Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago-August 14, 2008

Huntsville Memories from the late Margaret Ganguet: “I remember all our walks to Huntsville school (about 1923). I started there in the Fourth Grade after Pendleton and Walla Walla boarding schools. Now the kids wouldn’t think of walking two miles to school. We used to get disgusted when a car passed by and didn’t offer us a ride! Nowadays we wouldn’t dare get in a car if we didn’t know the people. In winter when we had snow, my father hitched up the team and took us to school in the sled.”

Originally called the Washington Institute and founded by the United Brethern Church, the seminary operated in Huntsville from the inception in 1879 into the Twentieth Century, and drew folks to the valley bottom from Waitsburg where they erected a mill and established homes. The Dayton School District purchased the property in 1912, and it served as public school until 1955. Photo caption: This imposing school building once stood in Huntsville.

Twenty-Five Years Ago-August 5,1993

Photo caption: Joe Abbey, left, and wife Liz, gather with their son Bruce, far right and his wife, Barbara and their two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. This is the first harvest that three generations of Abbeys will have worked the family farm near Waitsburg.

Waitsburg High School science teacher Mel McWhorter has joined 44 other teachers in the state in participating in an innovative master’s degree program at Washington State University, a program that will lead to McWhorter working for two months in a federal chemistry laboratory during the summer of 1995. At the end of the program, McWhorter will have earned a master’s degree in chemistry.

Fifty Years Ago-August 8, 1968

Ralph Rankin is busier during harvest than a baby beaver in a toothpick factory. Last week he was unable to mow “Rankin Park”, the pleasant welcoming strip of grass and trees at the south edge of town. When he got there to water it, he found that a good Samaritan had already done the job for him. We can’t tell his name either, but his initials were Roy Leid. Last year Ralph said that Laura Jean Hevel was his helper during his busy harvest season.

Dayton Drive In Ad: Jerry Lewis in “Way, Way Out” and “Hombre”, “Cool Hand Luke”, “Hotel”, and “Sound of Music” on various noted days, starting at 8:50 pm

Photo caption: The McKay elevator, north and west of Waitsburg, has a capacity of over half a million bushels of wheat. It has been busy this harvest season, being managed by Dick Baker, a WSU student from Waitsburg. Ralph Rankin is in charge of the grain storage facilities for Touchet Valley Grain Growers.

A two-way radio communication system has been established at the City Hall with units being placed in the water superintendent’s pickup, the city auto driven by the police chief and in the A. C. Watson house. This makes it possible to contact these people with greater ease in case of emergency.

Seventy Five Years Ago-August 13, 1943

Miss Josephine Gordon from Clarkston has been employed to teach mathematics and history in the local high school. She comes highly recommended and has an excellent background having studied history at Columbia.

Miss Doris Johnson became the bride of Raymond Switzer, seaman second class, at an informal ceremony at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ray Bowisley in Walla Walla, August 8.

Miss Freda Maud, Vellmer, became the bride of Dr. Lloyd Richard Michels Aug 8 at the Methodist Church.

Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Shuford are the parents of a baby girl born on Monday, August 9, in Yakima. Her mother, Mrs. Don Neace went to Yakima last week to be with her for a time.

One Hundred Years Ago-August 16, 1918

The Morgan Drug Store, of which O. S. Monnett is proprietor, was broken into sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning and all the change in the cash register, totaling between $6 and $9 mostly in nickels and dimes taken.

Frank Zuger’s barley on Reservoir Hill, just north of town yielded 18 sackes per acre, which was some yield of barley in this season of short barley crops. There are 139 acres in the field.

D. P. Bailey and family left last week for a few days auto trip to the Coast. They expect to visit Rainier National park before they return.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

August 18, 1893

Wm. Singer’s father from Portland has been visiting him this week.

Mrs. Dr. C. A. Hauber is home from San Francisco.

A.C. Dickinson this week threshed a forty acre field of wheat that made 52 bushels to the acre

W. H. Parker has established a cigar factory in Walla Walla and is making some first class cigars.

A good horse fell off the cliff east of the city on Tuesday and burst the planning mill flume. The horse is dead.

The first shipment of wheat from the Inland Empire was made on Sunday, when twenty five carloads left Eureka Junction for Tacoma.

Prof Brian the newly elected president of the Agricultural college at Pullman is a nephew of our A. W. Philips. If the Prof is as good a man as his uncle, he is good enough for us.