History Of A Pioneer Family
checking for typo's


February 11, 2002
 
 

HISTORY OF A PIONEER FAMILY
Written by Florence (Courtney) Melton 1857-1926
signed by her 24 February 1923 and later donated to
Garfield Co, WA Historical Museum in Pomeroy, WA
[green text = text added by me]
 

Part 2

     The only exciting thing that occurred while in Boise was my boat ride.  The boys (little boys) dammed the small creek until it was perhaps twelve or fifteen feet wide.  Then they Built a raft.  They wanted someone to ride across on it.  They were to pull from the shore.  I stood up - held to the branches of a willow.  When I was ready the boys pulled.  The limb broke and I landed flat on my back - went clear under.  I was "Eve on a raft" and they sure ducked [dunked?] me.  They gave up boat-building from that hour.  Boise did not appeal to our folks.  George Holbrook rented a farm and lived there the rest of his life.  His family live there yet and are very well off financially.

     It was along in August when we started on to Oregon.  The horses had such a good rest, they traveled pretty well and we were no time crossing the Blue Mountains.  I remember well our entry into Oregon.  It was at a Snake River ferry.  As soon as we touched land, the ferry man said, "Well, Sis, you're in Oregon now.  Going to be picking up red apples not many days
from now."  We came the Meacham road through the Blue Mountains down on the edge of the valley at Cayuse Station.  Everything was parched and dry, but where we camped there was a spring poured out of the bank like a hydrant.  No sign of water anywhere else.  All that could be seen was dry dust.  All the folks went to Walla Walla to see town and country.  They
came back next day and we all went to the town.  Uncle William Holbrook thought he had reached his foot of the rainbow, but our folks were not favorable impressed with the country.  They were tired of the road, however, and rented a farm on Garrison Creek.  We could look up and see the Fort buildings.  The stock destroyed the crop the renters had in, so they told the landlord he would have to put a lawful fence around it or they would not keep it.  He brought a man who claimed he had bought the farm and wanted possession right away, which was agreeable to us.

     They lost no time in packing their wagons.  [Jacob] Houk had sold his wagon.  He bought our light wagon.  That left us with one, so Molly and one of the boys rode the mules; some of the time a pair of horses.  We had seven head to one wagon.  It was on the twenty-fifth of September, I think, that we again started for Oregon.

     We went the Barlow route, down through Pendelton then about the size of Pataha City [WA].  The big wheat ranches below the Penitentiary were a desert then.  I never put in a worse day on the road than we experienced from Pendelton to the foot of the Cascade Mountains.  The first day in the mountains was September thirtieth - my birthday, eleven years old - no cake with candles.  We broke the hind wheels of our wagon so they went to
work to make the wagon over.  The wheels were like the drawing - oak grubs made the stays.  The wagon was overloaded, so Mother and I walked nearly all the way through the mountains.  We had no rain and it was warm.  We were in sight of the Columbia River at The Dalles and saw a steamboat there.  There were three memorable hills: Tighe Valley: this we reached after dark and we nearly had to spend the night there.  The Deschutes Hill and Laural Hill were both bad ones.  The ones who crossed first let their wagons down with chains.  The bark of the trees was scored and cut through.  I do no doubt but that they show today as plain as then.  We saw no animals of any kind, but we camped one night at a Frenchman's, old Mr. Revenous.  He lived about three days travel from Portland.  They had several children.  They were not allowed to go farther from the house than the back of the orchard for fear of the panthers.  They lost several head of stock by panthers each year.  They had several dozen California quail in coops feeding them to send them to the Portland market.  The first we ever saw.  They are prettier than the Bob Whites.

     When we crossed the Big Sandy, it was so smoky we couldn't see much of the valley.  The first town we came to was Oregon City.  Then we came to Salem.  The most beautiful town we had seen since we left Iowa.  OREGON THE BEAUTIFUL!!! All the hardships we had endured were well repaid by the picturesque beauty we feasted our eyes on, everywhere we looked.  It was indeed the land of red apples.  Everyone we talked to would say, "Now help yourselves to apples" out of any orchard you came to.  Everyone who owned an orchard would feel badly to think of anyone going without.  The most sociable generous people on earth.  All of them at some time or another had crossed the plains.  They knew what we had gone through and stood ready to lend a helping hand.

     One Saturday evening about the fifteenth of October, we stopped at Calvin Burkhart's home.  They asked if there were some place they could camp for a few days until they could find a farm to rent.  He directed us to a gate that led back in the timber to an old sawmill.  There we would have wood and water.  He pointed to a stubblefield and said to turn our
horses in there; also to stop at the orchard and help ourselves to fruit. We found a very good cabin and an old heating stove.  They set it up, and we were very comfortable.

