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Laura Bender Smith's and George Alvin Inks's wedding photo, taken approximately 1898-1899 by Clark's Portable Gallery. Born July 15, 1882, Laura would have been approximately 16. George, born Feb. 23, 1873, would have been about 25. Laura died Feb 25, 1930, of uterine cancer at the age of 48. George was 73 when he died May 13, 1946. |
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There were some good points about homesteading in Idaho in 1912.The eight daughters that George and Laura Inks would raise didn't tie up the telephone talking to boyfriends. They didn't have a telephone.
There was no radio, either. Although Marconi introduced the world to wireless in 1900 and trans-Atlantic wireless communications took place shortly after, it wasn't after the end of World War I in 1919 and the end of a wartime ban on nonmilitary broadcasting that amateur and then commercial broadcasting stations sprang up to reach listeners who depended on galena or silicon crystal sets to receive the message.
Grace, the second oldest, recalled in the summer of 1997 the trip west 85 years earlier: They came by train from North Dakota. Laura Bender Inks was 30, and already the mother of five daughters. The youngest of the five, Myrtle, had been born in January. The family arrived in Idaho in October.
They came west because George had been out of work. George had been working on the railroad, "but that came to an end," recalled Helen Miller also in the summer of 1997, at age 90. Their property was situated near the small town of Worley. ( Worley today is 489 sq. kilometers.1999 population: 96 families and about 182 residents). The Inks came from North Dakota in a migration that began in Indiana and took them through Michigan and perhaps Montana.
George had wanted to homestead in Montana. "He went to Dakota to get help from his dad," recalled Helen. "Grandad helped the other kids, but not George. (Other relatives believe the money that George was counting on went to another son so he could attend Bible School.) So Laura wrote to her brother, Charlie, who said they could come to Idaho. She would cook for Charlie, who was single, and dad would help him log his property." After arriving by train, they crossed Coeur d'Alene Lake by boat, and then took a "buggy or sled or something to the house."
| That winter they stayed with
Charlie, in his log Cabin across Caeur d'Alene Lake from
Harrison. The following spring they bought 40 acres
located on the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation, after a
couple on a nearby homestead split up and the land became
available for sale. The Inks were thus only the second
white family to live permanently on this parcel. It would
be their home for most of their remaining years. Uncle
Charlie obtained the money for George to buy the
homestead. When another 80 adjacent acres became available about eight years later, George went into Coeur d'Alene and made an offer on half the land. He didn't want the full 80 acres, which he could have purchased at the same price as the 40-acre portion, Helen recalled. The owners wouldn't split up the land, so George returned. Laura "blew her top and sent him back" to get the 80 acres, most of which went for pasture for the animals. Grace, who was 18 by that time, helped make the payments for the land. By this time there were eight daughters and she was making her own living. |
Worley (Red Star) is situated near an inlet of Lake Coeur d'Alene. |
The house was two story and rectangular. The front door was in the center; there was no porch. The parents' sleeping quarters were at the right end of the main floor as you looked in the doorway. In the back of the main floor, a stairway rose from right, near the folks' "bedroom" to left to reach the upstairs, where most of the children slept. Lighting was provided by kerosene lanterns. The only heat in the upstairs in the winter rose from the wood stove on the main floor; the girls relied heavily on quilts to keep warm. George built a lean-to kitchen onto the house.
The modest house contained an organ, and sister Lucile learned to play it by ear by playing for "hours at a time." In the summer of 1997 she still recalled the time when "the neighbors were visiting and I was embarrassed because Mama asked me to play." (The neighbors' daughter had taken piano lessons, but Lucile said she couldn't keep time.)
Acquiring the organ came as a stroke of luck. It was acquired from the Sunday School, which was held in the school house. One day the Sunday School acquired a piano, so they sold their organ for $2 to the Inks family. Helen talked her father into buying it while Laura and Lucile were traveling to relatives in the east.
Other buildings included a cow barn, a horse barn, and a shed for the the vehicle - a buggy.
This was a world in which automobiles were a rarity. If you finished the eighth grade, you had an education; only one of the eight daughters -- Erla --completed high school, and that lasted two years. (Blanche, the eldest, attended high school one year in Coeur d'Alene.) The agrarian economy still included barter.
Today, where the house used to stand, you can see a corner of Coeur d'Alene lake. But you couldn't see it then, because of the evergreens. George plowed the land one furrow at a time while walking behind a team of horses. But before he could plow, he had to remove the trees and grub out the roots and brush with axes, bucksaws and other hand tools. The girls helped by swinging the axe, using the grubhoe, digging out the brush and sawing down small trees, then liming them to clear the land. They also piled up the brush for burning.
And then he could plant the alfalfa. It sent roots down 20 feet and enriched the soil, and after a few years of alfalfa, when he planted the wheat, it grew so tall he could disappear walking through it.
For meat, there was plenty of game. George was an excellent shot. All he owned was a 22 Special Winchester pump-action rifle. But that 22 brought down deer -- and birds on the wing, reports Wayne Fister, George's grandson by Lucile, the second youngest daughter.
To train his eye, George would nail a rosebud to the shed door and fire from the house. This was not always a prudent choice, with children around; one time while he was practicing, one of the girls chased a sibling around the corner of the house and across his sights.
