1877, when a young man of twenty-two years, he left the parental roof
to make his own way in the world. Journeying westward to the coast,
he spent a year or more in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon, and in
the spring of 1878 came to Walla Walla county, Washington. Here he
was engaged in the stock business for seven or eight years and about
1886 he turned his attention to farming, which has claimed his time
and energies continuously since. Success has crowned his efforts in
the intervening years, he now being numbered among the extensive wheat
growers of Walla Walla county.
On July 15, 1886, Mr. Eaton was united in marriage to Miss Melvina
Sickler, of Waitsburg, who is a native daughter of Walla Walla county,
her father, Daniel Sickler, having crossed the plains in an early day.
They have become the parents of six children, five of whom survive,
namely: Clarence, who is a graduate of the State Agricultural College
at Pullman of the class of 1910 and who now operates one of his
father's ranches; and May, Marcia, Gladys and Ruth, all of whom are
attending the State Agriculture College at Pullman.
Politically Mr. Eaton is a stanch republican and in 1898 he was
elected to the board of county commissioners, in which connection he
made an excellent record and to which office he was again chosen in
the November election of 1916, so that he is again serving at the
present time. Fraternally he is identified with the Masons, belonging
to Waitsburg Lodge, No. 16, A. F. & A. M.; Dayton Chapter, No. 5, R.
A. M.; Walla Walla Commandery, K. T.; and El Katif Temple, A. A. O.
N. M. S., of Spokane. His is a highly creditable record and he well
deserves mention in this volume as one of the foremost farmers and
representative citizens of the county.
FRED GAYLORD WILLS.
Fred Gaylord Wills was born August 24, 1884, in Arlington, Oregon, a
son of W. H. and Clara (Oviatt) Wills. The father was born in Plymouth,
England, and when twenty-one years of age came to the states, settling
in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1879 he made his way to the Palouse country
to buy sheep and after spending the winter at Endicott came to Walla
Walla. He considered this locality as the most desirable that he had
seen and accordingly decided to make it his permanent home. He was
married at Walla Walla to Miss Clara Oviatt, who was born in Akron,
Summit county, Ohio, and resided there until the early '80s, when she
came to Walla Walla and made her home with a sister until her marriage.
Mr. and Mrs. Wills have watched with great interest the development
of what was a mere hamlet to a prosperous and up-to-date city of over
twenty-five thousand inhabitants and they have at all times done their
full share in contributing to its upbuilding.
Fred Gaylord Wills attended the public schools of Walla Walla, Whitman
Academy at Walla Walla, the Rindge Manual Training School at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and the University of Washington at Seattle, which in
1908 conferred upon him the degree of LL. B. It had been his intention
to devote his life to the legal profession but being offered a position
in July, 1908, a short time after his graduation, he entered the employ
of the First National Bank of Walla Walla as messenger. In 1910 he was
appointed deputy clerk of the superior court of Walla Walla county
and while holding that office in addition to discharging his duties
in that capacity he was employed in the First National Bank, working
there after the hour of closing at the clerk's office. In 1912 he went
to Seattle and for a short time engaged in the real estate business
there, after which he went to Tacoma, where he turned his attention
to accounting, which profession he has since followed. In 1916 he
returned to Walla Walla and he has met with gratifying success here.
His acquaintance among the business men of the city and his excellent
business and official record were important factors in his obtaining
the appointment of city clerk. He understands thoroughly the principles
of finance and accounting, and his work gives uniform satisfaction.
Mr. Wills was appointed city clerk on the 20th of January, 1917, and
his prompt and capable performance of his duties has won for him the
commendation of the citizens. He has always given careful study to the
questions and issues of the day and has been a stanch supporter of
plans and projects calculated to promote the civic interests of his
city and county. The greater part of his life has been passed in Walla
Walla, and his genuine personal worth is indicated by the fact that
those who have been intimately associated with him since boyhood are
his stanchest friends.
