| Notes |
- 3B3233A14. George Leland Bassett, son of Leland and Priscilla (Hughes) Bassett, was born 26 Sep 1864 in Missouri. He died 24 Oct 1936 in Edgewood, New Mexico. He married Elizabeth Selina Eads, daughter of George Washington and Mary B. Eads, on 18 Oct 1885 in Missouri. Elizabeth was born 26 Sep 1869 in Missouri. She died 8 May 1939. They are both buried in Mountain Valley Cemetery, Edgewood, Sante Fe County, New Mexico.
According to family legend, George L. Bassett had a half-brother [likely 3B3233A11, William Bassett] that moved to Montana.
For more information on the Eads family and Bassetts, See notes for George Washingon Eads, father of Elizabeth Selina Eads Bassett.
1870 Federal Census of Jackson Township, Maries County, Missouri (10 Aug
1870)
James W. Bassett 7 M Missouri
George H. 5 M Missouri
Living with Kane Hughville
1900 Federal Census of Jackson Township, Maries County, Missouri (12 Jun 1900)
George L. Bassett 35 M Sep 1864 MO NY MO Head Farmer
Sirena 30 F Sep 1869 MO MO MO Wife
Sanford A. 13 M Nov 1886 MO MO MO Son At school
William O. 11 M Nov 1888 MO MO MO Son At school
Causale* A. 8 F Aug 1891 MO MO MO Daughter At school
James L. 6 M Dec 1893 MO MO MO Son At school
Nancy E. 4 F Sep 1895 MO MO MO Daughter
*[Causada]
1910 Federal Census of Otto, Santa Fe, New Mexico (4 May 1910)
Bassett George M 45 MO US US Head Farmer, Married 24 years
Bassett Sirena F 40 MO MO MO Wife Married 24 yrs, 9 children, 8 living
Bassett Ada F 18 MO MO MO Dau
Bassett Lee M 16 MO MO MO Son Laborer
Bassett Ethel F 14 MO MO MO Dau
Bassett Lesley M 9 MO MO MO Son
Bassett Ray M 5 MO MO MO Son
Bassett Mollie F 3 MO MO MO Dau
Also on the same page:
Bassett Amos M 23 MO MO MO Single Laborer
and;
Bassett Oscar M 21 MO MO MO Single Laborer
1920 Federal Census of Venus School District, Sante Fe County, NM (10 Jan 1920)
G. L. Bassett 65 M MO NY MO Head Farmer
S. E. 50 F MO MO MO Wife
Amos 34 M MO MO MO Son Farmer
Lessley 18 M MO MO MO Son Farmer
Ray 14 M MO MO MO Son
Millie 12 F MO MO MO Daughter
George Leland Bassett, Certificate of Death, State of New Mexico
Geo. Leland Bassett, Edgewood, New Mexico
White male, married, wife, Serena Bassett
Date of Birth: Sept. 26, 1864
Date of Death: Oct. 24, 1936
Age at Death: 72 years, 29 days
Lived in Santa Fe County 27 years before death occurred.
Trade or Profession: Farmer
Birthplace: Vienna, Missouri
Father: Leland Bassett
Mother : Priscilla Hughes
Informant: Ray Bassett, Edgewood, New Mexico
Burial: Barton, New Mexico.
The Independent, July 31, 2002
The Bassetts: Their story is the town's, By Theresa M. Oderman
The history of Edgewood in the past century is a story of families such as the Bassetts, who arrived in 1909 and ever since have stamped Edgewood as farmers, ranchers, businessmen and community leaders.
Their story is the story of Edgewood, intertwined with its other founding families, with their trials and survival, and now with the town's sometimes daunting growth.
"I don't know how we managed to stay here but we did," Carl Bassett said.
"We're still here and Edgewood is growing up around us," his wife, Jo, echoed.
"They accuse us of being anti-growth, but most all this that's grown up here," Carl said with a wave out his window at the Dairy Queen, gas stations, McDonald's, Smith's, and the interstate, "is on land owned by Bassetts."
Carl and Jo, with their view of Edgewood's main intersection, are philosophical about the town's future. "Change is inevitable," Jo said. "They'll rebuild the interchange and that should facilitate traffic. It needs to be done. The town will continue to grow in some fashion."