     Mother and Sarah were congratulating themselves that the had gotten rid of [William] Cluster, as they expressed it.  Imagine their surprise and disappointment when on Sunday morning while at the breakfast table who should walk in but Will Cluster.  I laugh yet when I think of the look on Mother's face.  She said, "How in the world did you find us?"  He said, "I was riding along and saw the horses in the field, and asked a man at the house back there if there were some immigrants camped close by."  He had stopped in the Grand Ronde Valley, and they were sure Molly had received no mail, but what they didn't know was that Molly had written a letter which Uncle Holbrook had mailed at Uniontown telling him they were going to Walla Walla but if they didn't like the country would go on to the Willamette Valley.  She thought Albany was the destination. Well, Mother and Sarah got dinner, and predicted all sorts of calamities that would befall Molly if she took up with that stranger.  She didn't seem to worry much.  They settled it that day.  He went up to Lane County and rented a farm three miles from Junction City.  He bought the necessary implements with which to go to farming.

     Our men folk started Monday morning to rent a farm.  They had no trouble getting farms.  [Jacob] Houk rented a farm about a mile from where we lived.  Baxter and Ahira Morse rented together.  On Tuesday, bright and early, we started HOME.  For the first time since the first of May we were to quit living in a wagon.  We were most of the day on the road.  Wednesday morning we cleaned the house and unloaded the wagon.  Mary went with Sarah.  Wednesday morning she went to Mrs. Moist's to do some washing - some blankets, quilts, and clothes for the little one Sarah was expecting.  Mrs. Moist watched her.  She told her she would give $100 if she could work like she did.

     Thursday both families were busily preparing to keep house.  We had our supper finished with Mother said, "There is Houk!"  She jumped up, told me to wash the dishes and if she were not home what to do for breakfast.  The boys were to watch Father.  She was ready by the time Houk turned around.  About two o'clock, October 18th, William Elliott [Houk] came to gladden their home.  Mary stayed and helped her get settled for winter.  On November 24, 1868, she and William Cluster were married at Lebanon.  They went immediately to Lane County.

     It was decided not to plow much that fall - the horses needing a rest.  Ahira Morse was to look after things at home and Baxter went to work for Mr. Burkhardt in the woods.  He kept a force of men to cut logs for his sawmill.  He had a foreman who had spent years in the timber.  One of his specialties was to kill off every new hand.  He would take them with him.  After Baxter had chopped a few days Bill said, "Well, Courtney, you and I will work together today."  He kept chopping faster and so did Baxter - he never said a word, just worked.  When quitting time came Bill said, "Well, Courtney, I'll take my hat off to you.  You are the only man I ever ran across who could do as much in a day in the timber as I can.  You have worked in the timber before."  Baxter said, "Oh, yes, I chopped off four toes learning how." [this is true]

     The winter of '68 was mild.  The flowers bloomed, and it was perpetual spring to us.  When we had been at home about a week, a man stopped and asked if we had apples for winter.  He said a Mrs. Bridgefarmer had told him to stop and tell us to bring a four-horse team and get a load of apples.  He wouldn't turn it to the hogs for three days, until we could get ours.  How we reveled in apples!  I started to school the first of November.  I had been out of school fr a year, and it was hard at first, but it was not long before I was counted the best reader in the class.  But I wasn't very smart in figures.

     Mother was in her glory the next summer when the fruit came on. Canning was not in use and the [only] way they had to care for fruit was to dry it in the sun.  Plums were 20 to 25¢ per lb. and apples were 15 to 18¢ per lb..  In August of 1869 there was a total eclipse of the sun - the first I ever saw.  It was twilight where we lived, but in Portland it got dark enough to light lamps.  The chickens went to roost about three o'clock in the afternoon.

     We lived one year on the Smith Knox farm.  We rented a farm from a Mr. Blount for two years, that was out towards Sand Ridge. [Linn County]  It was very flat, poorly drained land.  Baxter plowed for days when the ground would go out of sight in the standing water.  When the water dried up that ground was as hard as a rock.  The continual wet weather began to tell on Baxter.  He did not feel well and he wished he had stayed in the Walla Walla country where he could take up some land and raise stock.  I don't know how or who the first to come to a decision to come to the Walla Walla country.  The last two years Mother lived in Oregon, she kept the family in clothes and all the groceries.  She bought a cook stove.  She never called
on Baxter for anything.

