The Worst Hard Time Characters

Bam White’s wife and Melt’s mother. She arrived in No Man’s Land after becoming stranded with her husband in the winter of 1926. After her husband died, she moved out of Dalhart with Melt and his siblings.

Hi Barrick’s wife. Inez and Hi had three children. She ran a business in which she sewed suits for lawyers.

A white woman who was kidnapped from her family by the Comanche. She later became the wife of Chief Peta Nocona and the mother of Quanah Parker. The Texas Rangers kidnapped her back from the Comanche, though she begged to remain with the tribe.

Cynthia Parker’s husband and Quanah Parker’s father. He was killed by Texas Rangers when they kidnapped Cynthia Parker back from the Comanche tribe.

The wife of George “Doc” Dawson. She helped him with his medical practice by managing the X-ray machine, bookkeeping, and serving as anesthesiologist. She was also voted the “finest-looking woman” in the Texas Panhandle.

Doc and Willie Dawson’s youngest son. John left Dalhart in 1929 to become a lawyer in Houston. He returned home in the mid-1930s to a devastated Panhandle. John, like Hugh Bennett and Pare Lorentz, believed that the nesters had destroyed the land.

A teacher who settled with her husband, Charles Shaw, on a far edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle, where they were among the first homesteaders. They opened a business in Boise City, Oklahoma.

Hazel Lucas’s father. He built a dugout for the family in 1915 and began “plowing the grass on his half-section.” He chose to move to No Man’s Land because the land was free of charge.

– Carlie Lucas’s wife and Hazel Lucas’s mother. She had five children and, after her husband died, managed the family’s wheat farm with help from her husband’s brother, C.C.

Hazel Lucas’s husband, Shaw was also a teacher. He and his wife relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio in the spring of 1929, where he studied mortuary science.

Hazel Lucas and Charles Shaw’s daughter. She was diagnosed with whooping cough during her infancy. She was born during the worst of the Dust Bowl on April 7, 1934 and died of dust pneumonia in 1935.

Hazel and Charles Shaw’s son. Hazel went north to Elkhart, Kansas to give birth to him. For Hazel, Charles, Jr. was the result of her commitment “to bring a new life into the world to replace the one taken from her by dusters.” He was born strong and healthy.

George Alexander Ehrlich’s wife and the mother of their ten children. She, too, was a German from the Volga River region.

The youngest of the Ehrlich children. He was killed after being run over by a cattle truck.

The judge who acquitted George Alexander Ehrlich of a false treason charge during World War I.

The surviving brother of Levi Herzstein, he was the co-owner of their general store and one of the first Jewish settlers in the High Plains. With the help of his nephew, Simon, Morris set up a chain of stores, starting with a new store in Clayton, New Mexico.

The cereal magnate who funded efforts to bring rain back into the High Plains.

– A reporter for the Associated Press who provided dispatches during the dust blizzards in the Southern Plains. He coined the phrase “the Dust Bowl.”

A government official, economist, and photographer originally from Kansas who headed the Farm Security Administration. He came up with the idea of creating a visual record of the Dust Bowl for his administration. He hired numerous photographers for the project.

– A Russo-German immigrant from the Volga who had immigrated to the High Plains during a hurricane in 1890. His children later suffered from dust pneumonia and his farm failed, resulting in the bank taking his combine.