Keller family part of German migration west by train
Many of the German families came west by train in the early 1900s. Many of these were part of the Russian-German, or was it German-Russian immigrants. The story of the Keller family was typical of the hard work used to establish farms and ranches in the Greater Columbia Basin. Read on.
Wilson Creek area history
The Rev. David H. Crawford compiled and published a history of families in and surrounding Wilson Creek titled, "Family Memories of Wilson Creek Area." The book was printed in 1978, which was the 75th anniversary of the town. David's son, John Crawford, has given permission for those memories to be a part of this column.
Today we continue the story of the Keller family:
The Keller family came west by train in 1903. Ed Wagners and other friends were in the Odessa area. So that is what prompted them to choose this region. They cleared the sagebrush on their homestead land, built a nice house, barns, pump house and hauled water from Blackrock until a well was dug.
The family home is still standing and occupied. Christoff contributed part of his land for a small cemetery and he, Elizabeth and some other family members are buried there.
Young Chris died in 1910 after being thrown from a thresher and subsequently developed stomach cancer. Christoff and Elizabeth retired in Odessa living there until his death in 1916 and her death in 1933. Katie faithfully took care of her mother, not marrying until 1934 to Con Libsack. They lived in the same house until Con's death in 1954 and her death in 1972.
It is interesting to note that Amy (Amelia) taught country school in Strasburg, North Dakota, living with the Lawrence Welk family. She married Reverend George Hein, a German-English Congregational minister and they lived most of their married years in Seattle.
The Wheeler wheat land that Christoff had chosen was not very productive, so eventually George and Charlie went to Port Angeles, where they found work in the mill and reared their families. Bertha and Minnie married brothers, Henry and Dan Goetz and they lived in the Odessa and Marlin area, later moving to Seattle. The half-sisters remained in South Dakota.
E-mail from Cheryl
Facts from the past gleaned from the Moses Lake Herald, Columbia Basin Herald and The Neppel Record by Cheryl (Driggs) Elkins:
From the Columbia Basin Herald on May 27, 1949:
The piglet story told to Kiwanis by Dave Jones
First there was one pig, then there were 13. Now there are only four pigs left at the May home of Gaylord Weaver. Gaylord received a bred gilt through a joint 4-H and Kiwanis Club stock improvement program.
There were 12 piglets born this spring. Two died in infancy. Six piglets were given to 4-H members to carry on the program and one was sold for future bacon.
Gaylord still has three. He intends to eat one, come fall, and breed the other two. Kiwanis Club members have not yet estimated the number of piglets to expect next year. Dave Jones, 4-H committeeman, told fellow Kiwanians the whole story at Monday night's dinner meeting in the Turf.
Water system extension talked by city council
Extension of the city's water system into the area south of town along Germania Street was discussed by the city councilmen and property owners in the area at Tuesday night's council meeting. As this property lies outside city limits, owners must install their own pipes in general conformity with city standards before the hookup with the city can be made, Mayor C.M. McCosh said.
The council voted to have the pump motor which burned out May 11 had left the city virtually without water for 36 hours. Five bids were received for supplying a new master water meter. The bids were taken under advisement and forwarded to G.D. Hall of Yakima, city engineer, for consideration.
Council members remained calm when, during the proceedings, a light globe exploded and showered the mayor and council table with glass and small dead bugs. No damage was reported and a new globe was installed immediately.
Grant County history
The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift shop in Ephrata.
I bought the series in 2009 and secured permission to relay some of the history through this column.
Memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.
Today we continue the story of Hartline, by Kathryn (Kay) Evans, recorded May 9, 1978 and the letter written by her grandmother, Aunt Kate, in 1940:
"After finishing those three months of teaching at the Vorhees School, I began another three months about six miles away in an opposite direction from my shack. This time the schoolhouse was a homesteader's shack with a dirt-covered roof. That was in the fall of 1889.
"That winter is still known as the Hard Winter. It began snowing early in November and kept on more and more.
