This grandfather packed a lot of living into his lifetime, for he entered the Civil War when just a young teen in Cairo, Illinois at the mouth of the Mississippi after his Dad passed of injuries incurred in the conflict. As the only male left at home, perhaps he felt it was his duty to take his father's place. Charles William Robison 'Crusoe' "Bub" Forbes. A big name to fit his life. He had 6 children with his first wife who also brought him two stepsons and a stepdaughter, Betty, Bill and Andy Long, and had 13 children with his second wife. All of this giving credence to the story that he was the father of 22, albeit, 3 were step children. He married the first wife, Mary Jane Bollinger, in Arkansas, and later with his second wife, Elsie Guffey, whom he married in 1885, he moved to Oklahoma Territory, to participate in one of the first land runs, in Lincoln Co, North of Oklahoma City.
C. W. was a mail carrier in early Oklahoma Territory. After the family moved to the Oklahoma Panhandle, called No Man's Land, or Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory, on January 16, 1912, Charles W. Forbes filed on 160 acres in Beaver County, Oklahoma - land office was in Woodward. The legal description of his 160 acres is: Section 29, Township 1-N, Range 20 E, Meridian Cimarron. Here they raised and trained horses and mules, while he was still working as a mail carrier,and proving up the homestead. It is believed that at one time Charles Forbes had the longest mail route in the State of Oklahoma, during 1906, he was a Star Route carrier on Route #53180 and his route covered 61 miles, from Liberal, Kansas to Ochiltree County, Texas crossing back and forth across No Man's Land, of the Oklahoma Panhandle, and making connection with the small settlements in the area.
Wild mustangs were running free in Southeastern Colorado, and in the 1920s, at the age of 70 with 6 children still at home, he and his family and some of his married children set out on the Colorado venture to catch and break mustangs for sale. Grampa's age had him feeling the cold more than usual, and after a bitter winter, they moved back to Oklahoma, long enough to sell out, pack up and head to Santa Barbara, California, where he planned to 'bake the cold out of his bones' and just enjoy the view for awhile. He claimed in Oklahoma, "you're either boiling, or freezing, and I'm tired of both." Many of their children relocated with them, and became established there. This remarkable Civil War veteran lived life to fullest and found himself a temperate climate in which to sit down and 'build a few saddles' just for fun. Whew. Grampa, What a life! From the Big Mississip' to the Big Pacific waters. It took that span of land to contain him.
(No grave site links for baby Margaret 1874-1875, baby twins Erva and Melvin 1899-1900, Opal Trula Shreves of Missouri, 1906-1989; or youngest son of the second family, Lloyd Jewel Forbes 1910-1998 who lived in Santa Barbara. (by Carolyn Grice Blackwelder, a great granddaughter)