     Father met with an accident on the 25th day of September, 1870.  He had a spasm and fell in the fire.  A few coals were in the fireplace; his right hand and right side of his face were frightfully burned.  Mother dressed his burns four times in twenty-four hours.  That fall I could not go to school.  Baxter had a crop to put in.  I had the cows to milk, three of them, and potatoes to dig - to be "Handy Andy" generally.  As soon as Father was able to work, he began working on the arm chair he longed for, an arm chair to lean his head against.  It was sent to Albany to be stained and varnished and a rawhide bottom put in.  He had several offers to make others like it, but Baxter, Mother and William Cluster made up their minds to come to Washington.  They had decided in June.  I think they didn't have the courage to tell Sarah until in July.  She and Father went out one Saturday afternoon and stayed until Sunday evening.  They had a battle royal.  She was determined she would not move again, and it made her so mad to have them tell of the failure of the grain crop.  [Jacob] Houk would have liked to come but he did not take a stand at that time.

     It seemed to me I was bidding goodbye to Paradise when we left Oregon.  Mary and I felt the same.  We had spent most of our lives in a new country. It may sound romantic to have a cabin built around you, but the privations that go with it take all the romance out for the one who experiences it.  Oregon Was settled up, everywhere you traveled you went in a lane, good farms, comfortable homes.  What we knew of Walla Walla, it was terribly rough.  It was nothing to hear of a man being shot in a saloon row.  The Vigilantee committee would hang some of the worst to make things interesting.  People were panic stricken to get away.  They had to sell their improvements to get away.  It was not very encouraging to say the least.  Will was only going to stay five years.  I think four of them Molly spent her spare moments in tears.

[Moving to Washington]

     On September 25, 1871, we started.  We went as far a [Jacob] Houk's and stayed the night.  We came the Lebanon route through Sweet Home Valley.  The first night we camped at a roadhouse.  Ola [Viola] was a baby of fifteen months.  I took her in the house to let her take a little exercise.  I found the woman knew Will very well when he was in the valley the first time.  She told about his love affairs and how many girls had tried to capture him.  We camped a Fish Lake on my birthday.  I was fourteen.  Fish Lake in the spring and early summer is a good sized lake with lots of fish, mountain trout and other varieties, but after the snows melt the water begins to settle until in July people could drive in and get fish by the wagonload.  A coarse rush would start to grow.  Cattle and horses were very fond of it.  It afforded excellent pasturage from August until winter came.  When we were there it was green as any meadow.  We climbed Sand Mountain the next day, ten miles to the top.  We dropped down on Cash Creek for four days and bounced from one stone to another.  We came by the seven craters that at some time must have sent the lava over the ground.  Ola would get so mad she would scream every time the wagon would strike a lager rock than usual.  The Ochoco country was very rough, a great sheep country.  Prineville was quite a town.  Everything was freighted from, I think, The Dalles.  We had nice weather all the way.  It was beautiful on the Warm Springs Reservation.  That is the beauty spot of Eastern Oregon.  We were three weeks on the road.

     We landed at Walla Walla about the middle of October [1871].  It was hot and oh so dusty!  Will and Molly moved out to Dry Creek.  He wintered at Jim Lorentz's.  We stayed at the Holbrooks'.  I started to school the first of November.  We went to the Baker school.  It consisted of two rooms; and man and wife by the name of Williams were the teachers.  The snow got too deep for walking, so we dropped out.  Baxter, Will Cluster, Ahira and Frank Morse went up to the Pataha and took out claims, built cabins and did all the work required to hold their claims.  All the supplies had to be hauled from Walla Walla.  There was a new store starting up about half way.  It was called the Red Store.  Then it was decided to start a town.  They finally decided to name it Dayton in honor of Jesse Day.

     We planned on moving up as soon as we could leave Molly.  On the first day of March, Florence came to live with us.  She always believed in being on time; she arrived just in time for dinner.  When she was ten days old, we started for our future home.  Father had been busy during the winter.  He made a table, bedstead, a door and frame to fit it in.  We got rough lumber to lay a floor before we started.  Baxter hauled everything that he could leave in safety before we went.  It was an early spring.  The roads were soft.  We started to go the upper road, but the horses couldn't pull the load.  So Baxter swung off down to Waitsburg.  We only got within five miles of Waitsburg the first day.  The second day we got as far as the old Graham place.  Wiggins lived there, three miles east of Dayton.  Houses were going up everywhere.  Lots were staked off, but they had not removed the rail fences yet, or attempted to make any streets.  The third day we got as far as Owsley,s.  We crossed the Tucannon at Bill King's.  That terrible hill!!!!  Mother was quite sick.  They helped her in the house to bed.  It was dark.  The only lamp was a grease lamp.  Old Mr. Owsley and Jane were all there were at home.  It had to be me who got supper, - make bread (sour dough), make coffee, fry meat.  I wonder if many girls of today could go into a strange house and cook like that.  We stayed there until Monday.  Will came for us and moved us into Frank Morse's cabin.

