What were the migrations of the James T. Berry family? To answer this and related questions I have written this brief sketch which is in no way a history of our family. Only enough background is presented to make clear where we were and possibly why. Perhaps other members of the family will write their own recollections. In this way a more comprehensive picture may emerge.²

 

My father, James T. Berry, was the son of Uriah and Elizabeth (Anderson) Berry. My mother, May Holloway, was the daughter of David and Melissa (Blakely) Holloway. Both families lived near Lone Tree, Cass County, Missouri. Their farms were only a mile apart. Pleasant Ridge is only a mile east of Lone Tree and Garden City only eight miles further east.

 

At Pleasant Ridge there is a large Baptist Church and cemetery where many of the Holloway relatives are buried including my great grandparents, Barnes and Ruth (Wallace) Holloway, and my grandparents, David and Melissa Holloway.³ My great grandparents, James G. and Lucinda Berry, are buried at Clearfork Cemetery about four miles north of Garden City. But my grandparents, Uriah and Elizabeth (Anderson) Berry, are buried in Kane Cemetery, Greene County, Illinois. Her parents Thomas K. and Melinda (Varble) Anderson are buried in the Admire‑Anderson Cemetery near Woody in Greene County.

 

First Trip to Oregon

 

Migration was almost a necessity on the frontier. Farming was the main occupation but to secure land families had to move. This was true for the large Holloway and Berry families. David and Melissa Holloway raised four sons and seven daughters. Two of the brothers, Lewis and Ray, and six of the sisters and their spouses migrated to Fox, a village in Grant County, Oregon. All were living there in the late 1890'a and the early 1900's. Uriah and Elizabeth Berry had five sons and four daughters. None of the sons remained in Cass County. Only one of the daughters, Mattie who married Frank Holloway, son of Lawson, (brother of David), remained in Cass County. The rest sought free land or other opportunities in the North and the Northwest ‑‑ North Dakota, Oregon and Washington. One of these brothers was my father, James T. Berry.

 

The migrations of the James T. Berry family began shortly after Dad and Mother were married. Mother and Dad were married at the home of her father, David Holloway, September 2, 1886. The ceremony was performed by A. H. Deane, pastor of the Baptist Church at Lone Tree, Missouri. Mother's diary tells of the event. There were 80 people there for dinner that evening. The next day they went over to the Berry farm where 91 were pre­sent for dinner. They were a popular couple.

 

Mother's diary provides most of the information concerning this period. She started this diary in 1885 when she was 16 years of age and still attending school. The diary reveals that Dad was her best boyfriend. After her mother died she left school to help with the housework, but soon married Dad. She continued the diary for almost five years, stopping Just before their first child, Ernest Lee, ms born in 1890.

 

Father's sister, Rosa Ann Berry, and mother's brother, Lewis Holloway, were married in March of 1887, and already plans were underway for a move to Oregon. This move actually began on May 1, 1887. The party included Uncle Will and Aunt Ellen (Holloway) Barnard, Uncle Lewis and Aunt Rose (Berry) Holloway, and Mother and Dad . Other members of the party are men­tioned in the diary, but none of which I recognize as relatives. Their destination was Fox, a village in Grant County, Oregon, where Uncle Will's brother, Ben Barnard, had preceded them. Likely they took the train to Kansas City and then to Arlington, Oregon. The route was probably through Denver, Cheyenne, Laramie, Montpelier, Pocatello, Goading, Nampa (South of Boise), Baker and Pendleton to Arlington which is about 150 miles east of Portland. To get from Arlington to Fox, it was necessary to "backtrack" about 150 miles southeast but this was the best route ‑‑ a trail made during the gold rushes of 1860s and 1870s. The trip from Arlington to Fox took five days and Mother mentions that she and Rose walked most of the way.

 

Dad and Mother remained in Oregon for about two and a half years enduring all the hardships of a pioneer life. Dad filed a homestead claim which was located about equidistant from Hamilton, Ritter and Long Creek. Their post office was Hamilton at first and later Ritter. They built some kind of a house for shelter and did some fencing, but Dad had to work for others to survive. Mother also did some work for others.

 

In this short sketch it is impossible to dwell on their life here. Mother was never very strong and the hardships were too much for her. By fall 1889 they decided to go back to Missouri. Dad took mother to the train at Pendleton, as a road to that point had now been completed. He went back to the Valley and collected a bunch of horses which he shipped to Missouri a month or so later. It took him longer to go from Pendleton to Fox than it did for her to go to Missouri. They were both happy to be home for Christmas and their first child, Ernest Lee, was born at Lone Tree on January 3, 1890. Mother's diary stopped here.

