Stories of My Ancestors: January 2012

Catherine (DeGraoat) Wells, Jonathan's wife.

I tried OCR software from my HP Scan today so I could make this easier. Didn't work. I guess because the typing is erratic. If anyone knows of a really good OCR program let me know. Oh well I suppose it's good for my typing skills.

Sunday, May 26

Lay in camp today. Very warm. Very hard thunder storm at night.

Monday, May 27

Left camp this morning at six o'clock. 9 miles. Crossed Elm Creek. A beautiful place. Crossed a number of other small creeks. Road very bad because of the heavy rain last night. Made 27 miles.

Tuesday, May 28

Made 27 miles today. Crossed two dry creeks today. Passed by Willow Lake. Road very good. Plenty of grass. No wood except buffalo chips. Camped on the Platte.

Wednesday, May 29

Today we had rather hard traveling because of sand. Crossed one bad slough and Skunk Creek. Camped by a good spring of cold water. Traveled 26 miles. Found one horse lame by a bad kick on the shoulder.

Thursday, May 30

Drove 26 miles. Passed some very sandy road, hard bluffs. Crossed a number of creeks. Camped by a spring of cold water.

Friday, May 31

Diggins lost a horse. Made 25 miles. Sandy road. Very warm. Poor grass.

Saturday, June 1

Road for the most of the day very good. Crossed several creeks. Hard shower at 4:00 o'clock. Traveled 20 miles.

Sunday, June 2

Lay in camp to overhaul our loads. Threw away what of our traps we could spare. Cleaned up and made preparations for another week of travel. All in good health.

Nora and Leo

******Taken from Leo Fernando Arnold Family History, 1974******

After living in the Santiam Valley and going to school together awhile, my father and mother were married February 14, 1878, Valentines' Day. He had chosen his mate and on December 5, the same year, my brother, Frank, was born. A year or so passed and they moved to a log cabin in a field on the same ranch where I was born on March 27, 1881. It was near a nice creek where Frank and I learned to fish when we got old enough, it was covered with a white climbing rose that made it look like a snowball from a hill nearby. Father bought the ranch where Grandmother lived. They moved back to the house where Frank was born and where on May 8, 1888, my sister Elva was born.

Frank and I had become boys and roamed the hills together hunting, fishing, climbing trees and doing the things that only boys can do. Elva got most of her early schooling there, riding to school on horse-back most of the time. Now Mothers health was failing. They decided to move to the high drier climate of Eastern Oregon and in the fall of 1897 we moved with four horsed and two wagons across the Cascade Mountains. It was a rough trip. Some of the hills were so steep we had to put four horses on one wagon, pulling it to the top then go back after the other wagon. It took five days to make the trip.

We moved to a place called Desert Springs and lived there a couple of winters. Deer were plentiful and we lived mostly on meat. In 1888 or 1889 we moved to the mines east of Prineville on the Ochoco River to work the mines but that didn't pan out. (Leo tells that the Spanish American War was just starting then, which actually started in 1898. It is unknown if Leo was eight or eighteen when they moved to the Ochoco, but it is more probable he was eight since in his next sentence he says he was so young he didn't have to serve).

So after working at other things, we moved back to the Willamette Valley for a year. Then Dad went back across the mountains early on skis to work a ranch he bought before moving back to the valley. Frank came later on a bicycle. I stayed to work the ranch and Elva went to school. I also worked with a threshing machine crew and helped our neighbor build a barn. When Father came home we again moved East and built a house on his ranch about seven miles southeast of Sisters, OR. At first you could only grow grain, only later after they got to putting land plaster and adding sulphur could alfalfa and clover be raised. We lived there several years, subsisting on venison and fish until he sold that ranch and bought another one about six or seven miles north of there. He lived there a few years and then sold that ranch - went to Florida to look at property - bought some Everglade land and never went back to it.

When we first went to Eastern Oregon, the desert was not settled. You could get on a horse and ride for miles in any direction without seeing a fence, but early in this century - about 1904 - a town was started at Bend.

The Deschutes River was about the greatest fishing stream that ever was about that time. You could see someone fishing the stream about all the time every fifty yards or so all up and down. They used to have big fish barbeques, especially on the fourth of July. It wasn't too long that all the fishing was gone, the stream just couldn't stand so much fishing.

Sometime, around 1908, before the Panama Canal was built someone was advertising the Fort Rock, OR country. They were blowing it up to be wonderful country, all settled and ranches taken up. No one around Sisters had time or money to go out and see about it. So, I went there on my bicycle.

The day I got there I never saw as bad a wind storm, and sand..oh, you just couldn't hardly look at it. It was the worst I ever did see. I rode my bicycle up pretty close to a house and got off. I went up and was gonna knock on the door, but a woman opened the door and says. "Come in, quick". I sure appreciated that. Oh, the storm blew out in a few hours and I went over to a hotel that was there and stayed all night.

