Morrow County OhArchives Biographies.....John Creig Lawrence January 22 1861 - September 13 1912 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ohfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Emily Goodey mgoodey@juno.com August 31, 2003, 11:33 pm Author: John C. Lawrence As re-transcribed by Sarah Athay and Emily Goodey. Autobiography of John C Lawrence As re-transcribed by Sarah Athay and Emily Goodey. The Story of my life By John C. Lawrence Part 2. The year 1888 was devoted largely to the real estate business. I formed a partnership with Greenville Holbrook, the Lawrence-Holbrook real estate company. I sold the hardware business to G. W. Nye but retained a quarter interest in the firm of G. W. Nye & Co. While still retaining the implement business, and the grain warehouse business started in 1886 when I put up a warehouse on the completion of the O.R.& N, real estate was the principal thing to engross my attention. We laid out the Lawrence-Holbrook Addition to Pullman, which lies across what was known as Missouri Flat in the early days, now on the north side of Pullman and extending to the college campus. In the winter of 1888 or rather the spring of 1889 we laid out the town of Kendrick, Idaho. While we were the real founders of the town we took in a number of friends to share in the profits. We made a deal with the N.P. Railway company to build down the Little Bear Creek instead of the Middle Potlatch which comes into the main Potlatch at Juliaetta, a few miles below the town of Kendrick. The summer of 1889 the Territory was preparing to become a state by an act of Congress generally referred to as the enabling act. Delegates were elected to a constitutional convention which framed a constitution and submitted it to a vote which ratified it. Then came a general election for state officers, including a legislative assembly. I was elected to the state senate from Whitman county and was second youngest member of the senate, being twenty-eight years of age. The Territory was admitted to statehood November 11, 1889 just eleven years to a day from my coming into it. I was made chairman of the committee on education and had the drafting of the first school law. Had I followed the usual rule I would have introduced the bill and had the law named after me, but I introduced it as a committee bill. This constituted my principal legislative work for the session. The bill passed just as I drew it without amendment except of my own suggestion of minor changes. On amendment offered by me the fees paid for appointment as Notaries Public went into a state library fund. In a few years this fund provided one of the finest libraries of any state in the union. In after years, in looking over the proceedings of the state senate I was surprised to find how many times I voted alone in the negative. In the election of new senators for a new state I had an important part. Watson C. Squire, who selected me for Superintendent of Public Instruction was a candidate and I had an opportunity to return the compliment to him. John B. Allen was an old friend who had been U.S. District Attorney when I was Superintendent. I was one of two selected by him to place him in nomination. They were both good men, although neither was re-elected. After the adjournment Jessie and I, with Bessie, whom she had brought over in January, made a trip to mother’s grave. This was early in April, 1890. Zola had gone to Pendleton to visit with Hugh and Hattie. Shortly after our return to Garfield I was appointed Register of the U.S. Land Office at Waterville, Washington by President Harrison. This was a newly created district. We moved out in August, having a delay in the confirmation of my appointment by the United States Senate. Frank M. Dallam, founder of the Spokane Review was my colleague as Receiver. We organized the new district but owing to vexatious delays were not able to open the office until November 11, 1890. I fixed this date as the anniversary of my reaching Washington, also the anniversary of statehood of the year before. At Waterville the next spring, April 13, 1891 Hugh was born. When a few weeks old Jessie was taken with a low fever which necessitated weaning him. While we hired a nurse Hugh’s care fell to me. A few weeks later on Jessie’s recovery Hugh was weaned in a double sense. He had, even at that age, only a few weeks old, learned to distinguish between us. While of course his mama cared for him in larger part, he slept with me and I cared for him when at home. We raised him on a bottle. I fed him at night, dressed him and undressed him. When at home and he was a little older I gave him every attention a mother usually gives a child. She never knew what it was to hold him on her arm at night, as she did the other children. If he waked, when older, and I was not in bed he would climb out to hunt me. This continued until he was five or six years old. Perry was born at Waterville a year and a half later, October 21, 1892, the anniversary of the discovery of America. On this account and to distinguish him from his Uncle Perry in the after years we put the Columbus in his name. Zola was named after Zoula Chase and my mother, Zoula Lucretia. In later years we dropped the u. Bessie was named by Jessie, and the name selected because she liked it, after no one in particular. The Angeline was after the second of her grandmother Rogers’ name. Hugh was named by both of us, after his two uncles, his mother’s brother, Hugh Montgomery Rogers, and mother’s brothers who were named Montgomery. Perry was named in the same way after two of my brothers, with Columbus added for good measure, for the reasons stated. I was in poor health during the entire time I was in Waterville, losing 40 pounds in weight. A good many of my friends thought I would die, and I was suspicious of myself. I did not recover until the year after our return to Garfield. This was due to treatments from Dr. Montgomery of Portland, Oregon. I then gained over fifty pounds in six months which I have not as yet lost, having maintained a weight of from 200 to 220 pounds for the past 28 years. I weigh 220 pounds at the present writing. The most important feature of my work in the land office was holding for cancellation all the lieu land selections by the N.P. Railway Company. I will not go into details here. On appeal I was sustain by the Commissioner of the General Land Office and later by the Secretary of the Interior. In religious life I taught the bible class in Sunday school