Page 38 - People & Places In Time

Downtown Bayfield, Colorado in 1910 when my grandparents were readying to leave for Exeter ~ Not a motorized vehicle in site.
Oklahoma to Colorado to Exeter, California?
Bayfield is a small town of about twenty-five hundred people today, I’m sure much smaller at the turn of the twentieth century. Located in a picturesque alpine valley, with the name Pine River Val- ley, about twenty miles east of Durango, Colorado.
The question is how and when did my grandfather Roland Smith, his brother Emmitt and two sisters Carrie and Bessie arrive in Bayfield, eight hundred miles west of their home for twelve or fifteen years, in Oklahoma. They had previously arrived in Creek County Oklahoma, about three hundred miles south west of West Plains Missouri, sometime after 1888. Thomas and Nancy Smith were both gone by 1897. My aunt Carrie married Schuyler Whitney while in Oklahoma, but they had their first son Earnest in 1904 in Bayfield, seven years after Carrie’s parents had passed. Their second son Clifford was born in 1910 in Bayfield, but their third son Leonard was born in Yakama Washington in 1921. My aunt Bessie married John Hays, in Bayfield and they had two children, Vera in 1904 and Earl in 1908.
So, then my grandfather met and married my grandmother, Ruby Eva Moss in 1907 when he was twenty-one. Sometime in 1909 Roland came out to Exeter, California to check out the possibilities and then returned to Colorado. My aunt, Pearl (Smith) Heckman was born in Bayfield in 1910 but my dad in 1914 and aunt Aunt Velma (Smith) Pruner in 1917 were both born in Exeter. I’m still left with one last question; what brought my grandparents to Exeter, California? I know there are answers out there but the people I would like to ask directly are not; and that was once more, my mistake realized too late.
The point is, the Smith family has settled in Tulare County about fifteen miles from the Mitchell family. Both families part of the founding of America. And they have each traveled across the country through two generations to the center of the San Joaquine Valley Tulare County each family following their own purpose.
Life in Exeter is now begun.
Now, I’ve come to familiar ground my grandparents Roland and Ruby (Moss) Smith have settled with their family into a house on ‘B’ Street in Exeter. My Grandfather is beginning his construc- tion business and Grandmother is making a home for their three young children. I’m guessing but could
Grandfather Rowland Smith, Carrie, Emmit and Bessie ~ Siblings orphaned in Oklahoma, together in my grandparents driveway in Exeter.
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