Well there was no use in my going home now, so I rode on over to Lakeview, OR. That was about 47 miles or so. After I got to Lakeview I thought I better go and see Klamath Falls. So I struck out over a dirt road, no pavement anywhere. I monkeyed around a day or so just looking at the falls and snakes and so forth.

There was, not so much now, but there was a time, and there was at that time 10,000 snakes piled up in a pile. It was a place half as big as this room and it was just a big pile of snakes. They'd be sticking up through the boardwalk over the sidewalk, sticking their heads up that high, all over. They were just harmless water snakes.

A certain time of the spring, they said it was the little frogs come up out of the lower Klamath Lake. There would be millions of them hoppin up there and those snakes would feed on them. They had a lot of fun out of those snakes, stickin'em in travelers suitcases and such.

Well, I heard that sixteen battleships were coming around the horn to San Francisco Bay. They were offering excursion trips to see it so I caught my bus and went. I had to take a stage to Doris, CA then a train to San Francisco. I saw the battleships and I went over to the ocean to see the seals and everything there. When I was over at the Cliff House watching the ocean, there was a fellow come with a big telescope and charging ten cents to look at the moon. Another fellow I met, years later, said that he had also looked through that telescope at the moon on that same day.

It was two years after the earthquake and it was just a shambles. There were very few houses built up when I was there. Just a pile of rocks you might say. This wealthy lady, Gould, you know, she was selling souvenirs, postcards, and things. We went through Chinatown, of course, and saw ‘em smoke their opium and you know what a boy will do, I had to see all of that!

When I came back to Klamath Falls I had five dollars. I had to go on to Sisters but I made it alright. I don't think I spent hardly any of the money. I had snow on part of the road and I had to carry the bicycle part of the way. So that must have been maybe in March.

When I got back I don't think anybody ever asked me about how the Fort Rock area was and I didn't tell them. It didn't look good to me. I couldn't see how it was hardly worth coming out there to. That country has been half abandoned now. People settled partly and couldn't make anything there and they quit and leave and go somewhere else.

I worked there, close to that country one summer in haying in 1906 or 1907. Frank and I went out there. There was nothing to do where we was, so we got on our bicycles and we went out. We was takin' a chance on finding something to do, but we found it at Summer Lake.

I worked for two different people there. Oh, they paid big wages - a dollar and a half a day. We got board and we slept in a hay barn or something. I think they gave us a few quilts and we slept out in the hay mound.

That Summer Lake is a nice place. They just raise all kinds of fruit there, you know. Peaches and everything. There's a cliff , 3,500 feet high on the west side of it. Not straight up and down, timber can grow on it but it's pretty near straight, it's awful steep. When Fremont and his outfit came up on top of that and looked out in there they said it looked like "summer" and that's how they called it Summer Lake.

The river that feeds it comes right up out of the flat country and runs into the lake about half a mile from the lake. Just as smooth and as pretty as can be. We went bathing in it about half way up and it was such a nice stream, Fremont called it Anna River, after his mother.

Silver Lake's a good big lake but it was shallow, now it's gone dry. Always stunk so bad with fish, it was terrible. Lots of geese and ducks on it. Silver creek runs into it through the little town of Silver Lake.

There's lots of good land out in there but the climate isn't too good. There was some talk of taking Odell Lake down in there to irrigate it. There's lots of water underneath but not inexhaustible and they'd have to pump it quite a ways.

They were preparing to, and did take water from the river to irrigate the desert all the way to Crooked River. And is now full of farms and homes. Frank and I worked on the big flume until it was finished. Then we worked in Redmond, which was just starting to grow. I then went to Prineville where I helped build a hotel and a bank building. Then I went back to Sisters where I was working when Dad came and asked if I would like to go to California.

In 1910 I came down here with Father and Edmund Healy (a cousin of mine) in his two cylinder Reo car. We bought the place we now live on and two more. One over by Glenburn and the other out in the timber (by Hwy299) now consolidated with this ranch. Father bought this place from Len Moss. Len is Nora's uncle. Father paid $8,000 for 320 acres. We could have bought several places around here for just a fraction for what you could get for them now. He paid $6.00/acre for the timber from Roderick McArthur.

After buying these places we went back to Sisters and prepared to move. About the middle of October we started the nearly 300 mile trip with two wagons and two teams, taking fourteen days driving and camping. There were no hills but what two horses could pull it right up. That was before you could come through Tule Lake, you had to go around it by that Bohemian town out there, east.

We camped on the lake and there was a place that looked like the mosquitoes was enough to fill a house up, if they were cramped in tight. But when they settled down, I was glad to find they were sand flies instead. They couldn't bite. Some say if the flies settle on your fire, they'll put your fire out. There were just clouds of them, worse than rain.