On the 16th of June, 1917, Mr. Wills was married in Walla Walla to
Miss Dorothy Frances Drum, who was graduated from the University
of Washington with the A. B. degree and who from 1914 to 1917 was
assistant librarian of the public library at Walla Walla. Her father,
Henry Drum, was appointed warden of the state penitentiary by Governor
Lister in 1912 and still holds that office.
WILLIAM LAMBIE.
William Lambie, prominent as a horse breeder and farmer of Garfield
county, living on section 31, township 14 north, range 43 east, was
born near Glasgow, Scotland, March 13, 1846, a son of John and Margaret
(Bryson) Lambie, both of whom were born in the neighborhood of Glasgow,
where they spent their entire lives, the father devoting his time and
attention to the occupation of farming in order to provide for his
family. His son, William Lambie, was reared under the parental roof and
acquired a public school education. On attaining his twenty-first year
he bade adieu to the land of hills and heather and made his way to New
Zealand, where he spent four years. He then came to the United States,
making his way to the Hawaiian Islands and thence to San Francisco.
He spent a short time in the Sacramento valley of California, after
which he removed from San Francisco to Portland, making the trip by
steamer. He spent one month in the harvest fields of the Willamette
valley and then came by steamer up the Columbia river to Wallula and
thence by wagon to Walla Walla, Washington. This was in the summer of
1871. When he saw the Blue mountains and the Walla Walla valley he said
to himself that he would travel no farther. During that fall and the
succeeding winter he was employed by James Foster, located at the foot
of the mountain and the following spring he started out to find land
for himself. He assisted a party with cattle upon the Palouse river
below Colfax and slept on the floor in his own blanket in the only
house in sight in Colfax at that time. He then journeyed northward in
search of land near the much-talked-of route of the Northern Pacific
Railroad, which at that time, however, had not been surveyed. He pushed
on to the neighborhood of Medical Lake, where he located on a beautiful
prairie sloping toward the south. He then returned to Walla Walla for
a team and wagon, and when he again traveled over the route he brought
back with him some garden seed and grain and planted ten acres of his
land that first season. In the summer he worked for a stock man upon
the present site of the town of Sprague, putting up hay. In August
he returned to his own place to look after his crop, but found that
his potatoes had been frosted and he, therefore, abandoned his claim.
That fall he started down the creek with his team and located in a big
meadow on Cow creek, where he cut and sold hay, the purchaser being
Thomas Durry, a sheep man. In this business he engaged for four years
and afterward sold the ranch to Mr. Durry for eight hundred dollars. He
then went to Lower Crab creek and bought mares with his money and began
the breeding of horses. In the fall of 1877 he took up his abode upon
what has since been his home farm and in the fall of that year he did
the first plowing done on the bench land in the north half of Garfield
county. He first preempted one hundred and sixty acres and at the same
time took up a timber claim, while three years later he purchased one
hundred and sixty acres of railroad land. This constituted the nucleus
of his present extensive possessions and gave him his start toward his
later success. From time to time he has bought adjoining land until his
present holdings comprise something more than twenty-one hundred acres
and he operates under lease four hundred and eighty acres in addition,
which he has cultivated for more than a quarter of a century. He has
been one of the foremost breeders of thoroughbred draft horses in
southeastern Washington and for the first fifteen years he specialized
in the breeding of Clydesdales, for which breed he has gained a wide
reputation. For the last ten or twelve years he has given his attention
largely to the breeding of black Percheron horses and has gained an
enviable reputation in this respect throughout the entire northwest.
He is regarded as one of the foremost breeders and one of the most
reliable judges of good horses in Washington. In connection with his
extensive operations as a breeder Mr. Lambie farms eight hundred acres
to wheat and has one hundred and ten acres planted to alfalfa and
annually he produces splendid crops because his methods are practical
and progressive.
[Illustration: WILLIAM LAMBIE]
In 1880 Mr. Lambie was united in marriage to Miss Emma Clark, of
Fresno, California, by whom he had two children, one of whom survives,
John Hazen, who is a resident of Longbeach, California. Mrs. Lambie has
a home at Longbeach, California, where she spends much of her time, and
Mr. Lambie there passes the winter months, while in the summer seasons
he remains in Washington to superintend his business interests.
