Wyoming: The Cowboy State of Pioneers and Innovators with Historian Kylie McCormick

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Welcome to Winds of Change, brought to you by Wyoming humanities. I am your host, Emy Digrappa. Winds of Change is a unique focus on the people, the places, and the history of Wyoming. Please sign up for our newsletter by clicking on the link in the description and learn more about us at thinky thinkwy.org dot. And today, my special guest is Kylie McCormick.         

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Kylie is a historian. She was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming, and she dedicates herself to education and Wyoming history. And currently she works as an assistant editor for wyohistory.org dot. And I think that’s pretty exciting. And plus, Kylie gives public presentations on Wyoming history, so I can’t wait to talk with her about her journey and her passion.         

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Thanks, Kylie. You bet. Thank you so much for having me, Emy. I’m delighted to share some great stories from Wyoming history with you today. I noticed you’ve done a lot of traveling, so you left Casper, and you went and studied in Virginia, Berlin, London, and Nebraska.         

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So tell me, what took you to all those places? Yes, definitely. So I was really interested in writing and history, and I found a great university in Virginia called Hollins University. It’s a small all women’s school, and it was just a really great fit for me. I loved it a lot, and I grew so much while I was there and had my first study abroad experiences.         

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The first one was in Berlin, Germany, which was just a really incredible journey to make it there. That was for a short term that we had in the month of January. So I was just there for a couple of weeks, and then I also studied abroad in London, wherever I was there for an entire semester. And that was also just great to get a different perspective on the world and meet all sorts of different people. And then I went on to get my master’s degree at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.         

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So a little bit closer to home. So is that where you were doing your thesis on the Jewish people who had come and come to the United States and how they came and why they came? That’s right. So I was really focusing in on. Really, I was inspired because of my undergraduate thesis.         

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I had written about slavery and the second great awakening and how that religious movement impacted the lives of the enslaved. And so I would look at Sunday in particular as a window to see what was going on plantations, and it was a very Christian sort of perspective on things. And my advisor, she asked me, because I’m Jewish, she said, well, have you ever thought about Jewish slaveholders? And it had honestly never occurred to me that there were Jewish slaveholders in the United States. And so that just sort of stuck in the back of my mind.         

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And then when I went on to get my master’s degree, I knew that was something that I wanted to know more about. And so I was looking for a Jewish community in the south and found the third oldest congregation in the United States was established in Savannah, Georgia. And so I really focused in on that community, and in particular, one of the families there in Savannah, Georgia, to see how Judaism and slavery were intertwined in those early colonial days all the way up to the American revolution. Oh, wow. That must have been so interesting.         

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Was that was the family that you were interviewing, were they open with you? Well, this was actually. Yes, this was a new experience for me because I had never, you know, my research was always so old and everything that I had never really experienced meeting a descendant of the people who I was researching. And when I went to Savannah to do my research, I was really fortunate to meet several descendants of the first Jewish people who arrived in the 1740s. And it was incredible.         

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Some of them were definitely open and curious and wanted to know the story and wanted the truth and everything else to be out. And some of the older generation said, oh, no, no, no, my ancestor would never. Even when I showed them some evidence of, like, yes, they did. And just sort of a, no, they wouldn’t participate in that. They were revolutionary war heroes.         

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But I think it’s important when we talk about history that we realize that we’re talking about human beings, and they have really good stories to tell, and they also have some really awful things and awful stories to tell also. So don’t put anybody on a pedestal. I say, no. That’s a very good motto when you’re studying history. Don’t put anybody on a pedestal.         

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So that leads me to talk about Spark, because Spark is our new Smithsonian exhibit, and we’re talking about places of innovation. And so I want to talk to you about what you’ve learned and studied and what you can share with us about rural places and innovation. Yes. I had a lot of fun researching this. A wonderful librarian in, Tamara, she hired me to put together a presentation for their I opening of their.         

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Of the Spark, the Places of Innovation Smithsonian Exhibit. And I just had so much fun researching Wyoming and thinking about it as. As this place of inventors and where people have to adapt to the environment and come up with new, new solutions to make things work. And I think that being in a rural area, it really encourages you to think outside of the box, and you only have so many tools available to you, so you won’t really want to make things work. I think there’s a great museum outside of Gehring, Nebraska, that talks about, oh, just the west and rural areas.         