On October 28, 1910 (mothers 52nd birthday) we arrived and moved into the old house that stood where we built this one in 1950. My father settled here and I built a shop out in the timber land where the Indian was. I couldn't get the lumber I wanted so I waited to build a house. When the time came I built a house over in Glenburn. I still cut hay and grain off the 15 acres in the timber and cut the wood off to clear the land. It was kind of scattered so I could make pretty fair time of it.

After coming here I worked at carpenter work in several places and then went to Redding and brought back my first auto - a Model T Runabout - getting home the day before Christmas, 1911. Then I had to work to buy gas for my Model T. Gas was forty cents per gallon and I made three dollars per day. But I worked and on Sept. 16, 1912, I married a beautiful girl, Nora Totten. She came from two fine old pioneer families the Tottens and Browns, in this valley. We lived in a small house on the timber property.

We worked together, camping where work was too far to drive from home. Then on September 12, 1913, our first son, Ralph, was born. He was a bright scholar with good grades in school and after graduating he became an excellent mechanic, operated a garage in Medford, OR., driving a moving van for a while, then bought a diamond tool shop and expanded it until he now owns and operates the Keen-Kut diamond tool factory in Milbrae, CA. Nearby he built a nice home in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay.

In 1917 we moved to Glenburn, where on March 14, 1918, Ione was born. She was a bright, healthy baby and now we had two. We worked on the ranch milking cows and working out, to increase our income a little and on November 2, 1922, Lenora was born and now we had three. We still worked the ranch at Glenburn.

My father lived on this ranch till 1917 then sold the place to Fred Andrews. Andrews couldn't pay for it and turned it back. In 1927 before father died he wanted to know if I would go over and put it into shape to do something with again, if I'd plow it up and farm it and make it good. Well I told him I would but he never lived to see the first crop in 1928.

In 1929, after fixing things up in Glenburn we moved to the ranch where we now live, four miles northeast of McArthur. On August 14, 1930, Tom was born, now we have four. He was a strong, husky boy and became a real help on the farm and when he finished school here, he went to Davis where he took a course in agriculture. We settled down to raise money enough to put them through school.

I raised cattle and fat hogs and sold them for 3¢ and 3½¢ a pound. The hogs were grain fed and some steers were fed cottonseed cake all winter. That wasn't too good but it didn't cost you as much either.

Ralph had finished school, and after graduating, Ione went to a business school in Sacramento, became a certified accountant and then married Robert N. Santee. They worked in McCloud a year or two and that is where Robert Jr. was born. They then moved to Hayward where Bob was a carpenter and Ione worked at her trade and their daughter, Jane, was born. Bob, Jr. took science and became a science engineer. Jane took up hair dressing and now works at her trade in Pittville where her husband, Ron Brendlin, has a large greenhouse full of plants for sale.

Things were going smoothly when on September 4, 1938, we had a telephone call, Nora took it for a moment and handed it to me. She could stand it no longer. Two of her brothers and a sister-in-law had been seriously wounded in a head-on collision of two cars in Los Angles. I was Vice-President of the Inter-Mountain Fair to start the next day. I canceled any obligations there and about five o'clock we started for L.A. arriving there the next morning to find Nora's brother and sister-in-law dead. Her brother, Clarence, died a day or two later. We stayed about a week helping what we could, then came home to wait till Phyllis' wounds were healed enough to come home and when she could, Nora went back and brought her home where she recovered and went to school here and then married George Ingram. She and George have a fine family of four girls and one boy- all bright, healthy youngsters- some married, some in grammar school.

Lenora took a nursing course in San Francisco and became a registered nurse and now works in Portland, OR, where she and her husband Jack Dunlap, bought property and now live. Jack is a salesman for Gold Bond Stamps and is studying real estate. They have a family of two girls and a boy. Jack Jr., is working for P.G.&E and lives in Stockton. He is married to a fine girl and they have a dandy little boy, Jason, two years old.

The oldest girl, Nancy, married Dennis McGowan and now lives in Santa Barbara where he works in the school and she is studying income tax. They have no children, yet.

Their youngest girl, JoAnn, married Ken Staggs. They live in Eugene. He works and she, like her sister, is studying income tax and takes care of two bright, lively little children - a boy, Duke and a girl Heather.

Tom, our youngest, came home from Davis and became interested in the ranch which he now owns. He farms it and several other rented farms nearby. He married a wonderful girl - Jane Craddick- and they have two fine boys and two awful nice girls. The oldest boy and girl, Jim and Carolyn, are in college. The two youngest, Bruce and Lee, are still in school at home.

Stories of My Ancestors

Information

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Jonathan Wells Diary, June 3 - June 9, 1850

Monday, January 30, 2012

Jonathan Wells Diary - May 27 - June 2, 1850

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Jonathan Wells Diary 1850, May 20 - May 26

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Jonathan Wells Diary 1850, of Crossing the Country for Gold, May 14 - May 19

Leo Fernando Arnold Story