In the spring of 1968 Arbon Valley planned a benefit for two families who had lost their belongings in a fire. The Idaho State Journal carried word of it on Friday, May 17, 1968: on Saturday evening the Arbon church was to be the scene of a gathering for the households of Mac Orison and Charles Orison Jr. A fire in the fall of 1967 had destroyed what both families owned.
The notice ran on the paper's society page, just after the weekend's social calendar. The paper called the evening an "old-fashioned housewarming," and it was a benefit besides. Arbon Valley's residents opened the invitation to anyone at all. Supper came at 8 p.m., and it was potluck, so the food would be whatever favorites the guests chose to bring. Players from the Idaho Fiddlers Association, out of its southeastern Idaho district, were to make the music; some of their numbers would be for dancing and some simply to sit and hear.
That short notice is all that turned up about the fire. It does not say where the fire was, what burned, or on what day, and no report of the fire itself was found in the newspaper pages searched for this post. How the evening went, and what it raised, is not known either.
The two families
The notice gives only the names Mac Orison and Charles Orison Jr. They were very probably brothers, two sons of Charles Henry and Jean Ann McNeil Orison, who took up a homestead at Summit about 1910 and whose family the papers followed between Arbon Valley and Logan for most of the century. No other Mac Orison or Charles Orison Jr. appears in any record read for this post.
Charles Jr. was born in Arbon and went to school in the valley. He married Sarah Mae Ashton at Malad on January 14, 1939, and farmed for most of his life. Mac Duane was the youngest son. In July 1949 he and his wife, Jewell Anderson Orison, then of Arbon, lost their infant son Danny Charles, who was not quite three months old.
Whether the two households were still living in Arbon Valley in 1967 the notice does not say, though the benefit was set there and hosted by valley residents. Three years later, when their father died at Logan in March 1971, his obituary listed Charles Jr. at Logan and Mac Duane at Salt Lake City, with their brother Arch M. Orison still at Arbon. Charles Jr., of Logan, died on September 22, 1990, at 77.
On this site: The Orisons of Summit, the Orison family album and the Orison entries in Stories.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, May 17, 1968, page 5. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
The paper's notice, printed the day before, announced a Saturday, May 18, 1968, benefit at the Arbon church for two Orison families.
Everything the Mac Orison and Charles Orison Jr. households owned had been lost to fire in the fall of 1967. The paper gave no further details of the fire: not where it broke out, what burned, or on what date.
The invitation from Arbon Valley residents was open to all. The evening was to raise help for the two families while also serving as a housewarming in the old style. Each guest was to supply a favorite dish, and the potluck would be served at 8 p.m. The Idaho Fiddlers Association's southeastern Idaho district would send fiddlers to provide the music, some of it for the dancers and some for those who only wanted to listen.