Rice Timber Culture Quarter (SE ¼ Section 30)

The evidence for this place is not very good, but it makes a nice story. Again this is a product of an active imagination, the internet, public records and some additional research by Sandra Brommer Whalen.

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In the 1911 Atlas of Lincoln County, the road from Fred Mahrt’s place to the Edwall Road has a kink in it that was removed sometime before the late 1920’s. This road would have turned south of the existing road and followed the fence line that goes over the hill just east of the grainary and machine shed on the Prince place. In half a mile the road turned west and ended at what is now the Detour Road at the Edwall Road. Also according to the atlas, there was a house at the corner and the land was owned by Lulu J. Rice.

This land was the timber culture quarter for Jeremiah Rice, who homesteaded a mile to the east. Originally the Timber Culture Act required 40 acres to be planted in trees to get 160 acres of land. Over the years the law was modified to make some exemptions, so only 10 acres of trees would need to be planted for a homesteader. The Timber Culture Act eventually was rescinded due to the amount of fraudulent abuse.

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The land was willed to Jeremiah’s son, Charles, when Jeremiah died in 1898. Charles died just two years later in 1900 and is also buried at Reardan. He married Lulu Jane Crow in 1896 and had three children (Hazel, Floyd, Cecil). Charles may have built, or started to build, a home here, either shortly after getting married or after his father’s death. This home was shown on the 1911 atlas. In the 1910 census there is a Josesph Bowman, his wife Emma or Alvina, and daughter Bessie, living on the Mahrt Road shared by the Fred Mahrt and William Koeller families. This almost has to be this same house.

Lulu remarried George Clother (widower of Jennie Anderson, also buried in the Reardan Cemetery) in 1902 at Spokane. George Clother, age 13, was living with Jeremiah and Sarah Rice in 1887. He would have been a year younger than Lulu. Jeremiah's own children, Charles and Gertrude, are not living with him that year. In the 1910 census, Lulu is again using the name Lulu Rice, states she is widowed and lives in Spokane with her three kids. George Clother lived elsewhere in Spokane. Also in 1910 Lulu, using the name Lulu Clother, is purchasing property in Stevens County adjacent to Thomas Crow. [Could this be her brother or father?] In the 1916 probate documents Lulu is married to Augustus Imhoff and living in Fresno, CA with children Hazel and Floyd. Cecil was in the military in 1920. As of the 1930 census, Augustus and Lulu are living with daughter Hazel, her husband, Aldis Webb, and their son and foster daughter in Long Beach, CA.

At the time of death in 1900, Charles owned “three work horses, geldings, two work horses, mares, one gelding unbroken, one milch cow, three head of hogs, two sets of harnesses, one buggy and single harness, two farm wagons, one bob sled, heavy, one bob sled, light, one fanning mill, one gang plow, one new 18 inch disc seeder, one six-horse drag harrow, one-half interest in a Hodge steel header, one-half interest in a wheat stacker, one-half interest in a McCormick binder and the real property.” The description of the real property does not mention buildings.

The property is in limbo until January 1916. Since Charles died without a will the property passes to his wife Lulu and their three children. Because the children are not of age, they cannot sell the property and neither can Lulu. She goes back to the court to get a court ordered real estate sale. The high bidder turns out to be Gertrude Rice Imhoff, Lulu’s former sister-in-law. She signs the papers as Lulu Rice Imhoff. (The two sister-in laws are using the same last name and both move to California.)

Gertrude quickly sold to other neighbors, Adolph and Edwin Anderson, a few days later. Adolph gave up his claim on the land in 1938.