You always knew in a small town everyone was related to everyone else. The connections make the basis of The Waitsburg Family. Who was who? Who did they marry? Maybe the answer is here. The development of a small town seen through the individual connections of its first fifty years. The forceful removal of the Native American population by the American government of 1858 left a territory open for homesteading. The new settlers, looking for opportunity or escape from the strife of the American Civil War brought their dreams, possessions and their large families connected to one another. The Waitsburg Family 1858 - 1900 the Beginning By Sandra Torres AuthorHouse LLC Copyright © 2014 Sandra Torres All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4969-2931-0 CHAPTER 1 The Waitsburg Family Long before Washington became a state it was populated by roaming tribes of Indians whose presence was first recorded by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark when they arrived on their expedition to explore the newly acquired lands of the United States in the early 1800's. The area around Waitsburg was claimed jointly by the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla tribes. The Lewis and Clark expedition was later followed by trappers and fur traders. One of the early trappers was Louis Raboin, known to his companions as Maringouin or "mosquito". The community of Marengo was named for him. He lived on the Tucannon with his Nez Perce wife. After the Indian Wars of the 1850's, he and his family lived on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Nez Perce, Idaho. His son Edward had a wife Laura. Another son Luke had a wife Mary and sons Edward, John, and Allen and a daughter Francis. Francis was married to Josiah Red Wolf. Their daughter was Maizie Redwolf. The missionaries arrived after the fur traders. Some of the early missionaries were the Spaulding and Whitman families. Doctor Marcus Whitman and his bride Narcissa Prentiss Whitman came to the Walla Walla valley in 1837 where they established a mission at Waiilatpu (later known as the Whitman Mission). Their only daughter Alice Clarissa was born there on March 14, 1837. She drowned in a tragic accident on June 23, 1839. Narcissa had little time for self-pity, but took in several orphaned children to raise as her own. After 10 years of teaching and tending to the needs of the local Indians and travelers, the Whitman family was massacred by the Cayuse Indians who felt that Dr. Whitman was the cause of the deaths of many among them due to a measles epidemic. The massacre which took place on November 29, 1847 was one of several causes of the Indian Wars which followed. Reverend Henry Harmon Spaulding was a Presbyterian minister. He was born November 26, 1803 in Bath, New York and died August 3, 1874. He married Eliza Hart who was born in 1808 in Massachusetts and died January 7, 1851. Together they built a mission at Lapwai, Idaho. Their children were Elizabeth Eliza, Henry Hart, Martha, and Amelia, all born at the mission. During the Indian wars the Spaulding family moved to Linn County, Oregon. In 1862 the Reverend Spaulding returned to Lapwai where he lived until his death in 1874. In 1850 five Cayuse Indian chiefs were hung for the Whitman massacre. The government forced non-Indians to leave the area. The Indian wars continued. In December of 1855 the battle of Walla Walla was fought. By 1858 the Indians had been forced onto reservations and the land was opened to white settlement under the terms of the 1850 Donation Act which gave a man and wife 640 acres of unsurveyed Indian land for the taking. Some of the men who had fought in the Indian Wars were the first to settle on the Touchet, Coppei, and Dry Creek. Among them were William McKinney II, Albert Gallatin Lloyd, Henry Bateman, Martin Hauber, George Pollard, Sgt. John C. Smith, George Miller, William Walter, and Anderson Cox. The promise of free land and the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in Orofino, Idaho brought many settlers in the late 1850's. Men saw a fertile land for cattle raising. Many early settlers followed the Oregon Trail, coming by wagon train first to Oregon and later traveling to Washington. Among them were a large number of families escaping the chaos of the Civil war, especially in the troubled state of Missouri. In January 1859 the territorial legislature organized Walla Walla County consisting of five voting precincts: Walla Walla; Dry Creek; Snake River; East Touchet; and West Touchet. In March of 1861 gold was discovered in the Idaho mountains. This brought in miners and the people who supplied them- merchants, packers, and suppliers of services. Each person brought a necessary talent to the community. The winter which followed the discovery (December 1861 to April 1862) was extreme with huge cattle losses and many hardships. Because of it many cattle men became packers to Idaho. A change in direction occurred with many families giving up cattle and planting wheat in the fertile so