Marion and Opal Judson

Marion and Opal Judson

Marion and Opal Judson left Washington on the 26^th of May 1922 and came to the Cariboo in two covered wagons bringing with them horses, a cow, chickens, a few tools and seeds for establishing a garden. They had married in 1917. With them was Opal’s eight year old son, Daymond, from a previous marriage, another son Alonzo and a four month old daughter Marjorie. Louis their youngest child was born here. Their original intent had been to go to Battleford, Alberta but had been unable to locate the road. Marion and his brother Matney had been to the area as early as 1913 but had returned to the USA where Marion had enlisted in the US Army during World War I.

Opal drove one of the wagons and Marion the other as they made their way north from the US – Canada border. It took them 22 days to make their way north to Forest Grove. Their first place of settlement appears to have been in a cabin on Biss Road but Marion worked for the Bridge Creek ranch in the late summer and fall of 1922. While he was employed haying the family camped on Exeter Lake until it became too cold at which time they moved briefly into the old 100 Mile road house.

The second year they lived in the vicinity of Beddingfield Lake but the following spring they moved to Bradley Creek where they lived in a tent made from the canvass of the two wagons until Marion could build a cabin.

These were difficult times and everything that could go wrong did. The cow dried up and the chickens stopped laying as soon as it became cold. The produce of the garden and the berries harvested in the fall did not last as long as the winter and by spring they were reduced to eating nettles.

They later had some success with wheat sowing a small area which produced a crop that they threshed using a hand made flail. The wheat was ground in a coffee grinder and sufficient flour was produced to make bread and porridge with the coarser remainder. Yeast was made from potatoes. The potato crop was variable from year to year depending on rainfall and their ability to water. In dry years the crop was considerably reduced.

There was little money available to purchase clothing and shoes with the result that Opal spent her summers barefoot. What little cash they had was from the sale of eggs and meat but this was used mostly to buy necessities such as sugar and flour.

Marion found work whenever he could and worked on the construction of the original store in 100 Mile as well as doing odd jobs for Fred Maude the owner of the Forest Grove Lodge and store. In 1940 and 1941 Marion cut wood for the Pioneer and Bralorne Mine near Bridge River. While Marion was away at Baralore Opal looked after the homestead which included bringing in the hay and taking care of the livestock.

Both Marion and his brother Matney were able blacksmiths but coal for the smithy was hard to obtain. When it was not available they used fir bark.

In the mid 1940s Marion and his son Louis went into the logging business in partnership with Ed Jamieson, Vaughn Dubois and Tom Dunbar and ran a mill at Buffalo Creek as well as at Dempsey Lake. This mill was sold in 1947.

As late as 1954 Opal was still cooking for an eight-man mill crew and Marion skidded out logs with a team of horses until he retired in 1956.

Marion died very suddenly of a heart attack suffered while he was collecting the mail from the Forest Grove Post Office. Opal followed not long after.

Vital Event Death Registration

Name: Alonzo Marion Judson

Event Date: 1975 11 22 (Yr/Mo/Day)

Age: 56

Gender: male

Event Place: Mackenzie

Reg. Number: 1975-09-017596

B.C. Archives Microfilm Number: B13347

GSU Microfilm Number: 2050529

Vital Event Death Registration

Name: Marion Smith Judson

Event Date: 1967 9 9 (Yr/Mo/Day)

Age: 75

Gender: male

Event Place: Forest Grove

Reg. Number: 1967-09-012035

B.C. Archives Microfilm Number: B13285

GSU Microfilm Number: 2033929

Vital Event Death Registration

Name: Lillian Opal Judson

Event Date: 1968 3 20 (Yr/Mo/Day)

Age: 72

Gender: female

Event Place: Kamloops

Reg. Number: 1968-09-004706

B.C. Archives Microfilm Number: B13288

GSU Microfilm Number: 2033941

Vital Event Death Registration

Name: Matney Judson

Event Date: 1985 12 12 (Yr/Mo/Day)

