My Family continued:

So Mom and Dad married in 1933 in Cascade ID.  This was during the depression and Dad went to work on the Rainbow Bridge on Hwy 55 going from Banks to Cascade. 

(Idaho Department of Transportation project description) - Rainbow Bridge is the largest single-span concrete arch structure in Idaho. Built in 1933, it remains today as a major achievement reflecting leading-edge bridge engineering at the time, and exemplifies a conscious effort to meld a modern structure with a picturesque natural setting. Listed on the national historic register, the bridge’s enduring popularity among residents and travelers alike is a tribute to its design.

Designed by Charles A. Kyle, the first Chief Bridge Engineer for the Idaho Department of Highways, Rainbow Bridge began construction in July 1933 and was completed in December of the same year. C.C. Dinsmore & Co. of Ogden, Utah was the construction firm.

Rainbow Bridge

On the average, fifty-three men per day were on the job, with Burton F. Dinsmore directly in charge of construction. The total cost of the structure was about $74,000. The bridge construction itself was paid for through emergency relief funding from the federal government and was part of the much larger longer-term effort to eliminate hazardous grades and obsolete bridges between Boise and McCall. The effort provided employment to local residents during the depression.

Dad was the oldest male in his family and he didn't talk a lot about growing up.  One thing he did talk about was he and his brothers participating in the Fourth of July races and they would always come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

I came across another family story - this another one about my mother's family.  It is written by my cousin, daughter of the youngest son, Cash Crawford.  Here it is with my comments in brackets:

My Daughter has asked me to write down all the history of the family I can remember.  No one in our family ever did anything interesting like going to the moon or discovering a cure for some dread disease.  With a few exceptions, most of them were just common hard working people. 

I’ll start with my Dad’s side of the family.  They all came from Kentucky and Tennessee.

Elisha Jurdon Crawford - Born May 17,   In Kentucky 

 

Christina Ellen Tuttle (Crawford) - Born April 10, 1871  In Indiana

    

I don’t remember Granddad Jurd (Dad’s Dad). He died when I was about four years old.[He died about 4 years before I was born.] From the stories I’ve heard he must have been quite intelligent even with no formal education.  He came from Kentucky hill people.  He always said he was “Black Dutch” (German to the core).

His Mother and Dad were John Crawford born about 1825, died before 1880 and Myria [Mariah B] Weaver, born April 11, 1829 and died March 4, 1899.    Granddad had nine brothers and sisters.   Pete, Louis, Ike, Evangline Eaton, Millie, Jerry, Fanny Hamilton, Jake, and Joe.

He married Grandma Christina when she was only 16. [He was 6 years older than she.] They were married November 23, 1887.   She was from Cumberland Gap Tennessee. 

Her Mother and Father were Dan Tuttle and Lydia Scott (no dates).  Grandma was one of eight children:  Frank Tuttle, Jerminia Kathern Phelps, Roda Jones, Renna Elam, Grandma Christina Ellen Crawford, George Tuttle, Tommie Tuttle and Levina Tuttle.   Dan Tuttle had a second wife Sara Elizabeth Tuttle and they had four children: Carol Ann Cup, Kate Moore, Jay and Joe. As with the customs of the area and the time they had lots of children.

They decided to come west to live.  I believe that Granddad’s brother Jake had written him and told him of all the opportunities in the Idaho area.  The area in Kentucky and Tennessee that they were from was very poor and life was not the best so the decision to come west was probably a very good one.

Aunt Nancy Jane was born in London, Kentucky on January 11, 1889 and when she was six months old the family of three moved to Indiana and then to Arkansas and Granddad worked in the timber.   While they were there a son Will Jake was born July 15, 1890.   From there the family of four moved to Texas.  It is not known the name of the town in Texas where they lived or what kind of work that Granddad did but Aunt Nancy did remember that they lived among the Negroes.  Uncle Joe was born while they were in Texas on January 29, 1892.   All the while they were there Granddad was trying to make enough money so that they could go West.  While he was at the train station buying the tickets to go to Colorado, he was robbed of all his money.  All they had left was $3.75 that Grandma had in her purse.  They had the tickets so they went on to Colorado where Granddad got a job and the man he worked for furnished them a little log cabin with a fireplace in it and gave them some cooking utensils such as a dutch oven and a coffee pot.   Granddad bought some groceries and a broom with the $3.75.  Grandma had some bedding packed in a big box so they made a table out of the box and put some straw in the corner for their bed.  They stayed there for a short time and then Grandma went back to Tennessee with the three kids and Granddad road a freight train to Idaho and stayed with his brother Jake.  Jake was a bachelor and had a little homestead just below Montour.  Granddad worked at anything he could and it took him eight months to save enough money to send for Grandma and the kids.  He had an old boot that he hung under the stairway and when he would get $.25 or $.50 he would put it in the boot until he got enough for a ticket.  He only got $.50 for a days work.