"In 10 to 15 years it might double," Carl added. "There's no room in the canyon for growth. This as about the first place east of Albuquerque where there's enough room to spread out."
Early in the last century, George Leland Bassett learned of New Mexico's land from his two eldest sons, Amos and Oscar. The brothers knew a family named Hughes in what was then called Venus and in 1907 tood the train from Missouri to visit their friends. They got off the train in Torrance, between Duran and Corona, and walked across country to Venus, which is now Edgewood.
The young men must have taken a favorable report back to their father in Vienna, Mo., because in 1909 George put his family on an immigrant train to New Mexico. His son Ray described the move in a tape-recorded 1978 interview conducted by Fern Ueckert and Diane Arnett-Stearley.
"We comd out here in a immgrant car," Ray said. "The Santa Fe or any railroad to encourage people to come west, they'd rent you a boxcar real reasonable and you could put anything you could get in there. My dad brought four horses and two cows and all the farm machinery and everything you could get in there."
Some family members rode in the boxcar to take care of the animals. George Leland broght with him his wife, Serena Elizabeth Eads Bassett, and their children, Amos, Oscar, Ada, James Lee, Ethel, Leslie Donovan (L.D.), Ray and Millie.
Ray was too young to remember the move, but he said in the 1978 interview, "Well, I can imagine 'em rollin' in to Moriarty and no place to go and no house and nothing. So I wondered what we did. And she said that we had an uncle here, Uncle Hiram Hughes... and we moved in with him. The furniture and everything was all piled outside, canvas put over it."
George, Ray said, "was real good with an ax. That's all he'd done all his life was use and ax makin' rails. So he goes up in the timber here and cuts these pinon poles and made a little log house. Right away he made a dugout with neighbors helping. Neighbors would get in there and help, they could have a house ready to move into in a couple weeks."
George filed a homestead claim on 160 acres north of what is now Dinkle Road, in Section 14, and his Amos, filed another 160-acres claim in the same section.
The pioneer dugout, made by digging a cellar-like hole, then covering it with a pinon-pole and dirt roof, was a snug home in winter and cool in summer, but was not big enough for the Bassett family. Soon, a cabin followed for the boys to sleep in, then Serena FInally got an above ground two bedroom home for her brood.
George and his sons began the arduous task of dryland farming with horse-drawn implements.
Oscar, meanwhile, met young Clara May Martin, whose sister Harriett had married one of the Hughe's sons. Clara May was born in 1890 in Cherokee County, N.C. She and her family were part of one of the last forced migrations of Native Americans - Cherokees relocated from the east to Oklahoma. Oscar and Clara May married in 1911 and tried for two years to make a living on Clara May's government-granted 40 acres in Oklahoma. But Oscar didn't like Oklahoma, so in 1913 he and Clara May brought their new daughter Mary with them to Venus. They lived with Oscar's parents before claiming their own 320-acre homestead.
By 1913, says their daughter-in-law, Jo Bassett, "the homesteaders were allowed to file a claim for 320 acres." So the saying went, "The government gave them another 160 acres to starve on."
"They raised beans, corn and wheat, basically, and a garden," Carl recalls. "Back then you could raise a garden with rain and a little water to get stuff started on."
But not every year was a good crop. In lean times, the older Bassett brothers, Lee, Oscar and L.D., would walk to Colorado, along with as many as 15 other local men, to take part in the potato harvest. After several years of the annual trek, Lee announced he was tired of walking and stayed in Colorado.
During the Great Depression, Carl remembers, his father Oscar once "went all the way to Palestine, Texas, to sell a few sacks" of beans.
Eventually, Oscar and Clara May has six children: Mary, Linnie Faye, George, Eunice, Carl and Elmer. Oscar built a house on the corner of Church Street and N.M. 344. "It's an adobe house," Carl said. "The plumbin' was out back and we got electricity in the 1940s."
Carl's face smoothes into a wide grin when asked what he, his brothers, cousins and friends did for fun as children during the Depression. "Well," he says with a laugh and a sidelong glance at his wife, "We had corncob fights."
