Early on the morning of Thursday, May 25, 1933, Hannah A. Poppie died in West Pocatello after a long sickness. Her husband, Ernest Poppie, made his home in Arbon Valley. The Pocatello Tribune reported her death the same day under the heading "Pioneer Resident Arbon Succumbs." Seven of her children were living, and her brother Julius Abter had been one of the valley's earliest settlers. By the count of the 1933 notices, the Poppies had been Arbon people since 1909.
From Kansas to Arbon
The Poppies followed her brothers west. Julius Abter ran the threshing machine at Arbon and had gone into the valley about 1901. In November 1908 he told the American Falls Press that new homestead filings were being made there; he counted three in a single week. One of the newcomers was his brother Joe Abter of McFarland, Kansas, and a brother-in-law, "Ernest Pappie, also of McFarland," was on his way. The 1933 notices give 1909 as the year the Poppies arrived. Their son Maurice's obituary in 1965 gives 1908 instead, and it names Paxico, Kansas, rather than McFarland as the town they left.
The 1933 obituary is what makes the family tie certain. Its list of survivors includes two brothers, Joseph Abter at Arbon and Julius Abter at Idaho Falls, so the "brother-in-law" of 1908 was her husband.
In the papers at Arbon
Hannah Poppie seldom appears in the papers under her own name. The Arbon items usually mention her husband and sons, and when they mention her they call her "Mrs. Ernest Poppie." In April 1914 Ernest Poppie and their son A. R. (Albert) Poppie signed the Arbon farmers' resolution for the Double-P monorail, a grain line the papers never record as built.
The war brought her into print. Her son Ernest left with the Power County draft men for Camp Lewis on October 3, 1917, and the Press reported that he had written to "his parents" from Company 44 of the 166th Depot Brigade. A week later it noted that he had sent his mother several photographs of the camp at American Lake. In the autumn of 1918 the paper printed the names of Power County's subscribers to the Fourth Liberty Loan. Under the Bannock district it listed "Poppie, Hannah" next to Ernest Poppie and A. R. Poppie. In the digitized text of the list, the amounts cannot be matched to the names. Her son Maurice went to Camp Lewis in September 1918.
In January 1919 the Press reported that "Mrs. Ernest Poppy" had word from Maurice, who had reached France a few days after the armistice. He had seen his brother Ernest there, wounded in the hand, with two fingers lost, and gassed. That part of the family's story is told among the valley's wartime casualties.
In June 1920 the Arbon column listed "Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Popple" among a party from Arbon who went to Snowville for the Old Folks Day that town had held every June for three years. The writer called the party "a crowd of young old people."
Her sons farmed in the valley. In 1924 Maurice Poppie's ranch lay five miles south of the Pauline post office. In 1927 Frank Poppie married Catherine Andersen, Otto Andersen's daughter, as the Andersen family page records.
Her death and funeral
Hannah Poppie was buried on Sunday afternoon, May 28, 1933, after a service at the Hall Mortuary chapel led by the Rev. C. H. King of St. Anthony's Catholic church. She lies in Pocatello's Mountainview cemetery. On June 1 a card of thanks from Ernest Poppie Sr. and the family acknowledged the kindness and flowers that friends had sent.
The papers do not agree on everything. According to the first notice, the death took place at 92 Greenwood avenue in West Pocatello, which it gave as Maurice's house. On June 1 the Tribune set this right: the house at that number belonged to Mr. and Mrs. R. D. Palmer, and that was where she died. The correction did not say how the Palmers knew the family. That correction also put every one of her sons at Arbon, though the first notice had given Albert's home as Kansas City. None of the 1933 notices gives her age or where she was born.
On this site: the Poppie and Abter families appear in the land records on the Arbon area page, and Ernest Jr.'s 1917 send-off is part of the valley's draft send-offs.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, May 25, 1933, page 12. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
News of Hannah A. Poppie's death ran in the Pocatello Tribune the same Thursday, May 25, 1933. She had been sick a long while, and death came in West Pocatello early that day. The paper named her husband as Ernest Poppie of Arbon Valley and dated the family's move to Arbon to 1909. In this first account, the place of death was her son Maurice Poppie's house on Greenwood avenue.
Her descendants numbered seven children, eleven grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Three of her sons, Maurice (spelled "Morres" in the notice), Frank and Ernest Jr., lived at Arbon. The fourth, Albert Poppie, was given as a resident of Kansas City, Missouri. Her daughters appeared under their husbands' names: Mrs. N. J. Nogle of Twin Falls, Mrs. J. L. Shelton of Glenns Ferry and Mrs. J. E. Williams of Cleveland, Ohio. Joseph Abter at Arbon and Julius Abter at Idaho Falls, her brothers, were named among the family left behind.
The Hall mortuary was named as the undertaker. Sunday looked like the likeliest day for the funeral, the paper said, and a Catholic priest from Pocatello was expected to conduct it.
Sources
- Pocatello Tribune, May 25, 1933, page 12
- Pocatello Tribune, May 28, 1933, page 5
- Pocatello Tribune, May 29, 1933, page 1
- Pocatello Tribune, June 1, 1933, page 10
- American Falls Press, November 7, 1908, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 9, 1914, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 23, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, October 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, September 17, 1918, page 8
- American Falls Press, October 29, 1918, page 6
- American Falls Press, January 17, 1919, page 10
- American Falls Press, June 25, 1920, page 6
- American Falls Press, February 28, 1924, page 7
- Idaho State Journal, November 29, 1965, page 2