By Scott A. Grant, JD
mail@floridanewsline.com
In the summer of 1911, two young men set out to ride from Oklahoma to New York City on horseback. That sounds like a harrowing journey for even the most experienced cowboys. What made their journey so amazing was that they were just kids. The two brothers, Bud and Temple Abernathy, were 10 and six years old. Temple was so small that he needed to stand on a stump to get onto his pony.
Despite the obvious obstacles, the two kids rode more than 2,500 miles in a little over a month to meet Teddy Roosevelt in New York City. They wrote checks along the way to pay for their provisions. Their father and Teddy were friends. Roosevelt had first met Jack Abernathy hunting wolves together and later appointed the dad to be US Marshall for the Western District of Oklahoma. Abernathy was famed for capturing wolves alive. He would stick his hand in their jaw to immobilize them and then wire their muzzles shut. Teddy Roosevelt thought it was one of the most amazing things he had ever seen.
The two boys set out on a small horse named Sam Bass and a pony named Geronimo. Geronimo came up lame and had to be replaced by a red and white pinto named Wylie Haynes. Along the way, they were treated as celebrities. They drove a train, slept in a fire station, and were the guests of honor at a Halley’s Comet watch party. When they got to Washington they met with President Taft. They liked him, but thought he was not as impressive as their hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Congress shut down so that they could listen to the two boys tell their story.
In New York City, they were greeted as heroes. The brothers met Orville Wright, who offered to take them up in his airplane. They rode in a ticker-tape parade with Roosevelt and the Rough Riders down Fifth Avenue. At the end of the parade, Teddy gave six-year-old Temple a huge teddy bear. They decided to ship their horses home via train and bought a small Brush automobile for $485 and then drove themselves home.
The boys became so famous that they played themselves in a motion picture titled “Abernathy Kids to the Rescue.” A year after their famous ride to New York City, the boys accepted a challenge to ride cross country from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in 60 days or less, never sleeping or eating indoors. If they succeeded, they would win a prize of $10,000. In the end, it took them 62 days and they did not claim the prize. They would have made it, but they lost their horses in the Great Salt Lake Desert and spent three days trying to find them, nearly dying of dehydration in the process.
The boys final adventure had them riding an Indian Motorcycle from Oklahoma to New York as a paid publicity stunt. They were nine and 13. Bud went into the oil and gas business. Temple went to law school and eventually became a judge. Late in life, he would say, “We’d been royally entertained by some folks, and coldly turned away by others, and we’d always faced the question of whether it was worthwhile to go on. I’m glad we always pressed ahead. That is where the future is.”
Scott A. Grant is a local historian and author. By day he manages investment portfolios at Standfast Asset Management. He welcomes your comments at scottg@standfastic.com
