SCHOOLHOUSES, TEACHERS AND LEARNIN'

BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS VOL. I

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Caption: This pre-1920 photo includes George Garner, Loren King, and Mary Greer (center front) on the front steps of the first schoolhouse in Noxon. Courtesy Blanche Gordon Claxton collection.

Sometime during his 1917 one-year school trustee term, Andrew Knutson was replaced by Joe Hammons, and Professor Chas. H. Smith escaped the spring draft call. During the same period, County Superintendent Gladys Brown and Adelaid M. Ayer, State Rural School Inspector, of Helena, visited Noxon School.

They were favorably impressed with the three room building "kept in immaculate condition," furniture and apparatus of "standard design" and equipment of "the newest ideas." Piano, organ and Victrola were applauded, as was the spring water, piped into each room, "running constantly insuring a never-ending supply of pure water."

The Superintendent and State Inspector found favor with the tall Carolina poplar trees bordering the fenced playground and "two outdoor privies serving the needs of boys and girls separately."

"Nowhere in America are people more interested in good schools ... residents of this thrifty little place have shown that education of the younger generation receives the first consideration in their hearts and minds," the newspaper editor published, from the report they filed in the county's school records.1.

Prof. Smith, who previously had supervised schools in Nebraska, South Dakota and Idaho, was supervising two women teachers when the inspection took place; Miss Sue Ettien and Miss Edna Dillon, who came from Jolliet, MT and was expert in primary work, according to their report.

The course of study included grades 1-10,

"in order that graduates of this school may enter other high schools later and receive full credit for the work done."

Smith, an accomplished pianist, taught the upper classes and a large class of music students, including Ruth Knutson.2.

Students were attentive and competitive, winning already several laurels in the county and state fairs.

The inspectors, making their tour while school was not in session, did not meet with any of the school trustees but wrote complimenting them.

"It speaks well for the district, teachers and trustees when teachers are retained for more than a year … Mr. Smith is anxious to organize a Parent-Teacher's Association ..." and he desired their support.3.

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Caption: Howard and Ellen Jenins, the two students on the right, are the only ones identified in this photo, circa 1920s. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

While educational opportunity continued to excel at Noxon, the teaching staff changed. Within six months Miss Conley and Miss Hattie McDonald had replaced the former two elementary teachers.

Never-the-less, Noxon and Paradise schools became two of only six schools in the entire state that were awarded the prestigious Superior Classification. The planned celebration for the event was postponed by an "epidemic of measles which threatens to close the school entirely," the newspaper noted.4.

The 5th grade, 1922, at Noxon school, photographed before the new brick school was completed that year. Marjorie Hampton, Pearl Fulks, Blanche Gordon, Zinc Wilson, Mark (?), Howeard Jenkins, unidentified, Clifford A. Weare, and Roy Joquist. Courtesy Stewart and Agnes Hampton collection.

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Caption: Schoolteacher, Golda Fulks, at the Pilik School on Bull River. Circa 1917. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

Golda Fulks said,

"Young ladies had one choice. Teach or get married. I didn't want to get married then. I was seventeen.

"I started teaching at the one-room Pilik schoolhouse in Bull River in 1914 before I turned eighteen, boarding at the Bull River Ranger Station with Harry and Irene Wilson.

"I wasn't married. I taught at Pilik one year and then came to teach at Noxon. There was a time during the war when they didn't allow married women to teach.

"John Kennedy was the Principal when I was teaching at Noxon. There was also a Smith at Noxon, teaching.

"Harry Talmadge was such a handsome man Mary and I used to go down to Bucks Store where he was clerking just to see him.

"We used to have dances up over the store Larson's ran. Every Tuesday nkight we'd practice dancing. Harry was such a good dancer. "We had a piano. I played part of the time and there were others who played.

 "I left Noxon to teach at Swamp Creek in 1918, only returning to Noxon infrequently to visit."5.

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Caption: Students at the Pilik School on Bull River, Sanders County, near Noxon, Montana, playing a game of marbles. Circa 1918-20. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

The fall of 1918 found Anna McDonald, from St. Paul Minnesota, in Noxon teaching the primary grades 1-2. Her sister, Hattie, taught intermediate grades 3-5. Each earned $100 a month. J. W. Skelton taught 6-8, the upper grades, receiving $125 a month.

