Biography and Recollections of Ottillie Muench Leeson

I came across a biography my mother, Ottillie Muench Leeson wrote and I can't recall if I published any of it on the Leeson blog. Please forgive me if it's a duplicate of a previous post.

OTTILIE "Tillie" LEESON (nee MUENCH)

OTTILIE was born May 24, 1906 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Emil and Rosalie Marion (ne: Herr) Muench. (It pleased Tillie that her birthday was also Queen Victoria of England's birthday.) 

In 1910, when Tillie was four years old, she moved with her parents, two sisters, Martha (6) and Wanda (1), and two brothers, Richard (2) and Robert (born enroute) to a homestead chosen by her father about 16 miles southeast of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, on the S.E 1/4 of Section 34, Township 13, Range 11, in the Bigford District. The family always referred to their farm as the Bigford Homestead. Two more brothers, Edward and Reinhold, and two more sisters, Emma and Olga were born there and two babies were stillborn.

"My mother's heart stopped during labour when Edward Fredrick was born, February 24, 1913 on the farm." Tillie said. Luckily, Rosalie revived and lived to raise all of her children to adulthood."

On June 27, 1920 Olga was born prematurely and their mother again nearly lost her life. Olga was the only bottle-fed baby and was Tillie's special care. 

Tillie's youth was one of hard work, and during years of crop failure, they lived in dire poverty as well.

"Even in good years, during the summer time, we kids had to go out in the pasture and pick up dry cow chips for cooking fuel. This was usually done barefooted and once in a while we stepped into a fresh green cow plaster and it oozed up between the toes. In wintertime, we had many terrible blizzards and it was best to stay home," she said. 

Tillie related stories her mother had shared about her own youth in Russia. She had told Tillie of the time one of her ancestors died. As was the custom, her clothing was sold. Later the family learned that the woman had sewn the few coins they'd saved into the hem of her skirt – what little wealth the family had was gone. 

For a time, before the older children began to leave home, there were 11 people at the table. The three eldest girls and one boy had finished the eight grades of school before Reinhold and the younger girls started. When Olga began school, there were five Muench children attending school together. Whenever Mother gave them a part of an apple for lunch, she cut it in four or five pieces, however many were going to school that particular day. Sometimes it would be one plum or sometimes a nice piece of sausage that went into their lunch. 

Tillie often spoke of the fun times she and her siblings enjoyed, picking Saskatoon berries and wild goose berries, which made very good pies. Tillie became a very good cook, like her mother. 

When Tillie was 17, she went to Swift Current to work, as family housekeeper, for a lawyer named Cathrie. That's when she first saw a bathtub and electricity, and had a bed to herself. For five years she worked for various families. She moved to Moose Jaw in 1924, where she worked as housekeeper for a Doctor whose practice was in his house. A year later she moved to Coderr, Saskatchewan where she worked until April 3, 1928 to join her parents at the farm they'd bought near Chester, Washington, just south of Spokane, Washington, USA. She only returned to Canada for infrequent visits with her family, who in 1931 had returned to Canada. 

She and Albert Edward Leeson were married on November 23, 1929 in a traditional home-wedding in her parent's two-story white frame house at Chester, Washington. Tillie descended the staircase, dressed in an oyster-white calf-length dress beaded with tiny pearls and rhinestone scrolls around skirt and a white floor length veil crowned with a headband adorned with orange blossoms and tiny white blossoms sculpted from wax. 

They moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon in July 1930, left there in March 1931, traveling to Helena, MT and then returned to Spokane. All three of their children were born in Spokane: Chester Floyd (1931), Mona Inez (1932) and Carol Elizabeth (1936.) 

Tillie wrote in her memoirs,

"We lived on Morgan Acres until we sold our home in 1939, moving to 6, N. Lee Lee Street, where we rented until February 1940. We moved into our small house that Al built at 1502 Front Street, one block from our shop that he'd built, The Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Works, at 1503 Trent Ave. We lived on Front Street two and a half years, moving to E. 734 Baldwin in the late fall of 1942, where we'd bought a twelve-room house. We stayed there until November 1, 1945 when, after contracting to sell our house and business, we moved to the Bull River valley, fifteen miles from Noxon, Montana onto a 160 acre ranch we bought.

"Our children found it a drastic change. In town they had a ten-minute walk to school. Now they had to be on the bus by 7:20 a.m. We often didn't see them in daylight for five days a week for several months in the wintertime. The house was always cold in the wintertime as I never really found all the cracks. The upstairs was hand-hewn shakes over poles for a roof and COLD!"