 

Second Homestead

 

By 1892 Dad and Mother had returned to Oregon. Just why they returned is uncertain. Three events may have been important. Mother's father, David Holloway, passed away in May 1891. Then Dad's grandfather, James Grimes Berry died in December 1891 and Dad's father Uriah Berry, decided to move back to Illinois.

 

Sometime in the latter part of 1891 or early the next spring Dad and Mother, with several other members of the Holloway family, returned to Oregon. The Harrisonville Democrat (18 Aug. 1891) reported that sale bills for J. T. Berry at his residence 31/2 miles S.E. of Lone Tree on August 15th are out." At the time of my earliest recollection, the Barnards, the Lewis Holloways, both Adkins families and the Robert Woods were living in Fox. Later Uncle Ray Holloway, Uncle Wes and Aunt Mayme (Berry) Griffith joined the group.

 

This time Dad claimed a homestead in the upper end of Fox Valley. Bessie was born on this homestead in 1891. However, after Bessie's birth, Mother's health was so poor that they decided to go to California to see if the climate there would be of any help. On September 4, 1893 they started for Healdsburg, California, where Mother's uncle, Arch Holloway, had settled. He and his brothers, Fleming and Joe, all joined the California Gold Rush of 1849. Fleming and Joe returned to Missouri in 1852 but Arch remained in California.

 

Again, Mother kept a very short diary telling of their hardships traveling in a wagon, over roads that were little more than trails. They went south through Burns, and Lakeview, Oregon, crossed the Sacramento River between Yuba City and Williams: then West, crossing the Coastal Range somewhere near Clear Lake, then down to Healdsburg. I have recently driven this route and it takes little over a day on paved roads with a good car. It took them a whole month.

 

The following spring (1894), word reached Dad that someone was trying to preempt his homestead, claiming that he had deserted it. So Dad made his way from Healdaburg to San Francisco, took the boat to Portland, the train from there to Pendleton and then by horseback to Fox. After he had done the required work on the homestead he returned by this same route to California. He then got Mother and the two children in the wagon and returned to Fox. This took another month and they arrived quite late in

the fall of 1894.  I was born on this homestead in 1896 and Arthur in 1897.

 

Stage Coach Station

 

Dad proved up on the homestead in 1897 and sold it shortly after­wards. We then moved to Beach Creek where he purchased a place which included some ranch property and was also a stage coach station. His responsibilities included caring for the stage line's horses and providing meals and lodging for passengers desiring them.

 

Since this was too much for one family to handle, he invited Uncle Lewis and Aunt Rose (Berry) Holloway and their two children Elsie and Troy to join us. They built another house near the station and so the two fami­lies were almost as one. Ernest, Bessie and Elsie rode horseback to a country school a couple of miles away. The rest of us were not old enough for school at this time.

 

In 1902, Dad sold this property and moved to the town of John Day where he had purchased a grocery store and meat market [editor's note:  ad from paper--also James T served as a city councilman. James signed for Andrew Earl and Hattie to get married in John Day]. He also bought a ranch four miles down the John Day River on which to keep the livestock before it was butchered. Uncle Lewis was to care for the ranch while we lived in town where Dad looked after the store. I started to school there that fall. Byron was born at John Day on December 1, 1902. Three months later Dad was in Cass County. The News (Feb. 20, 1903) reported that "J. T. Berry who makes his home at John Day, Oregon is ... visiting relatives and many old time friends ... [in] this city and Garden City. His father [Uriah] was the founder of the latter place and gave it its name." Garden City was organized as a village in 1875 but no record of this meeting has been found.

 

The News concluded that "J. T. will remain in this place until the end of the week." Hence it is probable that he was back in John Day by March 5. Two weeks later Mother passed away on [larch 20, 1903. After that, Uncle Lewis and Aunt Rose moved in with us and the combined families lived in town while school was in session and then we all went down to the ranch in the summer.

 

Return to Illinois

 

In 1904 Dad went back to visit his mother at Kane, Illinois, and while there married Winnie Seago on December 2, 1904. She was the only child of Jimmie L. and Achash "Axle" (Carrico) Seago and granddaughter of John C. Carrico and wife, Winnie Ann Van Meter. Thus she was a first cousin to Christa C. and Nancy Jane (Carrico) Berry's seven sons [editor's note: James T.'s father was the brother of Christa, but no blood relation to Carrico] and three daughters.

