Spokane 1921 to 1944: Raney Family Memories

James Raney 1911-1921

James Raney at 18 months

When James Raney was a baby in 1911, our grandfather was so proud of him, he'd take him out in a baby carriage to show him off to the neighbors in more than one Kansas town where he and Mary lived. James must have been a typical boy; he led Paul and Denny into all sorts of mischief, which Mary complained about in letters while Whitman was in Spokane in 1920 and she was in Trail, B.C.

And then tragedy struck in 1921 while Mary and baby Mary Agnes were hospitalized in Spokane with typhoid fever. A blister on James' heel became infected and he developed blood poisoning - septicemia we'd call it nowadays. No drugs yet invented to cure it. Hospitalized, ten-year-old James told his father, "Papa, when I get home I'm going to be the bestest little boy." Grandpa wept in the retelling many years later.  James died in agony.  The family was too poor to afford a grave-site at Fairmount. Cousin Pat Raney's information is that Fairmount allowed them to bury him outside the cemetery fence.  Later Fairmount incorporated that space into a place for babies and youth. Mom's story was that the county buried James in a pauper's grave, and I imagined poppies growing around it. In later years Red Charbonneau cast a tombstone for the grave.

James Raney 1911-1921

James' death cast a pall over the family, but they had other children needing their attention, and so they got on with life. They lived in a rented farmhouse in the valley on Broadway (Mom pointed it out of me when I was small) and Mary's parents and siblings lived across a field in another rented house. My mother Geneva was born at home on March 20, 1925. The story is that a couple of neighbor ladies were standing around talking, waiting for the doctor, while Grandma was in labor. She told them, "I think the baby came," and when they lifted the covers, there was my mother.  They didn't cut the umbilical cord, but laid Mom on Grandma's chest, and waited for that doctor. Mom walked at eight and half months and claimed it was from remaining attached (additional blood flow?) that made her so strong.

Mary's father Eugene died in 1928. She remembered him as a kind man, what better tribute.

Eugene Smith, our great-grandfather, 24 July,1850- 15 July 1928, buried at Fairmount Cemetery.

Frank and Mary Raney w/ Geneva at Felts Field c. 1929. Grandpa had already taken on the look we kids would remember. 

In the 1930 census, Frank is listed as a car repairman for a steam railroad (to discern it from an electric interurban). It was the Northern Pacific at the nearby roundhouse. Gus found odd jobs and Louisa and Laura had a boarder, who worked at the pole plant. Imagine piles of stacked wooded poles to be used for telephone and light poles. Mom and her siblings climbed them and then scrambled down as the poles rolled under them. No fence to keep them out, you see.

Our Great-grandmother Louisa Smith and Great-Aunt Laura

Louisa Petitjean Smith's sunbonnet she wore to work in her garden.

This is what my mother remembered about her grandmother's death.  Louisa had cancer. The unlicensed French doctor who "treated" her, diagnosed it as cancer of the spleen. Although the Smiths lived across the field, on Frank's orders Mary didn't visit her mother during the day during her last illness; she waited until Frank came home from work and they went together. The night their grandmother died, the Raney kids accompanied their parents. Mary, stone-deaf now, sat in the living room and whenever Louisa cried out in pain from her bedroom, Frank got up, went in and administered a spoonful of laudanum to dull the pain. It is a memory formed by a six and a half year old. The children slept fitfully in the living room during the death watch and Louisa died during the night.  The Sunday newspaper arrived in the morning.  It must have been a warm November 1, 1931, because the kids hesitantly went out on the porch and spread out the funny papers. When their dad came outside, they thought they'd get in trouble, but he didn't say anything. Mom recalled that at the graveside service she had to go to the bathroom and Mary, whose mother was being buried, had to leave the service and take her behind a tombstone.

Louisa K. Petitjean Smith, 1851 (or 1849) - Nov. 1, 1931. Buried at Fairmount Cemetery, Spokane

Louisa had a small insurance policy and, with their share, Laura and Gus purchased a farm near Addy, Washington, in Stevens County.  With Mary's share, Frank purchased a used auto that seldom worked. 

The license plate on this auto is dated 1929, so probably a visitor's auto. Denny does look about 14.  Geneva on top, Louise on the left, Mary Agnes looking at the camera.  I recall seeing the auto Grandpa purchased in the old shack behind the Nora Street house in the early 50s. It sat there until someone hauled it away, the "garage" was pulled down and Grandpa expanded his garden.

These were very hard years for the Raney family.  The Great Depression didn't start in 1929 for them, but earlier (as it did for many families).  Frank was not the best of breadwinners and Mom recalled that if he didn't feel like going to work, he stayed in bed all day. No sick leave then, so no work, no pay. She remembered Grandma being so worried about money, she'd cry. And when Frank was laid off from the Northern Pacific or fired from a job (as he was from the trolley company when an auto swerved in front of him and he hit it), he would sit and cry.  In late summer to earn some money Mary picked cucumbers (spiny in those days) for 10 cents a bushel basket at a nearby truck farm.