Aunt Nancy told about when they were in Tennessee waiting to go out west with Granddad.  She said they stayed with Grandma’s sister Roda Jones, her brother Frank and her father, Dan Tuttle.  She liked staying with Grandpa Tuttle.  She could remember walking across the hill to their house.  The forest was so thick it was almost dark when they were walking through it.  While they were in Tennessee a baby girl Roda was born.   There is no date of birth.  She lived only three months. 

 It was not a good time for Grandma during that time.  When she was a girl they didn’t send girls to school in the hill country of Tennessee so she never learned to read or write.  She had to depend on someone to do everything for her.  The family kept telling her that Grandpa would never send for her so she must have worried a lot.

When Grandpa finally sent her a ticket to come west, the whole family got busy fixing a lunch basket for them to eat from while they were on the train.  Roasted sweet potatoes and baked corn pones.  It took them five days to get to Caldwell, Idaho, where Grandpa met them.  It was evening when they got there and he took them to some peoples home named Roberson for the night.  Aunt Nancy remembered them as being so nice and that they fixed them a nice supper and breakfast.  I would think that anything would have tasted wonderful after eating sweet potatoes and corn pones for five days.  She said that they had biscuits for breakfast and that they had never had them before.  They left after breakfast and she remembered the hills they crossed to Emmett as being pretty.  The grass was about two feet high and the wind waved it like water.  It took them all day to get home but they were happy sitting in the back of the wagon box.  They camped for dinner at what they called box springs.  She said that Uncle Jake’s house was quite homey.  It was just a shack with an upstairs.

Grandma didn’t know much about cooking so Granddad did most of the cooking.  He always made the biscuits. Della was born August 1, 1895.

Grandpa told Grandma if she would shock the hay for him, he would get her a new sewing machine.  She did and got her sewing machine.

Nancy started to school while they were living on the Anderson ranch. They stayed at Uncle Jake’s for about two years.  From there they moved to Uncle Joe’s homestead below Emmett on the river.  They lived in a small cabin for one winter and Granddad built a new house and a nice cellar.  He dug a ditch about three miles long and brought water from the river to the house.  The ditch ended in a waterfall.  He also built a big barn and covered it with shakes.  They planted fruit trees, berries and lots of vegetables.  Granddad peddled vegetables and berries in Idaho City during the gold rush there. He must have been a hard worker.  He built all that, dug the ditch, milked the cows, strained the milk, and took care of the kids when he was home.  Grandma was sick most of the time.  She was sick in bed all summer before Hattie was born in August 31, 1998.  Aunt Nancy did most of the cooking after she was seven years old.  She and Will rode a horse to school and she told about the coyotes following them all the way. 

Granddads brother Uncle Joe was killed by a man named Mickey Morton and they took over Joe’s homestead.  It was three miles down the river from Emmett on the North Side.  They didn’t live there very long.  He sold it to Jim Little for $1200.  (I remember hearing the story that Uncle Jake was the one killed by Mickey Morton.  I heard that he got into a fight with Mickey Morton and bit his ear off.   Mickey later hid behind some sagebrush and shot him dead.  The story was that his wife was cheating on him with Uncle Jake.  Jake is buried in the Emmett Cemetery with Grandma and Granddad) [The tree planted by Uncle Joe’s plot in the Emmett Cemetery was one brought to Idaho from Kentucky and was planted by Grandma Crawford.]

 They moved from there to Emmett on the McNish & Allen place and Emma was born there March 16, 1900.  The family moved around the Emmett area for the next few years.  Alice was born May 16, 1902 , Walter Lee was born Jan 29, 1904 and Mary Marie was born Feb 11, 1906.

 Grandma kept having babies.  She said that all Grandpa had to do was hang his pants on the bedpost and she was “in the family way”.  She had thirteen children that lived to be adults and lost either three or four. There were conflicting stories. 

