On one occasion, Dora and Virginia “Virg” went with George on a trip. They came to a creek where the water was running very high. George decided to attempt to cross, the water was so swift that they almost were swept away and drowned. They were rescued by a cowboy who was on the banks on the side of the river but they lost their load of supplies.

George Washington Bloxsom helped build the telephone line from Ponca City to Pawhuska, Oklahoma. One story goes that he got glass in his eyes from the glass insulators used on the telephone lines. This version of the story is not very credible since the first insulators were made out of ceramic. The more credible version of this story was that he contracted an eye disease, which was common to the Indians in the area. The family referred to this as “granulated eyelids disease”. He became blind for three or four years and then regained his sight. A disputed part of this story is that George and Dora had sold all of the land that they had inherited in Illinois in attempting to obtain help for his eyes. Originally, Dora had inherited 100 acres of maple sugar tree land and George had 100 acres of black walnut timbers.

While George was blind, Dora supported the family by doing washing and ironing and she also was a midwife. George helped by delivering the clean laundry, pulling a wagon with Virginia, the youngest child, leading him. Dora did the laundry for the local barber shop. One day, George was pulling a small wagon full of barber shop towels down the sidewalk and a man stopped him and said “I think that I can help you, my good man”. He gave George either some herb or some ointment (two different versions of the story), and George regained his sight. In one version of this story, this was a magical, mystical event. In the more pragmatic version, the man happened to be an eye doctor from back East.

In Ponca City, Oklahoma, Dora bought six lots at 600 South 9th Street. She paid for this property by doing washing and ironing. The family had a two bedroom house on this property.

Apparently, the family’s middle son, Carl, was a real wheeler-dealer. Once he and two other young fellows wrote a love-lorn letter full of tall tales to three girls, who were convinced to move to Ponca City, bag and baggage. Carl and the boys hid them out for awhile. Somehow, Dora ended up cooking and washing for them for three weeks before she got wise. She called the police, who took the girls to a boarding house, where they earned some money and went back home.

Carl had been born pre-maturely, with no hair, eyelashes or fingernails. He was so small at birth that he could fit in a shoe box. The story goes that Carl and Hank were very wild and rugged and rode broncos in the rodeos. Eventually, Carl joined Colonel William F. Cody in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and traveled with the show to England and Europe.

George Washington Bloxsom eventually contracted stomach cancer and was ill for six or eight years. He died in 1914, in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Isadora died on November 22, 1933 and is buried in Ponca City, Oklahoma.