Entry from Michael

Wallace Elmer Southwick, 1911 - 1986

Some Background on His Origins and Early Years

(extracted and updated from the mini-biography of Elmer and Gertrude Southwick included with the memory book of their lives prepared for the 2005 Southwick reunion in Lincoln City, Oregon)

My father, Wallace Elmer Southwick was born at home in Liberty, Utah on January 11, 1911 to James Oatha Southwick, always called Oatha, and Frances Pearl Southwick (nee Gatchell), always called Pearl.

 Elmer was the fifth of seven children.  His older sister Eva Pearl died of heart problems at age 12 when he was three, but his five brothers, Howard, Joe, Jim, Jerry, and Louis, as well as his sister Clara, all went on to have long lives.  Many in the family came down with the devastating Spanish Flu in 1918, including my Dad, but no one died, a result that may have been unusual considering that this epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and more than 20 million people worldwide.

Economic circumstances for the Oatha Southwick family were modest, though not any poorer than for most others in the Liberty community in Ogden Valley.  People there farmed.  Oatha’s small farm was his share of land from a homestead grant obtained by his father, Joseph Southwick, Jr., in 1895.  Economic life revolved around raising crops, tending to animals, and doing other work to supplement the family income.  For the Southwick men this involved working on a thresher in season and operating a small sawmill. Trips for supplies to the nearest city, Ogden, were rare.  In my father’s early years these were made with a team of horses and a wagon.  Most social activities in Ogden Valley revolved around the Mormon Church or the schools.  Oatha and Pearl both liked to perform in plays.  Like the rest of Utah at the time, virtually everyone in the community was a Mormon.

Oatha’s father, Joseph Southwick, Jr., had a colorful life.  Born in England in 1847, he was only four when he emigrated to the United States with his family, traveling first by ship from Liverpool to New Orleans, then by riverboat to St. Louis, where his father died of cholera.  Some months later, with his young, widowed mother, he traveled across the American plains from Missouri to Salt Lake City.   Family legend says he traveled mostly on foot.  From age 13, by then motherless and fleeing a harsh stepfather, he was on his own.   Joseph married three times, outliving his first two wives but divorcing his third.  He had one daughter with his first wife.  The rest of his nine children were with his second wife, Louisa Maria Shupe.  Joseph lived until 1929, having achieved a longer span of life at 82 years than all of his children except William, referred to by my Dad as “Uncle Will”.  Will died in 1976 at the age of 93.

More details and other information on the Southwick family and its origins can be found in the two Neal Southwick genealogies.  The first, published in 1981, is entitled “The English Ancestry and American Posterity of Joseph Southwick, 1703 – 1980.”  The second, published in 1997, is Volume 2.

Thanks to my cousin Connie Golighty, Jerry Southwick’s daughter, I have finally come to know some of the history of the family of Dad’s mother, Frances Pearl Gatchell.  The basic source is a manuscript written by Maxine Smith, a niece of Frances Pearl.  It is a fascinating read. 

Pearl’s family on both sides is descended from two New England families named Judkins and Gatchell, both of which date back to the early 17^th century in America.   Her father was Jeremiah Gatchell, known as Jerry, born on June 25, 1850 in Lee, Maine.  Her mother was Clara Ellen Judkins, born on January 29, 1857 in Missouri.   Jeremiah and Clara Ellen were married in 1877 in Minnesota.  The Gatchell line appears to connect to John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, passengers on the first Mayflower voyage that landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.  They later married and had a large family. 

The marriage of Jeremiah Gatchell and Clara Judkins proved to be a sad one.  Tension arose early on when Clara decided she wanted to join the Mormon Church, following the course taken by others in her family, including her parents.  Jeremiah said that this would end the marriage.  Nonetheless, Clara left Minnesota without Jeremiah and joined the church in Utah.  He eventually followed her.  In Utah the couple had two daughters, Frances Pearl in 1881, and Serepta Ann Jeanette in 1882.   Shortly afterwards, in early 1883, Jeremiah abandoned his family.  After the breakup, Clara supported herself and her daughters for a time working as a chambermaid for three dollars a week at an Ogden hotel.  She went on to marry Richard Jones in 1885.