"Teachers were just out of high school, eighteen and nineteen year olds. We took things seriously and we coped," Anna said.

"Uncle and Aunt lived in Thompson Falls when I came out to Thompson Falls on the train. I didn't know my aunt. It was night when I arrived.

"My oldest sister lived in Seattle. I wrote to her and got a letter right back so I went on to Seattle. Then we came back, my sis and I, to Noxon.

"Mrs. Buck had a store and we stayed there the first night," Anna said. "We drove to Heron with her in her buggy to look over the country. We took her little house and batched."6.

Another sister, Florence, taught up Bull River at the Pilik schoolhouse, living with Granny and Pauline Gordon at the ranger station. She had the time of her life because there were a whole bunch of forest service men there.

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Caption: Teacher and her students at the Pilik School on Bull River, Sanders County, near the Bull River Ranger Station. Circa 1918-20. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

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Caption: Recess time at the Pilik School on Bull River. The school was located on land adjoining the Pilik homestead, about a mile downstream from the Bull River Ranger Station on the Cabinet National Forest in Sanders County, Montana. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

At Noxon, on the first day of school when the children trudged into the rooms which had been added onto the original schoolhouse, boys garbed in bibbed overalls, dirty and barefoot, overwhelmed Anna. Noxon seemed to have none of the sense of propriety instilled in her by her cosmopolitan upbringing in St. Paul.

As soon as Anna had her students settled at desks and occupied with books she fled to her sisters room. In the cloakroom Hattie held her tightly, letting the sobs shake them both. Eventually, the comforting arms and encouragement of Hattie calmed her so Anna could return to her students. Before long she applied her serious nature and was able to "cope" with whatever came along.7.

School kids played Hop Scotch, Hide and Seek, Bounce the Ball, jumped rope and also a game called Red Light. "Red light! Green light!" they shouted. Another popular game had something to do with a witch. 8.

Fred Minear said, "John Skelton, a teacher from Paradise, Montana, came to Noxon to teach. Jim Duffy's sister, Nellie, was his wife. They moved out on a place over southwest of Noxon and lived up there. She had two kids, Nellie and Johnny."9.

Weare's homestead was five miles west of Noxon, across the Clark's Fork River. Their little children stayed in Noxon with Grandmother Baxter to attend school. The Skelton's, Cummings, Browns, Ellinwoods, Saints, Fulks, Higgins, Raynors, Meadows and all the families close enough, sent their students. A number of families, like Finnigans, who had little children moved into tiny houses in town for school.

In 1920, Miss Albertine Waylette taught in the Pilik school on Bull River located only a little over a mile from the Bull River Ranger station where she boarded and roomed with Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lake who had resumed living there. Almeda Lake, in second grade,, and her brother, Stanley, walked with their teacher.10.

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Caption: Pilik School students posed on the porch. Circa 1918-'20. This schoolhouse was a center for many activities in which the homesteaders in the Bull River valley took part. Dnces, Booster meetings, and socials provided lively get-togethers in the remote mountain valley when travel by horse, then crossing the Clark's Fork River by ferry to get to the NP railhead at Noxon, was a major undertaking. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

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Caption: An unidentified family posed for pictures on the porch at the Pilik School, February 9, 1919. Grades included 1-8 in the one-room schoolhouse. To earn their monthly salary of $90, Teachers split wood, built fires and bucketed water for their students. They paid $40 a month for board and room with the forest guard and his family at the Bull River Ranger Station, about a mile upstream. Teachers and most students walked to school. A few rode a pony or a bicycle, when weather permitted. Courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

During the World War I, Marineus "Marion" Larson operated the store owned by Doc Peek and Henry Larson at Noxon. Marion Larson had been elected Clerk of the School Board. School board members drifted into the store, discussed what needed to be done at the school, and then Marion would see that it got taken care of. Exceptionally outspoken, he was a kind man, fiesty and had a ready wit.*12.