     Baxter went back for another load.  Father and Baxter worked on our cabin, laid the floor, and then we moved in.  For the third time Mother had a house built around her.  We were treated kindly by everyone, all the way up from Walla Walla.  There was a nice class of people settled on the Pataha Prairie.  Though we had many privations, there was never a time that everyone did not have beef.  The first three years the crickets ate most of out gardens.  All of the grains we sowed for hay.  Father and Mother fought the crickets, drove them like hogs and saved some of the garden.  They were all gone in July, so some things could be grown in the fall.  The first thing after our house was completed was to plow sod for the garden. We bought five sacks of potatoes on the way up.  That was to furnish seed and for the table until the new ones came.  They were large; Mother cut out the eyes and kept them in a damp place until ready to plant.  We raised a fine lot that year.  The crickets would not molest peas, but all the early stuff they took.  They ate the potato tops, but they came on again.  They planted a patch of sweet corn in July, about the fifteenth.  It was in good roasting ears when we had a heavy freeze in September.  We rolled out of bed at 4 A.M. as soon as we could see light, began on the corn.  Snapped it off and husked it; by eleven o'clock it was on the scaffold drying.  We had a fifty pound sack half full of dried corn for winter.  No one could tell it had been frosted.  In August, they sowed a big patch of turnips; they were fine and we had those all winter.  Baxter bought two shoats [young hogs] in the spring.  We kept them in a pen and fed them everything that could be spared out of the garden.  The turnips and potatoes, with a few sacks of grain, was all we needed for our meat and lard. Mother made sausage, mince meat, pickled pigs feet.  Baxter bought a quarter of beef.  Mother made a lot of the nicest dried beef anyone ever ate.  She hung it to the rafters and it cured to perfection.  We got tallow to furnish candles for a year.  I have given in detail how we got along the first year.  It will be seen that we didn't come anywhere near starving.

     There was such an influx of settlers the merchants ran out of supplies in many things.  Everything had to be freighted from Wallula.  Baxter worked in harvest in Walla Walla, then hauled freight to lay in supplies for the winter.  He came home late in the fall and got down wood for the winter.  Then he went into the mountains and made rails until the snow got so deep they could not work.  In the spring he broke prairie until it got dry enough to haul fencing out of the mountains.  He hauled seed grain three years in succession to the Pataha before he got a crop.  They used to say rails were legal tender.  Uncle Will brought several head of cows with him.  He would trade a steer or cow for rails.  He never went up to make any himself.  Mother and Molly each made butter to sell.  Mother found out there was a great demand for buckskin gloves.  She got a pattern and men came from far and near to get her to make them gloves.  Molly raised chickens to sell and sold a lot of eggs.  The winter of 1874 the Columbia River froze over early.  The merchants of Walla Walla ran out of coffee and would not sell any more than a dollar's worth to one family.  Everyone had to resort to substitutes.  Almost everyone used barley.  It makes fair coffee, as good as some people could make coffee.  We all drank it, but Mother.  We managed to keep the genuine for her.  The spring of 1872 the settlers were excited over the trouble with the Indians.  There was talk of war, that spring, with Chief Joseph in the Wallowa Valley.  It soon blew over, however, and slumbered until 1877, when the Nez Perce War was a reality.  Everyone was frightened.  Some left and went to Walla Walla.  There was no actual danger any of the time but it was a bad fright.

     The summer of 1872 there was no school for anyone to go to, but the district was organized and early in the spring of 1873 a log schoolhouse was built and a three months term was taught by George Greer, beginning the middle of April.  The lower flat people organized a district; the first school taught there was the winter of 1873.  Will Butler was the teacher.  The spring of 1874 the central schoolhouse was built.  They finished it all but the windows. Harvest came on and they did not have time to finish it, but concluded to start school anyway.  John Story taught the school.  There was a rainy spell in August and the children suffered so with the cold that the directors got a cook stove from the cabin of someone who had gone below to harvest, and used it in the schoolhouse until fall.

