HERVEY CHESLEY BOOK FAITHFUL TO HISTORY

by Bob Miller
"The Hamilton Herald-News"      February 7, 1980

Until a couple of weeks ago when it was the subject of a lengthy and most favorable review in a Sunday issue of The Dallas Morning News, the book "Adventuring with the Old Timers, Trails Travelled -- Tales Told" was almost a secret in Hamilton, the hometown of its author, Hervey E. Chesley.

Chesley passed away last spring before the book was off the press, but friends will be glad to know that he did see it in its final form before his death.  It was simply justice that he did for "Trails Travelled" is a symbol of his lifetime of work recording historical events of the Southwest before those who had lived them took the memories to the grave.

The hundreds of historical tales recorded in the book with unswerving devotion to accuracy will have to stand as reminders that there are thousands more such tales recorded by Chesley during his lifetime which will be mined by other authors in times to come.  The world will be better off in the sure knowledge that 'this was the way it was," Hervey Chesley said so.

As it is well known in Hamilton, Chesley was an attorney, like his father before him, but he seemed to practice only when he saw fit.  He was also a court reporter for many years, and the talent he developed for recording fact in shorthand in the courts was the talent he used  so  much in taking down the stories of every oldtimer he could meet throughout his lifetime.

Transcribing, organizing, and indexing these stories may have been an avocation for Hervey Chesley, but he did the job so diligently for so many years, it was more like a vocation.

Through all the years, it was apparent that Chesley was more devoted to getting the facts on paper thanhe was in publishing them.   That is why the hundreds of tales in "Trails Travelled -- Tales Told" must stand as symbols for the thousands of tales in the author's vast collection, which can now be studied in the Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library at Midland, Texas, which, by the way, published the Chesley book.

The library is also the repository for the great collection of original sources of history on Texas and the Southwest compiled by historians and biographer J. Evetts Haley of Canyon, who was Chesley's traveling companion on most of the fact gathering trips into West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona that produced the tales for "Trails Travelled".

Haley wrote the foreword entitled "Introductions to the Chesleys" for the book.  He tells about the author's father, the author's military serviced as an artillery captain in World War I in France, and the author's pretty and gracious wife, the former Lena West, who still lives in Hamilton.  He tells about how he met Hervey Chesley, how their friendship ripened in the shade of mutual respect for accurate history, and how they traveled together in the search of history, with Haley's sometimes asking the questions and Chesley writing down the answers.

Concluding the foreword, Haley writes, "Of necessity, only fragments of that mass of fading memories can be given here.  The vast bulk, the balance, is to be found in the files of the Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library in Midland. Texas--a significant testimony to Hervey Chesley's unflagging diligence and dedication to history -- while the fragments here are from a few of the vivid characters who, for some good reason or other, impressed him the most.  I am glad to have been along when he got them."

The fragments came from lawmen and outlaws, cattlemen and cattle thieves, settlers, and explorers, hunters and trappers, miners and promoters, railroad men and train robbers, and countless others who lived or passed through Arizona and New Mexico in the 50 years or so before they entered the Union in 1912.

Some of the raconteurs are virtual unknowns while others are familiar figures in history because of significant contributions they made to the development of the area.

Buffalo hunts, Indian raids, frontier cattle and sheep ranching, mining, and many other subjects, particularly stories about outlaws like Billy the Kid, are recounted by the numerous story tellers.  Some accounts humorous, some very dry.  The author puts them down as he hears them he does not embellish them.

This devotion to accuracy gives a pronounced feeling of authenticity.  Future historians will rely on what Chesley has written.

Some of the story tellers were born before the Civil War.  Chesley's interviews which ended up in 'Trails Travelled" mostly took place between 1938 and 1945 when the tellers were very old.  Had he delayed, they would have been dead and the memories lost.