Marion's brother, Bob, joined him to work in the store. Regular store equipment included a tobacco cutter, and high shelves where the clerk had to mount a ladder to select some of the items. Customer's orders were still put up by the clerk who wrote down everything bought. People paid most of their store bill by bartering their hand-split fence posts, railroad ties, or hay.11. After his day's work was done, Bob was soon escorting the new schoolteacher, Anna McDonald, to dances and box socials.

* * * * *

When her family was living on the old Knutson place east of Noxon on Pilgrim Creek, Doneita Pringle rode her horse, Dart, home from school one winter day and into the shed. The horse, realizing something was wrong, backed out, throwing the thirteen-year-old girl over his head into the building, which came down on her.

Doneita regained consciousness with her head poking up between two boards, her hip out-of-joint, and the weight of the building on her shoulders. Blood splattered the snow. She yelled for help.

Jack, their collie dog ran to the house, scratching on the door, until her mother came out and heard the yelling. 'Oh Lord, if ever we need you, we need you now,' she prayed as she worked to free her daughter, and then put her to bed and patched up her cuts.

Donieta lay facedown for three days, with back aching fiercely. When she was finally able to force herself to turn over, her hip popped back into place so loudly that her mother ran in from the kitchen. She was a long time healing and always carried a scar from a nail over her left eye.13.

East of Noxon, children attended school at several locations: on Swamp Creek, Trout Creek, Tuscor, and at a schoolhouse nearer to Trout Creek. Bertha Eplin was the teacher at Tuscor in 1918.14.

Martin Creek Camp School, located at the base of Clinton Gulch in 1920. Both sides of the canyon were lined with buildings clear up to the corner where the mill was, at the Hole In The Wall. The railroad spur line went from Tuscor up Martin Creek. A flume went from the mill to Tuscor and the Clark's Fork River. The school stayed open only seven years. Bernice Haviland taught the last year of school there, in 1927; it was Bernice's first year of teaching.

Several schools were west of Noxon, including schools named Heron, Elk Creek, Granville, and, across on the north side of the river, River Echoes. Each afforded education to children in the farthest reaches of northwestern Montana.

When Ruth Dettwiler began first grade at Heron School in 1914, Miss Lois LaFey was her teacher. Miss LaFey taught her first year in eastern Montana. She had a hundred marriage proposals, but turned them all down, saying she came to teach, not to get married.

Miss LaFey had come from a very wealthy family and was well educated. At Heron her teaching included giving two years of high school instruction to Georgia Knott, along with teaching four grades. Georgia went into Missoula and went right on with her Latin and everything without having to do any repeat lessons. Miss LaFey had remembered well all her subjects.

She was teaching at Heron in 1918, where, until she took charge, Glen Larson had trouble sounding certain letters. With her phonetic teaching, it didn't take the slim young lady long to have him speaking correctly.

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Caption: Sophia and Albert J. Kline's ranch on Elk Creek, near Heron, Montana. Circa 1917. Albright, Wilhelma, Ray (baby), Jerry and two Fillerup girls and the Fillerup baby (on right). A. J., Emil Gavin and Alex Davie operated three moonshine stills for the Spokane market, transporting the 'moon' via NPRR freight trains, which stopped at the water tank between Gavin's cabin and Kline's, to pick up their product. Courtesy Roland Kline collection.

When the Fillerup children schooled at Heron, they rowed a boat across the Clark's Fork River to get to school. After they went to Heron for a few years, their folks bought them a horse and they attended River Echoes School.18.

Austin Clayton was six years old his first year of school. Walking a mile and a half to the River Echoes school alone, carrying his lunchbox, was scary. He saw pine squirrels, grouse, snowshoe rabbits, and a variety of birds. But,  coyotes, deer, bear, porcupines, and even mountain lions, lived in those same woods.

