The Jenks family's years at Pauline, 1909–1923

From about 1909 into the early 1920s, the family of William Wallace Jenks farmed at Pauline, at the north end of Arbon Valley where it meets the Fort Hall Reservation. Their story comes back in pieces, from obituaries printed between 1952 and 2002 and from short items in the papers of their own day.

From Weston

The Jenkses came from Weston, Idaho, a Cache Valley town just north of the Utah line. W. W. Jenks's first wife, Annie Severn Randall Jenks, was the mother of Wallace Albert, born at North Ogden, Utah, in 1888; Asael, born there in 1894; and Olive Ann, born at Weston in 1899. Olive's obituary says her mother died when Olive was two. Lucy Dawson, born at Weston in 1874, became W. W.'s wife, and both of Albert's obituaries name her as his stepmother.

The obituaries do not agree on when the family reached the valley. Lucy's, in the Logan Herald Journal in 1953, dates her marriage to October 1898 and says she "upon marriage moved to Arbon Valley." Olive's says the family moved to Arbon Valley in 1909, and Albert's in the Salt Lake Tribune says he lived at Weston until his own marriage in 1910. The obituaries do not explain the difference, nor how an 1898 marriage fits Olive's birth to Annie in 1899. A daughter, Thelma, was born at Arbon on July 12, 1911, which puts the household in the valley by then. The valley was still often called Bannock Valley, and it lay in Oneida County until Power County was formed in 1913.

At Pauline

Lucy was a Dawson, and Dawsons were among the family's neighbors. In August 1913 a Wallace Jenks of Arbon (printed "Jinks"), probably W. W., was one of four witnesses Emma Jane Dawson named for her homestead's final proof, set for October 6, 1913, to vouch that she had lived on and farmed it so that she could receive title. A history of the valley that the Press printed in March 1917 recorded his part in the Latter-day Saint congregation at Pauline, the Meadow Ward, though papers of 1911 date it to June of that year:

In 1912 a ward organization of the L. D. S. church was formed with W. F. Kowallis as bishop, Charles Myler and W. W. Jenks, his counselors.

In December 1915, when the valley's teachers met at the Pauline meeting house, a Mrs. Jenks, one of the school trustees' wives, helped serve them a picnic dinner. In February 1916 the Arbon news reported a surprise party; the partly legible item names Mrs. Wallace Jenks (again "Jinks"), "the surprise being on their daughter, Miss Olive." That spring Virgil Jenks, whom Lucy's obituary lists among her sons, and a Lucy Jenks were on the Pauline school's perfect-attendance list. Olive's obituary recalled that she had served in Arbon Valley's first Primary, the church's organization for children, and as a Sunday school secretary.

Leaving in stages

The parents left first. In May 1917 the Idaho Republican of Blackfoot printed a column surveying farms on the Fort Hall Reservation, where, it explained, tribal members were leasing tracts to white farmers. It reported that Wallace Jenks had "moved recently from the Bannock valley country to the reservation and is leasing 80 acres," and added: "Mr. Jenks has his family with him and they are raising some stock and some white leghorn chickens." Lucy's obituary dates the couple's move to Blackfoot to 1917, so this was almost certainly W. W.

The grown sons stayed on. When the Press printed the county's draft registrations in 1917, the list included Asael Jenks, Joseph Alford Jenks and Wallace Albert Jenks, all of Pauline. Asael was to leave on a special train for Camp Lewis, Washington, on April 2, 1918, and served in France with the infantry. His obituary says he married Mable Smith (the year is illegible) and farmed in Arbon Valley for a year before moving on to Blackfoot. Olive moved to Blackfoot in 1919 and married Virgil Manning there that May.

The papers show Albert at Pauline the longest. He had married Izetta Olsen, born at Weston, in the Logan Temple on November 2, 1910. They were still at Pauline in the dry summer of 1919, when the Pauline correspondent wrote:

It is almost impossible for the farmers to get hay to do their harvest work let alone get feed for winter. There was a nice rain fell here last week which has made the roads better, settled the dust and refreshed the air. It came too late to do crops any good.

In October 1921 the Arbon news reported: "Born to Mr. and Mrs. Albert Jenks a boy. All concerned are doing nicely." In February 1922 the Relief Society women of Pauline met at a neighbor's home, with Mr. and Mrs. Albert Jenks among the guests:

The husbands were invited and most of them were there. A fine dinner was served about 2 o'clock and the rest of the time spent in games and chatting.