during our residence of nearly four years. I was chairman of the committee which built the Presbyterian church which we joined in the absence of the U.B. church. I was elected school director, a position I held during my residence, and during this time we built what was then the new school house. I had charge of building a telephone line from Wenatchee to Waterville, our first communication with the outside world, except by stage coach. Politically, I was boss of the county, being county chairman of the Republican party and a member of the state committee. At the state convention in 1892 I was offered the nomination of Lieutenant Governor, having been selected by John H. McGraw as his running mate. I declined. I was removed from office by Grover Cleveland who succeeded President Harrison. We left Waterville April 10, 1894 and went to Lincoln county, near Davenport, where we spent the summer on Mrs. Rogers’ farm where I put in a crop. It was an entire failure, averaging only five bushels per acre. However, I did not stay to harvest it, hiring that work done. The entire yield did not pay harvest expenses. I accepted the position as manager of the Farmers’ Warehouse Company at Garfield. Bryan Westacott, R.C. McCroskey and Michael Byrne were the board of directors. So in the fall of 1894 I again took up life in Garfield after a practical absence of five years. Here we spent the next eleven years. Busy years, I worked hard. While generally successful, these were not the happiest years of my life. This was due largely to competitive business conditions and some personal enmities which developed politically and otherwise. When I took the management of the Farmers’ Warehouse Company it was in debt in excess of the amount of its capital stock. The first year its earnings paid its indebtedness and a large dividend. I do not now remember the amounts paid in dividends under my management but far in excess of the amount of its stocks. The year 1893 had been the year of the wet harvest. The heaviest yield of record was almost entirely spoiled by the rains which commenced early in harvest. Those who lost the grain in the field uncut were the lightest losers. When cut and stacked it spoiled. When threshed it spoiled. When hauled to the warehouse it spoiled in greater part. In the fall of 1894 there were hundreds of tons of wheat in the warehouse in various stages of decay. Some I sold for horse and cattle feed. Some for hog feed, some I gave away, and some I paid to have hauled away. At the legislative session of 1894-5 I went to Olympia and prepared a bill to govern the grading of grain, called a grain inspection law. I was accused of trying to provide myself a job. Upon this report I went to the governor and asked him to appoint my brother Perry chief state grain inspector, which he did. When I returned to the Palouse country, which was in what was called the N.P. Railway Co. indemnity belt which had been in controversy many years, settlers came to me for aid. By reason of my experience in the land office I was better informed than the attorneys who had been handling the cases. In this way, while not giving the matter much of my time, I drifted into the practice of land law, confined almost entirely to cases of lieu land claimants against the railroad company. While not an attorney I made, in the course of the next ten years, several thousand dollars in the practice of law, a record few laymen have. I was appointed United State Court Commissioner by Judge Hanford, a position I held for several years. The work was entirely in connection with land matters, taking homestead applications and testimony in final proof. I did a good deal of trading of all kinds, especially in real estate. In this way I accumulated property. I traded a small tract of land, a town lot, as I remember, for 80 acres of raw land near Oakesdale without seeing it. This I kept for a few years and traded it for the home known then as the Rounds house in which we lived for several years. I never saw the land. I traded a small tract of land to Jonas Crumbaker for a house and lot. One morning Jim Faught called me out from the breakfast table and before going back I traded this house for his farm. I had left 160 acres south of Waterville on Badger Mountain, clear of all encumbrances. This I traded to Jim Dutton for his home of 160 acres with $1,000 mortgage. I traded the Faught land, with its mortgage, to John Hale for his home. I sold the Dutton place for enough to clear me of all indebtedness. For a brief period in the close of 1897 I owed no man, the only time since starting in life I have been free from debt. In the course of years I traded for a good many horses. Selecting a number of mares and colts I advertised them to trade for Spokane property. I traded for a furnished home in Spokane. This I traded for a farm in Spokane County. This I traded for a house and six lots in Falls City, near Seattle, taking a mortgage to balance of $4,500.00. This mortgage I traded for a section of land near Mansfield, Washington. This land I traded for a stock of hardware and implements at Wilbur valued at some $16,000. The house at Falls City I traded for a new Winston Six auto which I sold for $2,600 cash. This is an account of only a small portion of the trades I made. I have often said I would admit having traded horses a few hundred times. Possibly only a hundred times or so. But in all my trades I had no blush of shame to meet the other fellow afterward. Sometime I lost but generally made money in disposing of the property. I traded square and without misrepresentation. In 1895 I developed the pooling of wheat by different farmers so as to make up a big block to offer an exporter. By keeping in touch with the markets and especially the ship charters in Portland where I generally sold knowing when the ships were on demurrage, I could secure an advance of a few cents on the regular market by selling to an exporter who was short of wheat to finish loading. I introduced the method of collective selling, but did not perfect the system for various reasons. During 1895 I was kept very busy with the grain business, having a house on each railroad in Garfield. During this year the receipts were heavy. It was a competitive point. Grain came from other places because of the advance in price I paid by reason of pooling. In the spring of 1896 Jonas Crumbaker and I made a trip to the old home in Illinois. This was after an absence of 20 years. That then seemed a very long time, but 27 