Alfred Livesley was the ninth and youngest of George and Ester's children. For his first eight years he lived in Cheshire County, England, an English boy of English parents in the ancient stomping grounds. But this was the family that had once moved to the U S, had lived in Ohio four years. There was something different about them, palpably dreaming, planning. And in November 1855, George and Esther indeed boarded the steamer "Ontario" in Liverpool with their children (all except Sam) and bound for New York, and never again returned to England.

After a brief stay in Ohio, the family pushed on tot he Baraboo valley of Wisconsin where they set roots. It was here Alfred was a teenager, read about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, heard the lure of far-off Oregon, watched his older brother William and brother-in-law Martin, go off to, and thankfully come back from, the Civil War.

Alfred was 14 in 1861. Ironton was a Federal town and things looked very promising at the beginning of the War. But then McClellan dragged on the Peninsula and missed Richmond. Halleck was as bad and, near Washington, it suddenly looked as though the Rebels would succeed with their succession. Then came the news that William had been wounded at Bull Run.

Fortunately the parents got regular word from William during his convalescence and later, to Mary's great comfort, from Martin. Alfred heard it all. In late 1864 William came home and the two brothers, close in age and temperament, were reunited. After the war things slowly returned to normal. In these years Alfred attended the weddings of many of his brothers and sisters and became an uncle many times over. Then the word came that the Nebraska Territory was made a state, that the Government was to make land claims available there to draw settlers. Brothers Will, George and Alfred were game to go, as were Martin and sister Mary. So too, much to their surprise, were their parents.

Just then brother George's wife died of the measles while George was away in New York, and less than a year later niece Cora too. They talked over his new plans, now he was a widower with a young child. They found him even more determined to make a go of Nebraska. So in the spring of 1869 they bid their Wisconsin friends goodbye and wagoned off. Alfred was the young bachelor of the group and his parents rode with him. The destination was Milford, in eastern Nebraska. Fortunately for us the experiences of the Livesley/Cooper families going to and living in Nebraska are detailed in Samuel Cooper's memoir, "A Jaunt West in '69." Suffice they took six claims in two groups near each other. Alfred's was of eighty acres located in Precinct K between that of brothers William and George. The families met every requirement and developed farms and orchards in their eleven years there.

EMILY O'KEEFE
Mother Esther's claim was dated August 1871-October 1876, her residence a sod building "twelve by sixteen feet in size, shingle roof, one door and two windows." We assume Alfred's was similar. Alfred met and at 27 married Emily O'Keefe in Milford, Dec 1874. She was 29 at the time. They were married 37 years but had no children. Emily was the daughter of other Nebraska pioneers and a great singer and player of the piano. Samuel Cooper notes she had a "pianoforte" with her. Being that is a big affair, I'll bet it was really a harmonium which is a portable piano-like instrument. Whatever, she brought a good deal of music to the wilds and likely William often sang with her in his rich baritone.

It appears that when the Livesleys continued on west to Washington Territory in 1880, from the flat prairie tot he wooded water of Puget Sound, Emily's brothers Charles and Timothy did also. Likely they were in the same party as these brothers as they also went to Vashon Island.

FARTHER WEST
Alfred (and Emily) and William (and Mary and children) appear in the 1880 census of both Nebraska and Washington (Yakima and Tumwater) so we are confident this is the year they traveled. Brother-in-law Martin sold his claim in 1881. What year, to whom and for how much Alfred and Emily sold theirs, we don't know yet.

My guess is that Alfred appeared in Yakima on the way to Tumwater. Since brother George went to Yakima in 1885, it's fun to speculate that he learned about it from William and Alfred. But perhaps Yakima was on the route and all Livesleys going west visited there. Anyway we do know that William and Alfred were in Tumwater only briefly before pushing on to Vashon Island (close to Seattle, but in Puget Sound) where they took land claims (Alfred's dated 1883.) In 1882 they established a shingle mill and business together at Southport.

In 1894 Alfred and Emily moved to eastern Washington, to a farm in Burbank. (His moving was approximately the same time as William's starting in real estate. They pushed on from Vashon simultaneously because they were close?) This move is from the tall, green timber of Puget Sound to the treeless, yellow land of the upper Columbia, quite a change. Pasco is the seat of Franklin County, right at the confluence of the Snake River with the Columbia. Burbank is its neighbor, just across the Snake in Walla Walla County. This is big, basaltic country where grass grows on the top and cliffs go down to the huge rivers. The natives used to fish these waters, particularly in summer months at cascades. Lewis and Clark came by here on their exploration. The Whitman Mission, one of the earliest white settlements in the area (and site of "the Whitman Massacre" in 1847), is just east. The Pasco-Kennewick-Richland area is now called Tri-Cities and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is just up the Columbia to the north.

If you have access to water here you can grow fruit. If not, sheep or grain. Yakima, Washington is west and a little north of here, much more in the mountains.

There's a charming note in "The History of the Big Bend Country" that when President Roosevelt came to Pasco in 1903 he was presented with a box of "selected strawberries and fruits grown on the Livesley and White ranch." Alfred shows on the reception committee for the president and as chairman of the 1904 officers of Franklin County, so he must have had some presence in the area.

ANNA ETTA COOLIDGE
Emily died at home in 1911. Her obituary mentions brothers John and Ed living in Everett, Washington. On 14 Mar 1912 Alfred married Anna Coolidge in Pasco. The big news of 1912 was the Titanic's sinking on April 15. When he died in San Luis Obisbo, California in 1929 (at 80), records say he'd been "14 years in CA." We know he appeared in a Washington court to settle Emily's estate in 1916, so he and Anna must have gone south soon thereafter.

So this man knew the traditional life of middle England, the farming and glacial landscape of Wisconsin, pioneering on the flat prairie of Nebraska, the dark verdant forests of Puget Sound, the volcanic grassland of eastern Washington and the mountains and climate of coastal California.

@2000 by Sam Bush; reproduced on this website with permission