The house of Clara Wright Carr Buck

Clara or Clarissa or Clara Belle or Clersey was my great-grandmother, daughter of Weitzal and Sarah Taylor Wright and sister of Marguerite. She married Charles Wilson Carr. Charles was born in Rulo Nebraska but his family moved to Kittitas County WA between 1880 and 1885. His parents were William Mitchell Carr (he was known as Mitch) and Mary Elsie Wright Carr. When I first started my genealogy I started with the Carrs. I had always thought that the Carrs came with the other Wrights because of it also being his wife's last name. I figured Mary Elsie was family to Weitzal Avery, only I cannot find any tie at all. We have the name of Mary's father, Elias but we know very little about him. He was married to Christina Folck who married shortly after he died to Charles Wickwire. Mary's brother Erastus was married to William Mitchell Carr's sister Sarah. Sarah filed widow pension papers for Erastus but was not able to prove his service. William Mitchell served in the Union Army of the Civil War, Company L, Iowa's 4th Infantry. This is a very interesting path to follow but I don't want to continue back much more because I really wish to move forward. Since William Mitchell Carr was buried in Cle Elum in 1893 I believe they must have lived near Cle Elum. Now I know that the Taylors had a homestead at Bristol which is just east of Cle Elum, so maybe the Wrights lived there also. Or maybe they met when Clara visited her cousins. I believe as soon as they were married they moved to Hillyard, once a separate community but now is in the middle of Spokane. Hillyard got its name because of the railroad yards and the founder/head of Great Northern Railway, James J Hill. Train maintenance seemed to be the main industry there. Charles Wilson Carr was a machinist for the railroad. As far as history for the area, the machinists went on strike in 1911 because there were a lot of immigrants that flocked to Hillyard so many non-English speaking men became machinist helpers. The machinists did not want helpers that they could not communicate with. I don't know the outcome of the strike. I guess I can sympathize if it really was about the language barrier.

Anyway, Clara and Charles had a house on Olympic that they either built or finished. It was a small house, and a very strange house. I know this because I lived in that house until I was about 9 years old. The house stayed in our family until I would guess the 1980s. As I said before, my uncle inherited everything from the family so he also inherited that house. I think he may have dones some remodeling. I am not sure. But when I lived there is was this random series of rooms. I will post, maybe this weekend some pictures of the outside and I think I have a few taken on the inside. I have this picture of Charles, Clara, Marita and Leslie (her brother and only sibling), that looks like it is taken in their front room. While it has similarities to the front room in the house, it definitely is not their house. I wonder if it was taken in the house or studio of the photographer? I am not sure I will ever know (will post that as well).

So I am going to try and descibe the house (a good writing exercise I suspect). The house, which is not very big is on a lot which is really tiny. You could barely walk around the house and still be on the property. I used to love the yard. It had at one time been landscaped so it had this flower garden space in the front, just a little part of the yard to the right as you faced the house. I cannot remember everything about it, I know it had holly or juniper and a bird bath. On the right side of the house it had just enough room for a narrow concrete walk to go from the front to the back of the house. The other side yard was a bit bigger but it had a cherry tree, a plum tree, I think an apricot tree and bamboo. I loved that side of the house because even as a young child I could barely walk through it. It was a real exploratory jungle.

In the back yard was the original garage, detached and in the far left corner. I don't remember much about it except that it looked pretty rickety to me, even then back in the early 1960s and that it was full of stuff. I don't know what kind of stuff because I rarely remember seeing the inside of it. My curious mind though always thought it was a great place. While I lived in that house my father built (or had built) an attached garage. He built it so he could put his print shop in it. As I was probably about 5 at the time it was built it seemed like a huge space, but it probably was not a very big space. He placed it so that you could enter  from the outside door of the basement, I think it was like a half floor down. The basement had this modern looking basement section with one big room. I always felt like it was our personal museum with old furniture stored in there, but not piled up, seperated enough that you could walk around it. The only thing I remembered specifically was an old radio around as tall as I was. I thought it was so cool.

On the opposite side of that room was the entry to the old part of the basement. That part was scary so I both loved it and hated it. It had this rock wall. The stairwell that came down from the pantry/kitchen area was wood and dark and curved against the stone wall, like an old castle, a scary old castle. When you reached the bottom of the stairs you were at the coal furnace that heated the house. I don't remember where the coal came into the basement. My mother's father owned a fuel business so coal shutes was something I paid attention to. But since it seems to me that was in the center of the house, I cannot for the life think of where one would get that coal in the basement, or store it. Needless to say I hated going into the basement from  that direction.