Coming from the Clayton ranch, which was west of the schoolhouse, sometimes Austin was early enough to accompany his teacher, Miss Brooks, who had a mile and a half further to walk. She had to go early to build a fire in the wood-burning stove that heated the schoolhouse. River Echoes School sat on a high bench above the Clark's Fork River, upstream about three or four miles from the Cabinet Gorge, and downstream a couple miles from the Heron Rapids where Indians had bartered with the explorer, David Thompson in 1809 for the fish they caught and smoked there each fall. The river's echoes could be plainly heard as it spilled through this rocky trench cut by glaciers long ago in the Cabineit Mountains Range.

Georgia and Ralph Dettwiler, and Patricia and Agnes Duffy, the other first graders, walked similar distances from east of the River Echoes School. Other students in grades 1-8 included Margaret, Tom, Kathleen, and John (and, later, George) Duffy; Ruth, Roy (and later, Eugene) Dettwiler. In 1918, Barbara and Montana Fillerup came to school, riding horseback to get there. Miss McBride was their teacher in 1919.

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Caption: Heron School. Circa 1903. Note baseball diamond in the foreground. Courtesy Henry and Bessie Knott collection.

Austin said, "In my third year, there were five-inch cougar tracks in the deep snow. My parents kept my brother, Neil, and me home for two days while the neighbors hunted the pair of cougars.16.

"The cougars were mates that came near our farm buildings in 1919. Joe Brooks, seeing the tracks when he brought Claytons mail from Cabinet, told Mrs. Clayton about them. Armed with a dishtowel and a five inch saucer, she went out to see them. The saucer was just large enough to fit on the male cougar track. The female had left three-inch prints in the sixteen inch snow pack. The cats escaped to higher country. Hunters found where they had killed a deer," Austin said.

"The next June, Mrs. Clayton saw a nine-foot male cat the bear trapper had caught, above Dettwiler's. It was being sent on the express wagon to a taxidermist for mounting.

"At recess time we were to stand under the porch roof extension of the schoolhouse. The echo of the roaring Heron river rapids from which the school took its name could be distinctly heard.17.

The land where he grew up, and everything he saw or experienced, fascinated Austin.

"The whole area was covered with dense evergreen trees that overshadowed the wagon road. Only wide enough for a lumber wagon to pass, the road was like a tunnel through trees and bushes. In winter it was even more tunnel-like when snow was two feet deep, as was usual in mid-winter, most years.

"Our school was only 40 feet from the river canyon. The swift green water was about 150 feet down a steep embankment, with white crests of rapids where the water rippled over boulders in the stream bed. On the far bank of the canyon the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks ran parallel to the river.

"The river and railroad were diversions enjoyed at recess time. Trains, pulled by black, shiny coal-burning locomotives that sounded their steam whistles at the pleasure of the engineers passed several times a day. Passenger trains ran on a time schedule but the long freights went through at random times. It was too far across the river to see the individual passengers in the train carriages, but we easily spotted hobos on freight cars of lumber.

"The mile-long freights had many box cars of different colors and railroad names, as well as tank cars, lumber cars, etc."18.

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Caption: River Echoes School was built on two acres, in NW 1/4, SW 1/4, Section 21, Township 27N, on high benchland on the northside of the Clark's Fork River. Courtesy Austin Clayton collection.

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Caption: River Echoes School, built of logs by community effort in 1917. Five sixteen-paned windows faced the Clark's Fork River. A large overhang porch on the west end sheltered the entrance. The schoolyard was fenced with cedar posts and pole railings. Courtesy Patsy Duffy Layton collection.

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Caption: These Heron School students are posed in the backyard palyground of thier school, which had grades 1-8 in a fine two-story building. Courtesy Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide collection.

Miss LaFey was teaching at River Echoes School on September 7, when Austin and Neil Clayton began the 1920-'21 school term.19. Long before tennis shoes were considered women's footwear, when they were high-topped black canvas footwear, Miss LaFey wore them. Elinor Clayton remembered her as the original little old lady in tennis shoes.

Miss LaFey walked from her place on Cherry flats to the Clark's Fork River, rowed herself across in a boat, and then walked to the River Echoes schoolhouse downstream about two-three miles. After teaching all day, she'd walk back to her boar, row across the river and walk home.

Miss LaFey brought her baby chickens to the schoolhouse in a bag. While she was teaching, the chicks would run all over, delighting the students.

