"God gives the world many wonderful blessings, but a Mom and Dad are the very best of all".

The stories you are about to read are the true facts of the lives of Mom and Dad. They are written word for word as told to us by them, -- nothing changed or omitted.

They were 91 and 96 years old when they decided to tell their life stories. They got to read all the copies before they passed away, and wanted to see the book finished for their kids.

We especially want to thank our Mom and Dad for getting this information to us so we can pass it on.

As you can see, --- this is not a very professional job, but, | | Here it is and hope you enjoy it as much as we did � putting it all together. Lots of work, -- but lots of fun too.

---------- Jane and Dorothy

I was born in the Indian Territory at a place called Wanette Pottawatomie on August 30th, 1885, (Now Oklahoma State) about 4 miles from Durant.

My Dad, Mother, two older brothers, a younger sister and myself started on our way to Oklahoma with a couple of oxen teams, in 1891. It was a long ways up there. Dad was goin' up there to homestead. That was the northern part of the Indian Territory and was open for homesteaders.
[ Note: "Dad" would be George Washington Yarnell; "Mom" is Anna Mary Yarnell ]

We must have been on the road a couple of weeks, camping along the roadsides, as those old ox teams didn't go very fast. We finally got up there and camped by the river. We didn't dare cross the river before he homesteaded, as they didn't allow any body across the river that was going to homestead. They called them "Sooners" if they found out that they had crossed the river first, and they'd lose their homestead. So we stayed on this side of the river till they had their big run for their homesteads.

We all lined up on the south side of the river like an army, I guess; some of the men on horseback, some afoot, as that's all there was in those days. At the signal, they all run across the river, every man for himself.

Each man had a bunch of flags and when he found a piece of ground he thought he wanted, he would stick a flag, or as many flags he thought would reach across it. They tried to homestead it in 160 acre tracts.

My Dad was on foot, so he tagged the first piece of land that he came to across the river. Then he went on back three or four miles and flagged another one just to make sure that he would get one or the other of them. We moved across the river and we had an awful time of finding his homestead. We were camped back aways from the river, and when we went across, he found his flags on the back piece, but he couldn't find them on the first piece he flagged.

We stopped there and started pitching camp and getting things scattered around and there was another fellow came along and asked Dad what he was doing there. Dad said that he had flagged this piece and had figured on taking it. The guy said "but my flags are just over there." He had put his flags in another place. They quarreled about it for a little bit and finally Dad said "well, I've got another piece flagged somewhere, if I can find it. The fellow asked Dad what direction it was from the river. Dad said, "why it's right on the river but I couldn't find it, so I came on back here." So together they found his flags and we moved back there.

Dad put up his tent and got things fixed up a little bit. While living in the tent, my Mother Anna Mary, born in 1853 died, at the age of 39 years. She died in January and my little sister, Hulda Ann died in September of the same year. [ Note � the year 1892 ]

When he got around to it, Dad started cutting logs for a house. He always built a hewed log house when he went on a new place. He built our house out of Red Oak. Those were the nicest trees grown there. They grew nice and straight. He put up the house and started clearing land with the oxen. He cut the trees down and dragged them off and farmed the stumps till they rotted off.

Dad was there six ears and he took sick and died. My older brother Alonzo (Lon) took over and lived there two years and proved up on the homestead. Then he stayed one more year and decided to sell out everything and come out west. We had an Uncle down here in Vancouver, Washington. Lon decided we would come out and see him. He was the only relative we knew we had out here at the time. He didn't have any children, just he and his wife, so Lon brought Bud and I out with him. He had figured on getting into Vancouver, Washington by Christmas. He sold off everything he could to get enough money together to get tickets to come out on. When he got the tickets to come out here, he couldn't get them to come all the way through in those days. We had to come half way and then to get different tickets to come the rest of the way. When we got the tickets for the rest of the trip, someone got things balled up and we ended up in Vancouver B.C. By the time we got there, Lon was pretty well broke. He thought we were going to Uncle's place so he got to enquiring around and found out that we were in Vancouver B.C., instead of Vancouver, Washington. He found out how he had to get to Washington but by then he had no money. The people at the ticket office saw the mistake that had been made on the tickets, fo they gave us our tickets to Vancouver, Washington, but we still had to buy our eats. So Lon sold off some of our quilts and every thing we had, even our gun. This was a gun my Grandad, who was a gunsmith, worked over. He had taken this old 10 gauge shotgun and had turned down a 38 rifle barrel to fit into the left barrel of the shotgun so he had a 38 in one side, and a 10 gauge shotgun in the other side. It had an old octigan barrel on it. My Dad used to use that gun in the fall in the cornfields. There were a lot of Fox Squirrels back there. A little bigger than our gray squirrels out here. He used to pop them in the head with that old gun and never miss.