Grandpa packed the family into wagons and moved to the Palouse Country.  He hired a man to drive one of the wagons but the roads were so narrow and steep that he quit so Granddad made his oldest daughter, Nancy, who was 16 drive the team and wagon.  Nancy married Cleve Gifford while they were in the Palouse Country.  I think probably because she didn’t want to drive the wagons back.  Cleve’s family was homesteaders outside of the Moscow, Idaho area.  We went there one time to visit with Aunt Nancy when I was young.  They are still probably in that area.

The rents were too high in the Palouse Country so Granddad moved on to Montana.  Ernest was born there November 24, 1907. Then they moved  back to Emmett.  Where Dora was born October 4, 1909, Cash Norman was born September 6, 1911.  Dad was a baby when they moved to long valley in the fall of 1911.  When Cash was born Grandma gave him the name of Cash Nickels but when he applied for his birth certificate in later life it was mistyped as Cash Norman.  Dad had always hated his middle name and was kidded about it when he was younger so he just left it as Norman and never had it corrected.

Granddad bought a ranch in Round Valley, Idaho, South of Cascade and just over the hill from Smith’s Ferry.  They raised cows but mostly I think that he made moonshine.  He spent time in jail for his talents. 

He built log flumes in McCall, Idaho.  The logs were skidded by teams of horses to the top of the flumes and then shot down the flumes into the lake and then floated to the mill.  Uncle Cleve drove the teams of horses that skidded the logs.  There is a photo of him and his horses and a huge log and also mother was painting a picture of this.  I’m not sure if it was ever completed.

One winter there were nineteen people living on the ranch in Round Valley.  Dad said they would butcher a cow and it would last only a week.  There must have been a lot of moonshining going on the Valley because Dad told about being hired by a couple of guys to sit on a hill with a twenty-two rifle and watch for revenuers.  He got caught by his sister, Mary and she beat him with a belt.  Child abuse must have been common place during that time.  Mom and Dad both tell of getting beat with a belt or a razor strap.

The homestead in Round Valley

Dad only went to school through the fourth grade.  Grandma got mad at the teacher and wouldn’t send the kids back to school.  It was only a one room school house with a big pot belly stove and an out house. 

Revenuers must have been a problem.  Dad told about Grandma chasing them off once with a stick of stove wood.  They also fed the mash to the pigs, which made them drunk.  They would squeal and walk up to the trough on their knees.  The revenuers were coming one time so they fed the mash to the horses and made them drunk.  I can’t see that would have been too good for the animals but I don’t think that health care for animal was a very high priority at that time.

Dad said they buried four gallons of moonshine in a fence corner at the ranch.  He was always going to go down and dig it up.  It must still be there.  It would now be about eighty years old and would probably have quite a kick.
 
Granddad rented his ranch in Round Valley to Mom’s folks, Ray and Sara Rumiser.  Granddad and Grandma Crawford moved to Emmett.  They lived in a stucco house just below the cemetery.  The house had a grape arbor all over the house. 

JE and Christina Crawford abt 1940

Granddad Crawford must have been a vain man.  The family story was he went to Texas and got a monkey gland transplant to improve his libido.  He died not too long after that.  I’m not too sure of the validity of this story. 

When Granddad died, he left Grandma enough money to be comfortable and houses and property in Emmett.  Granddad died while we were living in Lewiston during the war. 

Grandma Crawford was a real character.  I don’t remember her being very lovable.  She was always good to me but she wasn’t much of a cuddler.  She was quite heavy so didn’t have a lap to sit on.  I always remember her having snow white hair.  One of her Granddaughters gave her a permanent once and turned her hair green.  She always wore dresses and aprons. 

She did not like her in-laws.  She ran Alice’s husband off with a stick of stove wood.  That must have been her weapon of choice.  She said the devil owed her a debit and paid her off in daughter-in-laws.  She lived in Emmett in the stucco house and then later in the little house down the street.  She always had a big garden and spent hours working in it. 

She had nightmares and walked and fought in her sleep.  Mom told of going to visit them one time and Granddad was sitting with his boot on a stick over the heater. Grandma had walked in her sleep and peed in his boot.  Grandma was laughing and Grandpa was cussing.  One of her kids bought her a gun for protection when she was living alone in the little house in Emmett.  She put it on top of a cardboard closet in her bedroom.  She walked in her sleep and tore the closet all to pieces but never found the gun.  The kids took it out of the house after that.   I remember her screaming out during the night.  As a child I never had to sleep with her when she came to visit or we went there because it was too dangerous. 

She never learned to read or write because she never went to school.  Dad always said she knew more that she admitted to and no one ever got away with anything.  I don’t see how she could raise thirteen kids and not pick up a little.