The mortgages

On February 27, 1922, the Devereaux Mortgage Company won a decree of foreclosure against Wallace Albert and Izetta Jenks for $410.50 with interest, one of many such cases against valley farmers after wheat prices fell and the 1919 drought hit (the foreclosures of 1920–1925). The sheriff advertised their land in Section 29 for sale "at the front door of the court house in American Falls" on March 27. A court summons dated August 17, 1923, named Wallace and Lucy Jenks, Albert Jenks and Joseph A. Jenks as defendants in the Utah Mortgage Loan Corporation's suit to foreclose a mortgage on land in Section 23. The papers do not say how either case ended. About 1923, by Lucy's obituary, she and W. W. moved on to Cache Valley, in Utah; he died in December 1944.

How long was Albert there?

Both of Albert's 1952 obituaries say he homesteaded in Arbon Valley and then moved to Pocatello. The figure reads as eleven years in the Salt Lake Tribune and, as far as its scrambled columns can be read, in the Deseret News as well. Izetta's obituary in 1964 says two years. The papers of the time show Albert at Pauline from at least June 1917 to February 1922, which fits the longer figure; when they first settled there is not recorded.

In Pocatello Albert worked as a boilermaker for the Union Pacific Railroad; he died in July 1952, aged 64. Izetta, later a practical nurse at Pocatello General Hospital, died in 1964. Lucy died in 1953, Olive in 1957, Asael in 1961, and Thelma, the daughter born at Arbon, in 2002.

The article as printed

Idaho Republican, May 28, 1917, page 2. Transcribed from the page scan. The column's headline cannot be read in the scanned text, nor can a few lines where its columns run together; the paragraph on the Jenkses is near the end. Like other writing of its day, the column describes Native farmers and their families in terms now recognized as slurs; they are kept here as printed.