Mary made the kids' clothes, and constructed their underwear from bleached flour sacks. As always, they charged their groceries. When they couldn't pay the rent, the owner allowed them to stay.  Mom remembered meals composed of potatoes, dried beans, eggs and cornmeal mush, most food flavored with bacon grease from a lard bucket. Coffee was the morning beverage, not milk. Mary still baked her bread and must have raised chickens because she often made hardboiled egg sandwiches for the children's lunches. She had a garden.  They lived near the railroad tracks and she never turned away a hungry hobo, frying up a plate of potatoes and eggs, and adding bread and butter and coffee. 

Frank was a Republican in 1916, or at least wrote Mary that year from Princeton, Indiana, while she was visiting family in Kansas, that he attended a Republican candidate's appearance and was mightily impressed.  During the 1920s organized labor lost its strength in a decade dominated by conservative Republicans and business boosterism in both Washington, D.C. and Washington State. Union membership continued to decline during the initial years of the Depression. Frank voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and benefited when the New Deal's National Industrial Recovery Act passed in 1933, giving workers for the first time the right to join unions without fear of being fired. In 1932 the Norris-LaGuardia Act made illegal the "yellow dog" contract, by which a  worker swore not to join a union in return for being hired.  Frank hadn't allowed Mary to vote after suffrage passed in 1920, but in 1936 when he feared Roosevelt might not be reelected, he had her vote. She never let him keep her from the polling booth again. A strong railroad labor union gave Frank steady work and security. And so in 1935 Frank and Mary bought the house on Nora - either $3,000.00 or $5,000.00 (I'm fuzzy there) with a 30-year mortgage at about 3%. During the 1930s and into the '40s, because of hard times, each child and young family moved back home for a time. Except Geneva, the youngest, who remained home until she married.

Mary Raney circa 1942 with sister Laura Smith (May 8, 1888 - Nov 27, 1955)

Augusta Smith (Nov. 23, 1876 - June 11, 1965)

  Gus was run over by a team of horses when he was a young man and suffered head injuries. He had occasional spells of confusion and Mom mentioned in a letter during the war to my future father that Aunt Laura had to rush back to Addy from a visit when neighbors telephoned to say Gus had wandered off. He loved his large draft horses and his herd of goats. After Laura died of a stroke, he spent some time living with Frank and Mary, but developed dementia and spent his last years in a county nursing home converted from a storefront in downtown Spokane.

The family had grown used to Mary's deafness and she'd learned basic lip-reading. Exploring the possibility of a hearing aid never came up. They were rather bulky until late in the 1930s. Sometime during the 1940s Denny bought his mother a hearing aid. The first time she wore it to mass, she wept when she heard the altar boy ring the bell for communion.

Paul Whitman Raney (Feb 14, 1913 - Dec 23, 2005)

  Paul married Grace Bernhardt July 2, 1934. They had five children: Patrick, Larry, Sandra, Paula, and Michele.

Dennis P. Raney (Oct 13, 1915 - Sept. 17, 1991)

Denny married Junice Vivian Moe on December 24, 1937. They eloped, shocking Frank and Mary, but Junice converted to Catholicism and was a wonderful daughter-in-law. Denny and Junice, too, had five children: Jack, Frank, Mary Jean, Geraldine and Kathleen.

Louise Ann Raney Hunter (April 5, 1918 - Sep 14, 1949)

 Louise married Don Hunter about 1937. They also had five children: Nancy, Jimmy, David, Douglas and Dale.  Louise's early death when she was thrown from an auto and it rolled on her, was another tragedy visited on the family. I was about to turn four, but I remember the rosary at St. Al's at night (I'd never been to a church at night) and my grandfather kneeling in the pew in front of me, sobbing.

I wanted to post the photo that Pat Raney found of the Hunter kids, in case Louise's grandchildren haven't seen it.

Mary Agnes Raney Charbonneau  (June  12, 1921 - August 4, 2003)

Mary Agnes married Omer "Red" Charbonneau on June 1, 1940. They had eight children: Charles, Richard, John, Thomas, Gregory, Paul, Sharon and Steve.

Geneva Elizabeth Raney Charbonneau (March 20, 1925 - June 4, 2014)

Mom met Red's cousin Albert Charbonneau at Mary Agnes' wedding. They wrote each while he was in the South Pacific and married on November 20, 1944. They had me, Karen.

I think we'll leave our grandmother sitting on her front porch steps with Tag for company. 

 The house no longer belongs to the Raney family, but their essence remains within its walls.

I invite you to leave anecdotes and memories in the comments section about any family member. Come back again and again as even second-hand memories come to you. It's your family blog. Next we'll journey even further back in time.

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