     The people of the Prairie took a great deal of interest in schools and in establishing a church.  In 1873 this part of Washington had be so thickly settled, the Methodist Episcopal conference had always met west of the Cascades and included Walla Walla when sending their ministers.  It was thought advisable to divide the districts; eastern Oregon and eastern Washington to be in one, to be known as the Columbia River Conference.  A Mr. James Rice, a neighbor, talked with different ones.  He said now was the time to form a class and send in their application to have a minister assigned to the Pataha Prairie.  They met at our house.  The class was organized and composed of the following names:  James Rice and wife and daughter, William Greer and wife, Ezekial Benjamin and wife, Father and Mother.  Mr. Rice was appointed class leader.  All had been raised Methodist but our parents.  Mother made it clear to all present that she and Father were willing to the M.E. church, but the Presbyterian church was their church, and if one was established at any future time, they would feel free to go to their first church.  This meeting was held the first day of March 1873.  It was cold with snow squalls all day and it snowed quite hard in the evening.  In the following August the general conference met.  Different circuits were established.  Pataha was included in the circuit with Dayton.  Reverend Lane was sent to Dayton with an appointment to preach once a month at Pataha.  The first revival meeting was held at the log schoolhouse.  Mary Benjamine, Rachel Bankson, Josie Bankson were all that united with the church that I can think of now. The next preacher was George W. Kennedy.  The central schoolhouse was of easy access, so the gatherings were gradually moved there.  Reverend Jocelyn was the first preacher to establish the place of holding services at the central schoolhouse.

      By this time a lot of changes had taken place.  Baxter had quite a field plowed and fenced, that thrashed some wheat.  The first grain he sold he hauled to Snake River where he got 65¢ a bushel.  Very early the settlers found they could realize more money to feed their grain to hogs, make bacon of their hogs.  Some drove to Lewiston.  The longer the land was farmed the better the crops were.   The summer 1876 Baxter had a field of barley that thrashed 80 bushels to the acre.

     About this time James [Moran] Melton appeared on the scene.  He drove a bunch of fat hogs to Pierce City.  The eleventh of June the Indians killed enough of his hogs to take with them on their march through the mountains.  This was the beginning of the Nez Perce war.  Jim joined the scouts, was at the battle of Looking Glass, carried dispatches back to Pierce City.  The settlers came there for protection.  They were afraid of a general uprising of the Nez Perce.  He and another white man got as far as Kamiah, where the Indians were ready to knife them.  Old Louise had lots of influence with the tribe.  She lived with a white man (Jack Greer).  She told them to be in no hurry to start, she would pilot them through.  She and Greer took them through a pass, then over to the Lolo trails.  Jim always said he owed his life to old Louise.  She was grandmother of Mrs. John Agee, and used to visit Mrs. Holt's daughter on the Tucannon.  After they climbed the Lolo trails, they had to go through the mountains.  They ran into a camp of Indians.  Dutch, the man with Jim, was for riding on the run.  Jim said no, that would look like they were afraid.  They jogged along, never seeing the Indians.  One came out and halloed - they never heard - he shouted again and they didn't hear.  Next an arrow came zip in front of their horses.  They stopped short and Jim whirled to face them.  They came up and asked all about where they had been, about the Indians, but they hadn't heard a thing about the war, and were looking for cattle.  As the Siwash talked war they talked cattle.  They started on but the chief would them.  Finally they got away from them.  After the had gone a half a mile or so they could hear horses loping after them; they rode faster but still heard them.  Where it was open they would slow down to rest their horses, but where it was timber they would ride like perdition.  Finally Jim could stand it no more.  They stopped brush was thick and a steep bluff was to their back.  They tied up their horses to one side and took their stand where they could watch the road.  They didn't have long to wait.  It was a loose Indian pony that was following them.  They got into Pierce City early the next morning.  They brought the word that the Indians were going from them, so allayed the fear of an attack at that time.  Jim didn't get home until in August.  He had bought rails from the Jim Rose farm on the mountain.  Before he left in the spring he drove the stock out and put up the fence, thinking it might make some hay.  When he got back it was a nice field of wheat.  He had it threshed.  It went 25 bushels to the acre,  which everyone was pretty good for volunteer.  We were married the 20th of December, 1877.

     The summer if 1877, Bill Potter began building a flour mill, and there was talk of a town being started.  The stage had been stopping at J.M. Pomeroy's for several years.  Also they handled the mail for a long time.  While the Pataha Prairie mail first had a temporary post office at Stephen Day's.  When they moved away, Ransome Long had the Post Office for a long time.  Dick Zemel [?] kept the mail, but not for long.  As mill progressed, the idea of a town grew in popularity.  The first talk of a name - it was to be named "Marthene" in honor of Mrs. Pomeroy.  I don't know any of the particulars concerning the name, but finally it was decided that the name should be Pomeroy.  Ben Day put in a stock of goods.  Zemel put in a grocery.  Dr. Frary a drugstore; Calloway's a delivery stable; someone a blacksmith shop; and lo! we were no longer a frontier but a full fledged community with a town in our midst.  The days of March, Jim went over the hill in front of Skyhock's to Pomeroy and got groceries and my first washboard.