years have passed since then. I was surprised at how well the people there remembered me. Mr. Crumbaker knew me at once, but did not know his own son. I had supposed few outside of our immediate neighbors and Uncle Harry’s would even remember me, a boy of a large family of poor people. The two incidents in this respect which most surprised me were with Roy Fariss and Dr. Waters. The former I had not seen or he had not seen me as far as I knew since I was ten years old. When he remembered me I thought he confused me with Charley or Willie. “Oh, no,” he said. “I remember you. Why I often went to Reese John’s school Friday afternoon to hear you speak.” I have before mentioned the fact that Dr. Waters remembered vaccinating me when a child. It had seemed an age since I left Illinois as a boy. A much longer period has passed since that time, so that the 20 years I counted then seem short. On my return I stopped in Nebraska to visit Croff Bailey’s. They were not at home when I reached there except the young boys who of course did not know me. It seemed so unreal to be at Croff Bailey’s and a stranger. Margie came first. We were at supper when Croff came, with his usual bluster. They called out to him to see who was there. As he came into the dining room I met him and can hardly explain the disappointment when he hesitated to call my name. Turning me around and looking a long time he finally said, “It is George Lawrence’s boy and I think Johnnie.” So he knew me. The year 1896 was a very important year in many respects. Times had been very hard since 1895 with the price of all farm products very low. In 1894 I bought wheat at Garfield for 21 cents a bushel, sacked. This was equal to 18 cents a bushel bulk. Later in the year the price advanced to 35 cents. From 1895 to 1896 the price to the farmer varied from 35 to 45 cents. It was the period of what we called the “Free Silver Craze.” Silver was low compared to gold and a popular political demand came up for the free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1. Silver was then bought by the government at the market price which varied in its relationship to gold. The demand, which was quite popular, especially about Garfield, was for the free coinage at the ratio of 16 to 1. A very popular book on this subject was published in Chicago by a man named Harvey, “Coin Harvey.” It was the means of converting many to the doctrine of free silver. I was at first inclined to that belief, but the reading of the book had just the opposite effect, so I stood against a tide of popular opinion locally. In fact my brother Perry and I with Charlie Gwinn, were about the only Republicans left in the town of Garfield after the campaign was on. W.J. Bryan made his celebrated speech on the “Crown of Thorns and Cross of Gold,” which gave him the Democratic nomination for President. I of course supported McKinley and succeeded during the campaign in converting many to my political belief. For a number of years thereafter I was rated as a conservative of “stand-patter.” Gradually, after 1905, under the teaching of Roosevelt, I became a progressive. In the fall of 1897, we took a trip to Portland with Bryan and Jennie Westacott, taking Bessie and Perry. While in Portland we found there was a rate war on between the steamship line and the railroad on the fares to San Francisco. This lead us to take a trip to San Francisco by train at a round trip fare of $5.00 each, the children half fare, which included the standard sleeper, a rate which made it cheaper to take the trip than stay at a hotel in Portland. It was a very delightful trip. On our return to Portland, Bryan and I each bought a surrey or carriage as we called it, having a cut-under body. These we got a very low price, $150.00 each, at the closing-out sale of a large implement house. Our children will remember the carriage which we all so much enjoyed for several years thereafter. No auto of the later years brought greater pleasure. It was on this trip that I took Jessie to a doctor to secure treatment for a cough. In fact it was the cough which led me to propose the trip. Dr. Dix at Garfield had examined her and pronounced it consumption. Her sister, Mattie had been taken with a similar cold and cough in the spring of 1894 when we were spending the summer on the farm near Davenport. After we moved to Garfield in August following she came with the children hoping to secure treatment to cure her. She went to Dr. Dix who after examining her told me she could not live many months. She died the following winter. I can never forget how she longed to travel in the hopes of recovery. Dr. Dix now said he never saw two cases more alike. This was in the early winter after our return from the Portland and San Francisco trip. We immediately started planning for another trip and getting ready for it for it for I was determined to leave nothing undone that could be done to save her life instead of allowing her to die like Mat. Just as we were about ready to start there was a sharp advance in the price of wheat which went to 75 cents a bushel, an unprecedented price at that time. I could not get away but fearing the delay on Jessie’s account bought tickets to Illinois and return via Denver, good for six months for her and Zola. They were to stop at Denver, Colorado, until we would come, meantime she would take treatment from a Dr. Holmes who was experimenting with an anti-toxin treatment for tuberculosis. After the lapse of a few weeks I received a telegram from him saying to come at once. Taking Bessie, Hugh and Perry we started. This was when McKinley was rushing preparation for war with Spain, after the sinking of the Maine. We had trouble getting through as we had to give up our coach to soldiers. [Page 58 missing] Jessie soon tired of the noise. We could not talk to each other on lower Broadway without stopping to yell in each other’s ears. So we determined to take a train for Washington, D.C. We went into a railroad ticket office on Broadway and bought return tickets to Garfield via the G.N. from St. Paul. After leaving the ticket office in a basement we stopped on a street corner a few blocks away to determine just how to go to a ferry across the Hudson. A man came up and asked me if I had not just bought two railroad tickets at a certain ticket office. I had always prided myself on the fact that a man used to the Great West was not afraid of any stranger. But how often are people from the country warned of all strangers in New York City. Looking