THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
John
Joseph and Lula May Estee Vandiver
and
children Ada Margaret and John Henry
Yakima,
Washington, 1918
The
memoirs of John Joseph Vandiver give insights into how hard families
who left
their familiar homeland of Choestoe, Union County, and moved west had
to work
in order to make a living. Going west
was not an easy landfall for jobs or security.
John Joseph remained in Drake’s Creek,
Arkansas from 1895 until 1898 where his father had a farm and John
Joseph
worked an extra job cutting railroad ties.
When he was twenty, he boarded the train in Arkansas to travel
to
Greeley, Colorado where his older brother, William J. (known as Bill)
had
moved. The young men worked on the
Charles Robinson farm for $20 per month.
But when the harvests were in, the jobs were out.
They heard jobs might be available in
Laramie, Wyoming. Checking into the
Custer Hotel there, they learned that a Mr. Thornton at Rock River
sixty miles
west of Laramie was looking for ranch hands.
The two Vandiver brothers boarded a train westward to Lookout
and then
walked twelve miles to the Thornton Ranch.
They were hired to feed the stock and herd sheep.
For about a year they worked on the Thornton
and the William Taylor Ranches near Rock Creek.
During the rough winter of 1899, the
Vandiver lads worked with the survey crew for the Union Pacific
Railroad. Things were not going so well
with John
Joseph and Bill’s parents down in Arkansas.
John Floyd Edward Vandiver and his wife, Rhoda Lucinda Souther,
loaded
up the family remaining at home and in the spring of 1899 joined the
two older
boys at Rock Creek. In May of 1900 they
relocated to Little Medicine, Wyoming, to the John J. Burnett Ranch.
John Joseph writes of this
period: “It was hard going in those
times. About all the work available was
herding sheep. I spent two winters
making railroad ties in southern Wyoming near the Colorado line in
three feet
of snow. I went on the tie (railroad
ties) drive down the Medicine Bow River in the spring of 1902.”
John Joseph’s next move was to
Seattle, Washington in June, 1902. There
he got what work he could at various labor, among which was in a brick
yard, at
a sawmill, at a logging camp, driving a meat wagon for a packing house,
and
working on the Bear Ranch. It was not
that he was inept at any of these jobs and was fired only to have to
find
another. Jobs were scarce.
His determination to make his own way always
seemed to land him in another job.
His parents followed John Joseph’s
lead. In the fall of 1903, J. F. E. and
Rhoda Vandiver sold what stock they had at Little Medicine, Wyoming and
moved
to Okanogan, Washington, where the elder Vandiver paid $800 for a lease
on some
land that had a log cabin and a school house between Okanogan and
Malott at a
site called Pleasant Valley. It was a
good move, as the children still at home—Sarah, Nell, Hartwell, Calla
and
Jess—had a place to attend school. Older
brother Bill joined them at Pleasant Valley.
Bill and John Joseph worked about ten miles from home at the
Last Chance
Mine during the winter months, cutting firewood for the mine workers,
batching
in an old log cabin and doing their own cooking. In
the summers of 1904 and 1905, they helped
their father with the ranch work at Pleasant Valley.
With some earlier experience on a survey
team, John Joseph went to Seattle, Washington in the early spring of
1906,
where he worked with the Oregon and Washington Survey Crew, working on
the line
that paralleled the Northern Pacific from Portland to Seattle. That job was finished in the fall. His next employment was surveying for a rail
line and terminal at Catalla, Alaska.
Seven feet of snow were on the ground when he arrived there in
March,
1907. With that job finished, he
returned to Yakima, Washington where he got work with the Reclamation
Service
surveying for canals: the Tieton and
Ellensburg.
He decided to further his
education. He took a three-month course
in the Seattle YMCA School and following that was admitted to the
University of
Washington in February, 1910. He wrote of
the keen competition with younger, better-prepared students. His education helped him to gain better
employment with the Reclamation Service where he oversaw various
engineering
projects in the Tieton Canyon, on Rimrock Dam and elsewhere.
While he was a student at the
University, he met and fell in love with Lula Mae Estee of Gibson City,
Illinois. They were married in Yakima on
May 23, 1914. To them were born two
children, Ada Margaret (1915) and John Henry (1916).
When World War I stopped progress on
the Reclamation Service dam and canal projects, John Joseph Vandiver
started
work as a carpenter, with little experience in this field.
However, with his determination and
willingness to work, he was able to progress and provide for his family.
Sometimes we put an aura on the idea
to “go west, young man,” as if the adventure will be laced with success
and
prosperity. The life story of John
Joseph Vandiver and his family who migrated from the Choestoe Valley in
1895 to
find their way in Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington state
shows that
it was not an easy road but one requiring hard work, ingenuity and
adaptability. These characteristics he
had learned early in life as he worked on the farm settled by his
grandfather
J. John Souther in the shadow of Bald Mountain.
They did not disappear in mountain mists but remained as guiding
principles throughout Vandiver’s life.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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