Arizona republican., 1909-07-26
ME SA DEPARTMENT
STILL SPINNING HISTORY
 FOR WESTERN KANSAS
A Mesa Arizonian Recalling Things
 that Used to be.

~ "eSd NTizohIan HeCailin9 lnlHgS
 that Used to be.
 Uncle Billy Ross who has taken time by the forelock while on his va cation in Kansas and has spun out more reading matter for the edifiea- tion of the readers of the Wichita newspapers than a good portion of their Associated Press dispatches. Wm. Ross used to cut considerable ice in Kansas in an early day and it is a general resume of this that furnishes the principal theme for his historical sketches. However. at the rate he has been going it has begun to look as if the Wichita dailies could afford to place him on their regular staff to furnish copy while the telegraph and exchange editors take a vacation The latest elaboration is from the Wichita Eagle. which by the way is one of the largest papers in point of circulation in the state. and is as follows:
 Billy Ross, who is here from Ari- Zona, has been spending two days at Clearwater He was one of the town company who laid out the town. His old friends and neighbors were de- lighted to see the old pioneer of the Ninnescah back among them again after an absence of many years.
 He was at one time one of the most extensive land holders in Kansas. With the exception of few claims that had been taken along the river he claimed all the land in Sedgwick county west of the Arkansas.
 MT. Ross last night sad to an Eagle reporter:
 At that time Robert Lawrence and I were next door neighbors. but our hens never bothered each others gar dens as it was eighteen miles between the two doors. l drove many times from the Ninnescah river to the Arkansas without seeing a man, a house or a plowed furrOw And there were times when I would gladly have parted with a ten dollar green back for the privilege of driving over any kind of a bridge I was caught on the Wichita side of the river for nine days and my family on the bank of the Ninnescah without a house and suffering for the want of food.
 Another time I arrived at the west side of the river when it was too high to ford. I camped at the side of. a big log without any food and none to be had while my horses browsed around on dry slough grass sat one evening, very forlOrn, at the foot of a cottonwood tree on the river bank fasting and praying Fast ing because l had had nothing to eat for nearly fOrty-eight hours and praying for the waters to subside.
 "In 1875 the settlers in the west part of the county discovered some carboniferous shale in a creek and concluded that there must be coal down there. We held a meeting and subscribed fifty dollars as grub stake. They found a set of boring rods somewhere to drill for the black diamonds but none of them knew how to operate the drill. They heard that Billy Ross was an old mining expert and a committee waited upon me and engaged me at two dollars and a half day and board to sup erintend the operations. l procured long hackberry tree down the river for a spring pole and erected a der rick The work of boring proceeded at a lively rate. The drill was down. had a set of rods made two years before for Charlie at the Ninnescah ranch to drill for coal further down the Ninnescah. Sam Stover and my self were sent down to buy tbem, giving corn in trade. The drilling went on until depth of a hundred and fifty feet was reached. It was bumper year for corn, the bottom lands yielding eighty bushels to the acre.
 Sam Stover says that I boarded around like the old time school marm and when I had satisfied myself that there was no coal and my salary of two and a half dollars a day had ab- sorbed all the available funds in the treasury and my splendid appetite had depleted all the larders in the settlement it occurred to me that I was badly needed at home to husk my corn, so I unloaded the stock on Stover. appointed him manager of the operation and left for home.
 sam, elated by his promotion and the fact of having acquired my stock. which gave him a controlling interest in the mine, took hold with renewed vigor and with his associates worked like Trojans, expecting to strike the vein every lick, but on the third day they broke the rods off thirty feet from the bottom, which put an end to the industry.
 sam Stover owns that thirty feet of rods at the bottom of the hole and a controlling interest in the mine until this day"