him squarely in the face I told him I had and asked him why he asked. “You left the tickets on the counter,” was his reply, saying he was in the office at the time and was on the lookout for me down the street. Searching my pockets I could not find the tickets. We hurried back to the office where we found them. I had actually walked away after paying for them leaving them on the counter. The agent had asked a stranger who was in the office to keep a lookout for us and tell us if we were seen. I doubt if we would have returned to the ticket office when we discovered the loss as I was so sure I had put them in my pocket. I will say here that I have been very fortunate in losing so little in all the years I have traveled, covering probably a quarter of a million miles, or as far as ten times around the earth. I remember losing only about $25.00 when I once had my pocket picked in a crowd near Los Angeles. Next morning we were in Washington, D.C. We came into the city in a different direction from what I expected and as a result I have always been turned around in the nation’s capital however many times I have been there, a dozen times or so, once remaining a month or more. It was Sunday morning and we spent the day quietly at a small hotel, taking a ride with a man who drove one horse in a canopy top surrey. We made the practice all through life when in a strange city even a few hours to spend a few dollars riding about to see the principle objects of interest. In the score of years following we visited every principal city in the United States and by taking a ride in some special conveyance, an auto in the later years, we really saw much of all the cities. Our first trip the next morning was to the capitol and around the first corner came face to face with M.E. Hay and wife, with whose life my own was in later years so closely linked. Congress was not in session and after a few hours at the capitol we went about the city. Next day we attended the President’s reception at the White House, a public reception in the East Room. We shook hands with President McKinley who used the phrases alternately, “Pleased to meet,” “Glad to see you,” to the long line of visitors from over the United States. Mrs. McKinley sat back at a little distance, surrounded by several ladies and her delicate face was an object of much interest to all. That evening we took a train for Mansfield, Ohio. We got off at the B&O depot, the identical depot at which we landed when we went back from Indiana in 1864, 34 years before when grandfather met us. No one expected us this time. We hunted up Uncle Sam Eyerly who lived not far away. He was the young man who was courting Aunt Lucinda of whom mother in her letter to Aunt Belle from Illinois in 1866 asked for a piece of her wedding cake. We made their home our headquarters for the next few days while visiting the relatives there, their children, Aunt Belle, the half uncles Joe and Oliver out at the old home place and Hugh Piper who had been mother’s foster brother. From Mansfield we went to Climax to visit mother’s nephew, Nelson Montgomery, Uncle Jim’s only son. It was from there we visited the place of my birth mentioned before. Leaving Climax we passed through Marion where we spent a half hour with cousin Ella, Aunt Lucinda’s oldest daughter who married a man named Plank. We might have called on Warren G. Harding had we known at that time he was to become President of the United States. He was then an unknown editor of a country newspaper at Marion. We went to Bloomington, Ill., where we changed cars for Lexington, our old home town. We went out to Uncle Harry’s at Pleasant Hill, Jessie’s old home. This was the realization of a dream to her. Uncle Harry’s home was just across the street from her father’s old home. Aunt Cynthia was one of her closest women friends. Much older, of course. Jessie often related a silent rebuke given her by Aunt Cynthia once when she took the largest piece of pie. She said she could never forget the look in Aunt Cynthia’s eyes and could never thereafter take the best of anything. If she was ever really selfish, which I cannot believe except for her own statement, certainly never was a cure more complete. In the course of nearly forty years we lived together I never knew her to be guilty of one selfish act. We spent nearly two weeks visiting old friends. I had seen some of them only two years before, but many for the first time since leaving Illinois 22 years before. We went out to Mr. Crumbaker’s, who seemed like our own folks to each of us. I had missed seeing Maggie two years before when she was on her way back from Nebraska at the time I left. She and Marion’s wife, who was visiting there, were over to visit Joanna. We drove down the road to meet them. When they saw each other for the first time after a separation of 18 years Jessie and Maggie jumped from the buggies and ran together for the fond embrace. They were girl chums and Maggie was my schoolmate. Jessie laughed when Maggie asked her if she could kiss her husband. It was a wonderful two weeks for Jessie, as she renewed the childhood acquaintances. She had often complained of a poor memory and especially of her childhood days. But I never saw her fail to recognize an old acquaintance or to call them by name. Nor did she ever fail to remember the incidents told by others. We spent the Fourth of July at a celebration in Lexington and a few days later we had our pictures taken with Maggie at Merrill’s old gallery in Lexington. I remembered the gallery so well as we had all gone there to have our pictures taken before leaving for Oregon over twenty two years before. Twenty-two years then seemed a long time but it has lengthened to forty-eight years at this writing. We went to Chicago where we bought the furnishings for our new home, the Rounds house, where we lived for the next seven years. We had taken the measurement of each room for carpets and linoleum, the latter being still on the floor of the dining room at Ralph Wilson’s to whom we later sold the house. We moved into the new home in the fall. We had owned it nearly two years but waited for the time when we could add to it the modern conveniences and furnish it as we now did. Our children will remember this as the strongest home tie of any house in which we ever lived. The year 1899 passed away with a busy season in the warehouse and banking, added to the farm life. I had traded for the John Hale place and bought the Charley McCown place adjoining which gave a half section south of the Tom McCown place, which I afterward bought. I hired Joe Rogers by the year and equipped the place with stock and implements for farming. I suppose this was a period of as ideal life as one could have. We gained a little each year in property value. I bought a new driving team after selling Prince and Dandy, two white horses which seemed almost a part of the family. I bought a barn with two lots across the street where we kept the team and a cow, Roxie, which I bought as a small calf from Tom Amos. She was a registered Jersey. Later I bought Tony and Nell, a splendid driving team. We kept mares at the farm, one a registered Percheron and her colt, a registered Percheron stallion I afterward sold for $1,200.00. The year 1901 was the beginning of a homeseekers movement promoted by the railroads, especially the N.P.R.R. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce invited representatives from the surrounding towns of all the country to come to a big meeting at Spokane to plan how to handle the homeseekers. I attended from Garfield and when called on after a long session gave my plan. It ended all discussion and was adopted in detail but without credit to me by the local paper. Under this plan each town was to send a representative to St. Paul to ride out on the homeseekers’ train. I made one trip, going on back to Illinois with Brother Willie who continued his visit to Ohio. This was the year of an attempted division of Whitman county in which I took a leading part in opposition which ended at the legislative session which resulted in its defeat. Uncle Harry again came out on a visit in the fall and took a hunt down on the Pend Oreille, an experience he repeated a number of times. The next year Aunt Cynthia and Nellie came out and spent a large part of the summer and fall with us. He was seeking health as well as enjoying the trip and a deer hunt in the late fall. These were the years that now seem the fruition of our lives although we were still looking forward to the time to come for what would be the full measure of success. But here was the period where our children were growing up so as to share with us in a larger measure the happiness of life. Zola was finishing high school, and coming all too soon to the time when she married Bert Fisher. No one who has not gone through the experience can know the feeling of parents when the first born ceases to be a part of the home by making her home with another. This was the first seeming break and however natural in human life is like taking away a part of one’s self. Bessie, whose eyes had troubled her through childhood so as to interfere with her studies in school secured a treatment to help her after passing a crisis which almost caused the loss of sight. Hugh and Perry gained a practical experience with farm life such as could come in no other way. They were both growing into sturdy boys. Jessie’s health while not fully restored was such that she entertained a great deal of company. Our dining room contained a large table which was usually well spread and surrounded by many at each meal. We seldom ate alone. Neighbors from the country, the Shoemaker’s and Westacott’s, were frequent visitors. Brother Willie often came and Leona spent a good deal of time at our home. Brother Charley was on a small farm at LaDow Butte. Perry’s moved to Pullman and Harry lived in Colfax. John Bishop and Janey were on the farm near Steptoe and Sam Crumbaker and Martha had moved out on the main traveled road to Colfax. When Uncle Harry came we had a reunion at our home and a picture taken of my brothers and sisters, the first group taken since in Ohio in 1864, all the children together but for the last time on earth. But happy prosperous years will end. Not that joy passes out of life but there is a lessening of the things that brings the completion of earthly happiness. In the winter of 1902 I took my final deer hunt on the Pend Oreille. Each year for a score of years I enjoyed an annual fishing trip and for many years an annual hunting trip in the mountains. Jessie and I planned a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of our wedding for April 2, 1903. Cards were out for a large gathering. I went out to the ranch to help Bert break two colts, driving out in the carriage. Bert had the colts ready and we soon had them at work. In the afternoon they seemed so quiet I hitched them to the carriage and drove down to the Palouse river where I filled the carriage with evergreen boughs for decorating the house, then drove on home. The next afternoon I hitched the colts to an old buggy I had bought at a sale. This was one of the mistakes of my life. Driving through a mud hole on Main Street in front of the bank a single tree broke and the tongue came down. In the mix-up I jumped out and losing my balance I broke my left ankle, or the bones of the legs at the ankle. I will not dwell on the injury. It broke up the proposed party. I spent more than a year either in a hospital or in Spokane under the care of Dr. Thomas. He saved an amputation but my suffering was intense. Not for ten years could I step on that foot without severe pain. To save amputation the doctor removed the end of the tibia, lapping the fibula. This gave a very imperfect joint and the shortening of my left leg gave me a permanent lameness. The accident changed the whole course of my life. I sold the stock and implements and rented the farm. I was compelled to retire from the active management of the bank and warehouse. It was certainly a very trying period in my life. The great change which gave the opportunity of my life came in June 1905 when I was selected by Governor Mead as a member of the newly created Railroad Commission. The creation of such a commission to regulate the railroads has been a political issue for some years. My appointment was a surprise to everyone including myself. In fact I did not then know what influences led to my selection. In later years I learned that an old time Palouse friend, then of Seattle and connected with the G.N. Railway was the actual factor in my selection. I immediately went to Olympia to assume the office with Harry A. Fairchild of Bellingham as chairman of the commission and John H. McMillan of Roche Harbor as an associate. Space will not allow me to detail my life and work on the commission where I spent seven years. It seemed that every prior experience in life was a course of preparation for this work. I gave up every other pursuit