 

Winnie was young and ill prepared to mother teenage step‑children. She had never been away frown home before and was very unhappy in Oregon. Therefore, Dad sold the store in 1905 and prepared to move to Illinois. In the meantime, I had been severely burned while lighting firecrackers on the 4th of July and was in bed for over two months, so it was October 1905 before we could get away. While none of us really appreciated our step­mother, I am also sure that had we not moved to Illinois, we would probably have grown up with few, if any of us, finishing high school.

 

Our long railroad trip to Illinois was tiresome ant uneventful. Uncle Lewis took us to the end of the narrow gauge railroad which was slowly building from Baker to Prairie City. As I recall, we boarded it at a little place called Tipton. To us who hat never seen a train, it was quite an experience, but it was really not much of a train. There was one passenger coach and the train often stopped to load on wood for the engine. We had one fairly steep mountain to cross. Travel was so slow up this mountain that the men and boys would get off and walk beside the train. Since I was still on crutches from my accident, I could only watch from the window. At Baker we got on the Oregon Shortline, later purchased by the Union Pacific. Compared to stage coaches, trains were fast. Still it took us four days to travel to St. Louis. We were in coaches all the way so everyone was completely exhausted by the time we arrived.

 

In Illinois we moved directly to the Seago farm which was six miles west of Kane and nine from Jerseyville. Dad farmed this place for five or six years. The Seago farm consisted of about 320 acres of fairly poor farm land, which had actually been much better earlier, but which was rapidly becoming exhausted. At least a third of the property was in bluegrass pasture or woodland. Since cattle were selling for 21/2 cents a pound this was not a very profitable sideline. Generally we grew 30‑40 acres of wheat, 50‑60 acres of corn with the balance in hay.

 

The Seago farm also included some "bottom" land about four miles distant, down on Macoupin Creek. This land was very fertile, but it was partially flooded at least once a year. Corn was raised almost exclusively on this land. If the floods came early enough so that a crop could still be planted, everything was fine; but sometimes they came so late that the planted crop was destroyed and it was too late to plant anything else.

 

At first we lived with Winnie's parents, Jimmie and "Axle" (Carrico) Seago. But with two families living in one house, friction developed. Hence, Dad bought land across the road and built a house but continued to farm both places until we moved to Jerseyville.

 

We Go to School

 

As long as we were in grade school, schooling was no problem. The country school was only a quarter mile away and while it was only a one­room school and the term only six or seven months, we were as well off as almost everyone else. However, in 1905 Ernest was 14 and ready for high school. Therefore when school was in session he stayed in Kane with Grandma Elizabeth Berry. But Kane had only a two‑year high school. Hence for his junior year he went to Twin Falls, Idaho and stayed with Uncle Alvin and Aunt Miranda (Griffith) Holloway. Then for his senior year he went to Whipple Academy at Jacksonville, Illinois. This academy was operated by Illinois College as a preparatory school. This influenced him to go to Illinois College. He had already decided on medicine as a profession.

 

Bessie and I both took ninth grade work by special tutoring under the teacher at the country school. Then we stayed with Grandma Elizabeth in Kane for a winter. For Bessie's third and fourth years, she and a couple of other girls went to Hamilton, Illinois. One of the girls taught there and the other was a senior in high school. I took my third year at Whipple Academy and my fourth at Jerseyville.

 

In 1911, Dad sold his farm and his farming equipment and bought a grocery store and a home in Jerseyville. Financially this was a very good move for the next three or four years. However, in that community at that time, practically all grocery business was on a credit basis. After 1914, World War I caused extremely rapid inflation. Dad advertised that he would never increase prices on any goods which he had in sk, and this policy, combined with the large amounts on the books finally resulted in his having to close the store.

 

Go West Young Man

 

There is an old saying that if anyone has ever lived in the West he will never be satisfied to live anywhere else. This seemed to be true in the case of the James T. Berry children. When Bessie finished school at Hamilton she taught in a local country school for one year and then decided to go back to Oregon. She had secured a job teaching the four primary gra­des at Long Creek. After Mother died Aunt Rissa (Mrs. Robert Wood) had mothered Byron for about a year. She was very anxious to see him again. Therefore she and Uncle Bob invited Byron and Arthur to come stay with them. So they accompanied Bessie on this trip.

 

I spent three years in Illinois College, but in 1915 I had to drop out for lack of funds. I had been on my own with no real help from Dad, but inflation was making it harder and harder to get along. So as soon as school was out in May, I headed for the wheat harvest in Kansas. Then in September I went on out to Oregon. Bessie had secured a job for me in the Long Creek School. I taught the upper four grades and she had the four lower ones. School was only for eight months, so as soon as the term was over, the last of April, I went over to Fox and taught the next eight months in a one‑room summer school. Since this school was out by Christmas I returned to Illinois College for my last semester.