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And I learned something that I had never known before about ranchers when the telephone was first being invented, that they actually used their barbed wire fences to create party lines between the ranches. So that way, even miles away, they could contact and call each other on the phone and have just sort of this party line where they could all talk using that barbed wire. And I think how unique that is and how innovative you have to be. Like, you have to have a really creative mind to know, hey, here’s this new technology that’s not reached me yet, and I’m not benefiting from it, but I can adapt it and make it something that is going to be really useful to me today. That is so cool.         

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I love that. I actually think we do that all the time in Wyoming. I think so, too. I found out some interesting things about Wyoming when I was looking at this. I thought, well, let’s look at the patents, because I knew I could adapt my own personal research on women’s suffrage in Wyoming to this topic very easily, because talk about some political innovation there, that we’re the first to have a constitution with an equality clause in it recognizing women’s right to vote, as well as just protecting citizenship rights, regardless of your gender, sex, your race, your religion, that everybody has citizenship in Wyoming.         

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And that’s really quite remarkable for a constitution and the reason why our state Capitol is the, on the national historic landmarks. But I knew, I thought, well, that’s, that’s very philosophical. And let’s, let’s think about something a little bit more, more tangible. And so I started looking at the patents and the Wyoming State Library. They just have such an incredible digital suite of databases, and one of them is on Wyoming inventors, where you can actually look through all of the patents that have been filed in Wyoming, and there’s been over 4000 of them filed in our state, which is really incredible.         

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And when it comes to a patent, you know, we’re talking about a document that protects your intellectual property of an idea that you have for an invention in exchange for a description of what that invention is. And it costs a lot of money to file for one, actually, and a lot of motivation to be able to get one done. And usually in most places in most states, patents have sort of a sponsor or an assignee where a company is the one who’s paying those fees. And Wyoming, we’re incredible, where most of our patents, according to the state library, 55.5% of the patents filed in Wyoming are filed by individuals without an assignee. And so it’s just somebody who has an idea and they have the motivation and the means to actually follow through and get a patent filed.         

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That is pretty cool to think about that, especially the amount of work it takes to get that done. Oh, yeah. Was that one of your favorite things that you discovered about Wyoming when you were doing this research? Well, I had a lot of fun finding the different people who filed for patents, and I went through some of the firsts, which there’s just great stories to be had for most of these people, and fortunately, some of them, they’re just absolutely impossible to find. Like George C.         

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Choate. He’s the first one to file a patent in the territory of Wyoming. And it was for a shovel handle that made the shovel basically like a multi use tool. I couldn’t find anything about him at all. But meanwhile, the man who filed a patent just the year before we became a territory in what would become Wyoming, Anson Mills, for a cartridge belt.         

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He just had a really incredible career in the military. He wrote a great autobiography and has just so many wonderful stories to tell about the development of that invention and the way that he made a small, independent fortune developing the cartridge belt into what we use today, which is really incredible. So some really great stories to be had and some mysteries that arose as well. I love that. That is so fun.         

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Well, you’ve uncovered your own mystery, because I remember when I first started talking to you and you were talking to me about the first flag and how you did a lot of research. And it’s the first Wyoming flag, right? Or is it the first us flag? Oh, I’ve done a lot of research on the development of the Wyoming state flag and the designer Verna Keays. Keys.         

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Oh, yeah, that’s right. And it was such a great conversation. So what have you discovered and learned about that? Well, there’s always more to learn, which is always surprising to me. I’ve been.         

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That is, the presentation I started my business with back in 2019 was on the Wyoming state flag. And I think I add something to that presentation every year. Last year, I was able to find some of the first honorary flags that were given. One is to Senator WW Daley. That’s at the Carbon County museum.         

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Another was given to Robert Carey, who was the incoming governor, and another was to the governor who had signed the bill into law, Governor Kendrick. And at that point, he was Senator Kendrick serving in the US Senate? And I was wondering, I thought, well, where is Senator Kendrick’s flag? And I was able to track it down and find it. It’s at the American Heritage center with its original flagpole, which is really cool.         

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And so we were able to find some of those flags. And then, I know in 1927, in the state of Wyoming, they had gifted Verna Key or not. In 1927, they bought some flags from Verna Keays. And then in 1945, they decided to gift her some of these flags. But that had to be a special law that they wrote because of the way that passing state property to private citizens works in Wyoming.         

