Home, Home On Deranged Trivia Quiz

Answer: Benjamin Harrison

While all of the possible answers provided have the necessary "shared" last name requirement, only Benjamin Harrison is the correct answer.

The Johnson County War was a range war which took place in April 1892 in Wyoming. It was a battle between owners of small and large ranches in the Powder River Country. In the end, president Benjamin Harrison sent in the US cavalry to stop the feud.

The relationship between wealthier ranchers and smaller ranchers had grown more and more strained after an extremely harsh winter of 1887-1888 that was followed by a scorching summer that ruined grazing lands.

The larger ranches began to control the supply of water in the area after losing thousands of head of their cattle to nature's forces. Some of the tactics of these wealthier ranchers included forcing smaller ranchers off their land, setting fire to their homesteads and trying to keep them from participating in the annual roundup. They justified these actions by using the allegation of "rustling".

As a matter of fact, rustling in the area WAS on the increase, due to the efforts of an organized group of outfits that roamed across portions of Wyoming and Montana. Montana cattlemen declared a "War on the Rustlers" in 1889, an action that was followed by Wyoming cattlemen in 1890. In Johnson County, members of the larger ranches killed several alleged rustlers from smaller ranches. Many of these were executed on the flimsiest of "evidence".

Frank M. Canton, who served as the Sheriff of Johnson County in the early 1880s, was thought to be involved in many of the deaths. In 1889, a double lynching took place that enraged residents of the county. Elia Watson and a shopkeeper named Jim Averell were killed by some of the hired gunmen. Jim Averell was not even a cattleman.

Answer: Germans

In Mason County, Texas, in the late 1800s, large numbers of cattle were found dead or missing entirely. Before long a conflict called the Mason County War, also called the Hoodoo War, started between German immigrants and Texas natives. Tensions had developed between the two groups for quite a while, because during the Civil War the native Texans had been loyal to the Confederate States, while the Germans had remained true to the Union.

The problem started when nine Texans were put into jail on cattle theft charges and four of them subsequently escaped. On February 18, 1875, about forty men of German extraction took the remaining five men from the jail to a place near Hick Springs, where they hung Elijah and Pete Backus and Tom Turley and shot a man named Wiggins, but a fourth man named Johnson escaped. A district court investigated the matter but nothing ever came of it.

A full scale war started when Deputy Sheriff John Worley was sent to arrest a man named Tim Williamson who had been accused of cattle theft. After Williamson was arrested on May 13, 1875, the sherriff's posse fell under attack by twelve men with blackened faces. Williamson was killed, and a German farmer named Peter Bader was blamed for the killing.

No one, however, was ever arrested for Williamson's murder. Scott Cooley, a friend of Williamson and a former Texas Ranger, swore to get revenge. He then recruited a gang of men to help him in phase of retaliation, killing at least 12 German immigrants.

Scott Cooley blamed Deputy Worley for Williamson's death, and on August 10, 1875, he went to Worley's home where he found him working on a well. Cooley shot and killed Worley. His helper, who was clinging to the rope, tumbled to his death at the bottom of the well. Cooley then cut scalped Worley, later showing the scalp to the Germans.

The gang then killed Peter Bader, the second man on their death list. The Germans proceeded to hang two of Cooley's posse members, and the murders continued back and forth in that manner for nearly a year before the Texas Rangers were finally able to restore order.

Answer: Home on the Range

Boy, you should have seen this one comin'! I mean, just look at the title of the quiz!

I have included below a few, just a very few, of the alternate lyrics that I have found to this song. There must be fifty different verses, and if you strung them all together, you'd be a-singin' 'round the ole campfire all night long.
Well, maybe that was the whole idea.

Anyway, check out these three stanzas:

How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.

**I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours,
I love the wild curlew's shrill scream;
The bluffs and white rocks, and antelope flocks
That graze on the mountains so green.**

Oh, give me the mine where the prospectors find
The gold in its own native land;
And the hot springs below where the sick people go
And camp on the banks of the Grande.