[The people who married into the family]

     As I have told you all I know about my folks, I think I will tell you what I have heard about those who came into Mother's family.

[Jacob Houk]

     The first was Jacob Houk.  He was of German descent.  He was born in 1833 near Terre Haute, Indiana.  His mother and several members of the family died with the cholera.  His father was a hard drinker.  After the family was broken up he drove the children from the home.  He bought a barrel of whisky and started to drink himself to death.  Some of the neighbors told [Jacob] Houk what a pitiful plight his father [Jacob Hauck] was in, so he went home and took care of him and laid him away.  He then went up to Minnesota and worked in the woods.  He drifted down to the Lake [Spring Lake, MN] and became acquainted with Sarah.  He stayed right there until she agreed to keep house for him.  [They were married 10 MAR 1859 in Spring Lake, Scott Co., MN.]  He was a man of good habits, upright, honest, and a temperate man.  He died the 23rd of April, 1903, suddenly with something like apoplexy.

[Note: The information about Jacob Houk that I have says he was born 25 FEB 1835 in Buffalo, Erie Co., NY, and died 13 APR 1903 in Lebanon, Linn Co., OR.  Sarah died 29 MAY 1912 in Seattle, King Co., WA.  She and Jacob are buried in the Masonic Cemetery, Lebanon, Linn Co., OR.  Here is a photo of Sarah and daughters Lizzy (left) and Maggie]

[Margaret Porter]

     The next one was [Jacob] Jake's wife.  Her name was Margaret Porter.  She kept house for her father in Iowa.  She and Jake were married August 21, 1867.  She was a fine woman, a great worker.  We left [Iowa] in the spring of 1868, and I never saw them again.

[Note: Jacob Hiram Courtney was born 10 DEC 1839 in Deaverton, Morgan Co., OH.  He died 2 JAN 1916 in Asher, Pottawatomie Co., OK.  Margaret Porter was born 11 SEP 1837 in near McArthur, Vinton Co., OH, and died 15 MAR 1907 also in Asher.  They are buried at Avoca Cemetery, Asher, Pottawatamie Co., OK.]

[William F. Cluster]

     William F. Cluster was born February 8, 1830, near Vincennes, Indiana.  When a young boy, his father moved to Missouri.  (I think the Northern part.)  They lived there a number of years before the [Civil] war.  Father Cluster was a staunch Union man.  There[Their's] was a big family.  I think three or four of his sons served in the Union Army.  He had neighbors who were in favor of the south, but were good friends.  One came to him and said, "Daniel, you and I have been friends for years.  We don't see alike in this trouble but I am going to warn you as a friend to take your family and get out of this state as soon as you can.  I am betraying knowledge to tell you this and I don't dare help you openly.  God knows if I could stop them I would."  Mr. Cluster asked how soon he should go, and the neighbor replied, "Today, you will not be safe longer."  They put what things they could in a wagon and started for Iowa that night.  Mr. Cluster had a small sum of money by him; he lifted up a stone in the hearth and buried it.  He thought of it the next night after their flight.  The house was burned and  everything destroyed.  Mrs. Cluster went into southern Iowa.  This friend wrote him what had been done and said, "My children were up playing around the ruins and found some of what you left there.  I went and dug around and think I have it all.  It is safe."  After the war was over and it was safe to return, they went back to build another home, and this friend turned over the money.

     Uncle Will crossed the plains in 1862, was in Oregon where we lived. First winter he spent in the Grand Ronde Valley.  When he went east, he shipped from San Francisco.  I think he crossed the isthmus and came to New York.  He stayed about three hour until his train was due to leave.  When he got home to Missouri, he was dissatisfied.  When his mother saw how determined to come West again, she made him promise he would get married and settle down.  About the first letter he wrote home was to tell his mother he was married.  He was a great worker, saving, had no bad habits, [and] was kind to his family.  To pay his debts and to keep his word about anything amounted to a religion with him.

[Note: William F. Cluster was born in Tippecanoe Co., IN.  He died in June 1915 in CA or WA.  Mary Elizabeth "Molly" Courtney was born 30 DEC 1843 in New Lexington, Perry Co., OH.  She died 6 NOV 1922 in Yakima, Yakima Co., WA.  Both are buried in Pomeroy City Cem, Pomeroy, Garfield Co., WA.]

