A girl should learn to sew, to cook, to mend, to be gentle, to value time, to dress neatly, to keep a secret, to avoid idleness, to be self-reliant, to darn stockings, to respect old age, to make good bread, to keep a house tidy, to be above gossiping, to make home happy, to control her temper, to take care of the sick, to care for the baby, to sweep down the cobwebs, to marry a man for his worth, to read the very best of books, to take plenty of active exercise, to be a helpmeet to her husband, to keep clear of trashy literature, to be light-hearted and fleet-footed, to be a womanly woman under all circumstances. —Wood River Times, Hailey, Idaho, April 13, 1908.
By 1908, eighteen-year-old Nora Williams was “the woman of the house.” Her mother had died after the birth of her sixth child when Nora was only eight years old. As each daughter married and left home, responsibility for the younger children and the household passed down from one girl to the next.
Lela Williams, the eldest, had married Frank Jackson in 1907; the following year, Ella married Frank’s brother, Ralph. Nora’s brother Walter was single, hauling freight from Hailey to Salmon, leaving Nora to supervise sixteen-year-old Olive and mother eight-year-old Babe.
She was engaged to a young man who had gone to California to try his luck acting in moving pictures while westerns were popular. His portrait hung in her bedroom while she waited for letters and hoped he would return.
Nora’s father, William “Bill” Swarrow Williams had been born in Lebanon, Oregon, on November 21, 1861, to Charles and Lucy (Boswell) Williams, who had crossed the Oregon Trail from Missouri in 1852. Bill’s half-sister, Mary Argo, married William Orlando Warren while Bill was still a youngster. Bill’s oldest brother, James Harvey Williams, married Ava Davis, the eldest daughter of Thomas Oliver and Elizabeth, setting into motion the blending of the Williams and Davis families.
When Thomas Oliver Davis arrived in Oregon in 1851 he knew that he was going to raise cattle. While building his stock operation near Brownsville, he kept thinking about the land he’d seen near Walla Walla and along the Umatilla hills on the last leg of the Oregon Trail.
The country in Eastern Oregon was still shaped by the unresolved legacy of the Indian wars. It lay within the traditional homelands of the Yakama people, whose seasonal rounds, fishing sites, and travel routes had long crossed the Umatilla and Columbia River basins. The Yakama War of 1855–1858, fought after the federal government imposed treaties that dramatically reduced tribal lands, ended in military defeat for the people who had long lived there. Although many Yakama were confined to the reservation in Washington Territory, they moved through familiar lands in Oregon, exercising treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather in places they had used for generations.
By the mid-1870s, Umatilla County had been transformed by stockmen, farmers, and freighters, their access eased by military roads and supply routes built during the war. Grazing herds and wheat fields replaced camas grounds and river crossings. Settler anxiety often followed Indigenous presence, even when no conflict occurred. Federal policy increasingly favored removal and restriction, while local newspapers framed the region as newly secure and open for settlement. For men like Davis, his son-in-law Harvey Williams, and Harvey’s brother-in-law William Warren, eastern Oregon represented growth and possibility. For the Yakama people, it marked another narrowing of space and freedom. The land on which the Warrens, Williams and Davis families built their futures carried a recent and living history — one of resistance and displacement that lingered beneath the language of progress.
By 1875, the Davis, Williams, and Warren families bound by marriage established wheat ranches in eastern Oregon, settling in Sand Hollow, five miles from Centerville, now called Athena. They lived at the edge of settler territory, on land only recently transformed from tribal homelands into wheat fields.
Thomas and Elizabeth’s daughter Mary Davis was unhappy about leaving behind the young man she intended to marry when she came of age. Thomas disapproved of Lord Chase Cline, calling him “a dandy," but in the summer of 1877, Chase appeared on the Davis doorstep to ask for Mary’s hand. Rebuffed, the couple eloped in the night. When Thomas discovered his daughter gone the next morning, he saddled a horse and set off after them, but they had too great a head start.
Mary and Chase married in Yoncalla, Oregon and settled for a time in Halsey, not far from where Mary had grown up. They later crossed back over the Blue Mountains in time for the birth of their first child, Effie Geraldine Cline.
The dust of eastern Oregon aggravated Chase Cline’s lungs, forcing the couple to move back to Halsey before eventually returning east to run sheep in the foothills of the Blues above Prineville.
