McDonald Commentary: Hamiltons Helped Shape Lewis County

Students rush into Olympic Elementary School on Salsbury Street in Chehalis. Faithful flock to Bethel Church on Kirkland Road. Hundreds buy meals at the Napavine McDonald’s.

A century ago, the fertile farmland where these structures sit today persuaded the patriarch of a large family from Wise County, Virginia, to settle in the Newaukum Valley. He returned to Virginia and, in 1903, packed the family’s worldly goods into two big boxcars and traveled west by train with his ailing wife, nine sons and one daughter.

“There were nine boys and they each had a sister,” said Clair Hamilton, 90, who was among the  100 or so Hamilton descendants gathered Sunday at the Orchard at Sunshine Hill on Scheuber Road for the annual family reunion picnic.

When people hear the name Hamilton, many think of the billboard on Interstate 5 broadcasting conservative — and at times controversial — messages. But most Lewis County residents have likely met a descendant of William A. and Margaret (Gibson) Hamilton.

Four generations of Hamiltons have been born in Lewis County during the past 114 years. Dozens are buried at Fern Hill Cemetery on Bishop Road, including William and Margaret, who died in September 1904, shortly after the family settled here. She was 47; her youngest son was only 5. Three years later, William, who lived another three decades, returned to Virginia and married Rebecca Leah (Short) Bond, the widow of William W. Bond.

The Hamiltons have fought in wars, served in public office, and raised families on farms in Onalaska, Chehalis and Napavine. They’ve helped shape the community.

William and Margaret’s children were Emmett, Harry, Albert, Nathan, Ota (the only girl), Curtis, twins Frank and Fred, Art and Dennis.

In a June 30, 1922,  Chehalis Bee-Nugget column on Lewis County Rural Topics, J.C. Bush wrote about a presentation by Washington State College President Ernest Otto Holland.

“In his little talk before the Holstein men last Saturday, Doctor Holland mentioned several Lewis County young people who had attended the Washington State College and in speaking of the Hamilton boys said he hoped Mr. Hamilton would send all of his boys to the college. Someone in the crowd familiar with the number of sons of William Hamilton shouted back at him, ‘Can’t be done, Doctor — you’d have to enlarge the school if all of the Hamiltons went.’”

Three weeks later, the newspaper reported that William Hamilton sold 17 head of Holstein cattle to his son, Albert O. Hamilton, who planned to operate both his father’s farm and his own on the Newaukum River.

“Mr. Hamilton is the oldest breeder of Holstein cattle in Lewis County and it has been largely through his influence and the work of his sons that the Holstein business in the county has been put on the plane it is today,” the newspaper reported.

Clair, Nathan’s only surviving son, and Betty Ann Hamilton, Frank’s daughter, who were both born in 1926, described their grandfather as a husky man with a gray beard about 4 inches long. He had a collie and lived where Olympic School is.

“He didn’t like drinking and smoking,” Betty Ann recalled. “The family was pretty adamant on that, and most of us don’t do it today.”

Clair remembered going to the barn with him to milk the cow, and never forgot a visit when he was about 5.

“Going to see him we took the horse and buggy,” he said. “On the way back my mom picked up 

some groceries and there wasn’t room for me in the buggy so she put me on the horse, and the horse didn’t have reins to hang onto. I can remember screaming my head off cause I couldn’t hold on.”

“I helped blow out Grandpa’s candles out at 83,” she recalled. That was in April. William A. Hamilton died June 18, 1933, and his second wife, Leah, died a month later, July 25.

“My folks were taking care of them,” Betty Ann recalled, “and she was holding my hand when she passed away.”

•••

Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.