On Sunday, July 16, 1961, page 22 of the Idaho Sunday Journal in Pocatello carried a photograph of an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. L. A. (Jay) Whiting, and the news that their children were giving them a golden wedding reception the next Saturday. By the article's account, the couple's homestead years at Crystal, the high basin across a low divide north of Pauline, had begun half a century earlier. Just below it, a second item announced that the descendants of Lorenzo and Flora Whiting, whose family were among the early settlers of the Crystal basin, would hold their annual reunion that same weekend at Jay's home in Ross Park.
Who they were
L. A. Whiting was Lemuel Alma Whiting, known as Jay, born at Spanish Fork, Utah, on June 6, 1891, a son of Lorenzo Snow Whiting and Flora Waterman Whiting. His father and his older brothers Len and Forres had entered homesteads in the Crystal basin in 1909, and the family moved over from Robin in Marsh Valley the next year. The 1961 article puts the wedding at Anaconda, Montana, on October 5, 1911, and the couple's arrival at Crystal on November 7 that year. Find a Grave gives Marcena's maiden name as Ames and her years as 1895 to 1980. The land patented to Lemuel A. Whiting in April 1915 was 160 acres on the east side of the basin, in Sections 26 and 35 of Township 9 South, Range 34 East.
The country papers caught Jay at the ordinary work of the settlement. He was among the donors to the Crystal Christmas tree in December 1917. In January 1918 he and Manning Standley were hauling Standley's grain to Arimo, and in March he and Lawrence Evans were hauling sawdust from "the old Whiting saw mill above George Bradley's" for Ezra Lindsay's Crystal store. On Sunday, May 5, 1918, a baby was born to Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Whiting. In 1922 one party's central committee named him one of the judges of the primary election for Crystal precinct, with C. R. Butterfield and John Hayden. A school column of November 1923 mentions their son Reece (printed "Resse"), then five. Family records add that their first children, Grace Geneva in 1912 and Arch Jay in 1914, were born during the Crystal years.
Jay left before the rest of his family did. On March 27, 1924, the American Falls Press reported in a single line: "L. A. Whiting and family moved to Pocatello." That was the winter the Press predicted that Crystal would be almost deserted. When dry years and debt later sent his brothers Len, Ralph and the others to a ranch near Salmon, as told in Drought and debt empty Crystal and Buist, Jay stayed in Pocatello. He did not leave Crystal entirely. In his memoir Jay's younger brother, Alfred Reese Whiting, wrote that in the summer of 1932 the two of them set up a sawmill on Crystal Creek, powered by an old Avery steam engine the brothers had owned before. Jay hauled the logs while Reese felled them, and Jay's daughter Juanita, about ten, helped. They traded the lumber for goods, for scrip at a Pocatello store and for cows. By about 1934 Reese had traded his share of the mill to Jay and taken his cows to Salmon.
The reunion weekend
By 1961 Jay was the zookeeper at Ross Park, and the family lived in the park. Marcena had a job too: each week she conducted the orchestra at a Pocatello club for senior citizens. Death had not yet touched any of their twelve children, and the family below Jay and Marcena now counted 97 descendants. The children listed in the article lived as far away as British Columbia, Texas, California and Formosa, where their son Boice was serving in the military. Find a Grave lists six sons and six daughters, and most can probably be matched to the article's list, the daughters under their married names: among them Mrs. Sterling A. Baier (Grace), Mrs. Wally Wring (Juanita) and Mrs. Joseph King (Shirley).
The second item shows that the anniversary fell inside a larger gathering. Lorenzo Whiting had died at Crystal in 1920, the first burial, and the only adult, in the Crystal Ward's cemetery. Flora died in 1949. Their descendants were holding their annual reunion at Jay's home for the second year running, with a picnic, the dance at the Grange hall, and a family church service on the lawn the next day.
What happened at the reception is not known: no later report of it was found in the papers read for this post. Nor does the article say how long Jay had kept the zoo. Jay Whiting died at Pocatello on April 6, 1973, and was buried at Restlawn. In 1977 most of the graves in the Crystal cemetery, his father's among them, were moved to Restlawn.
On this site: the Crystal area history, Crystal, the hidden settlement up Rattlesnake Creek, the story of Jay's sister Ella in All of Crystal plants a widow's grain, and the first burials at Crystal.
The story as reported
Idaho Sunday Journal, July 16, 1961, page 22. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Jay and Marcena Whiting's children were hosting a golden wedding reception for them at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 22, 1961, in Pocatello's Portneuf Grange Hall, which stood at Seventh and Sublette. The evening would go on with a program and a dance, and the invitation was open to all of the couple's friends and relatives.
Their wedding had taken place at Anaconda, Montana, on October 5, 1911, and on November 7, barely a month after, they arrived at Crystal to start homesteading. For readers who knew only the newer name, the paper noted that Crystal lay in what was by then Arbon Valley.
Neither had retired. Jay looked after the animals at the Ross Park zoo. Once a week Marcena conducted the orchestra for the Golden Age Club, whose members were older people from around Pocatello.
None of the twelve Whiting children had died, and the family tree below Jay and Marcena now held 97 names. The paper looked for most of the children to be on hand, along with a large share of the grandchildren. Several lived in Pocatello: A. J. Whiting, lately of Salmon; C. L. Whiting; Mr. and Mrs. Leon B. Whiting; Mr. and Mrs. Wally Wring; Mr. and Mrs. Nick DiViesti; Mr. and Mrs. Joseph King; and William Pierce. The rest were farther off: Mr. and Mrs. Sterling A. Baier at St. John's, British Columbia; Russell A. and Reece P. Whiting at Boerne, Texas; Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Hughes at Winton, California; and Boice Ames Whiting and his wife, with Boice away on military service in Formosa.
A second notice on the page concerned the wider family. Lorenzo ("Wren") Snow Whiting Sr. and his wife, Flora Waterman Whiting, had descendants who met every year, and their reunion was set for the same Saturday. As in 1960, the gathering was to meet at Jay and Marcena's house in the lower part of Ross Park. The family would picnic at midday and then join the anniversary party, since the evening dance at the Grange hall served both events. Sunday, July 23, would bring a church service for the family on the Whiting lawn, and after a program and a luncheon the reunion would break up.
Sources
- Idaho Sunday Journal, July 16, 1961, page 22
- American Falls Press, January 30, 1913, page 4
- American Falls Press, January 1, 1918, page 2
- American Falls Press, January 29, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 5, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, May 14, 1918, page 8
- American Falls Press, July 27, 1922, page 4
- American Falls Press, November 22, 1923, page 2
- American Falls Press, March 27, 1924, page 2
- Cash entry patent to Lemuel A. Whiting, April 17, 1915 (IDBL 0011104)
- Find a Grave, Lemuel Alma "Jay" Whiting (1891–1973)
- Alfred Reese Whiting, Life History (family memoir)