"After lighting a fire in our schoolroom the warmth would melt the snow and soon we were all squirming to dodge the drops that fell from the board ceiling. The shack had one small window in the front another, smaller one, in the back. Long before 4 o'clock it was too dark to do much.
"After teaching about six weeks, I got up one morning and found there had been quite a blizzard and a lot more snow. However, I started for school, got about two miles, and both my pony and I got stuck in a drift. Fortunately, I was near a house where some of the folks saw us.
"A boy came and helped me out and then my pony floundered out. When I got to the house my feet were like clubs. Mrs. Jones took off my shoes and stockings, got a pan of snow and rubbed my feet. I bawled and bawled, it was so painful. However, my feet were all right after the treatment. That was the last of the school until spring.
"More and more snow fell and winds blew and filled draws 15 to 20 feet deep with snow. As most of the folks were newcomers who had been in the country only a year or two, they were unprepared for such a winter, as indeed were the oldest settlers, the cattlemen.
"The cattle and horses had generally lived through the winters on the native bunch grass, horses generally instinctively going south and cattle being driven to sheltered slopes with just a little hay being put up for saddle ponies and weaker cattle. But the unusual depth, four feet on the level, and no thawing spells killed off cattle like flies.
"The construction trains on the railroad came no nearer us than 25 miles, Wilbur. People got out of fuel. Those who had a little fencing, dug up the posts and if they had a partition in their house, used it for fuel.
"I had bought a ton of hay from a neighbor about four miles away. I had gotten about half of it hauled and put in my uncle's shack which was near mine. Uncle had built a shed onto the south side of his shack before he had gone for the winter to work for a stockman. The snow got so deep that I never got the rest of the hay.
"The snow drifted so deep around my shack and over my wood pile that I could not tell how my wood supply was holding out, but I knew it was impossible to get any more, so I would lie in bed until I got too hungry. Of course, I had the cracks of my wall battened before winter set in. You may know that a single board wall, no ceiling, but a tight roof, was not very warm.
"My poor old pony would get hungry and also lonesome, too, so he would come up to the house and turn and turn the knob and sometimes get it open, put his head in and whinny. I fed all the hay, all the rye grass straw in uncle's bed tick, and all I could possibly spare from my own bed, there were no springs and mattresses in those days, and every scrap of potato peelings and crumbs of bread, not a speck went to waste. I had to melt snow for myself and pony too, as the little spring was about 15 feet under snow.
"My shack was on a ridge, and it was a desolate outlook to look at miles of snow with just a little black dot here and there. However, the pony and I pulled through alright without any suffering. I dread now to think of the risks that we ran. I used to wade through snow up to my waist to a neighbor's house to get my mail. I shudder to think what if one of those thick bewildering fogs would have come up. I would not now let anyone I could help, try it. Others took the same chances.
"We finished that fall term of 1889 and spring of 1890 in another homestead shack. A cold windstorm came up in April and we almost froze, although the snow was gone. The battens on the shack had been taken off, and the wind and dust and trash blew through the shack. The stove pipe was too short to reach the peak of the roof, so the smoke blew back into the shack through the big box stove.
"Anyhow, we went through with it. We could not do much under such conditions, but I can say with satisfaction and pride that some of those same boys and girls who are now grandparents, have said that I was 'the best teacher they ever had.'
"The next school I had was the first school in Coulee City, which had sprung up in the summer of 1890, when the Central Washington Railroad was built from Spokane to Coulee City. That schoolhouse was the first hotel built in that town and vacated for another and better building, just a long narrow building of boards on end and battened.
"The first day, when I got there, the seats were boards layed on nail kegs and piles of brick with plaster on the floor from the chimney that had been taken down. About a dozen youngsters, all newcomers, who were not yet acquainted with each other, soon came, with some text books they had brought from whatever state they had come from.
"The carpenters kept on taking down the various partitions after school hours, until they were all down but one, back of which in what was the kitchen of the hotel, was my room in the teacherage, although we did not call it that.
"It was six weeks before we could get the uniform series of textbooks, as the publishers could not turn them out fast enough. We had about a square yard of slated cloth for a blackboard. The schoolroom had one ordinary sized window in the front, one on the east near my table and another on the opposite side, which was quite useless, as another building stood only three feet away.