Childbirth was a lonely vigil. If a doctor was involved, he showed up after the event. George helped with the birthing, learning the skill from his mother, who had served as a midwife, and showed him the tasks involved when Myrtle was born in North Dakota.
Their first child born in Idaho was Erla Adella Inks, whose middle name honored a sister of Laura's, Adella Bender Smith. Adella, like Laura and four other siblings, all had "Bender" as a middle name in honor of their mother, whose maiden name was Jane Bender.
When Laura went into labor for Erla, members of the family used a neighbor's telephone to call across the lake to Harrison. The doctor had to row the two miles across the lake and be met by a team of horses. By the time he arrived the birth was over, and the baby was washed and dressed. So the inks didn't bother to summon the doctor for the births of the last two daughters, Lucille and Millie.
The daughters, their birthdates and place of birth were as follows:
| Daughter | Date of Birth | Location of Birth | Date of Death | Location of Death |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blanche May Inks | July 26, 1899 | Indiana | April 11, 1999 | |
| Marie Luella Inks | March 29, 1901 | Indiana | Deceased | |
| October 3, 1903 | Indiana | June (?) 2005 | ||
| July 3, 1907 | Howe, Indiana | Deceased | ||
| Myrtle Loretta Inks | Jan. 1, 1912 | North Dakota | July 3, 1964 | Concord, Calif. |
| Nov. 16, 1915 | Worley, Idaho | December 21, 2000 | Spokane, Washington | |
| July 14, 1918 | Worley, Idaho | |||
| January 31, 1920 | Worley, Idaho |
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For water they had a well that took a bucket, and a cistern close to the house that filled with water. But at times during the summer the well would stop producing its cold sweet water and the girls would drive the cattle to a neighbors for water as well as fill up a barrel for home use.
The most cattle they ever had were six cows, which provided milk, butter and cream. They used a separator, drank the skim milk and stored the cream in cans in the cool cellar until they took it to the railroad station for shipment to a creamery in Spokane.
The girls churned the butter, and that was taken into Worley along with radishes and onions to sell or barter for staples -- flour, sugar, the five-pound tin of peanut butter.
The life wasn't without excitement. Erla remembers how the horse was afraid of trains and autos. But you had to cross railroad tracks to get to town. One time when Laura was taking the buggy to Worley to sell butter a car came over the rise at the railroad tracks just as the buggy was climbing the opposite side.
The terrified horse panicked. Horse, buggy, Laura and Erla ended up in the ditch, but the butter was covered with a cloth and wasn't lost. Beyond a couple scrapes and bruises, no-one was hurt.
But there were times when people did get injured. George was a logger, and on one occasion severely cut his foot. When he got home they poured the blood out of his boot. To stop the bleeding, they poured flour on the wound.
Another time sister Helen was splitting firewood with a two-headed axe. She held the axe with both hands and swung as hard as she could. Back went the hands; down came the axe. She was putting her whole heart into it.
Meanwhile, another sister was chasing Erla around the outside of the house. Erla ran into harm's way just as Helen was making her backstroke. The blade stopped short of cleaving her head in two, but a slight scar still shows where her nose was sliced to the bone.
One of the great dangers that faced the girls frequently was the well, which was about 3 feet wide and perhaps 20 feet deep. The girls had to draw water from the well by hand, standing on a platform none of them really trusted by a well that had, in their opinion, too low a wall around the opening.
Erla had nightmares as a child about falling in the well. In her dreams she would be sinking to the bottom of the well and then floating to the top, watching the layers of water, which were different colors.
Helen and Millie remember the time a heifer got on the platform and Millie was afraid it would fall through.
And one time a child did go down in the well. It was a controlled descent, but it still terrified her. The bucket had fallen into the well, and it had to be retrieved. The shaft was narrow. So George lowered his smallest child - Millie - down the shaft to retrieve the bucket.
Discipline was somewhat unpredictable on the
farm. George was known for a fiery temper and a razor strap that
had become intimately acquainted with the backsides of his
daughters. Laura was remembered as more forgiving. But she did
have a weapon of preference, and that was the switch. And what
the daughters remembered was that it was they who had to find the
switch and bring it in for punishment - although there is some
disagreement over whether a daughter had to pick out the switch
to be used on herself or her sister.
One time Millie and cousin Douglas (Marie's son) were facing a
switching for not doing chores. They ran to climb a tree. Millie
claims she was good at this; she was agile and fast, and she
climbed from branch to branch without much difficulty. But she
recalls that Douggie wasn't so good at tree climbing, and after a
brief effort, he resigned himself to the notion that it was less
effort to simply accept the switching. He climbed down and went
into the house.
 Laura Inks Late in Life |
As Millie listened to
Douggie holler, she came to the realization she was
eventually going to have to descend as well. So she
climbed down from the tree and went to the carrot patch,
where she stuffed carrot greens in her britches. Now in those days, the bum buffer of choice was usually mulberry leaves, but by the end of summer, the mulberry bushes were pretty stripped of leaves. The use of carrot tops suggests this was a late summer switching. Laura had to know what they were up to, but she never let on. Occasionally she would clip a leg, but usually she just swatted the back side. |
 Millie as an adult |
Millie danced around, hollering about how it hurt, and every now and then a carrot top would slip out of her pantleg. "Finally mama just broke out laughing" and quit the whipping, Millie recalled.
***More To Come***
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Revised: June 01, 1999.
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