He is a member of the Farmers Union and he does everything in his power
to promote the interests of the agriculturist and develop the farming
possibilities of the state. He holds membership in the Unitarian church
and is a man of genuine personal worth, progressive and reliable in
business, patriotic in citizenship and at all times guiding his life
by high and honorable principles. He has never had occasion to regret
his determination to leave the land of his fathers and seek a home in
the new world, for here he has found good opportunities and in their
utilization has worked his way steadily upward until he is now numbered
among the prosperous residents of Garfield county.
H. A. TRIPPEER, M. D. V.
Dr. H. A. Trippeer is one of the leading veterinarians of southern
Washington and was one of the organizers of the Veterinary Hospital
Company, which erected the fine City Veterinary Hospital of Walla
Walla. His birth occurred in Peru, Indiana, July 6, 1881, and he is
a son of Joseph E. and Alice (Alexander) Trippeer, the former also a
native of Peru, Indiana, and the latter of Linneus, Missouri. Their
marriage occurred in the latter town, to which the father had removed
with his parents. Not long after he was married, however he returned
to Indiana, and there engaged in breeding thoroughbred race horses
and Devon cattle. In 1888 he took to Wasco county, Oregon, a number
of horses and the first Devon cattle ever seen in the Pacific coast
country. Among the horses was Mattie Mullen, who for a considerable
period was the fastest short distance horse on the entire coast. He was
prominently identified with live stock interests in the northwest for a
number of years but is now living retired in Cove, Oregon.
H. A. Trippeer early began assisting his father in the care of his fine
stock and the experience thus gained has been of great benefit to him
in his professional career as a veterinarian. In 1904 he entered the
Washington State College at Pullman and after two years' work in the
veterinary department of that school he went to Chicago and continued
his course in the famous McKillip Veterinary College, from which he
was graduated with the class of 1907. He then came to Walla Walla and
took the United States examination for veterinarian at Fort Walla
Walla. While awaiting the action of the government on his application
he entered into private practice at Walla Walla in partnership with Dr.
J. W. Woods and as he met with marked success in that connection he
decided to continue in private practice. Two years later he, Dr. Woods
and Dr. Baddely, organized the Veterinary Hospital Company, which later
built the city Veterinary Hospital, an institution which is one of the
best of its kind in the northwest. Later Dr. Baddely withdrew from the
company, selling his interest therein to Dr. Woods and Dr. Trippeer.
The partners have gained an enviable reputation for thorough scientific
knowledge and skill in practice, and their patronage is large and
steadily increasing.
Dr. Trippeer married Miss Pearl G. Griffith, of Sioux City, Iowa, and
they have become the parents of a daughter, Denise. The doctor belongs
to Cove Lodge, No. 91, A. F. & A. M., of Cove, Oregon; to Walla Walla
Lodge, No. 287, B. P. O. E., and to the Walla Walla Commercial Club,
in which connection he is associated with other enterprising business
men in projects for the upbuilding of the city. He and his wife attend
the services of the Episcopal church and are liberal in their support
of its work. Since becoming a resident of Walla Walla the Doctor has
gained a wide circle of friends and is held in the highest esteem both
professionally and personally.
ORLEY HULL.
Attracted by gold discoveries in California, Orley Hull came to the
Pacific coast and throughout the intervening period until his death
was a resident of this section of the country. He was born in Iowa in
1825 and there the period of his boyhood and youth was passed amid
the conditions of frontier life, for at that time the state of Iowa
was yet a part of the great western territory that lay uninhabited
and undeveloped west of the Mississippi. He continued in that state
until he reached the age of twenty-four years, when the news reached
him concerning the discovery of gold in California and he determined
to try his fortune upon the Pacific coast. Accordingly he made the
necessary arrangements for the trip, securing a covered wagon and an
ox team, with which he started across the plains in 1849. The journey
was a long and arduous one over the hot stretches of sand and across
the mountains, but he pushed on day after day and ultimately reached
his destination. After spending some time in California he determined
to make his way northward and came to Walla Walla county, Washington.