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And so they wrote this law to gift her some of her own flags. And they put an odd stipulation on it that it could only be displayed in her home and her heirs homes and never otherwise displayed. And it’s possible that she placed two of these flags in her two homes in Wyoming, one in Buffalo, Wyoming, and at the Jim Gatchel Memorial Museum, a really wonderful facility, and another at the Natrona County Library, which is also just a great community space. And they’ve been illegally on display for maybe about 50 years or so. And fortunately, I was able to share my research with one of my senators here in Casper, and he was able to get that law amended that said, unless she decides to donate these flags to a Wyoming facility like the Jim Gatchel or the Natrona county.         

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And so, fortunately, these flags are now legally on display, if they are those flags from 1927. So the flags that Verna Keays designed is different than the one we use right now, or is it the same flag? It is a little bit different. Her original design that was signed into law in 1917. And what the lawmakers would have seen if they saw an image of that flag, it had the bison facing away from the flag staff.         

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And the person who wrote the technical description of that law is another woman who I’ve done a lot of research on, Doctor Grace Raymond Heberd, who was a prolific professor at the University of Wyoming, who had quite a bit of power, especially in 1917, across the state. She was very well respected and a very dominant personality. And she. I don’t know if it was a personal thing or if there were others in the daughters of the American Revolution, they’re the ones who hosted the contest for this, for the state flag. But it’s very clear that Doctor Hebert had a preference for the bison to face towards the Flagstaff with his nose into the wind.         

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And so when she wrote the technical description for that law, she wrote it without any mention of which direction the bison faces. And then when she had the first flags made in 1918 to be given to Senator Daley and Governor Kendrick, the bison faced the Flagstaff, and her way became the dominant way that we see the flag in Wyoming. Verna, I think she did sell some flags as she originally designed them. And what’s very interesting to me is that both of these are legal Wyoming state flags, that it’s really your preference. Which direction do you want your bison to face, really?         

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I think that’s a little known fact, actually, don’t you? I think so, yes. But I hope it stays that way. That’s something I think is really, really great and unique to Wyoming to have a flag that can be flown either way. And I love Verna.         

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She came up with symbolism for both ways, that originally, the bison facing away from the flagstaff symbolized freedom, that it was the bison surveying over the plains that he once roamed freely over. And years later, when she’s coming to terms with the fact that her design’s been changed and everything else, there’s a letter exchanged with a friend that sort of implies that she’s saying that the bison facing towards the staff means that it symbolizes those tough, stubborn Wyoming knights who are going to face any storm head on. And so whichever symbolism speaks the most deeply to you, you know, fly your flag in that direction, I say, yeah. That is so fun to think about. And what she must have.         

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You know, I love her first rendition, actually. I think that’s really beautiful. But how did this become your passion and journey? I mean, what made you want to start doing this research on the Wyoming plague? Well, I had graduated with my master’s degree in history, and I came back home to Wyoming in quite poor health.         

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I struggle with some chronic kidney stones and some other health issues. And so I took a part time job as a substitute teacher, which I really loved. Working with the kids and being in the school is. Every day is different, and you really feel like you’re helping, helping some of these kids out. And it was great to bring some of this knowledge that I had gained all over the world and bring it back home to Casper.         

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But I was used to researching things and finding my own discoveries, and I just got that itch. And so one day, I was in the Natrona county library and looking for something, and I came across those old flags, and I also came across a Casper Chronicles book that has a story that Verna wrote about, hey, you know, I. This is the story of how I designed these flags and in it she says that Doctor Heberd changed her design. And I had run into Doctor Heberd when I was writing a paper in grad school about women office holders. And specifically I was writing about Esther Morris.         

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And I wanted to write about her service as justice of the peace. And so in order to do that, I needed to get past that controversy of, oh, you know, did she have a tea party? Did she influence William Bright to introduce woman suffrage to the Wyoming Territory in 1869? And so I accepted what TA Larson and other historians had said so I could get to the meat of what kind of justice of the peace. Was she the first woman to serve as a judge in the United States?         

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And I’ve said that Doctor Heberd, along with the help of HD Nickerson, fabricated the story of her influencing William bright and hosting this tea party. And so there I was reading about Doctor Hebert again changing this design. And I thought, well, just who did this woman think she was? And it started me down a several year journey that I’m still on researching Doctor Heberd and her career in Wyoming, and finding out exactly who this woman is, that she’s quite, had quite the impact on Wyoming. And just a really influential person, I’d say, not to put people up on their pedestals in both good ways and bad.         

