After a long hard selection process, with much historical reading, we are excited to announce the winner of the “She Needs a Name” contest.
In June we announced we has a new mail room employee who was great in all respects, except she needed a name. We asked you, and you sent over 400 entries. Sifting through those entries was not easy as many of them had us reading biography and history books.
The winning entry was submitted by Susan the Farm Quilter from Washington state. Congratulations on your winning entry.
Our mail lady is now know as, Thorny Rose – aka Laura Bullion – and she comes with quite a story. She was born somewhere around 1876. In the 1890’s at the ripe old age of 13 Laura became involved with an outlaw named William Carver. On the run from the law, Carver and Bullion met up with the infamous Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang. The gang gave her the name Thorny Rose.
After taking part in countless robberies with the gang, the law caught up with her in 1901 with $8,500 dollars worth of bank notes taken during the Great Northern train robbery. She served three and a half years in jail for her part in the heist.
In 1918, Thorny Rose moved to Memphis, TN, where she lived out the rest of her life as a seamstress, and then a drapery maker, dress maker (you knew there had to be a connection to needles and threads) and interior designer. She died in Memphis December 2, 1961. Her grave marker reads - Laura Bullion, The Thorny Rose 1876 – 1961.