Making use of a big potato for darning his socks,  was the most impressive thing Austin Clayton learned from Miss LaFey, he claimed.

"You stuffed the potato into the wool sox, down to the hole in the heel, took the darning needle and yarn, working back and forth until you made a network over it and got the thing patched up."20.

She got the neighbor kids to bring vegetables to school, put the kettle on the heatingstove in the middle of the one room, put in the vegetables, along with a slice or two of beef, and boiled it for lunches almost every winter day.

Katie Duffy had hot lunch at school by taking the cover off the lard pail she used to carry her lunches to school. The pail then was put upside down on the heater stove, and the buttered side of the sandwich laid on the upturned pail-bottom to make a hot sandwich.21.

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Caption: School classes at River Echoes School, 1919. Miss McBride, teacher at upper right. Front row: George Duffy, Grace Clayton, Katherine Duffy, Harvey Corn, Jr., Agnes Duffy. Row 2: Austin Clayton, C. Neil Clayton, Patrick Duffy, Mrs. Corn, Alice Books and Mrs. Duffy. Courtesy Austin Clayton collection.

The woodstove had a little oven in the stovepipe. Students brought potatoes, putting them in it so that by lunchtime they'd have baked potatoes for hot lunch. Austin Clayton carried beans to school in a syrup can, which he filled with water and set on theheating stove to cook while school was in session. One day he forgot to loosen the lid. When enough steam got up the can exploded and beans flew to the ceiling. His classmates promptly nicknamed him 'Baked Beans'.22.

The stove had a metal jacket, that was propped up with wood to reflect the heat. Often, arriving completely chilled by the time they walked through the snow more than a mile to school, the students were put between this jacket and the stove to warm up.

One day the jacket fell over, spilling a kettle off the stove down onto Ruth Dettwiler's leg. It scalded  her leg through the thick knee-high woolen socks, secured by garters below the knee. Miss LaFey stripped off Ruth's sock and boot, pulling the blistered flesh off too, and then smeared the leg with Vaseline.

It was so painful, and Ruth cried so that her teacher took her to Bailor's place. From there the child was taken by train to Thompson Falls for the doctor's attention. Ruth spent the next six weeks on crutches while her leg healed.23

These kids teased Miss LaFey at recess, Austin said,

"by going down over the steep bank to the river to play, and then claiming we couldn't make it back up the hill. We'd often be late in from recess, sometimes going over to the Fatman mountain north of the school to pick choke cherries, and then being tardy coming back."24.

Finally, Mr. Dettwiler took his kids from River Echoes School and sent them to Heron, saying that they weren't learning anything but mischief at River Echoes.25. At Heron, his children got a 'different' sort of education than he expected.

His daughter, Ruth Dettwiler said, "During noon hour we'd walk from the Heron school to the Heron store to get our mail so we could look and see how many drunks were sleeping under the raised up veranda in front of the Heron Saloon.

"Old Mr. and Mrs. Schwints had a store near where two rows of poplar trees bordered the walkway. Schwints were chubby, short Germans. She always walked a few paces behind him as they trudged from their home and back to the store every day.

"Adolph Schwint had a store, also. He sold hardware. Adolph's store burned in the 1921 fire, but the other didn't," Ruth said.

"Adam Riley's, who were our maternal grandparents, lived on the south side of the Clark's Fork River. Granma Riley spread jam on both sides of slices of bread, which we children loved. She also always spread the end of the bread loaf with butter before cutting off a slice. Amos Riley was mother's brother.

"Once when Roy Dettwiler got sick, the teacher sent him home to Grandma Riley's. "Coming along later we kids found Roy laying on the ground alongside of the railroad tracks. We figured he was dead and decided the only way to be sure was to throw rocks at him to see if he moved."26.

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Caption: River Echoes School on a high bench above the Clark's Fork River, upstream about three or four miles from the Cabinet Gorge, and downstream a couple miles from the Heron Rapids where Indians had bartered with the explorer, David Thompson in 1809 for the fish they caught and smoked there each fall. The river's echoes could be plainly heard as it spilled through this rocky trench cut by glaciers long ago in the Cabineit Mountains Range. Courtesy Geraldine Brooks LaMarche collection.

