Life in the Brick House

Memories of Kathryn Turner Baker

To know the Brick House, one first has to know the spirit of my grandmother, Jane Elizabeth McKee Turner (May 7, 1862 – July 5, 1952). Born in Clarinda, Iowa, Grandmother Turner was the daughter of David and Mary Elizabeth McKee. Great grandfather McKee was a Covenanter Presbyterian minister, serving a small country church and farming on the side to keep his family fed. Great grandmother was the daughter of a wealthy Pittsburg father who made a small fortune in a mercantile store and investing in property around the juncture of the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers.

Grandmother met and married my grandfather, James William Turner (August 22, 1854 – Fall 1931) and they started their family in Clarinda. I have no idea what caused them to sell their farm there and move west, coming by train to Boise, ID, but I have to think that my grandmother’s adventurous spirit along with my grandfather’s lust for change must have played a role. From Boise, they settled in Bellevue, ID, Lewiston, ID and in the vicinity of Ritzville, WA before coming to Dead Ox Flat on the Oregon Side across the Snake River from Weiser, ID.

I’ve been told that my grandmother received quite a tidy sum of money from her mother – $5,000 plus $1,000 for each child. Grandmother had 13 children. Bessie had died as a child, so the gift included 12 remaining children for a grand total of $17,000, a fortune in the early 1900s. My grandmother purchased the farm on the Oregon Side saying she did not want to move again, and she did not.

The brick house was designed and contracted by my grandmother. It was constructed in 1917 at a cost of $7,800 for materials and labor. Grandmother signed all the contract documents herself, and she moved to the farm with my grandfather, six sons and one daughter (the rest of the children had married along the way). The house was really a wonder for its time with running water, central heating, electricity and bathrooms upstairs and down.

Eventually the sons (except John Allen) and Bertha married, but the house was never empty for long. William (Will), Ralph, Lucien and Bertha all moved to their own nearby homes after they married, but my father (Guy Elmer, August 16, 1896), John, Elwyn (the youngest) and Grandmother remained. My dad married Marie Nesbitt of a “sheep family” in Weiser, but she died of childbed fever, and their son Hugh died shortly after that.

Enter my mother, Lorena Elizabeth Smith (June 12, 1912). The Turners always engaged “hired girls” to help my grandmother around the house. There were lots of chores to do – cooking, gardening, washing, ironing, cleaning. The brick house is a very large house to maintain, and during the summer there were always extra hired hands to be fed. My mother was raised in Weiser, and when she had the opportunity to be one of the Turner “hired girls,” she jumped at the chance. It certainly beat picking turkeys for a living. I am not sure just when she arrived on the scene, but I think it was in the early 1930s, shortly after the Great Depression.

I know nothing about Mom and Dad’s courtship, but Dad always said, “She had the best looking legs he had ever seen.” They married in 1937 and started a family of their own, who quickly filled the brick house once again. (John Elmer – August 21, 1939, Kathryn Ann – June 23, 1942, and Raymond Guy  (Ray) – July 5, 1947). Elwyn and Helen had married on May 1, 1942 so when Guy and Lorena’s family was completed with the birth of Ray, Guy’s family of five, Uncle Elwyn, Aunt Helen, Grandmother Turner and Uncle John brought the house occupancy to a grand count of nine.

Early Memories

My earliest recollection (or non-recollection having come from stories) is of my mother falling out of a cherry tree on my first birthday breaking her leg, pelvis and back. I have always maintained that I remember crying for her as I was held by one of the “hired girls.” Whether I remember that or not is immaterial. I felt alone although surrounded by family and employees, but they were not my mother. Mom said she was put into a full-body cast (that hung in her bedroom closet for many years), and I would sit astride her as she put in many long months in bed. Mom lost the use of her toes from that accident, and I suffered from separation anxiety, which stayed with me for many years.

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From Kathryn Turner Baker