Paw Dodson Was Long and Lean/ Maw Raised in Frontier Ways
By BURTON 0. LUM
Tri-City Pioneer
Sunday, 23 April 1961, page 16
Old Paw Dodson was a true type, tall Englishman from that part of England known
for its tall men. He was slightly stooped, but stood well over six feet tall,
lean lanky and raw-boned. His head was well thatched with a shock of graying,
blond hair. His eyes were deep blue and deep set. His nose was long and protruded
out from his heavily bearded face like a plowshare. His arms and legs were long
and sinewy. He generally wore a large black slouch hat set well back on his
head, a blue denim wampus jacket, and a pair of homespun jeans tucked in the
tops of the largest boots made. This garb seemed to accentuate his height and
slimness. James Dodson was well respected by all who knew him. He never drank,
smoked, chewed, or swore. His wife Harriet was fat as her husband was thin.
She was a smiling frontier woman, the mother of their seven children. There
were three sons, Hershel, Ashley, and James Jr., also four daughters, Kety,
Loody, Georgie, and Hatty, the baby. Maw Dodson was a descendant of the first
pioneers of Tennessee. She was well trained in frontier life and lore. She did
water witching and acted as midwife at child birth for the other pioneer women.
She raised their large family according to the early ways of the Tennessee pioneers.
Their children called their father Paw and their mother Maw. The parents never
called their offspring kids, they were “youngins.” In the early spring she dosed
the youngins with molasses and sulfur. All the youngins wore a little cloth
sack filled with asafetida tied around their necks by a string long enough that
the sack could be placed in the mouth. This was worn continually except in the
very warm weather. The Dodsons had come by mule team and prairie schooner to
Wallula Ferry where they crossed the Columbia River. They were bound for the
Horse Heaven Hills to settle down and grow wheat. They had two prairie schooners.
Paw drove the lead schooner with Maw and the youngins. Herchel, the oldest son,
drove the other schooner. Ashley and James Jr. herded the livestock which consisted
of a couple milk cows, two or three riding and driving horses, also four extra
work horses. The second schooner, driven by Hershel, carried seed grain, plow
and harrow, a coop filled with chickens, and a small pen containing a couple
of porkers were fastened to the rear tail gate. When they had driven about 12
miles into the Horse Heaven Hills, they saw a beautiful slightly sloping expanse
of bunch grass cleft by a deep canyon. The caravan stopped. Paw, Maw and the
two older sons mounted saddle horses and explored the bottom of the canyon for
water leaks in the basalt rock. They followed a wild horse trail which led down
the bottom of the canyon to a small leakage of water. They returned to the wagons
and, picking out a route for the prairie schooners, they drove them and the
stock down the horse trail to the water leakage and camped for the night. The
next morning they arose at daybreak and prepared breakfast. Ashley had night
herded the livestock. Paw and Maw, after breakfast, walked up and down the horse
trail in search of more water leaks. Maw had cut a forked branch of a wild willow
for water witching and was trying to locate a better supply of water. She finally
selected a spot. Paw and the boys picked, drilled and shoveled out a basin in
the rock. It soon filled with cold sweet water for domestic use. A small trench
was dug down the canyon a short distance leading the over flow into another
basin for a watering hole to supply the stock. On the beautiful bunch grass
prairie above, the rim of the canyon, they selected the sight to plant their
treasured seed wheat which they had brought so many miles. Paw and the boys
spelled each other and kept the breaking plow going eighteen hours a day. They
plowed and harrowed a sufficiently large field to use their entire seed wheat.
Paw waited for a quiet day and hand sowed the entire field. The boys harrowed
it in. Food supplies were getting low. Paw, Maw and the youngins dressed in
their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, hitched the fast walking mules to the smallest
schooner and leaving Ashley behind to take care of everything, they piled in
and set sail for the new settlement of Kennewick which was located about 8.5
miles to their southwest on the banks of the Columbia River. They made purchases
at Leeper’s General Store and while shopping met Capt. Lum and family. Lum had
a well developed homestead about two miles north of Dodson’s place. Capt. Lum
was a stockman and not a wheat rancher. Dodson improved his place and wheat
farmed it for about three years. his wheat yield dwindled and he had to move
to Kennewick to get his children to school and make a living for his family.
Hershel and Ashley went to Montana. Paw, helped by son Jim, did teaming with
his fine mules and horses. One noon time at school when the children were all
sitting around eating their lunches, Loody Dodson held up her sandwich, showing
it to the other children and saying, “Maw’s brad want good, she had it risin
in the dish pan under the stove where it was warm and little Tricksie, the dog,
slept on it and it didn’t rise like it orter.” The youngins in those early and
rough days would have foundered themselves if they had been served a today’s
school meal.