[James Moran Melton]

     The next one to enter the family was James Moran Melton.  His life was a rather varied one.  His parents were English people who lived in Louisville, Kentucky.  He was born July 10, 1849.  His parents were both dead when he was two years old.  A man by the name of Curtis took Jim and expected to raise him, but he and his wife had trouble.  She ran off with a steamboat captain, went to Madison, Indiana and took Jim with her.  Curtis followed her and took possession of the boy.  He thought she was not the proper kind of person to have the care of a child.  He made inquiries for some good family to put him in.  He was directed to Wade Melton.  Jim was five years old when he came to live with them.  He was so diminutive he could walk without stooping under an ordinary table.  The Meltons never took any adoption papers.  His real name was James Moran; they just added Melton and allowed him to keep his father's name as his middle name.

     He had a roving disposition.  He boasted he had been in almost every state in the Union.  He never liked to go to school.  He was a hustler in every sense of the word, would work himself into a nervous chill.  He had a quick temper, was not afraid of anything when angry.  It was told of him that he went to bed with a chill one night.  When the fever came up he dreamed he was a set of harness.  They had taken him to pieces to oil him and they couldn't get him buckled together right.  When morning came Henry Day came to call [on] him and asked how he was.  Jim said,  "Oh, I'm all right if the have me buckled up right."  Day told him to lie still for a while.

     When he was thirteen, he ran off from Mr. Melton and beat his way south.  He was with the Union Army.  The captain of a company became quite fond of him.  He kept him with him until there was a big battle imminent.  He tried to get him to go home.  He would not go, so he sent him to his home in Akron, Ohio.  He was there until they began making arrangements to send him to school.  He got a job picking apples.  He thought he would write his home, finally.  His letter was the first word they had from him since he left the first of  June.  They sent him a ticket and word if he didn't come immediately they would come for him. He went home and started to school.  He was married when he was twenty.  His wife [Sarah Gordon] died when he was twenty three he was left a widower with an infant daughter.  Mr. and Mrs. Melton kept the baby and he settled his affairs and left for the West in August, 1872.  He came to California, stayed a while, then came to Portland that fall.  He spent the winter on Columbia slough where Troutdale [OR] is today.  He worked for James Buxton, Mrs. Melton's cousin.  When spring arrived he had his fill of rain, milking cows, and grubbing vine maple.  He took a boat up the river, landed in Lewiston just in time to get a job with a surveying party.  They surveyed the reservation in Kamiah, Idaho.  The surveying party was camped seventeen miles above Lewiston.  He had no horse.  They told him he could ride one of the pack mules.  He rode on a pack mule with a halter.  After they got out to where there was grass, the mule stopped to eat.  No persuasion, blows or entreaties would budge that mule.  As long as he could hear the bell he would throw one ear forward, then the other, then away they would go until they came in sight, then he would stop and feed.  He never got within speaking distance the whole seventeen miles.  He was out several weeks of a hotel run by a Frenchwoman.  H worked until harvest began.  He started out to look at the country.  He came on the Pataha and hired out to Parson Quinn to put up hay.  He didn't like the looks of things, especially the dishcloths.  He washed and boiled them.  Parson came in and saw them.  He said, "The devil!  You don't like my housekeeping, you do the cooking yerself.  See if ye do better."  So he cooked and made a hand in the field beside.  When haying was over he started afoot to hunt him a ranch.  He came up Tucannon ridge, turned left where the Cox schoolhouse stands.  He hadn't seen a soul when he came around down over the point above Meible's house.  There he saw a man cutting oats with a cradle down in the gulch about where their house now stands.  He had never seen such a crop growing as he saw there.  The man was Hurd Harris.  He wanted to sell so they made a deal that afternoon.  I don't know the date but in August, 1873 he became owner of the old ranch.  It was rated for many years as one of the best stock ranches in the county.  He grubbed willows all one winter.  Where the lower stands was grubbed out and plowed.  He worked there off and on for four years.  Then we were married December 20, 1877 and we both worked.  Ralph was born September 19, 1878.  Carrie was born February 29, 1880.  Gertrude was born December 27, 1884.

[Note: James Moran Melton died NOV 1895 in Pomeroy, Garfield Co., WA.  Ralph B. Melton died 7 NOV 1949 probably in WA.  Caroline Elizabeth "Carrie" Melton died 3 SEP 1966 in Palo Alto, Santa Clara Co., CA.  Gertrude Melton died 14 OCT 1971.]
 

