Cy Smith and Frank Turner, Homestead Partners from 1910

In 1910 Paul A. Smith, a bachelor known to his acquaintances as Cy, came to Arbon Valley from Oregon and, his obituary says, homesteaded there with Frank Turner, who had also lived in Oregon. The papers caught the two men now and then for the next forty years, and in 1953 they died about three months apart.

From Oregon to Arbon Valley

Most of what is known of Smith's early life comes from his obituary, printed in the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune on January 15, 1953. He was born in Pennsylvania, probably at Johnstown (the town is blurred in both scans), and came west young. He lived first near Medicine Lake, Oregon, and in 1910 moved to Arbon Valley, where, the obituary says, he homesteaded with Frank A. Turner.

Turner's own obituary, in the Salt Lake Tribune of April 19, 1953, is badly scrambled in the scanned copy, but some lines can be read. It appears to name his parents as David and May Turner and to say that he spent his early life at Dayton and later at a lake in Oregon; the lake's name is broken in the scan but is probably Medicine Lake. Dayton was very likely Dayton, Washington: the census gives Washington as his birthplace, and Dayton, Washington, appears in the obituary's list of survivors. That town sent a number of families to the valley between 1909 and 1916.

The Arbon news in the American Falls Press of August 31, 1911, reported Frank Turner back from Blue Lakes, Oregon, where he had been working. Whether that is another name for the same place, the papers do not say.

When the two men came, Arbon was in Oneida County; Power County was formed in 1913, and the Arbon end of the valley went into it, while Buist, at the valley's south end, stayed in Oneida County. In 1914 Smith signed his name to a resolution of the United Bannock Valley Booster Association, with other men "all of Arbon," in favor of giving a right of way to a company that proposed to haul the valley's grain to the railroad in cars hung astride a single track raised on a row of posts. The Press of April 9, 1914, reprinted in full an account of the meeting that seems to have come from a Pocatello paper; it began:

A railroad in Bannock valley in the next hundred days instead of the next hundred years is the slogan of the United Bannock Valley Booster association.

Proving up

Turner farmed and raised a family; the news columns of 1915 mention Mrs. Frank Turner and the children. In late 1915 he sold a large lot of beardless barley, scarce that year because the spring crops had failed. For the Pioneer Day celebration at Arbon in July 1916 he was one of the men listed under "Brush for Bowery," the committee that supplied brush for the bowery, a shelter roofed with branches.

The Frank Turner of the valley news was almost certainly the Charles F. Turner of the land and census records. When he registered for the draft in September 1918, the Power County list printed him as Charles Franklin Turner of Arbon, and the 1950 census lists him as Charles F. Turner. Smith's obituary calls him Frank A. Turner, a middle initial the other records do not give.

A homesteader had to live on and farm his claim for a set time before he could "prove up" and receive a patent, the government's deed to the land. Land-office records gathered for this site show that each man in the end patented a claim of his own. Turner, under the name Charles F. Turner, received 120 acres near Arbon on January 8, 1918. Paul A. Smith received 330 acres some miles to the south, near Buist, on June 12, 1918.

Smith enlisted during the First World War and, his obituary says, served two years overseas with an army supply train. He was a member of the American Legion post at Malad, the Oneida County seat.

In the influenza epidemic of autumn 1918, the Arbon news reported that "The family of Frank C. Turner have been seriously ill with influenza, all being down at once," and that Mrs. Arbon and Mrs. Davis were doing what they could for them.

What the schoolchildren wrote

In the winter of 1923–24 the Press printed news sent in by the pupils of country schools, among them Valley View School at Arbon. The children reported the state of the roads, who was sick, who went to Malad, and how many coyotes Frank Turner had. Their notes also show the two old partners going back and forth.

In the issue of January 3, 1924, the pupils wrote that Paul Smith "came to visit Mr. Frank Turner and family on Thanksgiving." On February 28 they wrote:

The roads are just fine today. Mr. Frank Turner has three coyotes and two weazles. Mr. Paul Smith visited Mr. Frank Turner and family last week.

In the next issue it was Turner who had gone visiting. He "was a visitor at Paul Smith's place Saturday and returned home Thursday night," the children reported on March 6, and on March 13 they noted again that he had been visiting Paul Smith.

1950 and 1953

The census of 1950 lists Paul A. Smith, 61, born in Pennsylvania, as a lodger in the household of Charles F. Turner and his wife, Ruth, near Arbon. The same census also counted him at his own place on the Arbon road in Oneida County, so he was enumerated twice.

Smith died in a Pocatello hospital in the middle of January 1953, after a brief illness. His obituary says he never married and that acquaintances knew him as Cy. His survivors included two half-brothers in Pennsylvania.

A little over three months later, early on Saturday, April 18, 1953, Frank Turner died in a Pocatello hospital after a short illness. The Tribune called him a "pioneer farmer of Arbon Valley." What can be read of his obituary does not mention Smith; the scanned page is too broken to say more. It is Smith's obituary that names Turner as the man he homesteaded with in 1910, and the scattered school notes and census lines in between that show how long the two kept company.

The story as reported

Deseret News, January 15, 1953, page 21. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

POCATELLO, Idaho — Paul A. Smith, an Arbon Valley farmer who served in the First World War, died in a Pocatello hospital in the middle of January 1953. His last illness was a short one.

Smith was a Pennsylvanian by birth, born at Johnstown, and he moved west while still a young man. He settled first near Medicine Lake, Oregon. In 1910 he left Oregon for Arbon Valley, where he and Frank A. Turner took up a homestead together.

During the First World War Smith enlisted in the army. He was overseas for two years, serving with the supply train of an army division.

In later life he belonged to the American Legion post at Malad. He never married. Those who knew him called him Cy.

Two half-brothers in Pennsylvania survived him: Melvin Neff of Bethlehem and Edward Neff of Templeton.

On this site: the settlers from Dayton, Washington, appear in the Summit area history; the south end of the valley in the Buist area history; and a homesteader who came from Dayton, Washington, in the Stories entry on Ben Messinger.