The Davis, Williams and Warren ranches prospered, so much so, that after 1880, Bill Williams and his brother Charles left the coast for the dry interior to help their brother Harvey, brother-in-law William Warren, and their Davis in-laws manage their extensive holdings. It just so happened that Thomas and Elizabeth Davis had twin daughters, Leora and Viola, who were coming of age. When the two additional Williams brothers arrived, affection bloomed under the watchful eyes of Thomas and Elizabeth. Once the brothers were established on their own ranches, Charles married Leora, and William married Viola.[1]
Together, the extended family operated five large wheat ranches that they worked collectively. Thomas and Elizabeth had three grown sons; the Warrens had two. Wheat planting came in the fall. If the rains held off, farmers waited and worried, knowing that if they planted too late—or not at all—could undo an entire year. They planted winter wheat with grain drills pulled by teams of horses, the success of the crop depending as much on timing and weather as on muscle and steel.
The labor was intensive, the men moved from one farm to the next. In late June and July, they worked from dawn to dusk, harvesting wheat.
The women cooked for the crews, cared for children, chickens, dairy cows, and stock. Working this way, they could raise hundreds of acres of wheat. After the wheat was harvested, the straw was plowed and the men chose what fields would lay fallow for a season and began to plant again.
On January 14, 1886, Thomas Oliver Davis died. Elizabeth, widowed at fifty-two, remained surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and undulating wheat fields.
Before 1887 ended, Leora was thrown from her horse. She never recovered, lingering bedridden long enough to plant a memory of a lengthy period of suffering into family memory. Leora Davis Williams died on January 30, 1888, and was buried beside her father in the Athena Cemetery.
The early 1890s were years of promise that turned quietly at first. In eastern Oregon, families who staked their futures on wheat and stock depended on a narrow margin of weather, credit, and time.
Bill and Viola’s fourth child, Nora Inez Williams was born on Christmas Eve, 1892, arriving just after the autumn drought took hold and a hard winter began to undo the world her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and her own parents had built.
When the rains failed the autumn of 1892, the winter wheat crops came up thin and the rolling hills dried out early. The land still produced something, but not enough. Hay was scarce and many stockmen entered the winter of 1893 with too little feed put by, hoping conditions would ease before losses became severe.
The winter was long and unforgiving, and by spring the damage was done. Winter wheat cannot withstand a winter that is both long and unusually cold. Livestock herds were reduced, debts deferred rather than paid, and thier hopes pinned on one good harvest. Instead, the national financial collapse of 1893[3] swept that hope away. Banks failed, credit vanished, and loans once renewed as a matter of course were called in. Wheat prices fell, cash disappeared, and foreclosure notices arrived around the county with chilling regularity. The family collective held on, but barely.
Charles Williams hadn’t remarried after Leora’s death. When Effie Cline, his niece by marriage, turned fifteen, Charles began walking with her through the fields when she brought refreshments to the crews. Effie was beautiful and reminded many of Leora—the way she moved, laughed, her spunky disposition.
His attention, innocent at first, made Effie uneasy and her parents wary. As the family story would be told, matters came to a head when Chase Cline caught Charles and Effie alone in the barn and demanded that Charles marry her.
Mary Davis Cline opposed it, and Effie’s grandmother Elizabeth was horrified. They tried to dissuade Chase, but it was futile. Thirty-eight-year-old Charles got what he wanted: a young wife who reminded him of the one he had lost.[4]
By 1894, the Williams and Warren farms were mortgaged. The drought that began in 1892 finally broke, but wheat prices remained too low to cover mounting debts. In1895, the Williams brothers, the Clines, and the Warrens lost their ranches. Elizabeth herself wasn’t in debt, but she would not be left behind.
While they lost land, they didn’t lose their possessions. They held onto their best horses—too valuable in work and breeding to surrender lightly and kept a few dairy cows, wagons, and determination. What remained was not wealth but resilience: skill, stock, children, and stubborn resolve carried them forward. In late September, the family group began packing.
William Warren moved to Pendleton, while his wife Mary Argo Warren urged her son Burt and two younger children toward Nez Perce, Idaho, anticipating the opening of reservation land to white settlement in November. Everyone else set their sights on Doniphan, Idaho.
They chose Doniphan because it offered a rare combination of wages and homestead prospects. The Doniphan mine east of Hailey was still active, providing paid work for men who needed cash. At the same time, land beyond Hailey remained available to families willing to clear, irrigate, and endure. Hailey was the commercial heart of the Wood River Valley, a rail head and close enough for supplies and markets. Doniphan lay just far enough out to feel like a beginning rather than a retreat.
