetery near Seymour, a headstone, ornately carved into the shaped of a tree trunk, with leaves, axes, mauls, a dove, a ‘footstone’ with the initials of the deceased, and a Latin (?) inscription “dum tacet clamat” adding further to the mystery?

‘Odd’ would be an understatement of my initial reaction to this monument. With it’s unique and ornate engravings, and having endured more than a hundred years of relentless Texas sun, it remained upright and strong. I had never seen anything like it.

Unbeknownst to me at the time however, is that despite its striking features, it is not rare. Those who know, will immediately recognize the headstone as belonging to the grave of a former member of the Woodmen of the World (WOW), one of the numerous fraternal organizations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although estimates vary, there may be more than 45,000 similar WOW headstones (so-called ‘treestones’) nationwide, mostly in the midwestern and southern states.

During the “Golden Age of Fraternalism” in the US, from 1870-1910, as many as 10.6 million were enrolled in fraternal organization and their auxiliary organizations for women and youth³ including Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and WOW.

Historian David Beito estimates that the high point for WOW enrollment was around 1 million, in 1910. That means that as many as 30% of American adult men were member of one or more such organizations.⁴

It’s probably a safe claim to make that no other institution or group of institutions has approached this level of participation, and probably never will, due to the sheer number of volunteer organizations available today. Enrollment percents of adult American males today, for example, include: the Catholic Church–15-20%;⁵ labor unions: 6-7%;⁶ military (active duty): less than 1%.

Local and regional WOW organizations were referred to as Camps, and there were dozens around the state in the early 1900s. The 1911 WOW convention at the Chautauqua in Mineral Wells (below) drew ‘several thousand’ participants.⁷

One story’s end is another’s beginning

The story of Peter Quin Bridges, at least the story of ‘his earthly life’ as my Mom would have put it, comes to an end on April 27, 1902, at Goree, Texas, as recorded on his ornate marker above. My story about Mr. Bridges, picks up where his left off, about one hundred and twenty years later, on July 22nd, 2022, when I happened upon his grave at the Masonic Cemetery near Seymour.

Peter Quin Bridges

Thanks to genealogical research by family members and other contributors, we know that Mr. Bridges was born on October 11th, 1853. Thanks to these same contributors and just a few minutes of sleuthing the interwebs by yours truly, we also know that he was born to Peter Quin Sr., and his father’s brother, whose father was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, moved to the new world as a youngster, and fought in the American revolutionary war at 26, survived that and moved to MS. And just like that, the coulple hundred years separating all these events seems not so long at all. Like a very long straight rod, when viewed end on, looks short.

And we know this chapter, this link in the chain, comes to and in on Goree, TX, about 19 miles to the southeast, where today you can find “Cranky Boys Liquidators”

1. The ‘all-fired’ portion of ‘all-fired hurry,’ according to the OED, is an ‘intensifier’ of whatever follows–in this case: ‘hurry.’ All-fired is an American colloquialism, dates to about 1829, and indicates “extremely” or “completely.” It’s also a euphemism for “hell-fired”–a way to express intensity without profanity, what linguists call “minced oath”–a cleaned-up version of stronger language that maintains the expressive punch while staying socially acceptable. More here. ↩︎
2. I don’t recall where or from whom I heard it, but one of my favorite jokes is: Doctors have discovered a cure for apathy. The problem is that those who are afflicted by it simply aren’t interested. ↩︎
3. Stevens, Albert Clark, ed. The Cyclopaedia of Fraternities. Gale Research Company, 1907. ↩︎
4. Beito, David T. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ↩︎
5. Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study (2020). ↩︎
6. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Membership Annual Report (2023). ↩︎
7. [The Woodmen of the World Convention at the Chautauqua], photograph, 1911; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39214/), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boyce Ditto Public Library. ↩︎