In March 1918 Lucien McLarry, his wife Irene and their son moved onto the Parley Bailey place in Arbon Valley. In November 1920 his horses, machinery and hay went to auction at a ranch by then in another man's name, and by 1922 the Bailey land was among the property in a lawsuit. The American Falls Press recorded each step, usually in a line or two of its Arbon column.
A homesteader from Dayton
McLarry came from Dayton, Washington, and probably had a ranch at Arbon by 1911, when the Arbon column reported a Lucien McLeary back from the Washington harvest and getting ready to seed it with Turkey Red wheat. For some years he seems to have divided his time. In October 1915 he was "of Dayton, Wash.," on a visit "to see after a bunch of hogs he wants to fatten for the winter market." In October 1917, "formerly of this place," he was "contemplating selling his homestead here."
On March 18, 1918, Arbon gave a farewell party at the Central school for Parley H. Bailey, who was moving to Richmond, Utah, and the same column reported the McLarrys moving onto "the Parley H. Bailey place," which it said McLarry had recently bought. Parley's homestead and desert-land claim lay in Sections 13 and 14 of township 11 south, range 33 east, in the Bailey block along today's Bailey Road (see the Bailey family).
That August the Press reported that McLarry had bought a second farm:
Mr. Kramer has sold his quarter section ranch south of Pauline to Lucian McCleary, a newcomer from eastern Washington, who last year bought the Parley Bailey ranch and is now a resident of Arbon valley.
William Kramer, who had homesteaded south of Pauline nine years earlier, had lost his whole wheat crop to hail the year before. Now his winter wheat was yielding close to 25 bushels an acre, and he would probably settle on the coast.
What McLarry paid was not printed, but want ads in the Salt Lake Tribune give asking prices of the time. In October 1917 Mrs. S. A. Cram of Arbon wanted $7,000 for a fenced ranch near Arbon with a two-room house and a barn 16 by 45 feet. In November 1918 M. P. Peterson of Crystal asked $10,000, half in cash, for a 320-acre wheat farm twenty miles from Pocatello, and offered horses and implements as well.
Two years in valley life
McLarry's name runs through the Arbon news. In the fall of 1918 he left for Wyoming after big game with E. H. Davis, Roy Lindley and Joe Arbon, served at the general election and was named Arbon district leader for the rabbit and squirrel campaign. In January 1919 he was the Farm Bureau's district leader for Arbon. In the spring of 1920 he became secretary-treasurer of a new range association formed "to keep the sheep out of the canyons," and that summer he appears as Arbon's Republican precinct committeeman.
That May the McLarrys and four other couples helped Mrs. J. N. Arbon give a farewell reception at Central Hall for Mr. and Mrs. David Ripley, who had sold their home and interests and were moving to Oregon. Every section of the valley was represented, the paper said.
The sale
According to a later court notice, McLarry deeded land to his wife twice, on April 21, 1919, and September 8, 1920. On October 22, 1920, the Press carried a sale bill for a public auction on Wednesday, November 3, "at the B. L. Dickinson ranch at Arbon," signed "Lucien McClarry Estate" and "B. L. Dickinson, Owner." It listed sixteen work horses, twenty-two range horses, a jack, three cows, two calves and seventeen sheep; a Deering combine "in fair condition," drills, harrows, a gang plow, weeders, a rake, a mower, a Bain wagon, a hack and a fanning mill; twenty-five tons of alfalfa; and household goods. Buyers of anything over $10 could give bankable notes at 8 percent, due in a year.
On November 12 the Arbon column reported that the sale at the Dickinson ranch, "formerly owned by Lucien McLarry," was largely attended:
The day was cold and cloudy and very wet and disagreeable, but the crowd stayed until the last article was bidded in. Everything sold high, including live stock and machinery. A free lunch was served at noon.
J. N. Arbon managed the sale, John Bullock clerked and L. W. Cotant of Rockland was the auctioneer. In the scanned text the report dates it Wednesday, November 8, but that was a Monday in 1920, so the advertised Wednesday, November 3, is more likely. The papers do not say why the stock was sold or how the ranch came to bear Dickinson's name. "Estate" did not mean McLarry had died: court notices of 1921 and 1922 name him as a defendant.
In June 1921 Mrs. Irene McLarry and her father, "Mr. Dickinson of Dayton, Washington," came to Arbon "to look after their interests here." That December the Press described a Dickinson of Dayton, printed as D. L. Dickenson, as "a prominent sheep man of that section, and father to Mrs. Lucien McLarry of Arbon." The ranch's new owner was probably Irene's father.
In the courts
When the district court opened at American Falls, the Power County seat, on June 13, 1921, its calendar included a suit of Irene McLarry against Lucien McLarry and others, set for June 16. The calendar gives only the names. What the suit was about and how it ended have not been found.
A second suit came from S. Metz Sons, a partnership of four Metzes; a firm of that name had offered registered Shorthorn bulls, stallions and jacks at the Farmers Barn in American Falls in 1919. Notice of its pending suit against McLarry was recorded in August 1921, and from January to March 1922 the Press printed the summons. The firm asked the court to set aside the two deeds to Irene, which covered land in Sections 13 and 14, including the land Parley Bailey had homesteaded, and two other quarter sections, so that its judgment could be declared a lien on the property and foreclosed. How the case ended is not in the papers searched, and after the spring of 1922 the McLarrys no longer appear in them.
Theirs was one of many suits of those years. After the wartime boom, foreclosure suits against dry farmers filled the legal pages across the valley, as the Stories entry on the foreclosures of 1920–1925 describes.
On this site: the Bailey family; the first farm auction, held in 1916; and the first combines, the kind of machine sold at the McLarry sale.
Sources
- American Falls Press, September 28, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 14, 1915, page 6
- American Falls Press, October 9, 1917, page 4
- Salt Lake Tribune, October 9, 1917, page 19
- American Falls Press, March 26, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, August 27, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, November 1, 1918, page 5
- Salt Lake Tribune, November 9, 1918, page 17
- American Falls Press, November 15, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 26, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, January 24, 1919, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 18, 1919, page 4
- American Falls Press, May 7, 1920, page 5
- American Falls Press, May 14, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, May 28, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, July 9, 1920, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 22, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, November 12, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, June 10, 1921, page 1
- American Falls Press, June 24, 1921, page 2
- American Falls Press, August 12, 1921, page 2
- American Falls Press, December 16, 1921, page 9
- American Falls Press, January 27, 1922, page 4