After Granddad died, she had Mary and Walt help her with her finances.  Grandma always loved a good fight and often pitted her kids against each other.  She was always saying that Walt or Mary was stealing her money and she would give it first to one and then the other to keep them stirred up.  She put the property in Emmett in Mary’s name.  Mary had it insured and when Grandma died the little house that she had lived in last and had all her things in burned to the ground twenty minutes later.  We had to drive by the burned out house on the way to the cemetery after the funeral services.  It was really hard on my Dad.

Grandma was staying with Uncle Walt in the Garden Valley logging camp  before she died.  Mary lived across the river.  The only way to get to Mary’s was to walk by the log pond and across a bridge with just two tracks and no railing.  Grandma decided to go visit Mary and when Walt’s wife Lola said it was too dangerous for her to cross the bridge because she was too unstable on her feet and tried to keep her from going Grandma attacked her.  Walt and Mary decided that it was time for her to go into a home.  Grandma told them that if they put her in a home she would die.  They put her in and she died two days later.  She was really a woman of her word.

Grandma got to make two trips back to Tennessee.  Uncle Walt took her once and Bill Gifford took her once.  She brought me back salt and peppershakers (little brown jugs) and a small pink cream and sugar set.  I was about nine years old at the time.  She also about that time gave me the compote dish that belonged to Great Aunt Mimmy. (I’m not sure which of the Aunts she was)  Grandma had over sixty grandkids, so I felt honored to get it and it has always been a treasured possession. The name of the dish is “Westward Ho” and was made by Corning to commemorate the railroad across the United States.  It has raised buffalo, elk and a log cabin.  There is a dish like it in the Smithsonian in Washington DC. 

One of her trips, this one with son Walter

I remember Grandma’s house having pictures all over the walls.  Most of them were cut from magazines.  One that always fascinated me as a second grader was a picture of a two-headed calf.  She had huge weeping willow trees in the yard at the little house in Emmett.  Dad was always upset with them because they dripped sap on the cars.  There was also a big cattail patch by her house and we loved to, as kids, play in the trails that went through them and weave mats out of the cattails.  They were a fun memory.  Uncle Will lived across the road from Grandma and kept an eye on her. 

The Crawfords were a scrappy lot and had their share of troubles as kids growing up.  When Dad was a young man in Cascade he got beat up one night by a couple of other young men.  He took his brothers back to town with him and they finished the fight.  I guess that one of the men ended up in the hospital.  During the fight Dad was stabbed in the back three times.  He was so mad that he didn’t even realize that he had been stabbed until he got home.  I remember seeing the scars on his back.

Aunt Mary told me that Grandma spoiled Dad.  He was the youngest boy and her favorite.  Dad didn’t like his food to touch on his plate when he was a kid so Grandma made the girls give him a clean plate for everything that he wanted to eat.  The girls really resented it.        

Aunt Nancy delivered her younger brother Walt when she was only fifteen.  Granddad went to bed and let her do it by herself because he had to work the next day and needed his sleep.  After all, Grandma was just having another kid. 

Cash Crawford

Dad had polio when he was a baby.  I think he was only nine months old.  He always walked with a limp and was blind in his left eye.  His left eye pulled in.  He had surgery when he was 21 and straightened it a little but it still pulled in and he could only see shadowy objects out of it.  Another story about this was that he fell out of the baby carriage on his head and had “Brain Fever”.  He probably had both happen.  He was not a healthy child.  He suffered from terrible headaches his whole life.                

Now Where Were We?

Well, we've done a lot of coverage of my father's mother's line.  Now it is time to look at some auxiliary lines - my father's father and my mother's lines.  Most of my father's ancestors (Logues, Dexters, Bennetts, Sweets, Washburns) were from the northeast, while my mother's family (Crawfords, Tuttles, Scotts, Yeagers, Weavers) were from the south.

My parents, about 1945

So, lets start with a little about my immediate family.  My father was Cecil Elbridge Logue, born 27 Nov 1907 in Crawford, Idaho.  His parents were pioneers to the Long Valley area of Valley County.  They homesteaded between Crawford and Thunder City (gateway to the mining area of Thunder Mountain).  My grandfather's brothers, John and Fred Logue, operated a mercantile that supplied the miners as well as the sheep herders who brought their sheep to the high country in the summer to graze.