Age: 95

Gender: male

Event Place: Maple Ridge

Reg. Number: 1985-09-020492

B.C. Archives Microfilm Number: B16577

GSU Microfilm Number: 1358017

Matney Judson - Forest Grove ca. 1946

World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918

about Marion Smith Judson

Name: Marion Smith Judson City: Not Stated County: Douglas State: Washington Birthplace: Idaho;United States of America Birth Date: 28 Oct 1891 Race: White Roll: 1991537 DraftBoard: 0

World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918

about Matney L Judson

Name: Matney L Judson City: Not Stated County: Okanogan State: Washington Birthplace: Washington;United States of America Birth Date: 5 Mar 1890 Race: Caucasian (White) Roll: 1991725 DraftBoard: 0

1910 United States Federal Census

about Matney Judson

Vital Event Death Registration

Name: Noble Roger Judson

Event Date: 1931 9 27 (Yr/Mo/Day)

Age: 80

Gender: male

Event Place: Forest Grove

Reg. Number: 1931-09-465500

B.C. Archives Microfilm Number: B13143

GSU Microfilm Number: 1952654

Washington Births, 1907-1919

about William Judson

1900 United States Federal Census

about Lilian Opal Hoover

Vital Event Death Registration

Name: Daymond Lee Morris

Event Date: 1976 3 12 (Yr/Mo/Day)

Age: 62

Gender: male

Event Place: Forest Grove

Reg. Number: 1976-09-009530

B.C. Archives Microfilm Number: B13352

GSU Microfilm Number: 2050565

Louis Judson

Growing up on Bradley Creek by Marianne Van Osch

The Judson family arrived in the Forest Grove area in 1922.

Marion and Lillian Judson had travelled from Washington with their children Daymond and Marjorie, eight horses, a cow, a crate of chickens and little else.

In spring 1923, Marion filed on a pre-emption along Bradley Creek. He built a log house, using a notch and saddle method, and cleared a patch of land for a garden. Until then there had been little for the family to eat other than dandelion greens, stinging nettles and milk from the cow. A bit of wheat was ground for coffee, bread and porridge and Marion caught trout in a fish trap.

Louis Judson was born on Sept. 22, 1924. When he was three, the family moved to the Blakeburn coal mine. Louis remembered their home and the tramline that passed close by their cabin, hauling buckets of coal to the Kettle Valley Rail Road.

One day, a bucket tipped and spilled coal. "That sure made my mother happy, to have some coal for heating and cooking," he said.

Next, the family moved to Princeton.

"I remember going with my mother while she trapped ground hogs," Louis reminisced. "She would clean them and keep them in salt water until she could cook them.

"One day our neighbours stayed for Sunday dinner. Mother had some chicken but not enough, so she cooked a ground hog. When everything was cleaned up, my dad asked the man what he had eaten. 'Why chicken, of course.' When dad told him what it was, they never came for another meal."

After a year away, the family returned to Bradley Creek. Marion ploughed gardens, branded and castrated cattle and built sleighs.

"When I was nine, my job was to turn the forge to heat the iron," Louis recalled. "It was iron from wagon wheel rims. My dad used fir for the fire and sometimes a bit of coal that he got from the people from the Canim Lake Reserve.

For a while, Marion had a store in a lean-to attached to the house but it didn't work out. He had been told Bradley Creek Road would be the main road past his house, but plans changed and it turned away from the homestead and was rerouted up the hill.

"Besides there was no money and no one to provide backing, so he couldn't buy supplies, Louis explained.

"In 1930, Marion, Davey Jones and Mr. Vandecamp built the Bradley Creek School. It is still in good shape and is now called The Stump Ranchers. There were as many as 17 students at the school and the first teacher was Mr. Edwards. "I fell off a horse and broke my wrist, so I missed part of the year, Louis said. "The next teacher was Mr. Becket and he was a terrible man. I spent so much time in the corner with my hands over my head that I didn't learn much. Our folks took Marjorie, Alonzo, my younger brother, and me out of school for a year and a half until his term was up, he said, adding Bill Brand, Ross Ashton and Archie Roach were other teachers.

"We usually walked the 2 1/2 miles to school. It didn't seem far. There was stuff to do along the way."

