WPA Interviews

Walton, William Henry

INTERVIEW with William Henry Walton, Near Holly, Oregon, January 22, 1940.

My name is William Henry Walton. I was born near Halsey, Oregon on November 14, 1865.

I will first tell you about my father's life since he was the real pioneer of the family.

My father's name was Isaac Newton Walton. He was born in Kentucky in 1832. His parents died while he was just a small lad and left him an orphan. At the age of eleven years he joined the army as a drummer boy. An uncle, learning of this, went to the officers and forced his discharge because of his extreme youth. This act of his uncle made father very angry and at the first opportunity he beat it - ran away from his uncle's home and started for the Pacific Coast. In 1848 when this happened, he joined an ox train bound for the west. (Here I should say that he was born, and his early home was in Kentucky.) In spite of his age he drove and did a full man's work on the way. He reached Oregon in the fall of 1848. After he had been in Oregon for a time he went to the California gold mines and spent some time mining on the Frazier River.

In 1852 father returned to Oregon and purchased a farm a short distance northeast of the present town of Halsey, in Linn County. He added to his holdings as he could. First he bought out a man named Hale, then from Keeney and finally the farm of a man named Barnett. In the end he had a very large place, which is still called "The Walton Farm". He died on that farm on November 6, 1886, at the age of 54 years. His rather early death was undoubtedly due to the hardships, which he experienced as a boy, especially working in wet clothes and in water in the mines.

Father was also a soldier in the Modoc Indian War. During that enlistment he was at one time shot in the calf of the leg with an arrow. The surgeon simply strapped him to a board and cut the arrow out without anesthetic or other relieving helps. Father immediately went back into the ranks.

At another time father was sleeping behind a log with another soldier. An Indian came creeping up to stab him with a bowie knife but the other man awoke just in time and seized the knife, then shot the Indian.

Later father went to the gold mines in Idaho. For a companion he had a man named Dillard. They were very successful in this venture and started for home again with $65,000 worth of gold each in dust. On the return trip, traveling down a river, they hired Indians to help them over some rapids. The boat in some way was torn from control and overturned. Father and Dillard lost everything they had including their gold.

After that he and Dillard went to Portland and buying a pack train loaded it with provisions for the mines. They took port, flour and beans, principally. Flour retailed at $1.00 per pound.

In pioneer days roads were narrow and poor. My father traveled all of them, the Barlow road, the Oregon-California roads and almost all pioneer ways. When wagons were used it was not all uncommon to meet in such a narrow place that it was impossible to pass or to back up far enough to find a way past. Then it was necessary to unload one of the wagons, carry the load around the other one, then take the wagon apart and carry it also past the obstructing team. This was not uncommon even in recent years. I have experienced these difficulties myself on the McKenzie pass where the road was cut deep among the rough lava.

Father was first married to a woman named Curtis. I don't remember her first name or anything of her family history. That was long before my day. They had one child and then both mother and child died of diphtheria.

Father married a second time to my mother. Her maiden name was Hattie Sylvester. She was born in Sheffield, England, in 1845. Left England with her parents when she was three years old. The family first settled in Wisconsin. I do not know just when she came to Oregon but she had not been here more than three or four years when she married my father in 1864. They were married in Linn County, near Halsey where my father lived.

Mother died in April 19119.

My father and mother had the following children. I cannot tell exact ages or birth dates because our family history is in possession of a sister.

L.E. Walton, Dec 25, 1866. He is a druggist at Harrisburg, Linn County.

James E. Walton. 1868.

Otis Walton. Died in infancy.

Dean Walton 1884. Now in West Virginia.

Clara Walton. 1870. Died.

Layra (Laura?) Walton 1871.

Alice Walton. 1872.

Florence Walton.

Maud Walton, 1878. Lives at Bend, Oregon. Married Chas. Garrett.

Pearl Walton. 1886. Married a man named Garrett. Lives at Grass Valley, Oregon.

Mae Walton. Married a man named Gove. Lives at Bend.

Harriett Walton. 1880. Married a man named Palmer.

I went to school at the old Oak Plains Schoolhouse north of Halsey. It was a really pioneer school. Our neighbors were the Ramsays, the Soverns, the Hills, the Nicholas Millers, and the Staffords. Bethel Stafford's old house still stands a mile or so west of the old schoolhouse, which is also in a good state of preservation. (Note: A picture of the Bethel Stafford home has been sent in. L. H.)

My father was illiterate. He could neither read nor write. I used to go to the old schoolhouse at Oak Plains on election days to help my father to vote. I do not know why it was but my memory is plain that every man who came to those elections carried a gun. There was never any trouble there except hot arguments but to come armed seemed to be the custom. Perhaps it was a hold-over from the times when Indian attacks were feared; perhaps it was from a spirit of past community feuds; perhaps it was a come-down from colonial training days; at any rate no election was complete if the men were not fully armed.

When we were big boys we had lots of fun at that old Oak Plain School. Sometimes there would be a fall of snow and then George Pugh and I would get four-horse sleighs and take everyone out sleighing. (Especially the big girls.) George Pugh and I were lifelong friends. One of the pupils there, Ida Maxwell Cummings, often declared that "Bill Walton and George Pugh were the two worst boys at the school. I will not speak for myself but George Pugh was one of the finest men that I ever knew. (Died 1939) Ida Maxwell Cummings (now Ida Harder) has been County Superintendent of Schools in Linn County since those days.

Among the teachers at the Old Oak Plains School were such well-known persons as Charles Mattoon, Baptist preacher and author of "Baptist Annals of Oregon", D. P. Porter, Peter Wigle, and Cyrus Clingman, pioneer surveyor. The first teacher at that school, but long before my day, was Thomas B. Micon.

When the railroad came through Linn County my father worked two teams on the grade as long as they were within driving distance from home. That was in the early 1870's. I was a small boy but I remember how I would get up in the morning and find father gone. I would ask where he was and mother would say, "Gone on the railroad.". He worked two teams and hired men from a point north of Tangent to a point south of Harrisburg. After that it was too far to longer follow the grade as it took too many hours going back and forth.

(Mr. Walton, though not an old man is rather feeble in health and walks with a cane. His memory is very good concerning such things as he had observed and heard. He lives on a small farm on Highway 228 about halfway between Crawfordsville and Holley.)

Copyright © 2000 Patricia Dunn. All rights reserved. This transcription may not be reproduced in any media without the express written permission by the author. Permission has been given by the Transcriber to publish on the LGS web site.