The wagons rolled out together at the end of September. Bill Williams traveled with ten-year-old Lela, eight-year-old Walter, five-year-old Ella, three-year-old Nora, and a wife who hoped she would reach Doniphan before giving birth.
Walter rode alongside on horseback, herding the milk cows. When the cows lagged, Bill would call out to Viola, “Ma, did you see those Indians?” and Walter would drive the cows forward as fast as he could.
Viola reached Idaho before going into labor. Beneath the shelter of a wagon, with her sister-in-law Ava acting as midwife, she gave birth to Olive Myrtle Williams on October 14.
Elizabeth Davis traveled by train with Mary and Chase, who shipped their household goods, livestock, and Dude — a half-starved racehorse he rescued from a farmer who warned Chase that the horse was a man-killer. Chase gentled and buggy-trained him, though only he or Mary could ever handle the horse safely.
Doniphan proved unsuitable for farming, and dust aggravated Chase’s lungs. Mary and Chase soon moved to Muldoon, where it was greener. The younger Davis boys left with Harvey and Ava Davis Williams for Weiser, Idaho. Elizabeth Davis stayed in Doniphan with her daughter, Viola and grandaughter Effie.
On June 9, 1900, Viola gave birth to another daughter, also named Viola, though she was called “Babe” from the start. Before the month ended, both Williams families had to make final proof on their homesteads at the Hailey land office.
Hailey was Idaho’s first electrified town and lay only eleven miles east of Doniphan. It was close enough to make the trip both ways in the long days of summer. The children looked forward to ice-cream sodas and the sights of town. Grandmother Elizabeth made sure the girls were dressed in their best dresses with their hair neatly braided.
On the return trip, Viola felt weak and feverish. When they reached home, she handed Babe to her mother, and went straight to bed.
Days passed. Bill stayed home from the mines, sitting by Viola’s bedside. His usual purposeful stride was gone, his face etched with sorrow. On June 29th, he gathered the children around the bed. Elizabeth held the baby; Bill held Olive. Unable to speak, Viola looked at each child in turn. By the time her eyes reached Nora she understood her mother was saying goodbye.
Not long after the children were sent outside, Viola took her last breath.[5]
Nora would never forget the agonized sound of her father’s grief. He came out to tell the children that their mother was in heaven, then went to the barn, where his sobbing drifted across the yard. Charlie helped Bill build a casket, and a day later the family buried Viola in the Hailey cemetery.
Viola’s death changed the household overnight. Elizabeth Davis stepped in to steady the household, while the older girls took on greater responsibilities as the rhythm of the Williams home shifted around work, duty, and the quiet determination of a widowed father.
Bill and Charlie hauled ore with their Oregon Clydesdales through summer and fall. When winter came, Charlie and Effie moved first to Gooding and later to Hailey, but their marriage was already fraying.
Bill moved his family to a farm in Bellevue, where he farmed, hauled freight, and cut firewood. The girls adored their brother Walter. During the school year he would hitch the buggy up each morning and drive the girls across the sage brush prairie into town. After school he’d be there to collect them. Sometimes he would add some excitement and shoot rattlers along the way.
Like many households in the Wood River country, the table was rarely set for family alone. Freighters, neighbors, and hired men drifted through at mealtime, and Elizabeth kept the kitchen ready for whoever might come through the door. When Lela finished her eighth year of school and was old enough to care for Babe on her own, Grandmother Davis joined her sons in California, but came in on the train every summer for a long visit.
Holidays were especially hard for Bill. Viola had always made them special. Bill made sure the children could enjoy them, but he’d just as soon work. Just before the Fourth of July, when Nora was about ten, Bill bought each of his girls a fine new dress. When the day of celebration arrived, Bill and Walter dropped the girls in town for the parade and picnic before they headed into the woods to cut firewood.
After the picnic, neighbors drove the girls home. Lela ordered Nora and Olive to change out of their new dresses and put on everyday clothes. Nora carefully hung her dress in the closet. Olive tossed hers on the bed, changed quickly, and ran outside to play. Nora helped Lela finish the laundry, and only after a full line of clothes was drying did she join her sisters. That evening, they were all meant to go back into Bellevue for the fireworks.
Suddenly, Lela ran onto the porch screaming, “Fire! Run for help!”
The only things Lela had time to save was bedding, which she threw out the windows, along with a few family portraits. Most of their clothing was already outside on the line.
Bill and Walter were returning from the woods when Bill saw smoke rising far down the mountain. He urged the horses as fast as was safe with a full load of wood, shouting to Walter that he was sure the fire was at their house. By the time they got back, everything was gone.
