On Friday, August 5, 1949, the Pocatello Tribune printed a short obituary under a headline that called him a pioneer. It reported that Charles Ethen Norton had passed away earlier that day, in his own house at Arbon. The next day the Salt Lake Tribune carried much the same notice. Together they give the outline of his life: born in Utah, brought to Idaho as a boy, married in 1900, and settled in the valley for the rest of his days. Other papers and records fill in a little of where and when, and they place the Norton home on the Crystal side of the valley, in the high basin up Rattlesnake and Midnight creeks, though the papers named the place as Arbon.
From McCammon to Crystal
Brigham City, Utah, was his birthplace, and January 6, 1876, his birth date; his father was Alonson Norton and his mother Julia Ann Williams Norton. He was eleven in 1887, the year the family moved north into Idaho, and McCammon was their first home there. The site's research notes point to Alanson Norton, who proved up a homestead near McCammon in 1900, as probably his father. The obituaries print his middle name as Ethen; the Idaho death index spells it Ethan.
Alice Evans became his wife on December 20, 1900, in a ceremony at the Latter-day Saint temple in Logan. The papers do not say where she came from. The 1930 census taker gave her birthplace as Wyoming, and no source read for this post connects her with the Evans families of Arbon. Their daughter Josie was born at McCammon in June 1910, so the family was still in that country then.
In June 1913 a Charles Norton, then living at Inkom, advertised as administrator of the estate of Julia A. Norton. He offered for sale seven acres and four shares of McCammon Ditch Company stock in the same section as Alanson Norton's homestead. This was very probably the settling of his mother's estate, though the obituaries do not mention Inkom.
By late 1915 the Nortons were at Crystal. On December 2, 1915, the American Falls Press printed the November attendance of a school in the Thacker neighborhood, one of the small out-schools of the Crystal district. Among the eight pupils with perfect attendance were Eddie, Ila and Josie Norton. Josie was almost certainly his daughter. Eddie and Ila may have been his children too, but the obituary names no one by those names.
On January 3, 1917, Charles Norton received a patent for 160 acres on the Crystal side, a cash entry in Sections 18 and 19 of township 9 south, range 35 east. In the fall of 1918, when the Press listed Power County subscribers to the Fourth Liberty Loan by school district, "Norton, Chas." stood among the Crystal names. Crystal at that time was a young settlement, as the papers of 1911 to 1917 describe it.
The Crystal years
The census found Charles and Alice Norton at Crystal in 1930 and again in 1940. Their daughter Josie married Fred Hatley in 1929 and was living with him at Crystal in 1930. In 1936 she married Herman Krueger at Brigham City. The Kruegers made their home at Crystal, where Herman was assistant leader of the farm fire crew and Josie led 4-H clubs in the early 1940s (the Krueger family record). In November 1942 C. E. Norton and his son Ted were among the Crystal families on the county's list for its wartime farm volunteer organization.
Alice Norton died about 1943; the obituary says only that she had died six years before her husband. In 1950 the census found Ted Norton, 42 and single, and his brother Wayne, 29, living together at Crystal. A rancher named Ted Norton turns up again in a 1954 report of a body found in the valley; he was probably the same man (that story is told here).
The papers read for this post do not tell where Charles Norton was buried, when his funeral was held, or what years he spent at American Falls, which the obituary lists between McCammon and Arbon. The first names of two of his daughters, Mrs. Stanley Williams and Mrs. Paul Robinson, are not given.
On this site: Crystal, where the Nortons lived; the Krueger family record, which includes Josie Norton Krueger.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, August 5, 1949, page 3. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Arbon lost one of its pioneers, as the paper's headline put it, on Friday morning, August 5, 1949. Charles Ethen Norton was 73. He died at home, and his illness had been brief.
He left six children. Ted, Wayne and Bob, his three sons, were all Arbon residents. Two of his daughters, Mrs. Herman Krueger and Mrs. Stanley Williams, made their homes at Robin, and the third, Mrs. Paul Robinson, lived in Pocatello. His brother Lemuel Norton was in Los Angeles, and his sister, Mrs. Grace Lish, was at McCammon.
The obituary traced his life to Brigham City, Utah, where his birth fell on January 6, 1876. Alonson Norton was his father; Julia Ann Williams Norton was his mother. At eleven he moved to Idaho, making his home first at McCammon, then at American Falls, and last at Arbon, where he stayed.
His wife, the former Alice Evans, had died six years before him. The two had been wed in Logan's Latter-day Saint temple on December 20, 1900, and he belonged to that church.
No funeral plans were given. The paper said the Arthur W. Hall mortuary would announce them.
The Salt Lake Tribune printed a similar notice the next day. It added that Norton had come to Idaho with his parents in 1887 and had been active in the church, and it printed Bob's name as Rob.