The Logue Mercantile

My mother, Rachel Helen Crawford, was born 6 Dec 1913 (at least this is what everyone in her family remembers).  She never had a birth certificate and spent several months attempting to get one when Dad retired from working in the timber industry (he was a sawyer - cutting down those beautiful, tall pine and fir trees in the mountains of Central Idaho) and she needed one to get her Social Security payments.  Her family was quite picturesque and interesting.  They came from the hills of Kentucky and my grandfather like to make his 'moonshine.'  He also was a 'wheeler and dealer' making purchases and sales of property in both Valley County and Gem County.

Tales my oldest aunt and a younger sister wrote tell about the family:

Nancy Jane Crawford Gifford's story:

  Mother (Christina Ellen TUTTLE) and Dad (Elisha Jordan CRAWFORD) were married in Kentucky on November 23, 1887. Dad was born and raised in Kentucky (was born May 17, 1865). Mother was born in Indiana, April 10, 1871. Dad was youngest of his family and was given the home place in Kentucky to take care of his Mother (Maurar WEAVER Crawford), but my Mother and her couldn't get along, so he traded it to his sister Fannie to take care of his Mother long as she lived.

  I, Nancy, was born there in London, Kentucky, January 11, 1889. When I was six months old, mother and dad went to Indiana, stayed there a while and went to Arkansas and dad worked there in the timber and Will was born there July 15, 1890. And they left there and went to Texas. I don't know the town nor what kind of work dad did. I can remember we lived among the Negroes and Joe was born there January 29, 1892. All the time dad was trying to make money enough to go west so we left there for Colorado. So at the station dad had bought our tickets and he got mixed up with some robbers and they took all his money but $3.75 that mother had so we went on to Colorado any way, and when we landed there, dad got a job and the man furnished us a little log cabin with a fire place in it to live in and give us some cooking utensils such as a Dutch oven and a coffee pot. Dad bought some groceries and a broom with the $3.75 and mother had some bedding packed in a big box so we made a table of the box and put some straw in the corner for our bed.

Elisha Jordan Crawford

  We stayed there a short time and mother went back to Tennessee and dad rode the freight train to Idaho and stayed with his brother Jake who was a bachelor on a little homestead just below Montour, Idaho or was Anderson Ranch I think at that time and he worked at any thing he could get and took him eight months to save enough money to send for mother and us kids. He had an old boot hanging under the stairway and when he would get 25 or 50 cents he would put it in the boot till he got enough for a ticket. He only got 50 cents for a days work then.

  While mother was in Tennessee and Kentucky we stayed with mother's sister Roda Jones and her brother Frank and mother's father Dan Tuttle. We sure liked to stay with Grandpa Tuttle. I can remember walking across the hill to their house. The forest was so thick it was almost dark going through it. While we were there Roda (Crawford?) was born. I don't remember the date. She only lived 3 months. It wasn't too good for mother those days there. When she was a girl they didn't send girls to school in that country so she couldn't read or write. She had to depend on someone to do that for her. And they told her dad would never send for her so she did worry I know.

  When dad sent mother a ticket they all got busy fixing a lunch basket for us on the train - roasted sweet potatoes, and baked corn pones- such a big lunch we couldn't eat half of it and was too much to carry anyway. Took us five days to come then to Caldwell, Idaho where Dad met us. It was evening when we got there and he took us to some people's home he had met named ROBERSON. I never will forget them. They were so nice; had such a nice supper and breakfast, had biscuits for breakfast and we never had not biscuits in Tennessee.  Roberson's had a boy named Dude. I always thought he was tops.

  Well after breakfast we got on our way across those same hills home, but it was quite pretty in those days.  The grass was about two feet high and the wind waved it like water. Took all day to get home, but was we happy sitting back there in the wagon box. We camped for dinner, at what they called Box Spring, Idaho. Uncle Jake's home was quite homey for us in those days. It was just a small shack with an upstairs. Mother didn't know too much about cooking so dad done most of the cooking. He always made the biscuits. Mother used to drive across the hill to Bevils (?) (Possibly BIVENS--the family of John BIVENS settled in the "lower valley" and ranched for many years. Bivens died in 1926 and is buried in Payette, Idaho.) to learn to make light bread. You had to make your own yeast in those days. We stayed there at Uncle Jake's place around two years.

  I remember dad told mother if she would shock the hay for him, he would get her a new sewing machine. So we went down with team and hack in those days to shock the hay. Della (born 1 Aug 1895) was a baby and the sun was so hot mother thought she would spread a quilt in the shade for me to take care of her while she shocked the hay and she bend down to put her on the quilt. She let the parasol drop down behind her and a rattle snake struck it so we had to move out in the hot sun and I held the parasol over Della all day in that hot sun. Was that a long day, but we got her done and mother got a sewing machine.