She failed to record her love of all children, or to tell how she never failed to give any child lots of affection and attention. She often raced or wrestled with her own three, even after they were teenagers. All during her life she loved gardening, cooking, canning and being outdoors. She was outgoing and always friendly. Tillie was well known for growing beautiful flowers, and for sharing whatever she had with others. She was frugal, and when she lived in Spokane she walked to thrift stores, bought wool garments and took them home. After laundering them, using a razor blade, she'd carefully take them apart so she could cut quilt pieces from the best part of the material. Using as many embroidery stitches as she'd mastered, Tillie made turned out lovely quilts, which she gave freely to those less fortunate than she.

She shared with her friends and neighbors the produce from the gardens she grew, milk and hand-churned butter, pastries from her kitchen, and flowers, and meat when there was any to spare. Her table was often shared with anyone who stopped in, either on business or for a visit. She did not like playing cards, abhorred alcohol, hated smoking, wished she could dance, and loved swimming and hiking. She enjoyed both ice and roller-skating, sewed, knitted, crocheted and did embroidery, too. She loved shoes and hats and always had a sizeable wardrobe of each. Because she'd frozen the tip of one ear and it curled over a tiny bit, and because a bout with influenza when she was a child had thinned her hair, she preferred wearing a hat wherever she went.

Tillie became a naturalized citizen of the United States on March 22, 1954 at Thompson Falls, Montana. They ranched in Montana for 16 years before retiring in a small house Al built on Highway 200, about 5 miles west of Noxon.

Tillie attended churches of several denominations while living in Spokane. After moving to their Bull River Ranch, she had no opportunities to attend any church and missed that very much. After their children were grown and had left the ranch Jehovah's Witness members visited her frequently. They encouraged her to study with them, and shortly afterwards Tillie joined the Jehovah's Witness Church at Noxon. She remained faithful to that religion the rest of her life.

Tillie and Al returned to Spokane in 1962 where Al was working with Chester, who had bought back the welding business Al had sold in 1945. Al died of a heart attach in April 1964. Tillie became very active in the Jehovah Witness Church and traveling as much as she could afford to. She died of a brain-stem level stroke following a gall bladder surgery, in October 1987. Both are buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Spokane, WA.

Her three children each credit both their parents for instilling in them honesty, love of family, good character, good morals, and a strong work ethic.

Tillie also wrote these memories of her life:

I married ALBERT EDWARD LEESON in an evening ceremony on November 23, 1929 in my parent's farmhouse near Chester, Washington. I descended the staircase, dressed in an oyster-white satin wedding gown. It was calf-length and beaded with tiny pearls and rhinestone scrolls around the skirt. I wore a floor length veil cascading from a headband of wax orange blossoms.

 

Al and I moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon in July 1930, leaving there in March 1931, coming back to Spokane, Washington after traveling to Helena, Montana in search of work. We rented a two-story house on Sixth Street.

Our son, Chester Floyd Leeson, October 19, 1931, wasborn in a rented house on East Sixth Street, Spokane.

We bought a house at N. 1772 Smith Street on Morgan Acres, a suburb of Spokane and Hillyard, Washington. Mona Inez, was born there November 26, 1932. Our third child, Carol Elizabeth, was born there February 11, 1936.  (In 2002, the house number was 7819 N. Smith.)

We lived on Morgan Acres until we sold our home in 1939, moving to 6, N. Lee Lee Street, where we rented until February 1940. We moved into our own small house that Al built at 1502 Front Street, one block from our shop, The Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Works, at 1503 Trent Ave. We lived on Front Street two and a half years, moving to E. 734 Baldwin in the late fall of 1942, where we'd bought a twelve-room house. We stayed there until November 1, 1945 when, after contracting to sell our house and business, we moved to the Bull River valley, fifteen miles from Noxon, Montana onto a 160 acre ranch we bought. [I became a] Naturalized citizen, March 22, 1954, at Sanders County Courthouse, Thompson Falls, Montana.

The years have all run together in my memory. We'd decided to move out of Spokane, to get back to the country. During 1945, the day we drove to Montana to look at a ranch we had taken no food, so we had to drive north from the ranch about eight miles to a store on Bull Lake, to buy some canned food and bread. When we went outside to eat it, the mosquitoes were so thick we had to get in the car, shoo all the pests out, and shut the windows or we got a mouth full of mosquitoes.

 

The children went wading in the lake and we had our first encounter with leeches! We were to find the waters in the area were not only a breeding place for mosquitoes, but full of leeches too. The livers of deer and cattle would be full of leeches. They didn't seem to affect the cattle, they grew fat and seemingly otherwise healthy.

World War II had been raging and then they finally signed the Armistice. We'd bought the ranch and while I stayed in Spokane during that summer, Al was up on Bull River haying [June 1945] with horse drawn mower and a one horse rake, which Chet drove raking the hay into mounds that Al then loaded onto a horse-drawn hay rack with three slings in it.

