Archives West Finding Aid

Grace Sinton Logan Schaedel (1896-1996) was a Wyoming historian and writer. Her grandfather, Hill Logan, was a gunsmith who came to Camp Carlin, near Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1868. He brought his wife and family to Wyoming in 1871. His son, Ernest Alfred Logan (1857-1944), grew up in the Cheyenne area, working as a cowboy, stagecoach driver, and mail carrier. In 1892 he opened Logan’s Book and Curio Store in Cheyenne and in 1893 married Elizabeth Sinton Walker. Elizabeth Walker and her sister, Jennie, had operated a dressmaking business in Cheyenne since 1885. The couple had three children: Mabel, Grace, and William.

Grace Logan attended the University of Wyoming, rooming with Olga Moore (Arnold), who later became a novelist and short story writer. Grace graduated from the university in 1921. In 1926 she went to work as secretary for the Director of Extension Services at Texas A&M University. There she met and married John Schaedel. The couple moved to Cheyenne to live with Grace’s father in 1929. John Schaedel worked in welfare services. Grace Schaedel pursued an interest in family and local history and wrote a biography of her father, “The Lord Loveth a Cheerful Liar,” which contained many anecdotes about life in Cheyenne but which was not published during her lifetime.