Will Welton

Kinfolk Matters Will Welton

About Time Matters was the only girl in the family and she wanted everyone to call her Atty. The reason for strange names of the children of the family was his father and mother had the first three children die before they were a year old. They had been told by a old granny women which had been the mid wife for the births that they were bad names and if the male of the family named them such that the children would not live. When she was eighteen she married the local Blacksmith that was unable to go to war. Since cash money was hard to come by at the end of the Civil War Atty and her husband decided to go out west. They loaded the anvils and any thing that was iron on the wagon that they built. Her Uncle and her brother had told of how things were and the opportunities that abound in the Dakotas. On the way out Atty husband was injured by one of the six mules used to pull the wagon and he committed suicide. Atty continued on with the help of a young boy who decided he wanted to be called Ringo. Atty and her Uncle, after Ringo's help to evade the law, they told him if he wanted to he could use the last name of Matters. He started a smithy shop, at the age of sixteen, two miles from town and later became the law and a prominent citizen as the town grew. No one knew exactly why Frank Matters evaded the law but he had a way of disappearing when the law showed up or near some towns he would only by pass and not enter.