 

World War I Calls

 

When I graduated from Illinois College in the spring of 1917, many college students were enlisting. I wanted to enlist, but Dad talked me out of it. Therefore I went back to Twin Falls and worked on a farm for the summer. Then I went up to Washtucna, Washington where I had secured a teaching job. But because the pressure to enlist kept getting heavier, I resigned and went to Portland and enlisted in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. For special training I was sent to Palo Alto, California, then to Washington, D. C.; to Richmond, Virginia; to Camp Humphries, Virginia; and finally to Des Moines, Iowa. In the meantime I had been commissioned a Second Lieutenant. We were ready to go across when Armistice was declared, November 11, 1918. The war was over.

 

We Settle Down in the West

 

After the war was over the James T. Berry family settles in the west ‑‑ mainly around Twin Falls, Idaho.

 

Arthur and Leila Harrison were married in 1918 at Twin Falls. By 1923 he had begun his life‑long career with the U. S. Forest Service. They had three daughters: Betty (Mrs. Kenneth Roberts) of Boise, Idaho; Margaret (Mrs. Dale Carringer) of Kemmer, Wyoming; and Anne (Mrs. Warren Smith).

 

When I was discharged I also came to Twin Falls and in 1920 started my 25‑year career in the public schools of Idaho, leaving only for graduate work in Teachers College, Columbia University in New York where I received the M.A. in 1930, and for more graduate work at Stanford University, Palo Altos from which I received my Ed.D. degree in 1943. Then for 20 years, 1946‑1966, I was professor of education in the University of Idaho at Moscow. For the last 12 years I was head of the Education Department.

 

In 1922 I married Lura Ruppert of Rupert, Idaho (a few miles east of Twin Falls). Our son, Dr. Charles A. Berry, is a Dean of the Medical School, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

 

During the war, Bessie had quit teaching and was running a small weekly newspaper at Long Creek, Oregon. But after the war she sold out and came to Twin Falls where she married Oris Cryder in 1920. They had two children: Donald Cryder of Hollister, California and Bethune (Mrs. J. R. Carnahan) of San Rafael, California.

 

After Ernest had graduated from Illinois in 1913, he taught one term in a country school. Then he enrolled in the Rush Medical School in Chicago. Rush later became Northwestern Medical School ‑‑ and is today one of the leading medical schools of the country. Students in Medical School were exempt from the draft. Hence Ernest was allowed to complete his studies and he received his M.D. degree in 1919. In 1920 he married Emma Deuth of Forreston, Illinois, and they came to Idaho to set up his first regular practice near Twin Falls; first at Hazelton, 1920‑28; then at Buhl, 1928‑41.

 

After Ernest did graduate work in public health at the University of Michigan he served as Idaho's Director of Public Health in 1943 and as superintendent of Idaho's State Hospital North, at Orofino from 1943 until his retirement at 6S in 1955. He and Emma lived at Lewiston until his death in 1975. Their three children are Warren E. Berry of Hagerman, Idaho; Hemline (Mrs. Donald Roberts) of Spokane, Washington; and Anna Mae (Mrs. Kenneth Sickles) of Riverside, California.

 

Bryon, the youngest of Mother's five children, was only one year old when she died. He was born in John Day, Oregon and was raised by Aunt Rose and Aunt Rissa in Oregon but he also came to Idaho. For 30 years, 1936‑1969, he was in the public schools of Idaho. In 1934 he married Myrtle Dexter and they had one daughter, Patricia.

 

J. L. came out to Hazelton with Dad and Winnie in 1924. He married Dorothy Lincoln in 1929 and they had three children: Dorothy (Mrs. Jerry Marlott) of Pocatello, Idaho; James L. Berry, Jr. and Janet (Mrs. Duane Goicoechea of Victor, Montana. J. L. inherited the Seago farm in Illinois but he could not sell it until his youngest child was of age. When they went back to Illinois, Dorothy's asthma became so bad that they rented out the farm and returned to Goading, Idaho where they farmed and raised their family.

 

At Hazelton, Dad ran an auto service station for a while and also operated a small farm. Dad was 63 when Winnie passed away at Hazelton on December 29, 1929. Dad lived another 27 years ‑‑ part of the last years with Ernest and part with Bessie. He was 90 when he died December 31, 1956 in Boise and was buried at Twin Falls.

