My father, P.B. (Coly) Cole, came to Kansas around 1880 when he was twelve. An early
  recollection as a boy in Missouri, his father came into the yard one evening calling, 
  "Hey, Mammy, come see what I have." The eight children ran out. Grandfather had a wagon-
  load of white flour, in the bulk. He said, "Now we can have white biscuits at every meal."
     I loved to watch grandmother make the most beautiful biscuits with the least effort.
  She'd raise the lid of her old flour chest, in her modern kitchen. Compartments at the
  back held salt, soda, sugar, etc. She put the old black baking pan in the electric oven,
  with bacon drippings. While it heated, she made a little hole in the flour in the big
  bin, put in a pinch of soda, salt, and some sour milk. Quicker than I can write this, 
  she made some magic swirls with her fingers, and had a neat ball of dough, which she
  quickly cut into biscuits. She'd take the pan from the oven, dip and turn each biscuit
  in the hot fat, pop it back into the oven. In a few minutes, out came white fluffy biscuits,
  almost transparent. I tried it, but had a batch of lumps to throw away.
     My father grew up in Barber County. He was a youngster in Medicine Lodge the night
  the bank robbers were captured and sentenced to hang. He hid behind a stack of fence
  posts, when they broke jail. He saw one shot, and the others hanged. We used to remark,
  when we approached the 'Hangman Tree', "That is where the bank robbers were hanged".
  Dad was in the 'Run for the Strip". He first staked his claim where Dacoma, Oklahoma now
  stands. When he went to pay his fee, he was $3.50 short, and returned to Medicine Lodge
  for the money. In the meantime, a Negro jumped his claim, so he went seventeen miles
  farther south, to file on a poorer piece of land. He improved it before sending for
  Mamma and sister Ruby. He put the covered wagonbed on the ground to live in, While he
  used the running gears to haul supplies. Homesteaders got cedar logs on Government land
  several miles away. It was unlawful to cut the cedar. They would slip in anyway, running
  the risk of being caught. One evening, Dad was returning with a load of logs. He knew a 
  lawman was following, he drove into the yard of a friend, asked if he could hide his
  wagon for the night. The neighbor said, "Drive your wagon between those haystacks,
  unhitch your team, and put it in the barn." He spread a tarp over both haystacks, 
  completely covering the wagon, and made it look like one haystack. The lawman came by, 
  say no evidence and wnt on his way. Next morning, Dad drove home with his logs which 
  became one log room with a gyp floor. He added another sod room with a dirt floor. That
  is where in 1901, I was  born. Two neighbor women assisted.
     I am a member at Colby, Kansas of "Sons and Daughters of the Soddies", also D.A.R.
  Dad built a beautiful two room frame house, and around 1900 sold the homestead and bought
  3 1/2 miles southwest of Sharon. I grew up, went through school a mile away, the Sharon
  High School. I taught five years in Barber County, two in the three upper grades in Sharon.
  I married and came to Oregon in 1920, the first of Barber and Harper Countians to come
  here.
                
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 137 
     Submitted by: Flossie Garner