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And surprisingly, I found evidence that she was more right than wrong about Esther Morris. That Esther Morris really had a great deal to do with bringing woman suffrage to the territory of Wyoming, which is really quite incredible. And based on some testimony from William Bright, the man who introduced the bill himself, is really the basis of that, which is just a remarkable discovery. And so lots to be found in the mixed bag of Doctor Heberd’s archives. There’s over 80 boxes at the American Heritage center, and I’m still digging through them.         

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What? There’s 80 boxes? Oh, yeah. More than really. Oh, my gosh.         

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So you do you have to love to be an investigator. You have to love to go and start on a trail and keep following it and following all the crumbs and keep talking to people. And you probably learn how to not be afraid to approach people. Because one thing will lead you to a conversation with someone who’s still alive today. And maybe it’s a family member or another historian or whatever.         

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Yes, that is something really that’s been a lot of fun traveling Wyoming and sharing these stories, is that I’ve met descendants of Esther Morris, which is really incredible. Descendants of some of the historians who I, Wyoming historians who I talk about and also like Sydney Howell Fleming, she was, I think, probably the closest to getting the Esther Morris story right and getting to meet so many different people. I, you know, just being in Douglas, I talked a little bit about the jackalope as a Wyoming innovation, because it’s a great Wyoming innovation. And, you know, there I was in the home of the jackalope. So I couldn’t help but to talk about Ralph and Doug Herrick.         

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And I said, well, there’s got to be somebody in this room who knew them or knows of them. And, yeah, sure enough, there was somebody who had worked alongside them for 20 years. And then, same with Verna, every time I talk about the flag and her designing the flag, there’s somebody in my audience who says, especially when I’m in Casper, who says, oh, I knew Verna. And they share just some really wonderful stories about who she was and how involved she was in our community. And so that’s.         

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It’s been an incredible experience to be able to say, to meet all of these different people and very different. I’m glad that my master’s thesis really prepared me for this, that having some uncomfortable conversations, you know, talking, it doesn’t get more uncomfortable than saying, hey, your descendant held people in bondage, and. And they participated in this awful crime against humanity, slavery. And so bringing to Wyoming, it’s much lighter to say, hey, you know, maybe. Maybe this professor you loved at the University of Wyoming got things wrong on woman suffrage and did some questionable ethical things there, like, let’s talk about that is definitely not as uncomfortable of a conversation and an interesting one to have, for sure.         

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What I’m learning from you, Kylie, is that you love being the student more than you love being the teacher that you always want to be on the other side of learning the next new thing. So that’s very cool. Yes, it’s wonderful. And that’s part of the great opportunity working with wyohistory.org and the Wyoming Humanities Council is that there’s so many people who are researching Wyoming history and different aspects of it that I never would have thought of that I now get to read and to meet them and hear those stories as well and also give them a platform where they can publish those stories. And so it’s been a really wonderful experience to learn more about Wyoming.         

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Wow. And it’s your job. Job. That’s cool. I want to hear, like, do you have your own website where people want to learn about the flag?         

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Or do you have places where electronically, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram or website, tell us what those connections are. Definitely. I have my own website, Kyliethehistorian.com, where you can see see what I’m up to. I need to get better at updating it all. I’ve got several new presentations to add on there, and if you want to hire me to come to your and share some of these stories, you can just contact me through my website.         

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I’m also on Facebook and Instagram. And then I’ve also written several articles for wyohistory.org so you can read the article about the Wyoming state flag to learn more on Wyo history, as well as some really amazing women in Wyoming, like Elizabeth Wiley, who ran for Mayor in GreyBull to chase the Ku Klux Klan out of her town, and Ethel Stoner, who got into a street brawl with a bootlegger while she was mayor of Cokeville. And so some really fun articles to read also on wyohistory.org that I’ve written. Oh, my gosh. I love it.         

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I love it. Well, thank you for your time, Kylie. It’s been great talking to you. You bet. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share some Wyoming stories, Emy.         

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Absolutely. And we’ll connect again.         

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Thank you for listening. I’m executive producer Emy Digrappa. Winds of Change is brought to you by Wyoming humanities, our co-hosts and all the people who generously share their stories and their time. For more information, go to thinkwy.org subscribe and never miss a show.