By Cary Rosenbaum
I didn't really choose to pursue family history. It kind of fell in my lap inadvertently — but I'm very appreciative now that it did.
As a journalist for Tribal Tribune, I've explored more than 100 leads on story ideas in my career. Some, unfortunately, I neglected to pursue until it was too late — such as stories on Larry Condon and Earl McClung. Others have fallen by the wayside and been picked back up — thanks to my email-hoarding abilities.
This is what put me in Addy, Washington on Sept. 29, 2016. My cousin, Gena Peone, had spoken to a woman who had a story idea she thought to relay to me. Some baseball player who played in the pros and had Colville blood — a David Skeels. It almost seemed like a joke. In the nearly 30 years of my life growing up and later working on the reservation, "Skeels" was never a name I had heard.
I let the email die for a couple years, returning to it one day and reaching out to the return contact that was provided. Somewhat surprisingly, the woman, Arleatta Williams, responded.
At this point, I really had only barely begun exploring my family history. I recall being surprised to learn my great, great-grandmother was Nancy Stensgar. My great-aunt Nancy Michel had occasionally talked about this figure in her life that was important — an uncle Ike. "Ike who?" I would bet it took nearly a dozen times to finally click — there's a connection to the Stensgars here.
I couldn't help but think about my upbringing. One of my best buddies growing up was Jerry Stensgar Jr. I loved my dad to death, but something in me always yearned for a dad like Jerry Stensgar Sr. He inspired me to be the hands-on, engaging dad I am today. There was his dad, a nice old man named Dave Stensgar. There was Dave's other children, Al, Sis and Rob, who all remain friendly faces in Inchelium. There was Mike, one of my dad's best friends. Ryan, an awesome guy who won a state football championship in 1991 and was there volunteering in the fall of 2002, when I was a senior in high school, helping the team prepare for the season. There was James Stensgar, an older kid in my neighborhood that would trade any basketball card he had — including Jordans — for a Shawn Kemp card.
The list goes on and on and on.
With that said, I felt strange that all these years I hadn't cared to find out — or consider (perhaps someone out there told me and it never caught my interest) — the connection.
But there was another connection I was about to make that day in September, which arranged for the meeting of my distant cousins Arleatta and Carol Lee at Merrill Ott's property in Addy.
The house he lives in is an absolute glimpse of the past. The iron gate either crafted or purchased by the patriarch of the Stensgar family, Thomas, or his heirs, is still in existence. The house, which had to have existed since the mid to late 1800s, was in good, livable shape.
Walking on the property and in the house brought forth a spiritual feeling inside me. With every step I took on the wooden floor in the house, I felt like I was retracing something familiar. My grandpa Ed Rosenbaum's grandmother was raised here. She was the belle of Addy, according to a story I read. The blended family of Native American and Orkney Island heritage was one of the the first homestead in the area. Notable leaders and figures often came to visit them, such as Chief Garry and Antoine Plant. Antoine's daughter, Julia, was convinced she should marry Thomas, whose previous wife Yuma of the Spokane tribe had passed, leaving behind three children. They eloped and had a handful more, including Nancy Stensgar-Moore, my ancestor.
During the time Indians were being allotted land, the family really spread out. Many had come to Inchelium, particularly the Meteor area, according to online records. Some went to the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. The matriarch of the family, Julia, long after Thomas had passed and been buried on the knoll on the property, chose to go to the Flathead Reservation. She followed her daughter Maggie, Nancy's sister, who had married into the McDonald family. Julia, Maggie and Donald McDonald are all buried together at St. Ignatius.
Back to the focus of this visit, one of the second-generation Stensgar daughters married George Skeels, a farmer and former football player for Oregon State University who helped the school start its football program. That athlete side comes to play with their son David, who was perhaps the greatest baseball player to ever come from Stevens County and the Colville Tribes. David came near a world record in strikeouts while playing pro ball in Canada in the early 1900s. He caught the attention of the Detroit Tigers, who had a man by the name of Ty Cobb on their roster. They signed him and, before long, put David on the mound to start. He had a bad outing and they canned him, selling his rights to a AAA team. He excelled at that level for many more years.
David was allotted land in Inchelium along with his family. He and his wife and children lived in the Meteor area for a time, before he contracted tuberculosis. He eventually succumbed to the illness in his 30s, causing another portion of the Stensgar family to become distant. David's daughter brought her children, including Arleatta, to the reservation several times, illustrating the importance of home.
She had even visited the Addy property, where her great-grandfather George is buried in a three- to four-person graveyard with Thomas. At least one of the graves was a Native American man, which prompted my brain to think: "Is this something our tribe should know about?"
Because of the distance and ruggedness of the terrain leading up to the knoll, we had to drive on Merrill's property with him to get there. I had included my Aunt Nancy, the oldest member of the Stensgar side of my family, to come on the trip with me. She had been to the grave site years back, she said.
It was a warm welcoming from Merrill and a round of hugs between the reconnecting Stensgar bunch prior to our tour of our family's Stevens County beginnings. Thomas' head stone had since fallen from its cement foundation, but is in decent condition. It tells its own story of how important this man was. It's got markings and inscriptions that suggest he was well respected.
We talked about how great it would be to have a family gathering at the Ott's residence, proposing an idea among family members on pitching in to restore Thomas' headstone. Two years later, the idea hasn't come to fruition and it's there withstanding the elements.
Despite that, I still have a great appreciation for my ancestors. I can't help but think about how lucky I was to tour the house that my Stensgar ancestor was raised in.
I should make this visit a yearly event. Who knows how long it will exist? Luckily, Merrill has been a great owner and is a historian himself of the property and the Stensgar family.
If you are a Stensgar and have the chance, I would suggest looking up Merrill in the phone book and asking for the tour. He seemed to be tickled by the notion that the living blood of a man he's studied was at his front door. He made us feel like he was just as excited as we were.
No comments:
Post a Comment