"Uncle Duncan"

   

Growing up I heard stories about "Uncle Duncan" from my mother. He had lived with her family in his old age, and she and her siblings were very fond of him. His full name was Duncan Livingston Nichols (1848-1934) and he was a first cousin of mother's gr-grandfather Miles Livingston. Around 1870 Miles Livingston, his wife Jennie, and Duncan and possibly another relative or two emigrated from Leeds County Ontario, Canada to the American West - Miles, Jennie and Duncan are listed in the 1880 Census as living in Richland, Iowa. They moved to Nebraska at some point, and were living in Cedar County near Randolph in the 1900 Census. Duncan continued to live with Miles and Jennie, or at least shows up in the various census with them, in 1910 they were in McIntosh, Oklahoma, and in 1920 he was living with Jennie, now a widow, in Muskogee. In the 1930 census he is shown as living with Maud and Marvin Croom in Dallas, Texas. (Maud was his cousin Mile's granddaughter.) 

   The stories I recall were as follows. Uncle Duncan, like many then, was a smoker, but he rolled his own cigarettes one handed, cowboy style. He is listed on his death certificate as a "retired farmer," but he apparently worked as a cowboy in the old open range days. He told Alison, my mother and her siblings Miles, Carolyn and Janet stories about riding on the range, like riding night herd and reciting Robert Burns poems to the cattle to keep them quiet! (A great example of the Scottish traditions of those Loyalist descendants in Ontario.) Aother cowboy story was how the cowboys thought a great treat was to get canned tomatoes, they would open them with their pocket knives and eat them out of the can. One other story I recall is that Uncle Duncan would take the children out to ride around Dallas on the street cars. My guess, reading between the lines of stories of my mother and census records etc., is that Duncan may have gone off cowboying on his own, and also worked for his cousin Miles, who had a ranch and farms in Nebraska and then Oklahoma. Duncan is buried in Greenhill Cemetery in Muskogee, Oklahoma along with other Livingston and Croom family members.