In December 1913 and April 1918 two sons of the Lusk family, whose ranch lay near Pauline at the north end of Arbon Valley, married two daughters of J. R. Bailey of Arbon. The American Falls Press followed the couples through the First World War and a death in 1922, and Utah papers printed the obituaries between 1952 and 1960.
Dave and Anna
The Lusks were a Malad family who spent their summers on a ranch on Rattlesnake Creek, at what is now Lusk Loop. The Baileys had come to Arbon from Wellsville, in Utah's Cache Valley. Arbon was in Oneida County until Power County was created in 1913.
David Thomas Lusk, called Dave, was born at Malad in 1888. In August 1913 the Press printed notice that he would make final proof on the homestead he had entered in 1910 near the eastern mountains. Final proof was the last step in "proving up": the settler and his witnesses swore that he had lived on the land and farmed it, and the patent followed. On December 24, 1913, by the family history, he married Susannah Bailey, known as Anna or Annie, in Pocatello. No newspaper report of the wedding has been found.
In November 1917 the paper's travelling farm writer, who signed himself the Pilgrim, wrote of a recent visit to Dave's ranch:
Dave Lusk has a little son three years old, and the little rancher is about as lively and active a chap as can be found anywhere. The other day the Pilgrim was at his father's ranch and the little fellow announced his coming by telling Mrs. Lusk that the "Program" was here. The appellation was not so far off, either, as the Pilgrim came to Arbon valley with a well defined program and carried it out.
The boy was probably John Paul, their eldest.
Park and Erma
Dave's younger brother, Edward Park Lusk, was born at Malad on Christmas Day 1895. He was called in the draft of 1917. On September 12 a social at Central Hall honored "our boys who are soon going to leave," and Park Lusk headed the list of seven. By the end of October the Press reported:
Park Lusk, who was recently promoted to be a corporal in A company, 347th machine gun battalion, has written to his parents that he has again been promoted and is now second duty sergeant. This is making a record for advancement in six weeks' service without any previous military training.
In April 1918 Sergeant Park Lusk came home from Camp Lewis, at American Lake in Washington, "on ten-day furlough." Pauline gave a party in his honor, and on Saturday, April 13, he went back to camp. By the family history, he and Erma Bailey, J. R.'s daughter, had been married in Pocatello the day before. She was seventeen.
In February 1919, three months after the Armistice, the Press carried this:
Mrs. Park Lusk received word that her husband was in a hospital in France wounded, but does not know how serious. Several of the letters she had written to him were returned with the word wounded written on them.
No more is known of the wound. By August 1919 Park was home, visiting his parents at Malad with Erma, and on July 10, 1920, their second son, Ralph, was born at his grandmother Lusk's house in Malad, "a fine big boy," as the paper put it.
In February 1922 Erma came down with pneumonia. She died at Pauline on February 24, after ten days' illness, less than four weeks after her twenty-first birthday. The Press report of her funeral in the Pauline meeting house said, "She married Park Lusk about four years ago," and named the two sons she left: Park, aged three, who was James Park, and Ralph. Her father dug her grave through the snow beside her sister Jennie's in the Arbon cemetery, as the Stories entry tells. Park and the children, the same column said, had gone to his parents at Malad for the rest of the winter.
By the family history, Dave and Anna raised the boys on the Lusk ranch with their own children, who were close to their ages and were their double cousins. The boys stayed with them after Park married Jessie Noble Daniels in 1927.
The obituaries
The first of the obituaries was for the sisters' brother, Melvin Kerr Bailey, born at Wellsville in 1895 and, the Salt Lake Tribune said, brought to Arbon Valley as an infant. He farmed and raised cattle there. The Tribune's report, badly scanned, says he died of a heart attack on the morning of Friday, May 9, 1952, while at work near his home. His survivors included his widow, Stella, and his sister Mrs. Dave Lusk.
Dave Lusk died in a Salt Lake hospital on Wednesday, December 9, 1953, at 65, after an illness. The Deseret News called him a "prominent Arbon Valley farmer" and said he had gone to school at Malad and in Arbon Valley, where he moved at nine. Among his sons, David W. was at Arbon and Vernon was with the Army's Counter-Intelligence Corps in Japan.
Park Lusk died on Monday, March 21, 1960, at 64. The Tribune's brief notice gave his home as Fort Hall, recorded both of his marriages and said the second had ended in divorce. It noted his First World War service and summed up his working life in five words: "Farmer at Arbon many years." Erma's sons were then at Fort Hall and at Arbon.
Where the accounts differ
Park's obituary dates his marriage to Erma April 13, 1917, and his marriage to Jessie October 24, 1927; the family history gives April 12, 1918, and October 20, 1927. For the first wedding the papers of the time lean toward 1918: Park was home on furlough that April, and in 1922 the Press put the wedding about four years back. The family history says Dave died in Pocatello; the Deseret News says a Salt Lake hospital. And the obituaries bring both families to the valley in the second half of the 1890s, while the family accounts date the Lusks' coming to 1888 and J. R. Bailey's settling to 1894.
On this site: the Lusk family, Dave and Anna Lusk, Park and Erma Lusk, the Bailey family, James R. Bailey, and the Stories entries Wounded in France and Jennie Gibbons.
Sources
- American Falls Press, August 21, 1913, page 7
- American Falls Press, September 18, 1917, page 4
- American Falls Press, October 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 20, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 9, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 30, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, February 7, 1919, page 6
- American Falls Press, August 1, 1919, page 2
- American Falls Press, July 16, 1920, page 3
- American Falls Press, March 10, 1922, page 4
- Salt Lake Tribune, May 10, 1952, page 19
- Deseret News, December 11, 1953, page 38
- Salt Lake Tribune, March 24, 1960, page 31