Jeremiah wound up in Wyoming, working as a cook.  Some evidence suggests that for many years he had had trouble finding work that suited him.  He died in 1909 and is buried in Laramie, though the location of the grave has not yet been identified.  He never remarried, nor did he ever join the Mormon Church, nor did he ever see his daughters again.  Nonetheless, the daughters knew of him and were curious about his life.  As an adult, Pearl was in correspondence with at least one Gatchell cousin, and Frances’s sister Serepta Ann Jeanette asked her aunt, also named Serepta, to find out about her father during the aunt’s visit to Laramie.  It was said that Jerry was a good man except for a drinking problem.  The reality behind that summation is no doubt much more complex.       

Clara’s marriage to Richard Jones seems to have turned out well.  A widower, he came to the marriage with six children.  Together, he and Clara were to have three more children, all sons.  Clara and Richard made a point of treating all the eleven children as if they were one family, with Richard having a reputation as a disciplinarian. Richard was a good provider, and the household even had a few luxuries such as a wool carpet. 

Clara’s older sister, Serepta Judkins Cowles, is of interest because she left a first person account of her long and colorful life, which paralleled to some extent Clara’s own life.  Born in Maine in 1857, Serepta moved often as a child, first to Massachusetts, then in succession to Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, where Clara was born.  Local unrest during the Civil War caused the family to flee Missouri and settle in Minnesota for a number of years, and then, for those who converted to Mormonism, to move to Utah.   It’s a true “How the West Was Won” kind of story.

A studio photo of Pearl taken in Ogden when she was 17 shows a striking young woman, with round, dark eyes, a feature she passed on to some of her children and grandchildren.  My cousin Connie Golighty remembers Andrew and Pearl as being very much in love.  They held hands and kissed often.  When Connie and her parents, Jerry and Delta Southwick visited Pearl and Andrew at their Mantua, Utah home, there would always be family prayer.  Andrew is further remembered as a large man, very kind and religious.  He had a smokehouse in his back yard where he smoked ham and fish.  Widowed again a few years before her death in 1947, Pearl spent her last months in the care of several of her children including my father at my father’s motel in Ukiah, California.

Liberty

Dad always talked lovingly and with nostalgia about growing up in Liberty.  He called his home community the “sweet land of Liberty,” borrowing words from the patriotic hymn, “America.”  He told stories of roaming around the surrounding hills on horseback with friends and relatives, of feats such as climbing Ben Lomond peak.  His cousin and buddy Ralph Southwick, a son of Uncle Will, was almost exactly his age, and lived on the adjacent farm at the northern end of the valley.  Visitors to Ogden Valley, at any time of year, will find it a beautiful place, especially in the fall.  While rapidly filling up with homes, the rural character of the valley remains. 

School for Dad in his early years involved a ride or walk to Huntsville, the largest town in Ogden Valley.  Dad told the stereotypical stories of trudging through the snow for many miles.  He liked school, and told the story of how he was the only person in his class at an Ogden school to get the correct answer on a math problem.  Nonetheless, like many kids of that era, he did not go on to high school.  His formal education ended with the eighth grade.

Dad’s life is summarized in The Willits News obituary I wrote about him in 1986.  It was reprinted in the second Neal Southwick genealogy.  In addition, I recorded two interviews with him, one in the mid-1980’s while visiting Mom and Dad at their home in Willits at 1025 Center Valley Road, and another, more fragmented interview, while Dad was with me and my wife Susan and our three children in 1985 on a visit to Ogden Valley.

David Brough had the first of these interviews transcribed, as well as the interview I did with Mom on that same Willits visit.  It’s also useful to read Ralph Southwick’s informal autobiography, a copy of which is in my possession, because his early years were similar to Dad’s.  Another useful source on Liberty and the Southwick family is a book published in the 70’s by Mary Chard McKee entitled “Early History of Liberty and the People.”

Dad worked in various jobs after leaving school.  He drove trucks, rode in rodeos, and hired himself out as a ranch hand, including in California.  From his father and grandfather, Dad learned early on about the timber business, as did all his brothers.  Grandfather Joseph established a small water powered sawmill near Liberty in 1877.  Later converted to steam, it could be moved from time to time to be near the best stands of timber in the region.   Over a big part of their working lives, one aspect or another of the sawmill business became the main occupation of my Dad and most of his brothers, as it was for Uncle Will and his sons.