  It was there that I went to my first school, at Anderson Ranch. We moved from there onto Uncle Joe's homestead which was below Emmett, Idaho on the river. It had just a small cabin on it which we lived in for one winter and dad built a new house and nice cellar further down on the place. He went to the timber and made shakes to cover it. Dad made a ditch and brought the water out of the river a way up above and come down around the hills. Was about three miles of ditch and at our house we had a big water fall. Dad built a big barn and covered it with shakes he made. We planted fruit trees and berries and lots of vegetables. Dad peddled vegetables and berries into Idaho City, Idaho during the gold rush there, with wagon and team.

  I think now how dad worked to do all that with his own hands, he milked the cows and strained the milk in the cellar, took all the care when he was home. Mother was sick a lot. She was sick in bed all summer before Hattie (31 Aug 1898) was born. I did the cooking when I was seven years old. One day during the summer a family by the name of HILL from Sweet, Idaho came to visit us and Mrs Hill made gravy with onions cut up in it for dinner and I had to wait and they ate all the gravy. I felt so bad about it, Mrs Hill told me how to make some more gravy but I didn't do it. Dad dug a well and it was quite deep. So we had to draw our water and dad hauled big old logs down from Dry Buck area, Idaho just above Sweet, a big deck of them, for wood and Joe climbed on them one day and fell off and broke his arm. And another time he fell out of the back of the wagon and broke the other arm. Will and I went to school in a buckboard and drove a roan horse that kicked everything to pieces if he got the line under his tail so dad tied his tail down to the single tree. The coyotes used to follow us to school. We had to go about 3 miles on the bench toward Emmett. The school house stood just under the hill where the cemetery is now. Dad's brother Joe was killed by Mickey MORTON was why we took over his homestead 3 miles down the river from Emmett on the north side.

  We didn't live there long. Dad sold it to Jim LITTLE for $12.00 in 1900 I think. We moved to Emmett on McNISH and ALLEN place and there was where Emma was born in 1900. I remember going to school from there. I think we lived there about three years and we moved and lived in tents one winter between there and the farmer co-op canal and we lived one summer in tents in Magees (probably Alvin McGEE who died in Emmett 29 Jun 1939) yard. I can't remember which place first.

  Any way from there we went to a place down in the flat below Emmett about twelve miles on a place we called the Woods (possibly Harry WOODS, whose obituary states he was a brother of a Mrs. Crawford) place which was near BISHOP's (probably Hugh) place. This place had a little two room shack on it. Part of the time we had a tent for a kitchen and we went to school in a little log school house over near the river which was a good three miles and we walked most of the time in the cold of winter. Sometimes we drive a horse or a buggy. We only went to school about 3 months then. And was there at this place Alice was born May 12, 1902.

  I remember mother was staying up to Emmett and I made her a birthday cake and I wanted to take it to her so I had to make Hattie, Emma, and Della a dress before I could take them to see mother and Uncle Jake was ditch walker and he went to Emmett every day so I told him to bring me some material to make them some dresses and he brought me a whole bolt of brown denim so it was so heavy I could scarcely sew it but I got it done and one day I got them all dressed up and hitched the old gray mare to the buggy and the way we went and visited mother and took her some cake. And we come back in the evening and I am not joking, it was really an old gray mare but she was a good old trotter. The weather got real warm before mother got home. Dad had a big barrel of cider just back of the house. He had it on its side with a spigot in it and one day the kids got to drinking it and every one got drunk and laid all the rest of the day in the back yard in the hot sun. I didn't give it a thought at the time, but later thought what an awful thing to do, to leave them lay there in the hot sun.

  I can't remember how long we lived there but dad sold that place and we moved up on the slope on the NEWMAN place and we lived there several years. I don't remember how many. It was there that dad's hay all burned up one year. We walked from there to Bramwell to school in the Mormon Church. Blanche BISHOP taught school there and it was on the Newman place that Walter was born January 29, 1904. I didn't go to school too much that winter. I can remember sitting up nights and rocking him and feeding sagebrush to the old box heater. I did all the house work and fixed mothers meals and I thought afterwards that her meals surely was very good. We had a quarter beef hanging on the end of the house. I had to climb the ladder to cut the meat. The house was just two rooms with a side room on it. Was too small for our family and was cold, hard to keep warm burning sagebrush. Dad bought a place just above this place and up the canal and I can't remember if we moved from Newman place there or not. But we surely did and dad improved that place, put all below the canal in orchard. It was a nice place but our house burned down there. It wasn't much of a house but never did get one as good built again. We had a nice ice house and Dad always put up lots of ice. We raised lots of melons and put them on ice in the summer. We had lots of bees and had lots of honey. We still went to school at Bramwell. They finally built a brick school house just a little closer to us, but I never did go to school there.