 

These are my recollections of the migrations of the James T. Berry family. As I said it is not a history of our family but a sketch of where we were at any given time and why.

 

Holloway Roots

 

Billy Holloway was the father of Barnes Holloway of Cass County, Missouri. Billy's grandfather probably was John Holloway ( ‑1757) of Cumberland County, Virginia. He married Hannah Spiers and they had a son, William, who married Francis Meador. Probably they were the parents of Joseph and Billy Holloway (see Stevens, Holloways of the South).

 

Billy served in the Revolutionary War, enlisting in Cumberland County, Virginia, in 1776. He served as a private in Captain Fleming's Company, Colonel Dangerfield's Regiment and was then transferred to Colonel Scott's Fifth Virginia Regiment. He fought in both battles of Trenton and the battles of Brandywine and Germantown. Billy was at Valley Forge when discharged in 1778. In 1781 he served a term in the militia. Later he received a pension for his military services. Also a letter indicates that Billy may have become a Baptist minister.

 

Billy married twice but the name of his first wife is unknown. They had a daughter Christine. His second wife was Nancy Ann Sentor of Virginia. They were married in 1809 and had two daughters, Fannie and [???].  Also they had two sons, John and Barnes. Billy and Nancy died in Tennessee.

 

Barnes Holloway (1781‑1847) was boon in Pittsylvania County, Virginia about 50‑100 miles southeast of Roanoke. In 1800 he married his first wife, Sarah McGill, in Lincoln County, North Carolina, which is a few miles west of Charlotte. Their children were: Polly, Sadie, (Sarah "Sallie"), William, John and Fleming. After Sarah's death (c. 1814) Barnes married Ruth Wallace of Blount County, Tennessee About 50 miles south of Knoxville. They lived there until they moved to Cass County Missouri in 1841. Their children were: David, Joseph, James, Lawson, Kum, Jincy (?), Nancy, Arch, Caroline and Robert. Both died in 1878 and are buried in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery.

 

Need text page 33

 

 

PART III

 

SOME FAMILY PICTURES

 

When James Grimes Berry died in 1891 he was survived by two sons ‑­Uriah and Christa and their wives, Elizabeth Anderson and Nancy Jane Carrico. While son John C. had died in 1879 his wife, Rebecca Gibbs, and their four daughters survived.

 

Uriah and Elizabeth had five sons and three daughters who survived childhood. And Christa and Nancy Jane managed to raise beyond childhood seven sons and three daughters ‑‑ the last, Anna M.B. born in 1893.

 

For the first generation we have only one picture of James Grimes Berry. For the second generation we have pictures only of Uriah and Elizabeth and Christa and Nancy and John's wife, Rebecca. For the third generation we have pictures for the 22 grandchildren, most of their spouses, and a few of their children.

 

Why not more pictures of the fourth generation? Perhaps they should be included. But before they are, someone needs to write the stories for each of the 22 grandchildren just as Ray M. Berry did for his family in 'westward Wending," Part II of this booklet. Indeed, I hope to write about my own family for a future revision or addition ‑‑ much as Ray has done. Family pictures belong with these stories and I have included some pictures of Ray's family for this reason.

 

JAMES GRIMES BERRY'S OBITUARY

 

"Bro. James G. Berry [who died at Garden City, Mo. December 17, 1891] was born in Madison County, Kentucky, April 19, 1811; was united in marriage June 10, 1832 to Lucinda Cravens; moved to Greene County, Illinois in 1834; moved from there to St. Louis in 1840 [1856?] and resided there until after the war. Since then he has resided with his children [near Garden City, Mo.]. His wife died Sept. 7, 1873 in Cass County, Missouri.

 

"Seven children were born to them ‑‑ three dying in childhood. Two children survive him, Uriah B. Berry of Cass County, Missouri and Christa C. Berry of Greene County, Illinois. [William T. died as a youth and John C. Berry died at age 38 in 1879.]

 

"Soon after their marriage he and his wife united with the Christian Church but in 1856 both were united with the Methodist Church of St. Louis. After the death of his wife he united with the Baptist Church. During his entire lifetime he was a consistent Christian. His funeral was preached at Garden City, Missouri, the 18th, [of December 1891] Bro. Dean officiating. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." (Name of newspaper unknown.)

 

James was buried north of Garden City in Clearfork Cemetery beside his wife, Lucinda, in the "Berry Lot" where his son, John C. Berry, was buried in 1879 and John's wife, Rebecca (Gibbs) Berry, was buried in 1936. Several children of Christa and John are also buried here.