Some family history
In 1864, at the age of 40, my 3rd
great-grandfather, Robert Ehart, died and was buried at Sweet Springs, Missouri.
According to my family’s oral history, he was a Confederate army veteran, and
my Grandfather told me he was killed late in the Civil War. His son, John Riley
Ehart, born in 1862, traveled by covered wagon with his mother, Mary, to Texas,
where they settled. When he reached adulthood, he and his spouse settled in
Weed, New Mexico. According to the 1900 US Census, his profession was stock
herder, which fits the family’s oral history, but it says that their house was
rented. This is interesting because my grandparents lived there, and they had a
painting of the house labeled “The Homestead,” and they always referred to it
as such. While a 1925 article in the Alamogordo News mentions John as a witness
in the finalization of a neighbor’s homestead, I could not find anything to
support this claim. Still, homestead records are difficult to access, and it
may be that the census entry is incorrect or they made the claim sometime
after.
Their life was hard, and the
homestead was a poor one, so much so that the neighbors were said to have
wondered if their six children even had enough to eat. The great depression
made things even harder. My grandfather Thomas was born in 1899, and by the 1930s, his parents were living with them, adding to the already stretched
circumstances. Financial pressures and the problems of the great depression led
to conflict over the homestead, including a shooting attempt, which he believed
was initiated by one of his older sisters. These tensions, the death of his
father in 1938, and the loss of the homestead in a fire forced the family to
pack up and move, following the harvests to California, like many thousands of
others, fleeing the Depression. The family picked fruit, and my grandfather and
oldest son, my father, used their musical skills to raise extra money, playing
at various dive bars and other small venues wherever they could find that kind
of work.
Eventually, they settled in Grandview,
Washington, where Tom and his wife Anna Mae were able to scrape up enough money
for a down payment on a small farm, where they raised chickens, a few heads of
cattle, and had a small orchard, where they supplemented their income by
selling fruit to the various packing house in the area, primarily apples and
pears, and later, cherries.
They raised 5 children, one who died
by drowning at the age of 8 while they were picking fruit in California. Tom
continued to play fiddle for dances and get-togethers, while Anna Mae worked as
a cook and cannery worker until her retirement. Tom died of a heart attack in
1969, and Anna Mae followed in 1990. They had been married since 1938, and for
the last years of her life, Anna Mae took every opportunity to tell people how
amazing her husband was. They are buried together at Grandview Cemetery in
Grandview, Washington.
Bibliography
Thomas Rilie Ehart
(1899-1969) - find a grave... Find a Grave. (n.d.).
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62424736/thomas-rilie-ehart
Notice for publication. (1925, July 2). Alamogordo Daily News, p. 5.
U.S. Census 1900; Census Place: Weed, Otero, New Mexico; Roll: 1001; Page: 5; Enumeration District: 0080
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