George Daniels Sr. turned 97 on Sunday, July 23, 1972, and an open house in Malad, the town where he had been born, marked the day. Three days later the Idaho State Journal ran his story on page 3 of its second section, with a photograph of him standing in a garden and a caption naming him the oldest man in Oneida County. Most of the piece is his own memory, and part of it belongs to Arbon Valley, where he had homesteaded on the West Fork of Bannock Creek.
George is already known to readers of this site through the family account of his life written by Melinda Campbell. Many of the stories in it, from the knife in the kitchen to the gold watch, also appear in the 1972 article. The article also holds things the family account does not, and on a few points the two disagree.
He was born on July 23, 1875, to Thomas and Jeannett Thomas Dives Daniels, who had each been widowed and brought children of their own to the marriage. Between them the couple counted nineteen children. Among George's older half-brothers were Dave and Donum, who by the family account settled the West Fork with him, and Tom, who also became an Arbon homesteader. Dave and Tom married two of Jeannett's daughters, Gertrude and Sarah, which gave George the family joke the article repeats. Gertrude went on to receive the first land patent in the valley, in the Big Meadows of West Fork.
The article places one set of memories "at West Fork at Daniels," near the reservation. The family fed the Indians who came by, as the visitors expected, and the article tells of one man who went after George with a knife while George kept the kitchen table between them. Those two names belong to two different places. West Fork is at the north end of Bannock Valley, in Oneida County until Power County was formed in 1913. Daniels is the area north and west of Malad, where, by the family account, George took up land after he sold his Arbon Valley ranch. The article does not make clear which place the story of the knife belongs to. His valley homestead, the family account says, was a one-room cabin by the West Fork spring at the foot of what came to be called George's Mountain. The site's research notes place that land inside today's Fort Hall Reservation.
One memory is plainly the valley's own. George liked to talk about his days as a square-dance caller, and the article names two of the places he called: Arbon Valley, and the second floor of the old J. N. Ireland bank in Malad, home of the Pioneer Museum by 1972. The article gives no years for the dances, and no newspaper read for this post reports them.
Where the article and the family account part ways, the differences are worth setting down:
- At American Falls, where the family fed cattle in the Snake River bottoms before the reservoir, the article says the cattle were his uncle's; the family account says he helped his half-brother Dave.
- After the gunshot wound that nearly cost him his leg, the article credits a doctor at Preston with saving it and says the healing was done with sage tea. The site's Stories entry and the family account say Indian friends recommended the sage tea.
- In the article, George and his partners went up to Butte to collect horses and bring them home to market, and the frightened herd ran clear to Pocatello; the family account has the herd being driven to Butte for sale.
- The article dates the death of his second wife, Emeline, to February 9, 1963. The site's research notes, drawn from his 1978 obituary, give February 7.
Emeline Ann Mecham Evans, whom George married in 1927, was the widow of David Evans of Malad. No link has been found between his family and the Evans family of Arbon. George's first wife, Mary May Bolingbroke, was a daughter of the Arbon homesteader Charles Bolingbroke, and the family account says the couple met while George was living at American Falls.
George lived well past this birthday. The family account says he enjoyed being honored by relatives and neighbors at 100, and died at 102 in the Oneida County Nursing Home in Malad, still the county's oldest resident. The site's research notes, from his obituary, date his death to January 15, 1978.
On this site: the Daniels family and Pauline and West Fork.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, July 26, 1972, page 13 (section B, page 3). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
George Daniels Sr., Oneida County's oldest man, was honored at a Sunday open house in Malad on his 97th birthday.
George came from a blended family in Malad City, where he arrived on July 23, 1875. When Thomas Daniels and Jeannett Thomas Dives wed, he had five children from an earlier marriage and she had six, and eight more followed, George among them. Of those nineteen, sixteen grew up. The two halves of the household later intermarried, two of Thomas's sons taking two of Jeannett's daughters as wives, and George made a joke of it.
Butte, Montana, was the far end of a two-month venture George made at 17 with T. D. Jones and Eli Jones, who meant to collect a herd there and bring it home to market. On the return the party stopped overnight in a field near Blackfoot. A passing train blew its whistle, the herd bolted, and the men were still chasing it when it reached Pocatello. In the end they found buyers for every animal except one, which George traded away for a gold watch. He still had the watch in 1972.
He recalled a Fourth of July gunshot wound to his leg, which a Preston doctor saved, and a nail through his foot that laid him up all summer until a wood-ash soak, Eli Jones's idea, healed it and burned it with lye.
Other memories came from the family's time "at West Fork at Daniels," close to the Indian reservation. Indians who stopped at the house expected to be fed, and the family turned down none of their requests. One caller pulled a knife on George, who kept the kitchen table between himself and the man by circling it. For a time the family looked after an uncle's cattle on the Snake River bottomland at American Falls. Fording the river there once nearly ended badly: halfway over, the horses would go no farther, and every member of the family was sure they were about to drown. It was at American Falls, too, that George met the schoolteacher Mary May Bolingbroke, and the two wed at Malad City on January 27, 1897. Eight children came of the marriage, six of them still living in 1972. Mary's death came on August 22, 1921, and George remarried on November 8, 1927. His second wife, Emeline Evans, had been left a widow with seven children, and he took a share in raising them. Emeline died on February 9, 1963. By 1972 his descendants included 21 grandchildren, 61 great-grandchildren and 10 great-great-grandchildren.
George still did a stretch of work daily at 97; as he saw it, the homesteading years at Daniels, rough as they were, had cost him nothing. He tended a big garden and weeded it to the last stalk. One old shovel, its blade half gone from wear, was kept as evidence of how much work he had done. At the Senior Citizens' Center, far younger opponents lost to him at pool, and children who came to see him left with peppermints. He could no longer hear, but he needed no spectacles to read, so callers wrote on a magic slate to talk with him. Among his favorite stories were the square dances he had called, in Arbon Valley and in the upstairs hall of Malad's old J. N. Ireland bank, the building that held the Pioneer Museum in 1972. His daughter Estella had lived with him and run his house for about ten years.