The following information touches upon conditions on the Indian reservation among the Shoshone, Bannock and Lemhi Indians and their white neighbors, Indians are leasing tracts to the white men on liberal terms and farming is receiving much attention by both races. There are about 1,500 Indians all told, and so far as we know they get along pleasantly with their white neighbors. The Indians are not taxed until they apply for citizenship, which some of them do. When this is granted they lose their place on the lists of those who receive government aid and guardianship.
Charles Diggie lives 1½ miles south of Blackfoot and is farming about 100 acres of land. He has a new Buick car, a canopy top wagon, sulky plow, fresno scraper, mower, binder, grind stone, Jackson fork, derrick, cultivator, lister, and a machine shed and all his tools in it. Everything about the place is very neat and clean and possesses an air of prosperity.
T. L. Lavatta is a neighbor to Diggie and is farming 116 acres of land. He has 80 acres of grain, 30 acres of hay and 6 acres of beets.
T. J. Burns is a white man leasing 60 acres He has for neighbors, Mr. Diggie, Mr. Lavatta and other Indians. Mr. Burns has 21 head of cattle, 6 horses and colts, 30 acres of hay, 12 acres of grain, 5 of beets and 7 of potatoes.
E. F. Ziegler and W. C. Roy are leasing 120 acres of land to the southward from Mr. Lavatta and Mr. Diggie. They raise wheat, oats, beets hay and potatoes as well as some livestock. Some of their cattle are in the hills and at the time of our visit they had 52 fine Duroc-Jersey hogs almost fat enough for market. This is their fifth year on the lease and they freely admit that they have made a bunch of money. They have a grazing lease of 3,600 acres on the Portneuf.
Orlan W., Lawrence and Nephi Clark are three white boys leasing Indian land south of town. They have 74 acres of which 45 acres has been seeded to wheat and alfalfa and 20 acres has been seeded to oats. They began leasing a year ago and during that time have built a house and stable.
Andrew Hansen has a lease of 80 acres and his sons have some land near his. They all work together in their farming operations.
Jimmie Sequitse has four boys and two girls and besides having his farm to care for he has 60 head of cattle, 5 work horses, 8 saddle horses, 3 hogs, 50 chickens, 6 sheep and some ducks and geese. Mr. Sequitse has 20 acres of alfalfa and 15 acres of wheat. When we visited his place they were engaged in shearing the sheep.
Morgan Barclay have a lease of 160 acres about three miles south of town.
Ed. Grant is an Indian and has 60 acres of land which is seeded mostly to grain and alfalfa. He does not read but appears to be succeeding as a business farmer.
George [illegible] boy [illegible] girl who are attending the Indian school, but he does not read.
Isaac Sandy is a married man and has a boy and girl both in school. Mr. Sandy is an Indian and he is leasing 100 acres of his land to Morgan Barclay.
[illegible] They are not poor men and are probably farming the place for profit. The place is nearly all in crop and the farming operations are being carried on by A. C. Ellsworth and sons.
Austin brothers have 100 acres planted to spring grain about four miles south of Blackfoot. These men have good positions with the Utah-Idaho Sugar company and they are operating stock and stock ranches in various parts of the country and the fact that they are operating leases on Indian land suggests that they must be engaged in it for profit They hire all the work done.
[illegible] Betty is clearing some land for them with a 20 horse power engine operated by gasoline. Mr. Betty stated that during the past two years he has cleared and plowed 700 acres of wild land besides operating a threshing machine in season. He has a camp wagon with a house built [illegible] it somewhat on the plan of the ordinary sheep camp excepting much wider and thus affording more room. The grubber is pulled with the engine. He has a blacksmith outfit attached to the spring wagon and he can do considerable blacksmithing right on the job. Mrs. Betty had tomatoes, cabbage and radishes growing in boxes on the supply wagon and where they go the garden goes also. She is something of an engineer herself and in her spare hours she helps with the machine. Mr. Betty built a rake for raking up sage brush after it has been plowed out and this is attached to the engine and about 5 acres per day can be raked. Mr. Betty drives the engine and Mrs. Betty sits on the machine and jerks a cord at intervals in order that the rake will dump the brush into windrows. When Mr. Betty is operating with the plow and sage grubber he puts it on high gear and goes about as fast as a horse can trot. He is about ready to make a new contract for clearing and plowing land and persons writing him should address him at Fort Hall, Idaho.
Emerson Sandy is an Indian who has a very nice home. He is raising some horses, cattle and hogs. He has good furniture in the home and while the youngest child was encased in the papoose board the elder girl taking good care of her doll which was also encased in a tiny papoose board. She gave her dolly the same tender care that her own mother was giving to the baby brother.
J. B. Bradley has a lease of 100 acres about 6 miles south of town, near Gibson. He has 10 acres in beets, 9 acres of peas and some wheat and oats.
Jack Tindoy is a grandson of the famous Chief Tindoy of the Lemhi tribe. He lives near Gibson and is farming about 120 acres there. He has a good house and barn and splendid farming implements and there is a well 50 feet deep on his place.
Captain Willey is a Shoshone Indian and lives a neighbor to Jack Tindoy and Mr. Bradley. He has a very nice grove of trees, apparently about 20 years old. It all looks as if it had been set out and planned by some careful farmer. A very old squaw, who has been practically blind for years, was at the place, seriously ill at the time of our visit and some of the neighbors were at the place expecting they might lose her by death at any time.
Sawmill Charlie is a neighbor of Captain Willey and Mr. Tindoy. He has a good house that is well painted and everything about the place is very neat and tidy. There is an old house that was partly built a number [illegible] years ago and it has never been completed.
J. F. Midkiff is a white man leasing 100 acres near the Indian mission and he is seeding [illegible] acres of the land this spring. This is his first year on the lease.
Billie George is a Shoshone Indian who came from Boise 30 years ago. He has a nice house and a grove of trees that he set out 30 years ago. He has a nice well and pump at his house. At the time of our visit, on a rather chilly day in May, he and Mrs. George had just taken a bath in the canal and after returning they laughingly admitted that it was a pretty cold swim.
Paul Bannock lives near the mission. He has a well 62 feet deep and a nice house but he lives in a tent house.
William Penn has a farm near Gibson, but he is not doing much farming this year.
P. B. Robinson is a white man and is farming extensively at Gibson. He married Dorothy Clapp, a former Blackfoot and Arco girl and they have a three-months old baby.