  Dad finally built a house up to Emmett and I stayed there with the kids and sent them to school. I don't know why, and Will stayed down on the place and did chores and feeding and didn't go to school This was a nice four room plaster house Dad built. It was real nice but I didn't have any furniture in it not even a cupboard in the kitchen till Uncle Louis (CRAWFORD) bought me one.

  Later in the winter mother and Dad moved up to town and about Christmas time I think Dad's sister and Sarah, Lige, and Nancy CRABTREE came out from Arkansas and moved in with us so our bigger house was too little and Aunt Aveline (Evelenia Crawford EATON?) got sick so I had to quit school and do the work and sit up every third night with Aunt Aveline. And in February Mary was born and that spring in May we went to the Palouse country on wagon train. Aunt Aveline and Sarah I think stayed on the ranch while we were gone and they finally moved to Cambridge. Bill Estes (?) came out too. I remember we went to see them there one time. But now I remember it was Cleve GIFFORD and I that went to see them there after we come back from Montana. But I am ahead of my story now. We had some trip to Palouse (eastern Idaho) country. There was nineteen of us all together. I drove the chuck wagon. I had to pick up and wash the dishes and hitch my team and catch up with the rest and some of that road down the Salmon River was high and narrow in those days. We crossed the big Salmon on a ferry boat and when we got across we had to tear down our wagon. The road was too narrow. Dad had built the box wide enough to sleep cross ways. Rocks stuck out till we couldn't get pass. We made it but was tough going. But dad couldn't get started farming over there. Was just too high rent, so he just worked some and went on to Montana. Stayed two winters in Montana and come back to the ranch. Buster was born in Montana October 4, 1908. Dad took his stock with him the rounds. Finally sold that place below Emmett on the slope for $21,000. We lived in Emmett on Washington Street for a while. I can't remember just how long but we went to Long Valley in 1911. Dora was born on the place before we moved to Emmett, October 4, 1910 and Cash was while at Emmett, September 18, 1911. He was a baby when we went to Long Valley in fall of 1911. Dad bought 3 places in Long Valley. The Haymaker place where we lived and what we called the blue house down by the river where Cleve (GIFFORD) and I lived and another place over by West Mountain opposite  Lake Fork. But there was a misunderstanding about the deal for that place and I don't remember if dad ever got it settled. Dad farmed here a while but the bottom went out of the price of timothy seed so dad didn't make much there at that time farming,  so he traded his Haymaker place for an apple orchard in New Plymouth and traded that

Christina Tuttle Crawford with 

her youngest two children.

for another house in Emmett below  the saw mill and sold that and come back to Long Valley and lived in the blue house and he still owned the blue house when he went to California in 1916 and stayed a short time and
come back and worked then in a logging camp up in the nook above Cascade. (Rachel was born before they left the Haymaker place in December 6, 1913.)

Written by Nancy Crawford Gifford in the 1970s








Alice Crawford Marshall story:

Alice Crawford Marshall

Born in Emmett, Idaho, in a little community called Bramwell, a Morman settlement, although we weren't Mormons.  Mother was a Baptist, and Dad just an ordinary everyday Christian.  There were six children and I was No. 7 which has always been my lucky number.  Also Friday the 13th has been my lucky day.  Nancy took care of the kids and home while I was being born as Mother was in Emmett at a friend's home.  During this period Nancy has quite a job on her hands.  She made clothes and got all the wild Indians cleaned up, hooked up the old mare to the buggy and all came up to see me and Mother.

 I just don't remember first seeing them but this is what Nancy has told me.  This was in 1902, May 16th.  She also told me that Dad has an old man working around the pace, maybe just for his board and room.  Nancy didn't like him as he never took a bath and had long hair and whiskers.  Nancy called him the sheepherder.  She fed him sour beans one day and when he got well enough, he left.  There were no ice boxes or refrigerators then so it didn't take long for beans to sour.  But she wanted to be rid of him.

 Dad always made several barrels of cider as apples were plentiful; but it wasn't long until it was hard cider.  So one day Della, Walter, and Joe started drinking cider and it wasn't long until they passed out as the hard cider was potent.  Nancy let them lay right out in the hot sun until they came to.  She said later that she shouldn't have been so hard-hearted but she was disgusted that they drank so much but they thought they were just drinking cider.