We finally made the trip to Vancouver, Washington. We looked up our Uncle Buck and stayed with him and cut cordwood. Everybody cut cordwood for the steamships that run up and down the river between Portland and The Dalles.

On the trip out here, Lon had gotten pretty sick, and he was pretty much under the weather by now, so he wasn't able to work. He had an awful cold that went into pneumonia. My other borther next to him, Leaman, had caught a freight after we had left back there and he almost beat us out here. The three of us decided we had better get to work so that we could make our beans, so we started cutting cordwood too.

I was thirteen years old at the time. Bud and I would saw off the blocks and Leamon would split and pile it. We got 75� a cord for making that wood. We cut wood for all of that winter. We got back to Vancouver just between Christmas and New Years of 1898. There wasn't anything to do then but cut wood for those ships, but it kept us in beans and stuff.

In May of that next Spring, my Uncle, one we didn't know was here, Pap Freelan and Aunt Mollie, came down to Uncle Bucks to cut wood. Pap and Mollie had homesteaded a place up on Burdoin Mountain. He worked around at whatever he could at logging camps and sawmills and had come down here to cut wood. That is how I happened to get to this country. While he was gone off to work, Aunt Molly was home alone and there were a lot of Indians around in those days, and they would get a little wild sometimes, and he didn't like for her to be there by herself, so when they went home, they took me with them. That was in 1899. I was fourteen years old then. This next spring my brother Lon died.

While Uncle Pap was off working, Aunt Molly and I cleared a little land. We managed to clear about an acre of brush. We had a little fun while we was doing it. I was just a kid, and she was a big fat ole girl. It was a real hot day and she was a real worker, wasn't a bit afraid of work. Anyway, we was out a workin' in front of the house, cuttin' willow brush and I got into a next of yellow jackets, down in the roots of this bush I was a workin' on. Just bein' a kid, I thought it would be funny, so I walked over to another bush. She got the bush cut that she was butchering away on, and waddled over there and begin to hackin' on that one, and pretty soon I heard her say, "Whoopie", and off through the brush she went. Them Yellow Jackets got up under her dress and got her everywhere from her feet to her waist. Of course I didn't get around very close for quite awhile, and she had a pretty good idea why I stayed off to one side.

That summer we all picked strawberries all the way from Bingen to Husum. That country was all in strawberries and they would ripen sooner at Bingen and slower toward Husum. That was in the fall of 1899.

Let's see now, -- that fall I went to school at Locke Hill in the ole log school house. I would walk from Uncle Freelan's to school, which was a four mile hike and came home the same way at night. That made an eight mile trip to walk to school. I stayed there all of that winter.

The next spring a neighbor of his wanted me to herd his milk cows of the school section. I think he had twelve cows. I went over there and herded his cows all summer. I'd take them out in the morning, and follow them around till about noon and they would water there of the school section at a spring. When they'd go to the waterhole, I'd come in, then I wouldn't go back out till about three. In the summertime they would drink, then lay around in the shade for awhile. Then I'd go out and head them toward home and get them home in time to milk them.

I did that all of that summer, and when fall came, he kinda pulled a dirty trick on me. He said that he wouldn't need me anymore and that I'd hafta' move on. Well, I'd picked me a bunch of hazelnuts while I was herdin' those ole cows. I'd always take a little salt sack with me and while I was a settin' around on a log or something, I'd fill that little sack with nuts. I'd taken the husks off them so that by the season was over I had picked me a 50 lb. Sack full of hazel nuts. When I had gotten it filled as full as I could, I sewed it shut and I put it in the house, in my room upstairs. When h e told me I would have to go, I asked him in "He would get me a new shirt, as the one that I had was getting pretty ragged." "Oh," he says, "I can't afford clothes for myself, and he sure couldn't get me a shirt." Well that made me pretty peaved so I said, "Well, maybe I could trade my nuts for a shirt." He said, "You haven't got no nuts. You picked them on my time." "Why", I said, "I had picked them on my own time while I was a herdin' those ole cows." We yammered around a bit and I could see that I wasn't a goin' to keep my nuts, so I took my little bundle in a gunny sack and took off.

