Watkins Family History

HISTORY OF MATT WATKINS FAMILY

NARRATED BY: ORA WATKINS ROSIN – APRIL 13, 1976

Mrs. Ora Rosin is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Matt Watkins, who came to the Weiser area and settled in the Oregon Side district many years ago.

My grandfather on my mother’s side, Dudley Evans, was born and raised in Independence, Missouri, and came west by wagon train in the year 1881. The family, along with most of the emigrants, settled in the Midvale area. Later, around 1918, he and his family moved to what was then called Dead Ox Flat. He had seven children in his family. He came by wagon train. I think he said 32 wagons came through. They left Missouri in May and arrived in August, three months later. So that was quite a trip. Later in that same train, my grandmother came, but they weren’t married at that time. Later they settled in Midvale and that’s where all their family was born. That would be my mother’s family. There were six children in that family and later, as I said, they moved to the Dead Ox community out here in 1918. They lived there for a year when they asked my parents who were living in Midvale at that time to move down there and each one purchased forty acres there. Grandpa Evans and his family moved over to what used to be called Ramsey’s place. The Evans home was just west of the present-day Dorothy Stoner home today. My Father, Matt Watkins, came from Kentucky.

My father was one of a family of ten children and he came here in 1904 and worked on different farms throughout the area. Incidentally, the year 1901 was the year that the Snake River Bridge across the Snake River at Weiser was being built. He told me that it wasn’t quite finished at that time. He worked on different farms on the Weiser Flat and around here, and eventually landed up at Midvale where he married my mother in 1909. They lived there until I was nine years old, which was 1919, when they moved to Oregon Side and into the Mesquite area down there. Our place then was the little house he built was right on, almost where the Ramsey place is now. Later, we moved just over the bank and down to the Mesquite Flat and that was then called the Evans Gow place, and I understand that is the Barker place now.

The old original barn, which was built there by Mr. Gow and my father, still stands. The two big locust trees in the front of the house were there and full grown at the time we lived there. They’re beautiful trees and I notice them every time I go by there. We moved from that place in, I believe, 1935, and moved down to what was then the Florence Mainland place, but later sold it to the Somers, and we lived there. We had potatoes and there was a large orchard there which is gone now, I notice. We lived there for about two years. It was a really nice house at that time. As I remember it, hardwood floors, a two-story house with two bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom down, and a large dining room with a colonnade with big hardwood pillars, you know, and a kitchen. It was a shingled house, painted white, and well-kept. At that time, there was no bath, no water, just a sink in the house and a hand pump outside. It wasn’t modern in any way, but as things went in those days, it was a really nice house. Florence Mainland owned the home at that time. She was a wealthy Chicago widow. I don’t know how she came to own the place or anything like that, but she was the one that owned it when we were there, and, I’m not sure, but I think she was the one that sold it to the Sommers. We moved from there in the Fall of 1926, or the Sommers owned it, I know, after we left, and how long they stayed there, I can’t tell you.

As I said, there was a hundred acres in the place, and some of it was north of the road which wasn’t in cultivation, but they had potatoes and alfalfa hay, and there was a large portion of it as an apple orchard. The orchard now has all been pulled out, and I have an idea it’s row crops by now. At that time, it was a really fine place. I really hated to move from there. We moved from there down into the Oregon Side here just across the river, and I was going to high school at that time. I used to go home on weekends, and my Dad would bring me back, and I’d stay in town for five days. And I’d look forward to just getting back home again. At that time, it was owned by the Patches. They were early homesteaders out there, and they owned most of, or a lot of the places in there, and that was owned by Jenny Patch at that time. We lived there until I was married. I was married when we lived there, and I think the folks moved away from there in about 1930.

I went to school. I started when we moved from Midvale in 1919 to the Oregon Slope and started at Jefferson School in the third grade and went all through grade school there, and graduated. I graduated with Stella Woods and Edith Joseph, and there was another girl by the name of Thelma Leach. I can’t remember all of them, but I have all these years kept in touch with Edith. I saw Stella once or twice, and with Edith too, until later years. She married and went to the coast, or down in Oregon somewhere, and I don’t see much of her anymore. Once in a while, I talk to her brother who still lives out there.

I was the oldest in the family, and I have a brother, Kayne, who went through the eighth grade at Jefferson and lives in Caldwell now. A sister, Mary, and her name is now Mary Guilford. She married one of the Guilford boys that was also an Oregon resident over here. They live in Weiser. I don’t believe she went through the eighth grade there. I think when we moved to the Mainland place, she went to Park School.

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From Ora Watkins Rosen