Back to the front of the house. The house had a wrap around porch that covered the entire front and about half of the left side. It went past the frontroom, bedroom, bathroom and stopped at the back bedroom. It had a door to that room with a big oval glass in it. But as most of the time that I have memory of that door, it had stuff piled high in front of it in the inside, so I don't even know if the door opened. Above the porch it had an overhang from the attic and a window. The window was boarded up on the inside and as far as I know there was no attic access. I suppose there had to be but I have no recollection of anyone ever going up there even though from the outside of the house it looked as if there should be a second story.

The front door had to be almost to the right corner of the house, but it always felt to me like it was close to the center. You stepped into a very nice formal hall as you entered the house. To the right in the hall was a piano which gives you some indication of the size. It had heavy woodwork in the house, I am sure it would be considered craftsman style. It had huge entrances to the diningroom ahead and the frontroom to the left. Both of those rooms had heavy dark woodwork, massive square columns, very much arts and crafts style. There was actually a door just beyond the hall to enter from the front room to the dining room so you did not have to keep going through the entry hall to get from one to the other. The back wall opposite the hall of the frontroom had a fireplace and builtin glass doored shelves on both sides. At the top of the shelves was the mantle that went across the entire length of the room. Above the mantle and the bookcases where small windows.

We had a large overstuffed camel hair sofa in the room that added to the formality and darkness. Both my brother and I thought it was scary, second only to the basement stairs. As we often came home after school to an empty house, it was not very inviting. At times though it was a great place to read.

The floors were hardwood and covered in oriental rugs. I think maybe even the hall. The dining room was light, but then it did not have a porch covering the windows diffusing the light like the front room had. It had a huge window on the outside wall to the right (of course it would be the outside wall). It had a window seat under that window. The room had a built in hutch at the back and plate rails around the room. The door to the kitchen was in the back, the door to the first bedroom was to the left.

Actually the door to the kitchen was the door to the hall that had the basement door to the left and the pantry to the right. I loved the pantry with all of its built in cabinetry. I think it had some glass doors in some of the cabinets, but I might be wrong, It had some counterspace but I cannot remember if it went all the way around or just in part of the pantry. I know it had counter or cabinets to the back so that it had builtins on three sides. I cannot remember if it was just open to the hallway or if it had a door. So now you pass the pantry and yo were in the kitchen. I think it was a rather small kitchen. It had two sides that had cabinets and counterspace. I really don't remember how much of each. The sink was against the pantry wall, the stove was to the left, where the basement door was. Straight back from the entrance from the dining room was a bedroom door. To the left, on the other side of the stove a door to the bathroom and on the back right side was the door to the back porch. Between that door and the bedroom was the refridgerator. On the back porch, which was screened in was the washer and dryer, maybe. or maybe just the dryer because I also remember the washer being in the bathroom or maybe both the washer and dryer. Okay, I was doing pretty good considering I was about 8 when we moved from there.

Alright. The most interesting room was the bathroom. The bathroom had three doors, one to the kitchen, one to the front bedroom and one to the back bedroom - remember the one with the outside door? The only way into that bedroom was through the bathroom, outside or through this closet that joined it to the bedroom behind the kitchen. Now I cannot think how this closet worked as far as in the footprint of the house. I think there was another closet in the right bedroom in front of the closet that joined the two rooms. Back to the bathroom. On the wall adjoining the kitchen was the sink. I think next to the sink between the bedroom door and the kitchen door was the washer and or dryer. On the other side of the front bedroom door was a good size claw foot tub. On the outside wall I think there was a high window but there was also the toilet that was tucked against the wall between the outside of the house and the back bedroom. If you were to go along the back wall you would find built in cupboards and drawers and then you are back to the kitchen door. Three doors that had to be locked if you wanted any privacy in the bathroom. Until I was 5 there were four children and two parents living in that house, two of the children were teenage girls. You can imagine how handy and private that bathroom was. If you missed a door you did not get to bath or use the toilet alone. Someone was sure to come in and it was just your bad luck because they were not about to leave again. I am not sure how that bathroom seemed when you were big but at 5 it was a long sprint to all of the doors.

So ends the tour of the house in Hillyard on Olympic that was built by my great grandparents. Growing up I always thought it was her second husband George that helped build that house. As far as I know my grandma Clara (or Mama Dear as she wished to be called) lived her entire adult life at that one residence. My grandmother inherited the house and I think both of her sons had a turn living in it with their families. I think probably we all felt it was our home, with squaters rights.

And so ends another entry on this history.