This brings us to the epic adventure of moving further west. Transportation isn’t my only unanswered question about this.
Let’s begin by surveying the family in the decade between 1910 and 1920.
Elizabeth McFarren Fifer died of nephritis in Palmyra, Nebraska, in 1911, leaving John McFarren the sole survivor of his generation. He was 70 years old that year. The prospects of making the journey to California must have seemed a little daunting for him, regardless of how they traveled. Perhaps he was thinking of leaving that move for the younger folks. After Exie and Cornelia left Searcy, AR, John and Mary Ann did make a move. In August 1914 we find a newspaper obituary in Wells County for Mary Ann’s brother, Joseph Logan Jackson, that mentioned that John and Mary Ann McFarren were living in “Vebe, KS.” This confused me for a long time. Turns out that the reporter was not very careful. The town was Bebee, Oklahoma. Son Frank and his wife Nellie McFarren were living in that area then. Frank’s second son Jessie was born in nearby Ada, OK, in November of that year, so my guess is that John and Mary Ann rejoined their family in Oklahoma before heading West, which makes me think there might have been some reluctance on their part to make that ultimate journey west.
But, journey they did. Mary Ann’s obituary says that they came to Holtville in December of 1915. It appears that between 1913 and 1915, many from our McFarren clan made it to California. Mary Ann survived two years in the desert of the Imperial Valley. She died of Influenza in December 1917 and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in El Centro.
Hattie and John Archer were still in Tuttle, Ok, in 1920, though their daughter Martha had moved to Prescott, Arizona with her husband and son. Daughter Jessie had left for Missouri and remained there.
Della and James Williams began the decade in OK. Their eleventh and last daughter, Gladys, was born there in 1913. James later obituary tells us that they made the move to the Imperial Valley of California in 1917.
Phoebe and Lewis Brodie’s 10th and last child, Lewis Jr., was born in OK in 1913, but they were also in the Imperial Valley by 1920.
Will McFarren and family came to California fairly early on, perhaps with Exie and Cornelia. We have a picture of Will’s daughter, Bessie, holding baby Arthur, the child born to Exie and Cornelia, who died of pneumonia at 7 months of age in Holtville in January 1915, so Will and family must have been there in 1914, at least.
Ed McFarren was still single at 40 years of age in 1920. He had made his way North to the Napa Valley already by that time, living in Carneros. I don’t find a town by that name now but there is a Carneros Creek Winery just outside of Napa, so I would assume it was in this area. He was managing a "Gas and Oil" (Station, I assume.)
The whereabouts of Ben and “Dode” are unknown during these years, so far.
We know that Exie and Cornelia were in Holtville by June 1914 when the unfortunate Arthur was born. Their daughter Exie was born on Ground Hogs Day 1916. Daughter Alice came along a few short weeks after her grandmother, Mary Ann McFarren, died. Daughter Hazle, or “Babe” as she was known to the family, followed only 14 ½ months after Alice. By census time in 1920, with these new additions and the loss of Arthur, they had 4 girls and son Elmore, the oldest. Some time during this period, I understand that Cornelia attended a Seventh Day Adventist Camp meetings and found the faith that would sustain her for the rest of her life.
The Imperial Valley was experiencing a boom through these years. Water had reached the Valley shortly after the turn of the century. Canals were dug from the Colorado River into the Valley creating vast agricultural potential, perhaps raising the cost of the land.
It’s unclear how much land was owned in Holtville by our McFarrens. Exie and Cornelia lived on Pine Canal Street. He was a farmer, but was he farming his own land? Census doesn’t tell us.
His father, John, was seventy-nine years old and widowed in 1920. He was listed as a farm laborer on farm #012 in Imperial County. John was boarding in the home of an immigrant Mexican family, the Guerreros. Sixty three year old Maximino Guerrero was head of this household. He worked on the same farm as John McFarren, as did two of Maximino’s older sons and another boarder. All Sr. Guerrero’s children spoke English, but Maximino and his wife were born in Mexico and only spoke Spanish, according to the census taker.
Della’s husband James, and 3 of her sons were ranch-hands near Holtville in 1920.
Phoebe’s husband Louis, was a farm laborer, as was son Norman, 18 that year. Daughters Blanche and Beulah married around 1911-13 and had also come to California. Beulah’s husband, Clark Ellis Cline, was employed in farm labor too.
John McFarren died of “old age” and “chronic heart lesions” on March 11, 1922. He was 81 years old. I hope he had at least a short retirement from labor in that hot sun before he died! A rolling stone no more, he is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in El Centro, along with his wife of 57 years, Mary Ann.
Following our caravanning McFarrens, most of John and Mary Ann’s children left the heat of the Imperial Valley by 1930.
Frank McFarren finally left his enterprises in Oklahoma, but apparently made more than one trip to test the California waters, or lack of. Dan Hancock said Frank’s
family ventured out to CA for the first time in 1919. Joyce was born in 1922 while traveling by train to Holtville. The family returned to OK five months later. They headed west in 1923 to stay. Franklin and Nellie and their children traveled in an open touring car "The Model T." Two other cars of relatives went with them. Finally, after three weeks of traveling, they arrived in Garden Grove, CA. They then headed North to Napa, where Fern was born in July 1924.
Very sadly Frank died in February, 1925, leaving Nellie with six children to raise. Nellie was employed as a practical nurse in the County Hospital in Napa in 1930 and for many more years, I believe. In 1930 her son Eugene, 18, was an apprentice mechanic in an auto shop. Son Jess was 15 and doing odd jobs. There were also the three daughters to provide for. Though there were difficulties along the way, Nellie managed somehow and had a large and loving family in the Napa area until she died in 1991 at the age of one hundred and five. She is buried in Tulocay Cemetery in Napa, where Frank is buried.
The Williams family moved to Porterville in 1926. In 1930 they were farming there, with a large and lively household. Four of their children, grown by this time, were still living with them. One was daughter, Ina, a young widow with four children must have kept them busy. Della and James (went by middle name, Hugh), and all their children remained in the area around Fresno and Porterville.
Phoebe and Louis/Lewis (spelling?) Brodie were still in the Holtville area in 1926, but moved to San Diego sometime after that. Some of their children also went to San Diego, others moved to Tulare. One adventurous daughter, Anna Belle Brodie Zinniger, moved to Eugene, Oregon, a much wetter clime!
By 1929, Will McFarren had some time before divorced Becky and remarried. He and wife Josephine were living Modesto in 1929-33 according to the City Directories of that town. It seems they had an on-again off-again relationship, divorcing once and remarrying. Will’s daughter, Bessie, with husband Simeon Clyde Williams, were living in Napa in 1930. Living with Bess was her brother Roy, with his wife, Nell. Alta had died as a child in 1906 and Ruby died in Compton, California, in 1923, a young mother of 2 yr old Betty Lucille Price.
Ed McFarren married Frances Amelia Harris around 1920 in Napa, and within 7 years had four daughters, Louise, Opal, Nettie, and Frances.