 Mother didn't stop when I came along.  She had five more children [really it was six more].  Every two years there was another mouth to feed.  She not only bore 13 of us, I should say 16, as 3 died in infancy.  She also was a midwife for old Dr. Noggles.  She helped deliver hundreds of babies all over Valley County.

 Dad was even-tempered, easygoing but a hard worker.  Mother was hot-tempered, would fight at the drop of a bucket and would fight a buzz saw if she thought she was in the right.  She never went to school, couldn't even sign her name.  Just make an "X" but she must have had a computer in her head.  She could add faster and figure faster than most can figure with pencil and paper.

 Mother and Dad didn't have prayers or any part of religion in the home but we were raised by the Ten Commandments -- not to steal or lie, do as you would be done by, judge not lest you be judged, and you were just as good as your word.  And that's the same religion I follow now.

 There was no big fuss over birthdays or any holidays, too many for that.  We always had food on the table and necessary items but no luxuries.  Most of our living was in the garden, meat from the pigs, cows and chickens, milk cows and churned our butter.  Once a week our washing was done on a washboard with homemade lye soap.  Took one whole day for the daily wash.  Mother didn't like to cook so Dad did most of the cooking.  She liked to bake bread, eight big loaves a couple of times a week.  She'd work out in the garden and to heck with the rest of the cooking.  Nancy took over when she was old enough and on down the line each one of us had our turn in the kitchen.  I guess I took after Mother.  I didn't like to cook either.  It's a wonder Dad didn't die with stomach trouble eating eight girls learning-to-cook food.  We all had to work, outside or in the house.  And we were all at the table at the same time, ate what was on the table even if it was just rutabagas and side pork, hungry enough that anything tasted good.

 Dad was born in London, Kentucky, and Mother in Tennessee.  Both were raised in the Cumberland Gap with the Hatfields and the McCoy's.  maybe that's where my mother learned how to fight and that must be where Dad learned the art of making moonshine.  He made it because he loved to make it, but it was a Godsend as Dad was a hard luck farmer.  He could not hit the right year to raise clover or alfalfa seed.  No market and the years he didn't have any, the price was good.

 One year in Long Valley he, Mabel, Joe's wife, and I planted 11 acres of head lettuce.  The company furnished the seeds and we did all the hard work and furnished the land.  We thinned and hoed and raised beautiful lettuce there.  When the lettuce was ready for market, the company brought out the crates but didn't haul out one load as they went belly-up, in plain words, broke.  Dad sued them and got a judgement against the company but it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.  It wouldn't have been a total loss if it could have been fermented -- Dad could have brewed it and sold the moonshine!  We didn't have enough pigs to eat the crop so the heads burst overnight and all went to waste.

 First trip to California (1917)
I was 13 years old.  Dad sold everything, home ranch, cattle, horses and all household belongings; just kept a camping outfit and bought a tent and our clothes and bedding.  He came to San Bernardino.  I can't remember if he came by bus or train but he joined a Socialist Colony on the Mojave Desert between Lancaster and San Bernardino, a little place called Llona.  Don't remember how many acres but each family that joined had to pay $1000 and work out a thousand shares.  Was supposed to be a big cooperative farm where everybody shared alike.  My dad was really enthused and worked hard for his shares.  He sent word for the rest of the family to come on down and join him.  Nine of us started out in a Model T Ford.  We must have been packed in like sardines.  We had our bedding and camping equipment tied on the running boards, clothing and food.  It must have been a sight that was unbelievable.  I remember it took us nine days to reach Reno.  We must have driven at least 35 miles per hour to take so long.

 Although it took time to unload for the night and cook our meals; otherwise I can't see why it took so long.  The President of the Colony met us in Reno with a dozen other families and had a big picnic lunch.  All had a good time.  The one thing that was so outstanding was the first time that I had ever eaten potato chips and they sure hit the spot.  Thought it was the best thing that I had ever tased!  We were treated Royal High but we must have looked like tramps and must have smelled the same as there was no way for baths.  Just was our faces and comb our hair.  Can't remember washing any clothes on the way down so must have worn the same clothes for days as we didn't have that many changes nor the room to carry them.

Written by Alice Crawford Marshall in the 1980s



So you see they were quite a family.  And my mother, the youngest of the thirteen (13) surviving children married my father on 16 April 1933.