"In the short winter days it was almost dark by 2 p.m. and also, about that time of day the mixed train came, and the snorting, and puffing and cutting out freight cars made such a noise, we could scarcely hear each other speak. We were almost opposite the depot. Altogether, to me it was the most unsatisfactory term I ever had. The population being so constantly changing, I had only one or two of the pupils I had at the first of the term when the term closed.
"After teaching four months at Coulee City, three months in public school and one month by private subscription, I married and went to live on a ranch. The house was a one-room log cabin with dirt piled on the roof.
"We lived there only a few months, put in about 20 acres of wheat, and then went back to Coulee City, where Bob (Roberts) had bought a dray business.
"Coulee City was certainly a lively place, the terminal of the Central Washington Railroad and the freighting outlet for a dozen or more little frontier towns with no railroad. The one main street was knee deep in alkali dust; sagebrush and greasewood covered vacant lots. Freighters put bells on their horses, for the dust was so thick on the roads and in the air that drivers could not see their lead teams.
"Nearly all the buildings were wooden. One man put up a galvanized iron building and did a big business. When the railroad was built through the county west of Grand Coulee the freighting came to an end and Coulee was dead.
"Evelyn, later to be Evelyn Evans, and Walter were born in Coulee City. Note from Kathryn (Kay) Evans: My mother, Evelyn Evans, took credit for being the first white girl born in Coulee City.
"When Coulee City died down because of the other railroad, we went back to the ranch, got it all fenced in and more land broken out. Those were lonely years, I would not see another woman for weeks at a time, for most of my neighbors had small children like myself and most were related, so when the women did go visiting, it was to see their own relatives.
"In 1893, came the Cleveland Panic. Wheat was so low in price, no one had money. Most ranchers used parched wheat, rye or barley for coffee. We had meat and bread, but vegetables were scarce for grasshoppers cleaned up what garden stuff we tried to raise.
"Fruit was to be had only by a three- or four-day trip to some fruit ranch on the Columbia. I bought enough peaches and plums one year to can 18 half-gallon jars one fall from Charles Hill, Jim Hill's brother, who peddled fruit. We would open a jar when we had company and use what was left. How careful I was of it. The little local stores carried only staples, such as sugar, tea, coffee, etc., a few dry goods, mostly overalls and such.
"One year wheat sold for 16 and 18 cents per bushel way below the cost of production. Bob and some neighbors went over to the Coast to work in logging camps. Uncle George Roberts stayed with us.
"That year literary societies were going on in Hartline and our own school districts. George took us to attend them. I surely enjoyed them and always took part in the debates in which many important questions were settled.
"I think we could profit by such discussions these days. I read everything I could get hold of I borrowed every book in the neighborhood and during those years, I memorized many poems. When I was a youngster in Ohio I had memorized every poem in the McGuffey's Readers, among which was Patrick Henry's 'Give me Liberty or Give me Death' speech.
"When my oldest was about 5 and a half, I was left alone with three children. I went back to Ohio for about a year and a half, but came back to Washington and taught school for two years. We had to stay very closely on that homestead, for land was getting scarce and meddlesome people were watching new homesteaders closely.
"Several times we caught someone sneaking around the house and stable when coming back after having been away for a few days. When we would come in sight of the house, the spy would sneak away through the sagebrush.
"The land commissioner, John R. Lewis told me that one fellow had been to his office complaining that I would go away and leave the children at home on the homestead and that I had no right to prove up just by leaving the kids there. Lewis told the fellow that I was the head of a family and that I could stay away as much as I wished so long as my family was there. I have always been grateful for the good neighbors we had.
"I forgot to mention that in the fall after coming back from Ohio, we built a little house in Hartline, while teaching there, in which we lived for two years until I filed on a second homestead. Afterward the girls batched in the little brown house as it got to be called while attending school during the winter months. Otto Schultz built a little shack on the same lot in which he lived and batched while he attended school. He and the girls used to borrow various and sundry groceries forth and back like some housewives.