Corn was a staple, fed to livestock and people alike, and "we had corncobs all around the place. You didn't wanna get hit on the side of the head with one," Carl recalled. "And you didn't wanna get one's been in the hog pen." The boys, suing fences, farm equipment and each other as cover, pelted each other with corncobs as kids in other part of the county pelted each other with snowballs.
The boys also played "setback" football, sometimes using a quart oil can for a ball. Carl said sometimes they would build a pond in a low-lying piece of land where water would gather and created a swimming hole. "We'd just strip off our clothes and go right in with nothin' on. I'd like to drown in one Calkins had in the school section."
The Calkins family, whose descendant Howard is now mayor of Edgewood, were cousins. George and Serena's second daughter, Ethel, married Clint Calkins. They lived in Barton, south of where Route 66 Elementary School is now lcoated.
Ada Bassett married Bill Williams, of the Williams Ranch family, and lived on their farm at the east end of Church Street. Her grandson, Ricky Parker, and his wife Monica, now run Parker's farm and greenhouses.
Ray Bassett, the youngest of George's and Serena's sons, had become successful in the pinto bean business, initially in partnership with W.O. Guest in Moriarty. In the 1978 interview Ray recounted:
"In 19 and 27 just before I was married. I was married on December the third 1927. But in the spring of 1927 W.O. Guest had a contract with Trinidad Bean Company to buy benas for 'em in Moriarty. We were at a ice cream supper over here and he called me off and wanted to talk to me. He said how 'bout going' in partners with me in this bean business and runnin' this bean cleaner for me. Well, I agreed to do that. We rented a 40 by 40 at the rear end of the Moriarty trading company in the fall of 19 and 27 and we started handlin' beans. And we handled about 30,000 sacks that year. It was hard work."
Ray and Guest took over the bean association in 1929, and "We handled a lot of beans that years. I forget how many thousand sacks. I know that fall Gordon was born, December the twelfth, I believe. For a long time I never did see him only asleep. He was asleep when I left in the mornin' and asleep when I got home. But I put out two [railroad] cars of beans a day."
Ray said he and Guest had their warehouse full and employed up to 10 people. "We paid 'em 25 cents an hour except the sack sewer. He got 35 cents an hour."
Part Two, printed 7 Aug 2002, Vol. 4, No. 32.
Facing the Depression, drought, and modern-day development with pioneer toughness, the Bassett family built both a sense of community and the buldings to serve it. The family, after arriving in 1909, has helped shape Edgewood throughout the past century.
The 1930s was a busy decade for the Bassetts - and for the future of Edgewood.
In the late 1930s Oscar Bassett, son of homesteader George Leland
Bassett, donated land for a new school in Edgewood to be built by the Works Progress Administration. Oscar and his brothers Ray and L.D. spearheaded an effort to raise money to buy materials for the building. The WPA built the schoolhouse of adobe bricks made on site. The four-room school still stands next door to McDonald's and is lsited as one of the most endangered historic sites in New Mexico.
The fate of the building is uncertain. Smith's Food and Drug stores purchased the property in 1999. A newly formed non-profit organization is working to preserve it.
The eldest Bassett brother, Amos, "remained a bachelor all his life," said Jo Bassett, Oscar's daughter-in-law. "For many years he was the custodian at the Edgewood school until his death in December 1958."
By the 1930s and '40s the farmers had figured out dryland farming and the bean was king of the Estancia Valley.
In 1933 Ray Bassett left the Moriarty bean business he had begun with a partner in 1927, intending to "stay home and farm," but by the end of the year, he was back in beans. He traded for land on ROute 66 in Edgewood with his brother L.D. "I just tore down the highway fence and
cleared out the trees and started building the warehouse," Ray said.
The former bean warehouse is now the home of Radio Shack and Edgewood Video.
The B Square brand bean brought the first telephone to Edgewood. Ray told the story in a 1978 taped interview.
"To handle beans, I had to have a telephone because you're selling all your beans over the phone. Well, I went to the telephone people and told them I needed a phone. There was then a phone there in Barton, that was the closest. And they said, well, we'll put a phone down there, but
you'll have to guarantee us $5 a month. So they did. Sometimes our phone bill was anywhere from $25 to $75 a month because that's the way we did business."
While his brothers farmed and ranched and his sisters married into other farming families in the area, Ray built a thriving business based on pinto beans, including a Case Machinery dealership he started in 1934.