to throw my entire time and my whole souled interest into the work. In looking back over it I realize, to myself, the successful work accomplished. This was conceded by friend and foe. In fact our work was of such a nature, along new lines, foundation laying in the attempt at public regulation of rates, that our commission achieved a national renown. It accomplished the extraordinary result of pleasing both the public and the railroads. So striking was this success that the editor of the Railway Age Gazette, published in Chicago, made a trip to Olympia especially to see me and find out from actual contact with the people of the state to see if they were really as well satisfied with the result as the railroad officials with whom he came in contact. He found they were and then asked me to write an article which was printed first in the Railway Age Gazette and afterward published in pamphlet form and went through two editions. The pamphlet was placed in every public library in the United States, including every college and university. I wish each of the children to keep a copy of this pamphlet with the copy of this story of my life. I feel that my life work as it materialized on this railroad commission is reflected in the solution of the problems of determining the reasonableness of a railroad rate as shown in this pamphlet. It is of course technical. It was written more especially for those who were versed in the language of railroad rates and fares. Judge Reid, leading counsel for the railroads, told me afterward he spent two weeks almost night and day studying one table, that of the division of the value of a railroad according to the value of its use for state and interstate purpose, saying to himself if I was capable of writing it he was capable of understanding it. It seemed like entering a new world for us to move to Olympia, but we enjoyed it. Before doing so Jessie and Zola’s moved to Coeur d’Alene where we had a house bought at the sale of Fort Sherman, the house of the commanding officer, where Bert and Zola expected to remain while we went to Olympia. Before we did so, however, I traded Ralph Wilson out of the Tom McCown place, adjoining our farm on the north, next to Garfield, and Zola and Bert moved back to this farm. In July I started on a tour of the railroad commissions of the eastern states prior to organizing our own commission. I visited the commission in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and the interstate commerce commission at Washington D.C. The next year, starting in February with Jessie, we made a tour of the United States, visiting all the principal cities. We spent over three months on this trip, saying it seemed like a wedding trip after being nearly twenty- five years married. We went through California, then took the Southern Pacific route through Texas to New Orleans, stopping off at El Paso and from which we took a side trip to Austin. After spending a few days in New Orleans we went to Montgomery, Alabama, then to Atlanta, Georgia, to Richmond, Virginia, then on to Washington, D.C. Later we went to New York, back to Ohio, Illinois, Nebraska, and then on home via the Burlington and Great Northern. We took many trips after that, principally to California and return, but no trip in our lives was as complete in its happiness as the trip we made at that time. We were in San Francisco just before the earthquake. We attended an actors’ benefit in Chicago later, given in relief of those earthquake sufferers. At this benefit we saw and heard all the celebrates of the stage in the United States and some from Europe including Sarah Bernhardt. Thereafter I made annual trips to Washington, D.C. during the years 1907, 1908, 1909 and 1910. Mr. Fairchild agreed to go in 1911 but the illness which led to his death had seized him so that he turned back from Seattle. During my services on the commission I became acquainted with many prominent men over the United States, usually men in public life as well as practically all the leading railroad men of the west. Samuel Hill of Seattle, the Good Roads advocates, was a close personal friend. His father-in-law, James J. Hill, because of Sam Hill, became a personal friend whom I met many times. I was once invited to home of Sam Hill to a dinner party in honor of James J. Hill who had come to Seattle on one of his periodical trips over the Great Northern. On this trip he had brought several leading bankers from New York. The dinner was given in Mr. Hill’s apartments on the top floor of the Hotel Parry. I had been invited over the phone and as Jessie was away from home overlooked all preparations. I rushed from the office to catch the train. I was a little taken aback when I entered his apartment just as dinner was ready to serve to find them all in evening clothes, including Sam and James J. However, I kept my courage up, feeling myself as good as they. As a matter of fact I did not own a suit of evening clothes. At Washington, D.C. I met many U.S. Senators and members of the President’s Cabinet. I have told how we attended one of McKinley’s receptions. Later we attended one of Roosevelt’s. We had to wait an hour and Jessie was very tired, but glad afterward she waited. Later I attended a Taft reception. President Wilson did not give public receptions but through senatorial influence I attended a private reception in the White House and with a few others shook hands with him. The death of Fairchild which came suddenly was a turning point in my life. It was on the appointment of his successor that Governor Hay, after consulting me, antagonized me by appointing a man I did not want, George A. Lee. I quickly found I could not work with him and becoming provoked, resigned from the commission. Shortly thereafter I announced my candidacy for Governor. I feared at the time there would be a split in the Republican Party and told Jessie if it came I would lose. I went in as a progressive Republican and when the split came followed Roosevelt into the Bull Moose Party. I failed to get the nomination at the Bull Moose primaries. In fact, they were so conducted that I never had a chance. After election we moved to Spokane where I went into the real estate business, mainly to handle my own property. At that time I owned nearly two thousand acres of land, mostly cheap logged off land near Spokane bought of the state with only a small payment down. After a few months I traded a section of land in Douglas county for a stock of hardware and implements at