One “helpful” neighbor had noticed the laundry line attached to the house and cut the outside pole down. He didn’t cut the line fastened to the house itself, and the fire burned along the entire length of clothing. They were left with only the clothes on their backs except for Olive. Her new dress had been thrown out with the bedding. Nora mourned her own tidyness, her new dress was burned.
After the fire, Bill moved the family to a small farm on the edge of Hailey where there was room for Bill’s clydesdales. Bill kept on farming, hauling wood with Walter and Lela kept house.
When a little boy lost his parents, Bill brought him home, making William E. Williams part of the family. In the family order, little Will fit between Nora and Olive, and Lela mothered them all.
In spite of loss and hard years, Bill made a their home a happy one.
One day, when Nora and Olive were left alone doing laundry. The large wash tub sat in the middle of the kitchen with dirty clothes piled all around it. A man came to the door and asked to speak to the woman of the house.
Nora drew herself as tall as she could manage and said, “I am the lady of the house.”
The man tried not to laugh. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“Why, of course,” Nora said. She shot Olive a look and added, with emphasis, “Olive, get the man a glass of water.”
Olive was confused. Nora rolled her eyes toward the stairway. Finally understanding, Olive sprinted upstairs to retrieve the only glass the family owned. A few days earlier, the girls had used it to mix flour-and-water paste for an art project and left it upstairs. Olive hid the glass in her skirt and returned downstairs as casually as she could.
She set the glass in the sink, and Nora began scrubbing away the hardened paste. Seeing the girls’ effort, the man said kindly, “I’m awfully thirsty. A cup or a dipper of water would suit me just fine.”
Relieved, Nora filled the largest mug in the cupboard with water from the bucket by the sink. The man stepped outside, poured the stale water out, and drew from the well, and drank his fill. When he left he tipped his hat and said, "Have a good day ladies."
Nora’s favorite pastime was writing plays. She recruited actors and actresses from the neighborhood and staged performances in an old weathered barn, which she grandly called the Playhouse. Rehearsals continued until every line was memorized and each act perfected. On performance day, the barn doors opened and admission was charged: one sewing pin.
The plays were popular. The audience roared with laughter, then sometimes sat in deep silence before emerging tear-streaked and moved. Nora took pride in her affecting dramas. The older girls, Lela and Ella, were budding seamstresses, and with so many performances, the Williams house was never short of sewing pins.
Lela sewed for all the children and earned money sewing for neighbors. Ella, the prudent sister, made sure the children were neat, schooled, and well-mannered. Every morning she braided Olive’s and Nora’s hair so tight their scalps ached for hours. And then there was little “Babe” who was showered with love.
In later years, Nora told her children that her father was a kind and humble man. Each spring he planted more than the family needed. When the sun went down, he gathered extra produce and made quiet rounds. Widows and families down on their luck woke to baskets of fresh vegetables and knew Bill Williams had been by.
Tall, dark, and handsome as they say, he was adored by all of his children. He’d court a woman now and again, but the girls made it known they didn’t need a step-mother. Bill never remarried.[6]
NOTES
[1] Although the marriage records were filed a week apart at the county seat in Pendleton, the weddings themselves were likely celebrated together at Greaswood—a practical arrangement during the busy month of September, when both men could not easily be away at the same time. Charles and Leora’s marriage was recorded on July 5, 1884; William and Viola’s on July 12, 1884.
[2] Gardiner, Kennebec County, Maine, Birth & Death records 1800 - 1892, Thomas Oliver Davis, born March 15, 1818; U.S. Army Enlistment he gave his birth year as 1821; 1860 Linn County Federal Census his birth year is 1828; 1880 Umatilla County Census is birth year is 1828.
[3] Beginning in 1893, a nationwide financial collapse—sparked by railroad bankruptcies and a sharp contraction of credit—led to bank failures, falling prices, and mass foreclosures. In eastern Oregon, the Panic compounded the effects of drought and harsh winters, accelerating the loss of farms and ranches.
[4] Effie’s stories as told to Larry Williams’ daughter Shirley Page, who shared them with her cousin Betty Williams, who then shared the letters with me. —S.E. Crie
[5] Childbed fever, also known as puerperal fever, was a bacterial infection occurring after childbirth and was a leading cause of maternal death in the 19th century. The absence of antiseptic technique and effective treatment made the condition frequently fatal.
[6] All of the stories about Bill Williams and his children were related to me by Nora’s daughters Lois and Eleanor Callahan.—S.E. Crie