J. F. Latourette is superintending the irrigation in the district extending from Wolverine to the forks of the Portneuf and Snake river. There are about 110 farms in the district, 18 of this number belong to white men who are leasing land. He has a distance of 34 miles to cover.
L. S. Simons is a young white man engaged in the government service as ditch rider. He has about 65 miles of canal under his supervision and has two saddle horses at his place near Gibson. He rides them turn about and in that way covers his territory daily.
Ralph Dixey, a very successful farmer and stock man, is living one mile south of Blackfoot. He has a good house on the place as well as fine barn and good orchard. Mr. Dixey has some meadow lands on the Fort Hall bottoms and has several hundred head of cattle there. Last winter he bought 100 tons of hay which he fed his cattle. Among the cattle he brought up to consume this hay were two Texas range cows. During the winter these two cows [illegible] great deal of bark on the apple trees. They gnawed the body of the trees and the lower limbs but usually did not bite clear thru the bark, and he thinks that some of the trees will die as a result of it. Mr. Dixey has 60 or 70 acres in grain and 4 acres in potatoes at the home ranch. Dixey always keeps one of the best automobiles that is to be had in the [illegible] market. This year he has an eight cylinder Willys Knight.
B. H. Allred has a tractor engine operating on his lease just west of Mr. Dixey's place. The engine and gang plow weigh about 3,300 pounds and cost $700. It is a "Happy Farmer" tractor and has been working very satisfactorily. It plows about six acres per day at a cost of about 50 or 60 cents for gasoline. Mr. Allred is the manager of the state farm bureau, but his son, Lothair, is in charge of the farm. He has about 180 acres in crop consisting mostly of wheat, hay and oats and 15 acres of potatoes.
[illegible] recently and they report a great deal of snow in that part of the country.
J. P. Hansen has a lease near the Blackfoot river and has 45 acres of wheat, 3 of potatoes and 4 or 5 of beets.
Herman Warjack is an Indian living neighbor to Mr. Allred and Mr. Hansen. He has 80 acres which is mostly all in grain. His land is on the west or lower side of the Allred place and we asked if he had any trouble with Mr. Allred's waste water running on his crops and he said that they had very little trouble along that line and that Mr. Allred was a good neighbor and a careful irrigator and that they got along very well together.
Sam Honena is an Indian who does not read and his land is situated near the butte.
Big Johnson, Joe Johnson and Dave Bigman are prominent Indians living near the Blackfoot river southwest of town. They do a little farming and are prominent horsemen.
Wallace Jenks is a white man who moved recently from the Bannock valley country to the reservation and is leasing 80 acres south of Joe Johnson and east of the Steven's ranch. Mr. Jenks has his family with him and they are raising some stock and some white leghorn chickens.
L. P. Humister has a lease of 90 acres of Indian land and has the appearance of being a very good farmer. He has just begun work on the land this spring and on the twentieth of May he had 35 acres seeded, and planned to plow up 10 more acres for potatoes. He has dug a well 41 feet deep and put a cabin on the place. Mr. Humister uses three horses for plowing sage and then pulls it out with a harrow that has a 250 pound weight attached to it, at the rear, which rides on a board attached to the evener. The harrow is operated with the teeth slanting back at half-pitch and he rides on the evener. He has experimented a little and finds that this method pulls out nearly all the sage brush and rolls it up in piles. He cautions farmers fixing up this kind of a rig to have a chain extend from the heavy weight behind the harrow to the evener, passing it under the harrow rather than on top of it. Mr. Humister says he does all his clearing by this method and he has the proof that it is a successful method.
Jim Smart is an Indian operating a good farm and he has everything about the place very neat and clean. On the nineteenth of May he was selling some very fine alfalfa hay at $35 per ton, spot cash.
J. M. Black is a white man who moved on his place the twenty-fifth of April and he has built a shack since that time and put 10 or 12 acres into crop. Mr. Black formerly lived in the Pahsemaroi valley.
G. Rist is a white man who came from Salt Lake in 1915. He is leasing 60 acres on the reservation south of the Stewart school house. He has built a house 24 by 26 feet and has about 25 acres in crops.
Orval Allred has 75 acres on the Charlie Buckskin place south of Riverton. He has 30 acres of wheat 5 of potatoes and 2 acres in beets.
Sirol Wright and M. Thompson have a lease of 60 acres south of Riverton. They found some ancient "gold mines" on the place which they will spread on the field as soon as they get time.
Racehorse is an Indian living south of Riverton. He said he was putting in three sacks of wheat and two sacks of oats.
Pat Tyhee is an Indian who is farming 21 acres south of Riverton.
Lewis and Frank Truchot are brothers who are farming 10 acres between the butte and Fort Hall. They have only three horses between them and have not been able to do much. They have been on the land about four years and they have lumber on the ground to build a house for Lewis. Lewis stated he bought a Jersey cow from a Blackfoot auction man and paid $50 for her and was informed that the cow would be fresh some time in the spring, probably about June. He thinks now that the cow may be fresh about next January. Mr. Truchot thinks some white men engaged in the auction business are apt to lie a little. They have 20 hogs, 50 chickens, 200 little chicks and some ducks and geese on the place.
Jack Hurley is an old Indian who has been nearly blind for a long time and Mrs. Wagner, wife of the minister at the mission, has had his eyes treated and his sight is much improved.
John Neider, of Blackfoot, bought 40 acres of land west of Fort Hall from John Pambrum for $65 per [illegible] He has a house on the place and a well 48 feet deep, a straw stable and 15 acres of the land is under cultivation. The land is all fenced and possesses a water right. He bought the land for his sons and they are farming it.
Johnney Pambrum has built a house on a piece of land adjoining what he sold. It belongs to his son, Doolittle. They have a well 41 feet deep and are putting in 20 or 25 acres of crops. Mr. Pambrum is a half-breed of Scotch-French and Nez Perce. He took out papers of citizenship some time ago and by that act acquires the right to buy and sell property as he wishes and he also becomes a tax payer.
John D. Pambrum has 20 acres in crop, he dug a well 38 feet deep on his place 1½ miles west of Gibson. This is his second year on the place and he is raising wheat, oats and alfalfa.
Joe Torres has 60 acres of land and is plowing and breaking 25 acres. He will have 19 acres of grain and 6 acres of potatoes.
Roy Fairbanks is working for P. B. Robinson this summer. They are farming 140 acres of which 100 acres is in wheat and 14 in potatoes.
Abraham Lincoln has a farm at Gibson and has 10 acres in alfalfa.