Wilbur. A little later I traded the logged off land for the building in which the business was located, known as the Hay building, a brick 100 by 200 in the center of town. Later I traded 80 acres of land near Garfield to Jonas Crumbaker for a stock of hardware and implements at Garfield. I organized two corporations. The Lawrence-Camp Hardware Company at Wilbur, Bessie’s husband taking the management and the Lawrence-Fisher Hardware Company at Garfield, Zola’s husband taking the management there. I planned to have Hugh in the Wilbur store and Perry at Garfield, making it a family affair. The business never ran smoothly or profitably. In the later years I blamed myself. But regrets are vain. After a little time John Camp became dissatisfied and returned to the coast. He sold out to C.V. Howell of Wilbur. When the war came on I feared the future. Hugh was bound to enlist. Taking it altogether I concluded the safe way was to get out of business and into farming. All my life, since our marriage, I had been an accumulator of property. I was a careful, successful trader. But now I made the one big mistake of my life. I traded all the property including the mercantile concerns, buildings and land into farm land in Western Adams county, nearly 7000 acres in all and equipped it for farming on a large scale. It made the biggest farming venture of that part of the state. We put in a 75 horse power Holt caterpillar which pulled 12 plows, 16 inches each, or about a rod strip plowed at the rate of 20 acres a day or 40 acres on a 24 hour run. We had five drills of 22 hoes or 11 feet, seeding a strip 55 feet wide with 60 feet of harrow pulled behind. In harvest we had a 24 foot combine and trailed a wagon with a bulk grain bed into which the threshed grain was spouted from the combine. The Holt people sent a photographer from California who made a moving picture of our harvesting outfit which was exhibited all over the United States. We had everything but a yield of grain. I stuck to it as it was my nature to stick, for three years. In that time I lost everything except my good name and all the children who took stock in the concerns with me lost proportionately, between fifty and sixty thousand dollars in all. In my sixtieth year I was stranded. While I had done many things I was at a loss which way to turn. By chance, W.H. Palhamus offered me the position of manager of the feed department of the Puyallup-Sumner Fruit Growers Canning Company. In the meantime, before taking over the place I was selected by the Good Roads Association of Eastern Washington to organize the state against the Carlyon Road Bonding Bill. This I did and was credited with defeating the measure. November 1, 1920 I went to work for Paulhamus and Jessie and I took an apartment in Puyallup. Later, her health not being good we rented a furnished home. Still later we shipped over our own furniture from Spokane and furnished another house. A year later, Paulhamus failed and I was again out of employment. I had devised a machine for mixing poultry feed, particularly egg mash. I put one in the mill at Puyallup of which I had charge and by its use built up a large feed trade. It was the success of the feed department which led to its sale November 1, 1921. I immediately set to work to manufacture and sell the mixer. I made application for patent and my claims were allowed, but later circumstances led me to drop it. I made a mixer and sold to Mr. Hawley at Bellingham and another for the Grange at Puyallup. Later I sold one at Wenatchee. Just before the New Year I was offered the position of manager of the Washington Co-operative Egg & Poultry Association at Winlock which I accepted and came down at took the new position January 2, 1922. This was admittedly the hardest place in the entire association to fill and I found a path made up of everything but roses. However, starting then with a floor space of 2400 square feet and 125 active members we have now in July 1924 some 18000 square feet of floor space and 325 members, doing several times the amount of business done at my beginning. The first thing I did at Winlock was to buy a little bungalow home for Jessie in which she spent several happy months. Soon after coming she had a severe cold or an attack of the grippe which took her to the hospital at Centralia. She never recovered full strength, although her health had been gradually failing for some years. Hugh came home after proving up on his homestead late in June. Perry was in the employ of the state highway commission and was living at Elma where Blanche expected to be confined. Zola came over on a visit and as Bessie lived near we were all together many times except Perry who could not leave Blanche. Sunday morning following the 4th of July when Zola, Bessie and Hugh were with us we were all at home and had just finished eating breakfast when the telephone rang. Jessie answered but a moment later asked me to talk. It was Perry at Elma telling that the baby had been born dead. I told him we would come down. It was against my best judgment for Jessie to go but motherlike and unselfish she would not consider her own weakness. Shortly after we started with Zola and John, all three riding in the runabout. We had tire trouble and did not reach Elma until after two o’clock. A little later we drove out to the cemetery where the little waif was buried, named on Jessie’s suggestion after Blanche’s father. After an early supper Jessie and I started back alone as Zola remained to nurse Blanche. We had more tire trouble coming home and she sympathized with me in that trouble. But we were both thankful it was the new born babe that died, not one of the living grandchildren or one of us. We were happy in this thankfulness, but both unusually silent. We had ridden much together during our lives, with the same mutual tender regard, but never in such silence. Mile after mile was passed without a word. When we came into Napavine it was a question whether we would turn to Bessie’s or drive to Winlock. She left it to me and almost unconsciously I turned to Bessie’s. After a little rest Hugh concluded to go home with us, but we had scarcely started when a tire went flat. We returned and Jessie went into the house while Hugh and I repaired the tire, only to find that our lights were very low. That settled it and we went in the house to stay all night. It was then after eleven o’clock and I went to bed and was almost asleep when Jessie came. A few hours later she awakened with a scream of