Carl Bassett, the second son of Oscar and his wife Clara May, almost got an early trip home from war courtesy of the bean.
Carl served in the Navy during World War II aobard a destroyer in the Pacific. In late 1945, after the end of the war, his ship was escorting troop ships across the Pacific. "The day before we left to come to the east coast," Car said, "we had dashed into Pearl [Harbor] to take on supplies. We worked until 2 a.m. getting the ship ready and then they had mail call. Well, I had to goin on duty in the morning to get us out of the harbor because I worked in the engine room. So I stored the mail figuring to read it once we got sea. Well, come to find there was a letter from Senator Chavez saying I could come home." The bean crop was enough that year that Oscar needed his sons to come home to help harvest the beans.
But the end of the bean was near. "The last big dryland bean crop was in 1949," Jo Bassett said. The crop was "so great the excess beans had to be stored outside under tarps.:
"Starting in 1950 we had a long series of droughts. It just stayed dry year after year," Ray said.
"It was the real dust bowl," Jo said. After trnasferring with Prudential Insurance to Albuquerque from the Hudson Valley in New York State, where everything is green, Jo married Carl Bassett in 1952 and moved with him to Edgewood. "I wouldn't wish a drought like that on anybody," she said.
"In 1955 and '56, by 9 a.m. the sky was brown every day. You couldn't see the sun," Jo recalled, shaking her head. The sun, she said, would finally come out early in the evening when the wind died down and the dust temporarily settled. "It was so dry in '56 we had to feed the cut
of hay to the cattle to keep the cattle alive."
"1957 was the worst," she said. "We were farming between Church and Dinkle, east of Quail. We went to church in Moriarty in May and you could hear the pebbles hitting the tin roof. We stopped on the way home at Mike's store for a few groceries and it took us an hour and a half to get home from Moriarty because the dust was so bad. We only saw about one other car and that was Mr. Vigil who was stopped there at V-Hill road waiting to turn, but he couldn't see because of the blowing dust to make the turn. When we got home and I unwrapped Eugene's receiving blanket - he was only four months old - the dust just fell out of the blanket and his clothes."
The government had to step in to help. "We just got to where we just didn't have much to do," Ray said. "The farmers had to go off to work. About this time in 1955 or '56 the government came in with this soil bank. They made a special privision that if you wasn't farming due to drought you could still lease your land to the government for five or 10 years. You had certain privisions and you had to sow grass on it. Well, we sowed it in grass. [It] was the best thing ever happened to this country. Once seeded to grass we haven't had the blowing like that."
Ray moved his farm machinery business to Albuquerque but still owned much land in the Edgewood area. Oscar and L.D. Continued to farm and work in the community.
In the early 1960s Oscar built the Edgewood Post Office, which was later occupied by Tillery Chevrolet. The building was burned down during a robbery early this year.
The Post Office also housed the office of the justice of the peace, a position held by Oscar's youngest, son Elmer, until the job was abolished in 1968. Elmer then managed Stuckey's until 1973.
Also in the 1960s the brothers donated the land and, along with their sons and many neighbors, helped build the Edgewood Community Center and the fire station.
In response to heavy traffic on Route 66, Ray added a four-unit motel to the east end of his former bean warehouse. The building now hosues Radio Shack and Edgewood Video.
The interstate split several Bassett properties. Prior to I-40, Oscar walked his cattle acorss Route 66, which divided his property. But as traffic grew, the practice became more dangerous. Oscar eventually talked the highway departments into building culvert underpasses large enough for pedestrians and cattle.
Today, those same underpasses are considered vital links in a future system of pedestrian, equestrian and bicycle trails throughout the Edgewood community.
Of George Leland's and Serena's grandchildren, only three still live in Edgewood, Carroll Bassett, Ray's son, and Carl, Oscar's son, still farm and ranch. Howard Calkins, Ethel's son, founded Edgewood Water Co. many years ago and was appointed mayor in 2000. Many of George's and Serena's great-grandchildren, the grandchildren of Oscar, Ada, Ethel,
L.D., Ray and Millie, still live and work in the area. [2002]
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Bassett Family Association Database
1864 - 1936 (72 years)