Harry Sidney Simons

       
Special thanks to  Margaret Simons, the source of much of this information.

            Harry Sidney Simons was born on March 25, 1881 in Steptoe, Washington Territory, the son of George Simons and Elizabeth Jeannette Apperson Simons.  Two weeks after his birth, the family moved to the Brent area on the break of the canyons overlooking the Columbia river. Initially they lived with George's brother Frank until they could build a  a small long cabin with an earthen floor.  They lived for about two years in this dwelling until they could build a larger, multiple room log home with a floor.  Harry was the third child born to George and Elizabeth.  His older sister Gertie May had died shortly after birth in California but he shared his mother’s attention with his older brother William.
 

            Soon a sister was born and then nearly every year another sibling was born. Harry must have learned at a very young age to do his share of work both inside and outside the house. He and his brothers learned farmer work at a very young age and by the 1900 census, at age nineteen he is working for his father as a farm labourer.

          Harry married Irene Pearl Carmen, a neighbour girl, on April 17, 1904.  Eventually they moved to Mansfield, Washington and had a son on November 24, 1906, whom they named Virgil. When Virgil was only a few months old Pearl came down with a very sever case of tuberculosis. They were advised by the doctor to move to higher, dryer country so Harry took his young wife to Colville, Washington.  However, eighteen months after the son’s birth, Pearl died. Harry was living near his sister Carrie and her husband, Sam Carmen, who was his wife’s brother. Carrie helped Harry care for his son Virgil.
          
 

            Sometime after Carrie’s first two sons were born, Vernal and Bert Carmen, Carrie divorced Sam Carmen.  Harry Simons and his sister Carrie moved to Wolf Point, Montana to each try to work a homestead.  They had to live on each place for five years in order to establish their claim.  According to Margaret Simons' memories, she didn’t think they stayed long enough to prove up on either one.
 

            It was around 1916 or '17, when Virgil was ten years old, that they moved to Montana.  At that early age Virgil was already helping his father to plough with a team of horses. Virgil and his cousins Vernal and Bert were double cousin and they were raised almost like brothers.
 
 

       During the 1918 flu epidemic Harry’s younger brother Ernie died of the flu .  Ernie and his wife had been living in Oswego, Montana which was in the area that Harry and sister Carrie were living.  Harry later married his brother’s widow, Florence LaLonde.  The marriage did not last long, however, as she was unfaithful.         

      Carrie, meanwhile met Elmer Hanson, they were married and they had a son named Bob.  The land must not have been too productive, or perhaps the families got homesick, because  both Elmer and Carrie Hanson family and Harry and his son Virgil returned to the Washington area.
 
 

            On returning to Washington State, Harry worked for different farmers in the Creston area.  His son Virgil finished high school in Creston.   Virgil met and married Margaret Arkills in 1933.  A year later the young couple moved to the Richland area where they bought land for farming right along the Columbia River. In the winters Harry would live with them and return to Creston to work as a farm hand in the summers. Carrie and her family were living nearby in Sunnyside, Washington and the two families could visit.
 

            The government expropriated the land that Virgil and his family were farming and they had to move. Harry helped them move to Gifford, Washington in October of 1943.
 

            The next summer Harry began having stomach problems.  He went to a doctor in Wilbur and even tried "nature foods" but nothing helped.  His young sister Tootsie (Elizabeth Jeannette), a nurse, came from the coast and brought him to her home in Edmonds, Washington to look after him. She brought him to another doctor who soon found that he had a malignant tumour.  Tootsie brought him to Spokane to the hospital where they operated and found that he was full of cancer.  He passed away November 29, 1944 and was buried in Sherman Cemetery.

Continue reading about the other children of George and Jeannette:

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¹ Richard F. Steele and Arthur P. Rose.  An Illustrated History of the Big Bend Country Embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams and Franklin Counties, State of Washington, Western Historical Publishing Company, 1904, p. 491.

² Ibid.