Memoirs of Frances Juliette COLE

November 24, 1882 - February 28, 19__

Written by: Frances COLE Jones Lingg Beeler

I am getting to be an old woman, passed my 67th birthday, November 24, 1949, and as my mind is quite clear in regard to much of the past, I am going to try and write some events of old times. First, I begin with my parents and grandparents. My mother was born Anna Caroline Plowman, (October 3, 1853 - May 14, 1914), somewhere in Iowa [Grand River, Decatur County]. I do not know where in Iowa they lived. As to her father, James, I never heard her say much about him only that he was a full blooded Frenchman and her mother, my dear grandmother, Frances Fleming, whom I remember, tho [stet] I was only a little girl of six or seven years when she passed away, November 14, 1888, was raised among the Pennsylvania Dutch.

When my mother was a small child of five or six, she came west with her family by covered wagon teams. I think they drove oxen and cattle but am not sure about that. As mother was born October 1853, they must have made the long trip sometime in the 1850's. One thing mother used to tell us children was they were never attacked by Indians but one bunch rode along with the wagon train several days and one young Indian wanted Mother's oldest sister to go with him. In fact tried to steal her but never got her away. As she was much older than Mother, she must have been a young woman of sixteen or eighteen at the time. She was my Aunt Rose. I still remember visiting with her and Uncle Gus and their family when I was six years old, somewhere near Sacramento, California.

Mother was married when quite young to a Will McKinney and my half-brother, James, was born to them. She was deserted by her husband when Jimmy as very small and she and my father were married. I never knew my brother was a half-brother until I went to school and I never liked him any less because of that.

Of my father's parents, I know nothing. He was born May 26th 1838 in Missouri [Carroll County, Arkansas] and came west when a young man. I never heard him say much about his family only he was of English parentage. He had three brothers, one in Oregon and two use [stet] to live in Colfax, Washington and with my parents at the time. Uncle Frank Cole was an old prospector doing lots of it around Grangeville and along the Clearwater in early days. Uncle Henry Cole was a bartender in a Colfax saloon for several years. He go an infection in one leg. I think it was erysipelas, and after much trouble and suffering with it, it was finally amputated at my father's home, on the dining table. I was about ten years old at the time and remember it perfectly. Drs. were Dr. Harvey and Dr. Pocock.

But I am getting ahead of time here. My mother and father were married in McMinnville, Oregon, or near there. One sister was born there, Elizabeth, Lizzie for short. Then they came to the Palouse country [Whitman County] by wagon again. The first winter they lived somewhere on Rabel or Union Flat with a family name of O'Dell. This same family had a fruit orchard near Snake River, three or four miles above Wawawai and my folks used to take a team and wagon and drive down every summer and get peaches to can, a whole wagon full. They would put straw in the wagon, then pick the fruit and fill the wagon, no boxes. We all enjoyed that wagon load of peaches very much and canned many gallons for winter use.

My parents came to Colfax and took a homestead about three miles East of Colfax, also a timber claim near, but lost it. A man named Snyder jumped Dad's right to it and won it. Lots of other land available then but this was a very desirable place because of a big spring on it. I don't know who homesteaded here first, my parents or grandparents. Our places joined and they both built houses near the South Palouse River.

At that time, there were no bridges and no railroad there and they kept a boat to get across it when the river was high. The Union Pacific Railroad was finally surveyed up to Moscow from Colfax and was put through our barn. So my folks decided to move up on the hill where there was a nice large spring. So there they built quite a nice house and I was born in that house. I think my brother Fred was born in the old house near the river. He is three years older than I.

My father was a carpenter and built or helped to build many of the old houses and bridges in Colfax and surrounding country. As he was away much of the time, mother and us children were alone a lot. There were a lot if Indians around Colfax at that time and many of them passed our school house on their way to Colfax. The use [stet] to stop sometimes and ask mother where her man was. Dad was gone, but a neighbor was chopping wood. He said, "You lie", but mother told him to listen and he would hear him. Lucky for her the neighbor just then started to chop again and the Indian got on his horse and rode away. Mother said she was very badly scared.

We children went to school in a little one room school house and there the most of us got what education we ever got. As the winters were so severe and snow so deep those days, we didn't have school during December, January and February. So our school terms were short. Our teacher boarded with my parents quite often. One thing we all learned those days was horseback riding. We would most of us ride to and from school and after school it was my job most of the time to get the cows home. My brother being older, usually had to work in the fields. As the country was not fenced very much those days, our cows use [stet] to roam far, sometimes being four or five miles from home. We kept a bell on one cow and I had to learn the sound of our bell as other cows roamed the hills too.

I had a very good horse to ride but it was a work horse too and I always wanted a pony. So, with my brothers help, I traded my cow and calf or a pony, and was I proud of that pony. He was a very nice pony being almost too gentle, but a small switch from a tree usually helped. I had him for quite a while till he got tangled up in barbed wire one time and got cut so bad we had to kill him. Don't think there were any dry eyes at our house that evening, as we had all learned to love that lovable little pony. His name was Britan, already named before I got him.

And then more bad luck hit us. Our house burned to the ground. That was in February 1891 or '92. It caught in the kitchen and I guess I did it. I was sent to get my younger brother's and sister's night clothes and carried a candle. They thought I probably got the flame too close to other clothes hanging there and my brother sleeping just off the kitchen almost burned up too. We lost nearly everything we had but the clothes on our backs.

We moved in another house my dad owned and my uncle and family occupied. Was rather crowded, but my older sister took my younger sister and went to a neighbors for a while. And they my father built a much larger and better home in the next two years. it still stands but has not been lived in for several years and the little saplings my mother set out much too close together are a wilderness now.

Here are some names of dear old friends and neighbors, many have gone on the far land but must be many left who are around our ages. 1 had one sister and one brother not mentioned before. They are Eva Margaret and Charles Agustus, Gus for short. We children are all alive yet by my half-brother Jim. He passed on several years back. Our dear old neighbors, the Andersons, Bairds, Days, Bentons, Marchs, Knights, Baileys, Schrools, Burlingames, Davises, Monluxes, Lewises and McCormicks. The latter three were all Schrool daughters, Lydia, Lena and Delia Schrool. Mrs. Averill and her daughter, Mrs. McNabb. The Ridouts lived with my step-grandfather several years and a family name of Hopkins lived near our school a number of years. Also the French family, those were the very best of people and we all loved to visit back and forth. If anyone needed help there were plenty of volunteers.

Father farmed for many years until he got too old. Then they sold the old place and moved for a while below Colfax, finally selling there and moved into town. They were living there during the flood of 1910 and our house was under water up to the door knobs. My older sister took our parents in a little later and my father passed away there in North Colfax, January 17, 1912. My mother lived two years longer and passed on in Pendleton, Oregon May 14, 1914. Both are resting on the hill in Colfax Cemetery. My grandmother, lies in an old cemetery called Bethel out near Clear Creek and my step-grandfather, Stephen Betts, in the Albion Cemetery. [Note: May Jones had these remains moved later to rest near Charles and Anna Cole.] My father's name Charles Cole. Dad passed on at the age of 74 and mother was not yet 61.

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