     The last to enter the family circle was Ella E. Buttrum.  She and [Levi] Baxter were married June 1, 1880.  She was born the sixth of March, 1851 in Georgia.  When a child her parents moved to Alabama.  They lived there through the Civil War and through the terrible reconstruction  period.  Her father was a Methodist minister and he was called from home a great deal.  There were four years that the light was never out a single night.  There was always some member up and dressed so they could not be surprised.  Conditions became so intolerable they determined to get away from the south.  So they came to Oregon in 1872 or '73, and came to the Garfield County in 1878.  Ella was a neat housekeeper, industrious, economical, a good devoted wife and mother.

[Note: Levi Baxter Courtney was born 14 APR 1846 in New Lexington, Perry Co., OH, and died 18 JAN 1916 in WA.  Ella Eliza Buttram born 5 MAR 1854 in GA, died 22 APR 1943 in Seattle, King Co., WA. Both are buried at Pataha Flats, Garfield Co., WA.]

    I think I have given all the history and dates of my family relations that I know of.  The only merit I claim for this letter is that it is true to facts that I have heard and what came under my own observation.  My object in writing this is to show what our life was, how we met obstacles, and overcame them, and more than all else to give you an idea of the grandness of character your grandmother possessed.  She was truly a remarkable woman.  She was sent for in sickness, and was all the doctor to be had in maternity cases.  If her granddaughters ever take a ride down to Columbia Center, starting from the Warren Place look at the old Indian trails going East and think of their grandmother riding horseback over them when she was 62 years old to care for a woman in a confinement case; think if they would be brave enough to try it.  After she was 64 she quilted a quilt in fancy design.  then after that she pieced a quilt for each child - the work was all done in appliqué.  Her health had been failing for some years.  Baxter had married, and she was relieved of household cares.  After she finished those quilts she said her life work was done.  After that she failed rapidly.

     She spent the last few months of her life with me.  On Monday before  Thanksgiving she asked me what day of the month it was.  I told her and she said, "Just think, next Thursday is Thanksgiving.  I hope I'll be giving thanks in another world.  Wouldn't that be a glorious Thanksgiving?  I would see Father, Mother, Sister Sarah---" and enumerated a number of dear friends who had passed on.  She then gave me instructions about taking Care of Father.  She retired well as usual that night.  She was taken very bad in the night and was in extreme pain until two A.M. Tuesday.  She sank into a stupor from which she never roused, and ten minutes until seven Thanksgiving morning she peacefully went to sleep with a smile on her face, we trust to meet her friends.

     My mother lived her religion every day.  I never knew her to shirk a duty.  Her life was one of sacrifice.  I can truly say she was a wonderful woman.  In concluding these random thoughts, I realize my lack of skill.  I know of no more fitting tribute paid to Mother's memory than that paid by her sister, Aunt Comfort Patton.  She made us a visit in 1894-95.  I was telling her of Mother's last days.  She said, "Well, Florey, I am the last of Mother's family and I have seen all of my brother sand sisters in their homes and their children since they have grown.  Mary was the proudest one of our family.  She never would go unless she could go with the best.  There was none of the brothers or sisters had as hard a struggle to raise their families as she had.  She was just as ambitious for her children to be somebody herself.  Nothing was too hard for her to do for Levi or the children.  To take the families as families, Mary's children are ahead of all.  You all seem to be comfortable, have the respect of your friends. Mary has stamped her pride and self respect on her children."  May her granddaughters follow in her footsteps.

With the exception of Aunt Ella all of the generation mentioned in these pages have passed on.  I stand alone the last.  My sister, my ideal of every virtue, was called on the sixth of November, 1922.  She is in my thoughts every waking hour.  I would not call her back, for she longed to go.  I think so many times a day, "I must ask Molly about that" - only to have it brought home to me my loss, but I have a great consolation in the fact that I have no unkind words to regret, no quarrels or misunderstanding, all is unity.  I ask for nothing more than when my time comes I shall find a resting place beside her, my darling sister.

Signed:     Florence Melton    February 24, 1923
 

[Note: Florence Emma\Emily Courtney Melton died 3 JAN 1926 in Pomeroy, Garfield Co., WA.  She is buried at Pomeroy City Cem, Pomeroy, Garfield Co., WA, as is her sister Molly.  Their father Levi Courtney died 7 JUL 1885 in Pataha Flats, Garfield Co., WA and is buried at Pataha Prairie Cem, Garfield Co., WA.]




See http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cchouk/rulaford/8/ for photographs
       of some of the people mentioned above.
See http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cchouk/ford/... a web site about Nineveh Ford
       my gr gr grandfather who crossed the Oregon Trail in 1843
See http://www.over-land.com/diaries.htmlfor the accounts of other families .


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