When it was full, they hauled it to the barn, attached a long rope to the sling. The rope went over pulleys and out the back of the barn, where they hitched the horses to it and pulled the slings into the haymow. Then by means of a trip rope attached to the bottom of the sling, dumped the load of hay into the haymow.

[Al and Chester returned to Spokane in July, 1945.] We had finally sold our house n Spokane, and on the first day of November 1945, the children and I moved up to the ranch on Bull River [in Sanders County, Montana], which we had previously bought.

The ranch house was made of logs with chinking, which I was to learn needed constant repair and unless the chinking was of cement the rats and mice used it for nests. One could look out of the cracks and see the meadowland!

Our first night there was sure an eye opener, for lo, when I got up the next morning to make the fire, on going out onto the porch where I'd left the house plants sitting on the floor, all had been neatly topped and in their place were carrots, bulbs, grain and various other things.

On returning to the bedroom to report to Al this awful calamity, he just laughed and said, "Just go out there again and look up toward the ceiling and you'll see the culprit."

Sure enough, two beady black eyes were staring at me There sat a rat called a pack rat. For everything they take they leave something in its place. This was my first encounter with these smelly creatures.

 

There were to be many more in the fourteen years we were to spend there, and not only did he top my plants but he also got into the kitchen and chewed a large hole in the hem of Carol's coat and I had a time persuading her to go to school with it as I had nothing to mend it with, and needless to say, no other coat. Town was 28 miles away!

 

About two weeks later we had about eleven inches of snow, but Hurrah! it all melted off in two weeks and we had no more until in December, and then we were to get four feet and more! This was to be much of the yearly pattern after that.

 

The first day we took our children to school. I dressed me in my fur coat and nice hat. After we got the children enrolled in school, we found out that the blue gills [kokanee salmon] were running. Nothing would do, but Al bought fishhooks and lines and we went fishing, fur coat, hat and all, and we came home with a gunny sack full. Smoked, they were a rare treat. The river was full of black patches and if you got your hooks in the middle of that patch, you could always catch two to three fish on the three-pronged snag hooks.

 

That first winter we bought some of Mrs. Hayes' cattle, as we had plenty of hay. The cattle watered from the north fork of Bull River as it flowed through our property. We pumped the water from a well at the back door for house use, and carried water from the river for drinking. The river was at least twenty feet deep just down the hill from the house. Our heat was wood, and there would often be ice on the water bucket in the morning, as we never could keep a fire all night.

 

The children found it a drastic change. In town they had a ten-minute walk to school. Now they had to be on the bus by 7:20 a.m. We often didn't see them in daylight for five days a week for several months in the wintertime. The house was always cold in the wintertime as I never really found all the cracks. The upstairs was hand-hewn shakes over poles for a roof and COLD!

 

One winter, for a couple of months we had a man staying with us. And, his head being bald, he tried to wrap the blanket around it. As the only light we had were kerosene lamps, the corner of the blanket caught over the chimney of the lamp. It finally went out but not before it guilt up a small stack of soot. Lucky yes, that it didn't start a fire!

We went back to town two weeks after moving up onto the ranch, to sign the papers on the house sale. On the way back to Montana when we hit the hill, it was icy and the truck started to slide. Since we had a load of building material, Al had tied two of the older children on the back of the truck and we had one in the front. I was tired and dozing when Al suddenly said, "You'd better start praying. We're sliding." And a bad curve was coming up. If we couldn't get around that, we would have all perished. My thoughts, of course, flew to the children tied on the back. Fortunately the bank caught and we made it. Whew!

The first year we were on the ranch we bought a tractor, a John-Deere Linderman cletrack crawler and Al decided to plow up some of the meadow. The Bull River flowed between the house and part of the meadow to the south of the house. He put Kenny Hayes to plowing. Kenny was watching the plow and forgot about the ditch at one end of the piece of meadow and drove off into the ditch and the tractor turned completely over. It was a miracle that Kenny wasn't killed.

Later Al decided to plow a stretch along a stretch of Bull River, to the north, across our bridge, when suddenly the back of the tractor went down and even the seat was under water. He came back to the house to get the truck, to help get the tractor out, but got the truck stuck, too. Finally, the next day he decided to chain a log over each track and with this he was able to drive the tractor out on its own power. It was found the tractor had dropped into a beaver hole!

Al planted Canary grass, which grew well in water, and our meadows were flooded every spring, into late July. Haying usually started then on the higher parts. One year Al decided to clear some more land at the far end of the meadow behind the Island (a raised portion of ground situated in the center of the meadow land that was timbered) where there was buck brush. He rented a breaker plow, which has an extra wide deep plow share. Al tied the anvil and some heavy rocks on the back of the plow and finally, for added weight, I stood on it too and he plowed under not only buck brush, but young trees went under it too. Thus he made considerably more land suitable to grow hay.

*****