Hutchinsons and the difficulties in writing the story...still

Alright I thought that writing about the civil war years would be easy because there is so much, but trying to get the facts in order became, well difficult. So yesterday I finished copying and mailing copies of Following Taylor-Sutherland Trails, a 500 page self published book by Jane Owens. My cousin (granddaughter of Napoleon Wright) Joan Boomsliter sent me her copy of the book. It is out of print, well it never really was in print, but it is pretty close to impossible to find. And while this book is a massive magnificent work of genealogy, it is full of errors. Not that it is possible to write the perfect family history book since the facts conflict, and I mean those hard, documented notarized facts. Then you through in family recollections and it becomes impossible to even come close to consensus. So little was written down, and things like names were never officially spelled by the parent, census takers spell phonetically and I think it was a prerequisite for a census worker to be deaf because their interpretation of a name was a very scary thing. I don't even think being literate was a requisite. Its like what is your name? Mary? Okay, and in the box - X-, last name, Smith. Okay -X-. so now the record is X X. Okay, I will be more realistic. What is your name? Marie Smythe? Okay, that's Mary Smith. It is crazy trying to get accurate names and dates. But that is problems with genealogy 101. It just goes downhill from there.
As usual, I am off on a tangent. Let me get back to the focus of this posting. In the book (remember the book?) I had decided I would FIX a page of my close ancestors, page 128 because this is information I know well. Under Weitzal and Sarah, only 5 of the 7 children are listed. In real life Dicey Wright, married to Benjamin Franklin Boice is the oldest child. but on this page the first child listed is Margaret md to Ben Hutchinsen. Even though at times her name was listed as Margaret her given name was actually Marguerite, or Margaurete or one of many other spellings. Her parents called her Maggie. I don't know if that name stuck because Maggie is pretty plain and she did marry a man of distinction, Richard Ashton Hutchinson, not Ben Hutchinson. She was his second wife, the first wife was Amelia Johnson. He had, I thought, 3 children with the first wife, Dean, Bessie and Ida. Marita, who I was quite sure was Marguarite's daughter was born between Ida and Dean, before Margaurite and R A were married. In all the books it appears Richard Ashton the first went by his initials R A. His son, R A Jr went by Dick. Anyway I find yesterday in Washington (state) Digital Archives a birth certificate for Eva Ashton Hutchinson, who was the second child according to the certificate, of Marguarite Wright and R A Hutchinson. On the certificate it states that it was a live birth and legitmate. The birth date is Dec 22, 1895. Rachel's birthdate is Dec 22, 1896. So are Rachel and Eva the same person?  When Richard, Jr was born it stated that he was the third child of R A and Marguarite and there has never been anything said about an Eva in census data or in newspaper clippings. She could have died at a young age but you would have thought I'd have found something about that. Rachel died in California, according to the Spokesman Review she fell off a ladder picking cherries. I of course cannot find that information right now. Again, that is the reason for blogging to help me get all of this data and my thoughts in order.

I am really bored with this so I can imagine how bored you are. So let me just get down the general facts as I can think of them. R A Hutchinson was born in Mississippi. His father Dean (his brother was also Dean) was the first cousin of President Andrew Jackson, his mother was Elizabeth Hutchinson. They moved to Kansas or Colorado or both. Then they moved to western Washington and then eastern Washington. His first wife was Amelia Johnson, I know very little about her except she was the wife that went with him to Nespelem Washington. Nespelem was the major city within the Colville Confederated  Tribes Indian Reservation. It was where Chief Joseph (the Nez Perce "I will fight no more forever" Chief Joseph - only he had a passive aggressive personality according to the book "Half Sun on the Columbia" by Robert Ruby and John A Brown) and Chief Moses, who was sort of you can't fight them so you might as well try to survive using their rules. R A was the miller and store keeper for this town and the only white family to live in the community. The Indian Agent only passed through every few months so Hutchinson was the communicator, negotiator etc between the natives and the government. This part of R A was facinating and almost made him seem like a nice guy.

He bought (or homesteaded) a lot of land in the Spokane Valley which he parcelled out and made pretty good money as a land developer. He was a County Assessor for Lincoln County, and as the county split (Spokane and Lincoln county were one in the same originally) he became the assessor I think for Spokane. I have forgotten and am not going to look it up right now, the beauty of being able to edit. I don't know how he and Marguarite met, that would probably be a good stand alone story. She was almost 20 years his Junior. They had three children, lived in a good size house on the south hill right across the street from Manito Park. That was an old ritzy part of town. In Spokane there is a museum called the Campbell house in Brown's Addition. That is another ritzy part of town, an old settlement with mansions. The museum tells you all about life in the 1800s in Brown's Addition but I have not found the counterpart of that talking about the south hill. I am sure there was quite a culture to talk about there. R A Hutchinson was a state senator, I think only for one term.

I have no idea what the older children from his first wife did or what life was like for them. I don't think Marita ever found her happy spot but I could be wrong. She appeared to marry a loser the first time, Herbert Wales. The only thing I have found out so far before they were married was he was in the census (1910??) as a lodger. By the 1930 census, she was in California living with her brother's mother in law, Teresa Kennedy, his sister-in-law and his two children at his widowed mother in law's house. In that census it said teresa Kennedy's house was valued at $15,000. Not too shabby for 1930. Marita Hutchinson Wales was now divorced.

Rachel Ashton Hutchinson married William McCreay and I cannot find anything about him. All I know about their life was that as I mentioned before, her death as a result as a ladder fall picking cherries. I don't know if she was married, widowed or divorced at the time.

R A Hutchinson Jr. became the vice president (or president) over International Operations of Studebaker. He lived a good hunk of his life in Brussels Belgium and as my grandmother, his first cousin, also named Marita was fairly close to him. She always drove a studebaker given to her by him I remember her last studebaker was a small white wagon with tan interior. I tried looking on the Internet to find something like it but I did not have any luck. I thought it was a 1968 but since they stopped making them in I think 1963, it must have been an earlier model. My uncle inherited everything from my grandmother (as my father had already passed away) and so in the vehicles last days my cousin drove it, I last saw it in 1974. Anyway, from the 1930 census I know that Dick also had a son by the name of R A and another one by the name of Jack.

This was from the International Division of Studebaker newsletter. There were many pictures of R A. I have the pages with his picture but no dates, of course.