"The first time I had an inkling of what wolves were about, a pack of wolves came through our way. They came within a few feet of the house past our place. The people there saw them. They were huge and black. "That day, I was out squirrel hunting and I could hear them howling. That sound really does make the hair stand up on your arms. Funny thing was, for some reason, I couldn't hit even one squirrel that day.

As a youngster, Louis spent a lot of time with Matty Ehart.

"She was just like a boy. She could take me down and sit on me anytime. She used to chase me with snakes. I didn't like it.

"One day, I was going to school and here was this big garter snake on the road. It's mouth was wide open and there were little snakes crawling into it. I managed to pick up two or three and stuck them down Maty's back."

We did some awful things, Louis said.

"For our science work, we studied frogs. We would go out at lunch time and cut their legs off. It amazed me a new leg would regenerate. "Then we just had to stick a straw in a frog and blow it up. Needless to say, we got caught. The teacher made us write 100 times: 'I must not be cruel to dumb animals.' Improved our writing at least."

For his last two years of school, 1937-38, Louis went to Forest Grove. "Doris Jenner was the teacher. She was a good teacher. I thought she was pretty. "She was going out with Gordon Branchflower. I remember Pat Phillips and Burla Bourgeois harassed her so much, she almost had a nervous breakdown. In later years, I saw her in Penticton. She had married my old felling partner. I told her that I had a real crush on her and even though she was in her seventies, she blushed."

Louis said all the children had a great time in the summer. "We all had horses and could wander anywhere we wanted. We'd swim wherever we found a good spot. "This one time, we decided to go skinny dipping at the end of Hawkins Lake. The water is warm where it runs off the lake into the creek. We were all quite shy at first but soon we were all swimming around.

"Along came old man Duschene. He snuck through the bushes and took our clothes. Well, here were all these kids running around, trying to keep covered. Finally, we found our clothes in a tree.

Louis, Marjorie and Alonzo made money by trapping. "We sold the skins to the man at the Forest Grove Store. When we started shooting squirrels, 20 or 30 a day, we shipped them to Little Brothers down on the Coast. We got seven cents a skin. "Actually, the more squirrels we shot, the better the skins got. They had more to eat and there weren't as many tooth marks on them.

When he was 14, Louis went to work for Tom Auld at Auld's mill on Bridge Creek just outside Forest Grove. It was the beginning of many years of hard work in the bush and on many mills both in the Forest Grove area and in the Bridge River country with his father.

Louis had a wide variety of other jobs through the years. He mined for gold and witched for everything from water to copper. He and Archie Hunter caught wild horses at Upper Hat Creek and took them to Vancouver to break and sell.

He worked in a tomato cannery in Kamloops and hopped freights with Archie Stonehouse to work in Saskatchewan. Then it was back to B.C. where they ended up working in the bush on the Silver Skagit.

In 1947, Louis bought a mill and set it up on the Robey property on Bradley Creek.

"I had just got it going when I got hung up on the carriage and cut my foot off. Alonzo drove and I held what was left of my foot. When we got to Forest Grove, Bob Parkins, the first aid guy, put a tourniquet and a pressure bandage on it. It took four hours to get to Williams Lake."When I finally got home, I built a peg leg. First, I walked on my knee for five months.

Louis was back sawing in the bush within five weeks of his accident. Eventually, he bought a mill from Ainsworth that he worked for 30 years. It is now on display at 108 Historical Site.

In 1949, he married Sheila Tomey. They moved into the cook-house at the homestead on Bradley Creek. Louis chuckled about his city girl's first winter in the Cariboo.

"It went to 65 below. It was so cold in the cookhouse that she would wake up with her eyelashes frozen together." -

Louis and Sheila had three children — Donna, Wayne and Bonnie. In 1961, they built a new home on Ruth Lake, where Louis still lives. Their first child Donna May Patricia was born in 1951 in the old log Forest Grove Lodge. Sheila passed away in 2005.

His life has spanned times of unbelievable change — from homesteading to the computer age.

He has kept in step with it all. He e-mails friends around the world, prints his own photos from his digital camera and plans to update his computer soon. Louis cooks, has a large garden and makes great jam and jelly. He has always loved to dance and continues to square dance at Lac la Hache every week.

Louis is a great story teller with many left to tell.