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Caption: Pupils in grades 1-8 at River Echoes School. Left - right: Austin Clayton, Agnes Duffy, Lois LaFey (teacher) in back, Ralph Dettwiler, Georgia Dettwiler, Edward Reygle. Courtesy  Austin Clayton collection (also in Sanders County Courthouse in Thompson Falls, Montana.)

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Caption: Bozeman graduate, Georgia Knott, 1919. Courtesy Georgia Knott MacSpadden collection.

Georgia Knott, who had graduated from grade 12 in 1916 in Missoula, Montana, began teaching at Elk Creek in a little log schoolhouse, southwest of Heron, . At first, there were only six kids when Georgia opened the Elk Creek School for three months. After the first couple of years it became a full-term school with grades 1-8.

Margaret Duffy was the first teacher in another school west of Heron; the Granville School. She had a horse on the north side of the river and rowed a boat across to school, where the Dunn family attended. Mr. Luther, his wife Elsie, and son Joseph Dunn. Mrs. Dunn taught at Granville School. 27.

No matter which school students attended, school 8th grade exams always had to be taken in Heron (until 1939.)

"The day I went to Heron to take my exams," Ruth Dettwiler said, "someone came along, borrowed Dad's boat, and left it on the Heron side of the river. When Dad came down to ferry me back at the end of the day, there was the boat across the river from him. But he hollared instructions at me what to do.

'"Just head it upstream and row like the dickens,' he said. The current was fierce so drifting over the Heron Rapids had to be avoided. But I did just like he said and made it fine."28.

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Caption: Emil Dettwiler bringing his daughter, Ruth, across the Clark's Fork River, from the Northern Pacific Railroad stop on the south side of the river. She was home from college on Christmas vacation. Note the ice build-up in the river he had to break through. Dettwiler made his own boats to cross the river to the Northern Pacific Railroad line, which had stops upstream at Heron, Montana, and downstream at Cabinet, Idaho. Courtesy Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide collection.

People held school dances at all of the schoolhouses. They put on socials to raise money to buy the textbooks. Mr. Duffy, who was working out someplace, helped with the glass for the River Echoes schoolhouse windows. Everybody donated things for school.

Years later , when Miss LaFey was teaching at Elk Creek School, she still had discipline, with a way of putting things across to the students who learned whether they wanted to or not, several of the students she taught recalled. She was very thorough in everything she did.

She walked from her home on the banks of the Clark's Fork River, where she had her invalid mother living with her, the several miles to the Elk Creek schoolhouse. After teaching school all day, she walked home to take care of the mother she loved dearly. This went on even on days when there was a foot and a half of new snow. Miss LaFey always arrived right about nine o'clodk in the morning.29.

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Caption: This class of Heron School pose for the camera. Edith Graybill, Ruth Dettwiler,  unidentified student, Adeline Graybill, John 'Buster' Jenkins, Frank Percy, and more two unidentified students. The Jenkins family moved to Noxon in 1918. Teacher was Harriet Ellinghouse. Photo is circa 1915-16. Courtesy Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide collection.

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Caption: Heron School students, circa 1915-'17. Adeline Graybill, unidentified student, Ruth Dettwiler, Edith Graybill are the girls keeling in front. Back row: Frank Percy, two unidentified students, and John 'Buster' Jenkins, eldest son of Everett and Minnie Jenkins. Frank Percy was the son of Clara Percy, telegrapher for the Northern Pacific Railroad  at Heron, Montana, and the sister of Compton White, Sr., White became a Democratic Congressman from Idaho, 1932-'46, and in 1948-'50. White was a strong supporter of silver currency and very instrumental in highway construction and the 'mine-to-market' program. Courtesy Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide collection.

The summer of 1919, school childrena living all up and down the Montana valley could only yearn for the savings-banks made from surplus hand grenades from WWI that were being loaned by banks to children.30. Montanans had already bought a total of $7,217,812.24 in War Savings stamps, and cashing in only a little more than one percent of them up to July, 1919.