pain and after a few minutes went into a convulsion. Afterward she lay an hour or two apparently asleep. The only words she spoke consciously were on the suggestion of removing a vessel. She spoke very quietly and in a natural voice, saying, “Don’t take it far.” A few minutes later she was seized with another convulsion and a short time later passed away. She had seen all the children the last day of her life but not together. This was the second great shock of my own life and the first one to come to the children. Death in any form is sad, but when it comes suddenly the intensity of grief is deepened. No woman of purer mind ever lived and none more unselfish. No wife more true or mother more devoted and loving. We buried her at the old home town of Garfield in the cemetery I had helped to locate soon after we were married and on a plot of ground we had together selected where some day I will be placed beside her until that great day when I trust we will be in the Kingdom together, our family unbroken in that happy reunion which is not to be again on earth. Two years have passed away since then. After the first burst of grief had passed I made up my mind to live my life on out to the end. This means that I am not to retire from active business while capable of doing it. Not to quit the activities of life as long as life lasts. Not to regard the chapter of life closed until the end. Not to look back with any vain regrets at whatever of failure there may have been, but to press forward in the work given me to do, whatever that may be. I remarried, a school mate and Jessie’s girl chum, Maggie Crumbaker, who had married Henry Wilson and was left a widow. How long it may be given me to live is no matter. I will live each day as though the future called me to new deeds and greater heights to be gained, both here and hereafter. Since childhood I have indulged in the fantasy that no reasonable thing was impossible of attainment if there was an intelligent concentration to a given purpose. Concentration, continuity and energy, backed with intelligence, are almost limitless in the possibility of their accomplishment. To illustrate this, I once stopped to think what would be the most difficult thing for me to do, the seemingly impossible. I concluded it would be writing poetry. To carry out the experiment I tried verse making. I am not an egotist, however self confident, and do not therefore flatter myself I became a poet. Yet I wrote a good many verses, some of which approach closely to poetry. I will ask Hugh to type some of them as an appendix to this story. The belief that all things reasonable were possible was taught me by my mother and I suppose this led me to try many things for which I had no natural adaptation. I said in the beginning of this story it was to be intimate and personal and that what I had to say of myself must not be regarded as egotistical. With this statement repeated I will tell some of the things I have accomplished in life without any natural ability in some cases. I grew up with the reputation in the family of not being able to sing a tune. I loved songs and singing, especially the old pathetic songs and was determined to learn to sing. It was a hard task but in the course of years I succeeded fairly well and think now if I had had a teacher in early life who understood voice culture I would have made a fairly good singer. As it is I have sung bass only. As a young man I was not mechanical, but I kept at it until I learned several trades, among them the printer’s trade and the tinner’s trade at each of which I worked some years. I learned to hang paper by papering our own house many times and then by watching good paper hangers did a good deal of work of that kind. I have done a good deal of carpenter work and have a number of inventions to my credit, some of them really worth while. Among them a portable grain bin, a pneumatic system of conveying grain and the mixing machine mentioned. I am recording my mechanical work with no pride but rather as a matter of personal history. I have been what is denominated as a “Jack of all trades” but have been a master of some. Recently, when I took over the management of the Egg & Poultry Association at the age of sixty, it was new to me and of a technical nature requiring years of training. I have handled it successfully and learned to handle the various departments. One is never too old to learn whose determination is backed by the physical and mental ability to do and I feel sure we retain youth and defeat old age by thinking in terms of our ability to do things. That determination keeps us young. At least it has kept me feeling young. I many ways I still feel like I was a boy. That may be because all my life I have been called Johnnie by every one, even by strangers who have always heard me called by that boyish name. I think this is enough to constitute the story of my life. It is far from what I would like to have done in life. God may yet give me greater opportunity. One of my inspirations came from mother saying to me, “Aim high. You are not likely to shoot higher than you aim.” This was another way of saying, “Hitch your chariot to a star.” Perhaps the greatest incentive to ambition was mother’s wish that I might accomplish something in life by which she would know that her own life by not been in vain. I will pass this on to my children and my children’s children. Whatever any of them may accomplish will make it seem more worth while for me to have lived. Lovingly, John C. Lawrence. Addendum: Transcription of an editorial/article from The Palouse Republic, dated Friday, September 13, 1912. (Subscription is $1.00 year in advance, in 1912 dollars, in case you’re tempted.) “While the vote of the progressive party at the primaries held last Saturday eliminate J.C. Lawrence of this county from gubernatorial race, The Republic still contends that Mr. Lawrence is, in point of fitness for the high position he sought, the best man who was before the people under any banner. A naturally brilliant mind, together with years of experience in public affairs, have equipped Mr. Lawrence admirably for the governorship, and had he succeeded in attaining to that high position, his chief aim would have been to give the state of Washington the best administration in its history.” Additional Comments: These are the memoirs of my great-great grandfather who was born in Mt. Gilead in 1861. This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ohfiles/ File size: 53.1 Kb