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- The Meteorite
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- One night in the fall
of 1882, the Quakers going home from church were startled to
see a meteor shoot across the sky, lighting the entire country.
From the intensity of its light they concluded it had fallen
to earth somewhere near Estacado, but they never found it. A
year or so later a cowboy found it five miles north and a little
east of the present town of Abernathy. It dug a hole in the ground
where it fell, but it must have bounced out, for it was lying
on the ground a foot or more from the hole and was broken into
two pieces. The large piece was wedge-shaped and was about as
high as a chair, and it weighed 650 pounds. The small piece weighed
300 pounds. After Mr. R.A. McWhorter moved to the Plains in 1892,
he carried it to his home in a wagon. It took several men to
lift it. He took it home and set it on the ground just outside
his dugout. They used it for a washstand for a few years. Other
people had thought about taking it home with them, but no one
ever did. It had been lying there about ten years before Mr.
McWhorter moved it.
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- Mr. McWhorter sent some
little chips of it to the museum in Washington to see if they
would pay anything for it. They finally wrote a letter with instructions
to wrap it in two sacks and label it "iron ore." The
museum had enclosed a draft for $500 with a bill of lading. Mr.
McWhorter did just that.
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- A few years later one
of Mr. McWhorter's friends was in Washington at the museum. He
saw the meteor, with Mr. McWhorter's name on it.
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- Of course Mr. McWhorter
missed the wash stand, but the $500 came in pretty handy to help
with living expenses.
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