There was this ole man, we called him Pop Evans. He had told me, "Boy, anytime you haven't got a place to go, you just come here. You can stay with Ma and I." There was just the pair of the, he and his wife. Right now I sure enough didn't have a place to stay so I went over there and told him what had happened. The very next time he went to town Pap got some cloth and the Mrs. made me a shirt. They were real nice people.

I stayed with them till spring. I helped him with the chores and whatever I could. He had a milk cow, and I was big enough to milk her, and take care of the horses for him. Then I helped him through the spring work. He grew some hay for his cows and horses and had a little grain planted, - a little oats and some wheat. When it came time to harvest it, we mowed it with a hand scythe and raked it with a hand rake. We didn't have much for tools in those days, and it made it pretty hard. I helped him get his hay in the barn, then I went to Goldendale.

Ole Pop had a son whose father-in-law died and he went up to run the ranch. Anyway, this son of his, Lee Evans, wrote me and wanted to know if I wanted to come up there and herd sheep. This was in 1900. He said that I could stay at his place free if I would like to take the job herding sheep. They had said that they would give me fifty cents a day to herd those sheep, and BOY! did I want that money. It sounded good to me, so I walked all the way to Goldendale and herded sheep.

This was for a man by the name of Hugh Phillips. He had 400 head of sheep and I stayed with the sheep till they were through lambing. That was about the first of June. Then I herded them around over the hills to Glenwood. When I got to Glenwood, I lost my job. Another fellow took them on to the Mt. Adams area for the summer months. This was in the summer of 1901.

I had made me enough money on this job to buy me a horse. I told Lee that I thought I should have a cayuse. All of this time I had been afoot and now I had a few dollars in my pocket and Lee told me that he would watch and when the Indians would come by, he would pick me up my horse. Every fall the Indians would round up all of their horses and take them to The Dalles to sell to the cannery. They'd get $2.50 a head for them, just as they picked them up off the range.

So sure enough, when they came through, Lee went out and stopped them, and told them that he wanted a horse. "Give me $2.50 and you can pick out the one you want." Lee's corral was right by the road, so he picked out this little iron gray filly. A 2 year old, nice lookin' little mare, but she was wilder than a deer. Of course I couldn't do anything with her, so Lee broke her out enough so that I could ride her. I bought me a cheap saddle and a bridle and I rode her all of that summer.

At this time I was still staying with Lee doing chores and whatever I could find to do. I went to school in Goldendale that winter and stayed here with Lee. The next spring, as soon as we could, we started hauling horse manure. We always had that to do in the spring.

Then I got a job for a man by the name of Glover. He said that he would give me 75� a day. I thought that I was doing alright. I'd lost my 50� a day job and now I'd get this one for 75�. He put me to cultivating summer fallow. I kept this up for quite awhile, and when we finally got the spring work done, it wasn't long till harvest time. He asked me if I thought I could drive a wagon under the header. He had found out by now that I was little but he could get a lot of work out of me. I told him I didn't know why I couldn't do it.

So my next job was driving the wagon under the chute of the header machine. This was a machine that had a big cutter on the front like a mowing machine only I would say it took about a twelve foot cut. It cut the head off the grain, then the heads would go into the machine and the grain would go up this chute and would dump into our wagons. My job was to keep my wagon under that chute till it was full and not get out from under that spout or we lost some grain. The header had 12 or 16 horses pulling it. There were three in the lead, and the rest were behind in a big V shape. I was really making big money doin' this. They paid me 75� a day for a ten hour day. Of course the man working with me got $1.50, but I was just a kid so I got paid half price.

I went to school in Goldendale again that winter, and the next spring back to hauling manure again.

This next year, I worked for Glover again. He had about a thousand acres of wheat ground. He had cut his wheat and had it piled in big stacks scattered around the field waiting for the thrasher to come through and thrash it for him. He also had about eighty head of hogs that he wanted out in these fields to fatten up on the heads that were left scattered around the ground that they had missed. He asked me if I'd be interested in herding them hogs for him. He knew that I had gotten my cayuse and he told me that he would give me 75� a day if I would ride around and herd them hogs around over the field and just keep them out of the piles. I didn't have anything better to do so I told him that I would do it and I sure could use the money.