Here he took up the occupation of farming and stock raising, to which
he devoted a number of years, becoming one of the representative
agriculturists of the county. Eventually he established his home in
Walla Walla, where his last days were passed.
It was in Walla Walla that Mr. Hull was united in marriage to Mrs.
Hannah M. Laird, a native of Rochester, New York, and a daughter of
Dr. Hiram Preston, of that city. After reaching womanhood she married
Leonard Laird and they subsequently removed to Minnesota, where he
engaged in farming for a time. He possessed considerable musical talent
and took an active interest in religious work. On leaving Minnesota
he removed to Hillsboro, Oregon, where he conducted a hotel for two
years, but about 1877 brought his family to Washington, and located on
a farm seven miles from Walla Walla, where he spent his remaining days,
dying there in 1879. To Mr. and Mrs. Laird were born six children,
of whom four are still living, namely: Miss Florence, a resident of
Walla Walla; George D., of Portland, Oregon; Jennie, the widow of
Millard Roff, of Walla Walla; and Nellie A., who is the widow of James
A. Delaney and is living with her mother in Walla Walla. During the
Spanish-American war Mr. Delaney entered the service and died of Manila
fever. He left one child, Adrian L., now a guard at the Washington
penitentiary in Walla Walla.
Mr. Hull was a stalwart and loyal member of the Masonic fraternity, in
the work of which he was actively and helpfully interested, being ever
ready to extend a helping hand to a brother of the order. He also took
an active part in the upbuilding of the city of Walla Walla and his
aid and cooperation could be counted upon to further any measure or
movement for the public good. Those who knew him esteemed him as a man
of high purpose and of honorable life and when he passed away in April,
1892, his death was the occasion of deep and widespread regret in the
southeastern section of the state, where he had long made his home and
his funeral was widely attended. He was a man of marked integrity and
his word was always as good as his bond.
YANCEY C. BLALOCK, M. D.
With the lasting example of his honored father before him, Dr. Yancey
C. Blalock has followed in his professional footsteps and has won a
place among the eminent physicians and surgeons of Walla Walla. He
was born in Mitchell county, North Carolina, August 3, 1859, a son
of Dr. Nelson G. and Panthea A. (Durham) Blalock, of whom extended
mention is made elsewhere in this work. During his infancy his parents
removed with the family to Macon county, Illinois, and he was a youth
of fourteen when they started across the plains to Walla Walla, making
the long and arduous journey according to the primitive methods of the
time. Dr. Blalock has a very vivid recollection of many of the events
of the trip as they passed on over the long stretches of hot sand and
through the mountain passes that eventually brought them to the Pacific
Coast. His education was largely acquired in the public schools of
Walla Walla and in the Whitman Seminary. At length he determined to
make the practice of medicine his life work and accordingly in 1881
entered the Jefferson Medical College at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
from which his father had graduated many years before. He completed
his course in that institution as a member of the class of 1884, after
which he returned at once to Walla Walla and for a time was associated
with his father in the active practice of medicine and surgery. Later,
however, he established himself independently in practice, and in 1902
he accepted the appointment to the position of receiver of the United
States land office at Walla Walla, serving in that capacity for two
years, at the end of which time he resigned to resume the private
practice of his profession. He has since given his undivided thought
and attention to his professional interests and is ranked today among
the leading practitioners of the county. He is most conscientious in
the performance of his professional duties, recognizing how grave are
the responsibilities which confront the physician.
In April, 1883, Dr. Blalock was united in marriage to Miss Julia
Sanderson, a native daughter of Walla Walla, and to them was born a
son, Jesse N. Mrs. Blalock passed away on the 6th of January, 1885,
and in 1890 Dr. Blalock was again married, this union being with Miss
Lillian Ballou, a native of Illinois and a daughter of Orlando and
Elizabeth (Boyd) Ballou. To this marriage has been born a daughter,
Phoebe I.
[Illustration: YANCEY C. BLALOCK, M. D.]