Astute businessmen in the east had found a use for the surplus war material while at the same time getting scarcer money into the banks for their use. By removing the powder and caps, ...

"just a slot cut at the top and a screw inserted at the bottom, and presto, the bomb that was to have clinched things in tight trench and dugout fighting has become a weapon against the forces fo extravagance," the newspaper informed the families.

When a child had filled the grenade bank and turned it in to purchase Thrift or War Savings Stamps of $5 maturity value, (another means to keep all available money in the hands of the bankers and businessmen), the bank became theirs to keep as a souvenier.31.

FOOTNOTES

1. Sanders County Independent Ledger, Aug. 27, 1917.
2. Sanders County Independent Ledger, Aug. 27, 1917.
3. Sanders County Independent Ledger, Aug. 27, 1917.
4. Sanders County Independent Ledger, March 21, 1918.
5. Golda Fulks Hollar, oral history, Jan. 31, 1984.
6. Anna McDonald Larson, oral history, 1972.
7. Anna McDonald Larson, oral history, 1972.
8. Edna Evans Cummings, April 13, 1987.
9. Fred Minear, tape-recorded oral history, February 1,1990.
10. Sanders County Independent Ledger, April 8, 1920.
11. Bob and Ann Larson, oral history, 1972.
12. Marineus "Marion" Larson and his wife, Madelaine, were popular and always involved themselves in community activities. Source - interview Margaret Larson Cluzen 1972. Noxon Public School records: January 21, 1970: Marion was clerk of the Noxon school board from 1918-22 and then from 1923-52 when Reverend Tabor took the job. Agnes Jenkins Hampton followed Tabor, then Henry Kraus, Jr, followed by Mona (Leeson) Vanek 1963-68; and Ernest Weber, then Kraus, Mildred Fleming. School trustees and clerks 1918-1929: Noxon school records, 1969. 1918-22: Clerk, Marineus Larson. 1918-20: Trustees: Elizabeth Buck, J. W. Hammons, George R. Phillips. 1920 Trustees: B. F. Saint, G. R. Phillips, G. J. Gordon. 1921-22 Trustees: Ben F. Saint, George R. Phillips, Sam Larson 1922 Clerk: Homer J. Baird 1923 Trustees: Wm Ellis, S. S. Brown, Arthur Hampton. 1923-52 Clerk: Marineus Larson. 1924 Trustees: S. S. Brown, Arthur Hampton, Andrew Knutson 1925-26 Trustees: Andrew Knutson, George F. King, Arthur Hampton. 1927 Trustees: George F. King, Arthur Hampton, E. L. Green. 1928 Trustees: Arthur Hampton E. L. Green, Cliff. C. Cox. 1929-30 Trustees: E. L. Green, Cliff C. Cox, Homer Wilson.
13. Sybyl Smith, var. letters, 1980s.
14. Edna McCann, oral history, 1968.
15. Fillerup, Heron Reminisce Day, July 1982.
16. Austin Clayton, letter January 21, 1987.
17. Austin Clayton, letter March 25, 1986.
18. Austin Clayton, letter March 25, 1986.
19. Earl Clayton's diary, 1920.
20. Austin Clayton, Heron Reminisce Day, July 1982.
21. Katie Duffy Rasmussen, Heron Reminisce Day, July 1982.
22. Austin Clayton, Heron Reminisce Day, July 1982.
23. Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide, oral history April 19, 1988.
24. Austin Clayton, letters, var.
25. Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide, oral history April 19, 1988.
26. Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide, oral history April 19, 1988.
27. Austin Clayton, Heron Reminisce Day July 12, 1982.
28. Ruth Dettwiler McQuaide, oral history April 19, 1988.
29. Eleanor Clayton Compton, "The last time a picture of her appeared in a paper, the Spokesman review showed her returning from three years of uranium prospecting in Colorado, leading a burro with her earthly possessions on him. Walking from Colorado back to Heron. Taking only three months. She was in her 90's."
30. Sanders County Independent Ledger, July 31, 1919.
31. Sanders County Independent Ledger, August 7, 1919