The first day or two wasn't bad. I'd turn them pigs out about eight in the morning, and I would ride around and keep them from getting into the stacks and it wasn't a bad job. But it wasn't long for them hogs to become smart. It got so that when I'd turn them out in the morning, they would all scatter out just like a bunch of quail; all in a different direction. I had one heck of a time. I just about run that little cayuse of mine to death. One day I got mad at one of them ole hogs, I grabbed up an ole leg bone off of an ole horse or cow that had died and let her have it as hard as I could. Well, anyway, away went the pig and the big ole bone ended up in the wheat pile, and at this time I didn't think anything about it. Later, though, when they went to thrash that stack, that big ole bone got into the thrasher, and all heck broke loose. There was a great big thud, bang, crunch � bunch of sounds came out of the machine and pieces begin to fly all over the place. There were two big rollers that had six inch fingers on them that whirled around and when that big ole bone got in there, things really went to pieces. I kept real quiet about that bone.

I stayed with Lee another winter and hauled manure again in the spring for Mr. Glover. His barn had three sides on it where they kept the horses in the winter, so there was no shortage of manure. I wasn't very big then and when we got the manure all hauled, he asked me if I thought I was big enough to plow. The ground was about ready now. I told him that I'd give it a try. He fixed me up with three horses and a 14 inch footburner. That plow was a lot bigger and heavier than I was so that first day was pretty tough. I was following an older fellow around the field and if my plow hit a big root or something and flipped over, I'd hafta holler for help to get it upright again. In a couple of days tho, I was getting so I could balance the thing and I made round for round with the older fellow. I followed him day in and day out till it got so dry you couldn't plow anymore. I was really making good money at the job. He was giving a dollar a day for a ten hour day. Of course the other fellow was getting a dollar and a half per day.

After the work was done that fall I came back here to White Salmon. I rode into town and tied up my horse to the hitching rail in front of the store and I went in to do whatever it was I had to get and when I came out, Ole Tune Wyers was standing there talking to a couple of guys. I went over to my horse, and he says ""Boy, do you want to sell that horse?" I says, "Sure I'll sell here." He asked me what I wanted for her. I told him twenty dollars, and he said, "I'll take her." He asked me what I'd do with my saddle. I said that I'd take it with me.

I was staying at ole Grandpa Locke's right then, so I packed my saddle out to his place. He lived right at the bottom of Locke Hill. Ole Grandpa Locke was always good to me. He and Grandpa Evans and a man by the name of Bob Clemens would always give me a home if I wasn't working where I could stay. This was about 1902.

I found out later why ole Tune wanted my horse. It seemed that he had a dead ringer for her to look at and he wanted mine to make a fancy little buggy team. But it didn't work out, as his horse was a real quick little scamp and mine, after she was broke, was as quiet as a kitten. So he sold her to an old man on the river that wanted a nice gentle horse. I don't suppose he lost anything on her.

When fall came, I went back to Vancouver. Again I stayed with my Uncle Buck and went to school. I had been away from that school for so long, that there were some new kids that hadn't been there before. Of course they all had to try out this little country kid and see just how tough he was. It didn't take very long for them to find out. I was real small for my age, but I worked real hard all the time so I was well able to take care of myself.

The next spring I came back to White Salmon, and did odd jobs wherever I could find something to do. I cut a lot of piling at McCoy flat till harvest time, then I went back up to Goldendale to work in the harvest.

In 1904 I went to work for Pyatts. I was eighteen years old and I weighed in at eighty pounds. Mr. Pyatt said that if I would stay at this place till I was twenty-one and work for him, he would give me my board, clothes and twenty acres of land. Bud had come to Pyatts before I did and Mr. Pyatt made him the same deal.

Bud and I cut winter wood and cleared land mostly. We also cleared land for Headly and Ziegler. They both had land that adjoined the Pyatt place. We did the work and Pyatt got the money.

Bud finally got peaved and left but I really wanted that twenty acres of land, so I stayed my three years till I reached my twenty first birthday and sure enough, he gave me my land. He gave me my twenty acres on the corner of the old Turner Place.

In 1906 I filed a claim on the homestead in Major Creek. I built a little log cabin on it and batched there for awhile. I cleared off a little ground, about an acre I guess, and planted it to peach trees.

I married Mom in 1908.