For many years Dr. Blalock has been prominent in fraternal circles. He
has membership in Blue Mountain Lodge, No. 13, F. & A. M., of which he
is a past master, and he also belongs to Walla Walla Chapter, No. 1,
R. A. M., of which he is past high priest. He has taken the Knights
Templar degree in Washington Commandery, of which he is a past eminent
commander, and he belongs to Oriental Consistory, A. & A. S. R., of
Spokane. He has also crossed the sands of the desert with El Katif
Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., of Spokane, and he and his wife are members
of Alki Chapter, No. 25, O. E. S., of which Dr. Blalock is past patron,
while his wife is a past matron. In Masonic circles the doctor occupies
a very prominent position and is a past grand master of the grand lodge
of the state and a past eminent commander of the grand commandery of
the state. He likewise served as grand secretary of the grand chapter
of the Royal Arch Masons for a number of years and was grand recorder
of the grand commandery, Knights Templar. On March 6, 1914, he received
the honorary thirty-third degree.
Dr. Blalock has occupied various civic offices and for three terms was
county coroner. He served in the volunteer fire department of Walla
Walla for twenty-two years, six of which he was chief. He is always
loyal in positions of public trust and in all of his service in behalf
of the community has been actuated by a singleness of purpose that has
brought good results for the community. His political allegiance is
given the republican party and he is an active and earnest worker in
its ranks. He has served as chairman of the republican county central
committee and puts forth every legitimate effort to further the success
of the principles in which he so firmly believes. His prominence,
professional and otherwise, is the outcome of his ability, his fidelity
to duty and his high standards. His sterling characteristics commend
him to the confidence and goodwill of all and throughout Walla Walla
county, where almost his entire life has been passed, he has a circle
of friends almost equal to the circle of his acquaintance.
THOMAS GILKERSON.
Thomas Gilkerson, who is residing on the family homestead in Walla
Walla township, Walla Walla county, was born in England, October 19,
1837. His parents, George and Sarah (Rayson) Gilkerson, were also born
in that country and in 1843 came with their family to America. They
took up their residence in New York state, living there during their
remaining days. To them were born seven children, of whom five survive,
namely: Mrs. Mary Wallace, of Spokane; Thomas, of this review; James
and William, who are living in New York; and Frances, who is now the
wife of Thomas Curry, of Homer, New York.
Thomas Gilkerson grew to manhood in New York and there received his
education. In 1860, when a young man, he and his brother James came
west to Walla Walla county, Washington, and he of this review took up
a homestead in Walla Walla township, where he has since remained. He
proved successful in his farming operations and later from time to
time added to his holdings, becoming the owner of a large and valuable
tract. He now leaves the active work of the farm to others but still
gives supervision to the management of his interests. He has gained a
competence and the period of leisure which he is now enjoying is well
deserved.
In 1862 Mr. Gilkerson was united in marriage to Mrs. Eliza (Sickles)
McWhirk and they have had five children, of whom three are living,
namely: Harry, Thomas J. and Dewitt A.
Mr. Gilkerson has supported the democratic party since gaining the
right of franchise and has taken the interest of a good citizen in
public affairs although never an aspirant for office. He has been
identified with Walla Walla township for more than a half century
and during that time has always proven a loyal citizen and a man of
sterling worth.
CLINTON D. DAVIS.
Clinton D. Davis, who has lived in Garfield county continuously since
1878, covering a period of four decades, now owns three hundred and
thirty-three acres of land on section 6, township 13 north, range
43 east, and is well known as one of the substantial farmers of the
Mayview district. His birth occurred in Marion county, Oregon, on the
12th of December, 1854, his parents being Leander and Mary (Cox) Davis,
the former a native of Ohio and the latter of Indiana. Leander Davis
crossed the plains as a young man in 1846 or 1847, and at the same
time Mary Cox, yet a young girl, accompanied her parents to Oregon,
her father taking up a donation claim in Marion county. Mr. Davis also
took up a donation claim in the same county and it was there that he
was later married and spent the remainder of his life, passing away
in 1875 at the age of forty-eight years. He served as a member of the
Oregon legislature in 1866 and made a most excellent record in that
connection. His widow continued her residence on the donation claim in
Marion county, Oregon, until the time of her death, which occurred in
the seventieth year of her age.