Joseph Family History

HISTORY OF THE JOSEPH FAMILY

NARRATED BY: CHARLES JOSEPH – FEBRUARY 24, 1976

My parents were born in Iowa, and my father, Horace Joseph, married Mary Fifer on October 20, 1898, in Creston, Iowa. I was born on December 8, 1899, in Iowa. They moved to Eugene in 1901, along with my grandfather and his entire family, and lived there for two years. In the Spring of 1903, my grandfather and father moved their family from Eugene to Weiser. In the summer of 1903, my grandfather and father crossed Snake River by ferry as there was no bridge there. The man who ran the ferry was named Tuttle. They called it Tuttle Ferry.

They came over on the Dead Ox Flat, about four miles South of Weiser, and homesteaded. My grandfather’s homestead is on what is now Highway 201, and my father filed on a homestead on what is now Foote Road. Of course, at that time, there were no roads, only trails, through the sagebrush. No telephones, and no electricity. In fact, there wasn’t anything but coyotes, sagebrush, and jackrabbits. It wasn’t very long after they filed on these homesteads that settlers began to come into the flat and soon every 160 acres on the Dead Ox Flat was homesteaded, and there were homesteader shacks all over the flat.

In 1904, my sister, Florence, was born on the homestead. Each summer when the salmon run was on, the Indians would come down on the banks of the Snake River to fish and trade with the white men for salmon and smoked fish. Then, several times through the summer, they would ride up through the flat in single file with the old Indian Chief in the lead with feathers in his headgear and his blankets all over his Indian ponies with two or four, sometimes six, squaws, all in single file. They would ride up to a homesteader’s house and the Indian Chief never got off his horse. The squaws, maybe one or two, would get off and come up to the door and try to sell their moccasins, beads, trinkets, or blankets, or whatever they had, but very few homesteaders bought any, so if they couldn’t sell them, they would start trading. They would trade for gas, bacon, chickens, and, I think they must have been real good traders because I don’t think they ever left a homestead without making some kind of deal.

By this time, not only was all the land on Dead Ox Flat homesteaded, but all the land adjacent to Dead Ox Flat had homes on it, and families were living all over these hills. Most of them had children but there were no schools. With the help of the County and State, the County Commissioners organized what they called the Jefferson School District

It was a one-room school which my father and his brother, Ben, built on the present location where the Jefferson School is now. At that time, there were thirty cow seats in a one-room building with outdoor plumbing. A barn was built for the horses because those who lived too far away had to come by horseback, some of them came in buggies. My mother taught the first school in the Fall of 1907, for the sum of $40 per month.

By this time, a lot of the farmers were struggling on the flat. This was not a real good farming section because there was very little spring rain and no summer rain, and those who were left decided they were all going to starve if they didn’t do something. A bunch of the leaders on the flat got together and formed an irrigation district. This irrigation district was called the Snake River Improvement Company. This was in 1912 and it took a couple of years, or a year at least, before they could sell the bonds to finance the building of the irrigation system. Finally, this was done, and the pumping plant site was decided on one-half mile East of The John Green Ranch, which is now called the Turner home, and the water was supplied out of the Snake River. The first Board of Directors, I believe, and the ones who were the originators of this project were Sam Hill, John Green, Frank Gribbin, my Grandfather, J.J. Joseph, and my father, Horace Joseph. This particular district comprised about 280 acres, a very small district.

My sister, Edith, was born March 7, 1912. My Grandfather died November 1, 1913. There were thirteen children in my Grandfather’s family and all of those have passed away, with the exception of Frank, who lives on Pioneer Road in Weiser. My father died in December, 1943, in the Ontario Hospital. My mother died in Weiser in 1964.

In 1929, there was a family who moved here from Caldwell by the name of C.F. (Potato) Smith. He got that name because all his life he had raised potatoes. He bought what is now the Rollins place and raised potatoes there. His family consisted of himself, his wife, and his youngest daughter, Dorothy. We started going together and December 9, 1931, we were married and built our present home in the Spring of 1936. Our daughter, Barbara, was born November, 1935, (Barbara has commented “Bad Dad, I was born in 1936”) and our youngest daughter, Joyce, was born in 1940. Both girls are married and have families of their own, and are living in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

In 1902, there was an organization called the Reclamation. This was a Federal organization and was formed primarily to help agriculture, promote irrigation districts, and do all they could for the western country. They soon became interested in the Treasure Valley, the land lying west of Snake River, and spent years taking soil samples, checking for drainage, trying to find a suitable water source, a place to build a dam for storage.

From Charles Joseph

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