Stephen's Smith Family - Ancestors, Descendants and Cousins

Notes

Ahira Manring

BIOGRAPHY:  In Ida (Manring) Lemon's scrapbook is a faded blue letter, written from Birdville, Tarrout County, Texas, on Feb. 25, 1861, by her father, Ahira Manring, to his father in-law Edward (Ned) Smith in Missouri, father of Ann Best (Smith) Manring. In it he stated that in 1860 he had refused $1000.00 in gold for his Texas farm. By 1861 Texas had seceded fromthe Union had his land was worth nothing, for conditions there were so bad their very lives were in danger.
    He wrote, "There is no man among the thousands who will leave here this spring, that hates to leave this beautiful country any worse than I do, but I am compelled to leave my home for the safety of my family." Indians and out-laws were raiding the country - no one was safe and he felt Texas would be compelled to annex herself to Mexico or the Chocktaw nation."

Garfield, Wash. Dec. 1890
T.H.B. & A.B. Smith's and families,
Dear Brothers,
    I have delayed writing from the fact that I knew nothing of interest to write. However, this leaves us all well and we hope that you are enjoying a like blessing. Will's hand is not entirely healed yet and he will not be able to use it for some time yet (of course you have heard of his gunshot wound in the right hand?) Our folks here are all well and I can add with pride that they are all doing well. Brother Alvin has a large farm Garfield on the South, and then he owns 40 acres within the Corporate limits of the town, worth $300 per acre, and he has an over production of all the comforts of life. Garfield has two R.R., 4 churches, and one saloon, and other things in proportion. I do not know the No. of injabitants, it has a school of 3 departments. Their school house was burned down this fall but arrangements are completed to build a comodious brick building in the spring. Our churches are Baptist, Methodist, Christian, and Advent. I should have said Methodist and Presbyterian for their house is a partnership edifice.
    Jordan has a good farm and orchard with good barn and out buildings and a good house of 3 rooms down stairs and I do not know how many above. (I have never been upstairs.) He is about to sell out and move to town and go into the hardware business on account of his only child, Grace, as handsome and smart a child as I ever saw of her age (6 years old). We have a complusory school law in this state for all over 6 and under 18 years of age. They must attend school (without a good excuse) six months each year, and from his farm it is one mile to the school house. May lives in town. They have 3 houses to rent in town, 3 acres of fruit and garden in town (kin bought the land of Alvin when he first came out here at one hundred dollars per acre). He also owns a splendid farm of 160 acres one mile out of town where he keeps his stock except Milch cows and teams. Clark lives in Sattach county, Idaho. he owns 320 acres of land, 160 deeded and 160 meadow lands on meadow creek about 10 miles apart. His deeded land is the finest timber I ever saw and is valuable for the timber only. The land is good but it would be worth about $100 per acre to clear it of the timber. He is doing well and has 4 [children] (2 girls and 2 boys) in his family. He is well satisfied and doing well, In fact none of them would go back to Mo. for any price (or they say the would not).
    I am living in town (Garfield) the only place I could get a house. I rented a house of rooms 3 above and 3 below with upper and lower halls throught the building. The reson this house was left vacant, it was the best house in town for rent. farmers move in town every winter for the benefit of a graded school. Therefore houses are scarce. I may tay here all next summer. I can not tell yet what I will do. It cost no more to live here than it does in Mo. provided you have all to buy in both places. Beef is 5 & 6 cents, pork 6 cents, coffee and sugar about the same in this country. god never mada a man that could describe this country intelligible on paper and the man could not describe it if he had made it himself and wanted to get a patent on his inventrion and in fact he would not need a patent for no man could make an other like it. You may say that it is Prairie or Timber or something like that, but you would be mistaken. It is not prairie, it is simply bald headed in places and that is all -- Why do I say baldheaded, because it looks like a cranium of some monster being with all of the bumps known to science (so called of Phneenology). It starts at the mouth which is represented in those dark and dismal canyons and gulches at the foot of the mountains and then carves destructiveness, smitiveness, etc., representing the first abrupt bluff to climb and then come Philoferogenitiveness which will be a gentle glade that some poor devil can erect his cabin and then on and on up through the different organs of science until you ascend the mount of veneration on whose magnificent heights you can stand and behold the most beautiful scenery and views clothed in sublime grandure which can only be defined from the name of the organ upon which you stand. Veneration yes this climate for it differs according to the altitude the higher you get, the less frost you will have.
The land is rich beyond compare in Vegetables, Fruit, Wheat, Oats, Barley, etc.
, but too cool for corn in the palouse Valley alone. The lowest estimate I have saw for this year is nineteen million bushels of wheat outside of oats and other cereals. Do not think of level country but bald hills that I have described running from 40 to 60 bushels and over per acre. does it pay to raise wheat? No. It pays no one but the R.R.'s. The farmer does not get cost for producing and hauling to market. this is the worst monopoly ridden country on earth. In the mountains proper there is the finest timber on earth, white Pine, Cedar, Red Pine, Cedar Black Pine and gum Tamrack, etc. For want of space I must stop.
Love to All Ahira Manring

Ann Best Smith

BIOGRAPHY: Ann and Ahira followed their older children to the state of Washington in 1890. later they had a cattle ranch in idaho until 1898 when Ahira died. Both are buried in Fairview Cemetery near Grangeville, Idaho.

Marriage Notes for Ahira Manring and Ann Best Smith-9082

Marriage ceremony performed by John J. Basye, Justice of the Peace at her parents home in Grand River Township, DeKalb, Missouri.