Dr. Brewster M. Higley originally wrote the words in a poem called "My Western Home" in the early 1870s in Smith County, Kansas.
**The second verse was one of his original five.**
The others were added by other people later, and believe me, there are a LOT more than just these two!

Answer: Ferdinand Marcos

That phrase is found further down in section 8 of this document:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Republic of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested in me by the Constitution and pursuant to Proclamations No. 1081, dated September 21, 1972 and No. 1104, dated January 17, 1973 and General Order No. 1 dated September 22, 1972, do hereby order and decree as part of the law of the land, the following:

Section 1. Title. This Decree shall be known as the "Anti-Cattle Rustling Law of 1974."

(Who would've ever thought of Filipino cattle rustlers?)

Answer: Stan Jones

"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend" is a country and western song. It was written on June 5, 1948 by Stan Jones, yet has been performed by a variety of music artists, including Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, Johnny Cash, The Outlaws, Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers, as well as many others.

Answer: Charles Goodnight

While all the people listed had associations with Charles Goodnight, it was he who constructed and used the first chuckwagon. The route that he and eighteen other men carved out became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail, which was one of the Southwest's most heavily used cattle trails.

Soon, every cattle drive had a chuckwagon. After all, the men had to eat in order to continue with their work. Charles Goodnight is given credit for inventing the first one by taking an old army wagon and adding extra hard wooden axles, and mounting a "chuck box" on the rear end. (A storage area in the front carried extra supplies and bedrolls.)

The cook was arguably the most important member of the cattle drive, because it was his responsibility to drive the chuck wagon ahead of the herd in order to feed the men. He was the person who selected campsites in the evenings and chose suitable places to serve the midday meal. As proof of his importance, he was generally better paid than the other men.
(In both the novel and the movie "Lonesome Dove", Larry McMurtry used the relationship between Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving as the basis for the characters of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call.)

Answer: by barbed wire fencing and a quarantine law

The Chisholm Trail was finally closed by barbed wire and an 1885 Kansas animal quarantine law. By 1884, its last year in operation, it was open only as far as the southern Kansas town of Caldwell. In the brief time that it was in use, the Chislom Trail was traversed by more than five million cattle and a million mustang horses.

Answer: $25 - $40 per month

The ordinary cowboy made from $25 to $40 a month. Horse wranglers would get about $50 or more. The cooks and ramrods would earn about $75 per month, while the trail boss himself would only take in about $100, although often they would share with other trail bosses in a kind of "profit-sharing" plan.
Nearly two-thirds of the "cowboys" who helped them were literally just that; boys or young men whose average age was between twelve and eighteen.

Answer: it required little supervision and no expensive fencing

Ranching and the cowboy tradition seems to have originated in Spain.
(A Spanish vaquero was called a cow-boy, from vaca meaning "cow".
Vaquero was later introduced into the English language as the slang word "buckaroo".)

American bison had roamed freely across the Great Plains. When Europeans arrived, displacing the native Americans and subsequently destroying the great herds of buffalo, the cattle and sheep that had been brought with them were simply turned loose to graze on the plains like the buffalo. They were allowed to roam with little supervision and no fences. The animals were later driven to market, with those reserved for breeding brought closer in to the ranches during the winter months. Livestock branding allowed the cattle owned by different ranchers to be identified. Ranching began in Texas in the 1840s, and expanded both north and west, during the time of the Civil War and on into the 1880s, ruling the economics of the region.

Later, when farmers came west to set up farms, a conflict arose. While they provided needed food for both humans and livestock, there was a hidden "cost" to the ranchers. The farmers had to fence off fields in order to keep cattle and sheep from eating their crops while they were in the ground. Barbed wire, which was invented in 1874, gradually brought an end to open-grazing grounds.

Answer: China and Australia

While all the countries listed are known for sheep production, China is the largest producer worldwide, with Australia following right on its heels in second place. Sheep are raised on both farms and ranches. Worldwide, there are over 800 different breeds of domestic sheep. These animals are quite shy and generally defenseless creatures.