Descendants of Charley and Hattie Botts

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“We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure” – Henry David Thoreau

Most of what I know about the Botts family migration to the Pacific Northwest comes from Charley’s daughter Alice, who furnished an account of her family to the Ellis County Historical Society for a book in the 1970s. She claims that the family left the state in 1924 because Charley wanted to see more of the country, and that they migrated to Shelton, Washington in a 1922 REO Speedwagon. I also heard that the family travelled in two cars, which is more likely, since most of the couple’s twelve children would have been with them.

I’m not sure exactly how many of their children made the trip with them, although they all ended up within a few hours’ drive of their parents. Mary Ann was married by that time and she and her husband Jack Griffin were in Texas in 1930, so it is likely that they stayed behind and moved north later. Alice married Lem Cooley in Oklahoma in 1926, so she was probably not on the trip. I believe James and his new wife Ella (Daniels) made the drive with his parents. And the rest of the children – Bert, Jane, John, Bruce, Bill, Emmett, Bob, and Frank – who ranged in age from 24 to 3, were likely with them as well.

The logistics of moving such a large family must have been daunting. The U.S. highway system was still in its early developmental stages in 1924, although by global standards it must have seemed quite advanced. Driving from Woodward, Oklahoma to Shelton, Washington today is about 1,900 miles and, driving eight hours each day, would take a little over three days. In the early 1920s, most of the roads the family travelled would have been two lane dirt roads that became impassable when wet, and when the road was good and they weren’t waylaid with engine repairs or flat tires, they would have averaged about 15 miles per hour. The family would have made 100 miles on a good day before stopping to camp at the side of the road. It would have been a miserable trip for the adults, although the younger kids probably had a blast.

I’m not sure which route they travelled, or at what point Charley and Hattie changed their destination from the Dakotas to Shelton, Washington, which is located on the lower western tip of Puget Sound. It seems odd that a family of grain farmers who had never been out of the Midwest would relocate to a town with an economy based primarily on timber and oysters. It must have seemed like a different world when they arrived. During 1916 the family spent a year with Hattie’s family in Christian County, Missouri, where Charley and two of his boys made good money hauling lumber; perhaps he thought they could find work in the timber industry in Shelton.

They only spent a few months in Shelton before moving on and landing in Morrow County, Oregon, where Charley had cousins on his mother’s side. It is obvious to me, having visited both eastern Oregon and western Oklahoma, why Charlie and his family would have settled in Ione. Ellis County looks very much like Morrow County without the rolling hills, and the crops are the same – mostly wheat and grains. It probably looked and felt very much like home, and Charley and Hattie remained in the area until their deaths in the 1940s.

South Dakota
Posted 2/9/2009

Genealogy is like anything else—it’s easy to do, but hard to do well. I’ve always thought that a good genealogist—unlike a mediocre one—is unwilling to assume anything without proof; the skilled genealogist knows that an assumption can come back and kick you in the ass. I got kicked this week, proving once again that enjoying something and being good at it are two very different things.

Charles Botts and his family left Oklahoma in 1924. A cousin told me a while ago that Oregon was not the original destination; Charley had claimed land under the Homestead Act in North or South Dakota and the family was heading that way when they turned west. Another cousin reported that they abandoned the Dakota plan when they learned that winter temperatures there could go as low as forty below zero. I searched the Bureau of Land Management database and, sure enough, found a 1920 Homestead entry for Charley E Botts (the middle initial was wrong, but that happened all the time) for 240 acres near Pierre in Stanley County, South Dakota.

But why South Dakota, and why go there in 1924? I had an explanation for the date—the Homestead Act required that homesteaders improve the land and live on it for five consecutive years before title passed from the government to them. The residency requirement was often overlooked if the homesteader could show that the land was utilized and that the requisite five year period had passed. Charley’s time was running out; he needed to go to South Dakota and work the land before October 1925 in order to gain title. The choice of Stanley County was explained when I found two Homestead entries for a Lewis Botts in Stanley County—one in 1910, and the second for the same date in 1920 that Charley’s was filed. I wasn’t aware of any Lewis Botts in my family history, but Botts is an uncommon name and this could not be coincidental, especially given the proximity of Charley’s land to the acreage claimed by Lewis. I was certain that Lewis was a cousin or uncle of Charles’, and I had several reasons for believing so. Both men had connections to Missouri and Illinois. Charles consistently demonstrated a level of family loyalty that is unmatched within the family today—he stayed close to both his parents until their death, and kept his children close to him until his own death. In addition, Charley settled in Morrow County, Oregon because he had cousins there, even though he had most likely not seen them for a quarter of a century. It was my hope that a deeper look at Lewis would reveal the parentage of Charles’ father James. I spent hours trying to find a connection between Lewis Botts and James Hanna Botts, to no avail.

Then one day I found an online family tree for Lewis Botts that listed his children, including Charles ‘Charley’ Edward Botts, who was born in 1894. I learned that it was he, not my Charley, who filed the claim in Stanley County in 1920, and that I really had no reason to think that Charles Henry had any connection to Stanley County at all. After spending hours chasing down a false lead based on a faulty assumption, I was nowhere closer to the truth than when I started.

So was South Dakota the original destination for Charles and Hattie Botts? Family lore indicates that it was at least considered. Was Lewis Botts kin to Charley? There no real reason to think that they were more than very distant cousins, or that they had ever met. Most people with the Botts surname in the U.S. early in the 20th century were connected to families in Illinois, and many of them also passed through Missouri as they spread out through the country.

The lesson for me in this exercise is that the acceptance of one bad assumption (that ‘Charley E. Botts’ and Charles Henry Botts must be the same person, since Charles Henry may have been heading in the same general direction that Charley E. was known to have settled in) inevitably leads to layers of other assumptions, and a failure to require proof for the first will likely result in a failure to demand it for those that follow. Now that I know this, maybe I won’t be kicked so hard the next time.

Brick walls
Posted 1/24/2009

Several people have asked me in the past couple of weeks why I limited the scope of this site to Charley and Hattie Botts and their descendents. If I knew more about Charley’s father, this site would probably be called the ‘James Botts Family Web Page.’ But read more

Hattie
Posted 1/11/2009

I wanted to post a few words this week about Hattie (Beasley) Botts, Charley's wife, but I really don't know much about her beyond vital statistics. She was born in 1879 in Illinois, the last of nine children born to Calvin Beasley, a farmer from Indiana, and read more

Charles Henry Botts, 1873-1944
Posted 1/4/2009

Charles Botts—"Charley" to his friends and family—took an indirect route to Oregon, moving first to Ellis County, Oklahoma in 1901 from Milan, Missouri, where Charley was born and raised. They left Oklahoma in 1924 for South Dakota but,deterred by reports of sub-zero winter temperatures, turned left read more

Introduction
Posted 1/1/2009

In 1925 Charley Botts moved with his wife Hattie and their twelve children--ranging in age from 3 to 28--to Morrow County, a rural farming county in north central Oregon. They were farmers, laborers, musicians and storytellers who left behind a wealth read more

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