Plaster Homestead Quarter (SW ¼ Section 28)
This article is part of a series. To find other articles, see Some South Reardan Homesteads.
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Samuel Whaling Plaster at age 66 and his wife Jane homesteaded this quarter in 1886. The photos of the couple were taken around the time that homestead was granted. He was born in Virginia in 1820. She was born in 1830 in Ohio. They were married in 1847 in Edgar, Illinois. He served as a sergeant in the Union Army in the Missouri Engineers building fortifications on the Mississippi River. They owned land in Illinois before and after the Civil War where they farmed before moving out to Washington Territory.
File:Early photo of Robinson clan.jpg Emigration is sometimes a family affair. Sam and Jane’s youngest son Albert moved with his parents and married a local Washington Territory girl, Luella Robinson. When her father, James Boardman Robinson and his wife Sarah Ferguson moved to Washington Territory in 1883 all but one of their twelve children followed and who in turn helped populate eastern Washington. (James, Sarah and several of Luella’s siblings are buried at Reardan.)
Samuel’s nephew John also settled near Reardan. John came out west in 1886 after the death of his father in January and his first wife in April. By November he bought the quarter of land (SW¼ Section 2 Township 24N Range 39E Willamette meridian about two and a half miles southeast of Samuel’s homestead. By 1890 he went back to his native Missouri where he married his dead wife’s sister and started to raise a second family of eight kids. In 1893 he sold the land to a Missouri neighbor. Although John did not stay long in the Territory, he did maintain contact with his cousin Albert.
Samuel and Jane were also followed by their youngest daughter, Kate. She married a slick dandy, Leland Westfall. They homesteaded land north of Spokane in 1891 and a year later decided to plat their land that was adjacent to the new railroad yards for Jim Hill’s Great Northern Pacific Railroad. This land became known as Hillyard, WA. Jim Hill was not pleased. He purposefully chose land outside of the Spokane city limits so his railroad yard would not be taxed. This delayed annexation of Hillyard for many years until the annexation agreement specifically excluded the railroad yard. About this same time Leland fathered two children with her niece, so Kate divorced him and moved to Cheney with her parents Samuel and Jane. After recovering emotionally, she decided to move further west to find a healthier place to live. She helped to found the town of Riverside, WA (just north of Omak) and served as Riverside’s first postmistress and married Dan Edwards in 1896.
From The Cheney Free Press, Cheney, Washington, May 18, 1900.
Mr. and Mrs. S. W. Plaster, late of Reardan, for many years residents of Cheney, have gone to Riverside, Okanogan county, to visit their daughter, Mrs. D. J. Edwards. They will reside there permanently if Mr. Plaster's health is improved.
From The Cheney Free Press, Cheney, Washington, June 22, 1900.
Death of Samuel W. Plaster
S. W. Plaster, one of the early pioneers of this section, died Friday evening, June 15, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. D. J. Edwards, at Riverside, Okanogan county, Wash., in the 80th year of his age. He had for several years been a sufferer from diabetes. He passed into a state of unconsciousness on Tuesday and remained in this condition until his death. His faithful wife was by his side.
Deceased came to this county in 1883 from Illinois and settled three miles northwest of Cheney. He sold his well improved farm two years ago and moved into this city. Last summer he removed to Reardan, and only a few weeks ago went to Riverside. He leaves a wife, two sons and three daughters. A. C. Plaster of Reardan is his son.
Mr. Plaster was an honest, industrious and hard-working man, respected by all who knew him. He was a member of the Methodist church.
Samuel Plaster was one of the first burials in the Riverside Cemetery. His wife Jane, daughter Martha and son-in-law Sam Albright, Sr. are also buried there.
In 1889 Samuel Plaster sold the homestead to his son Albert. About ten years later there is this curious set of transactions. In December 1898, Albert sells the land to John Betz for $1600 and then a few months later in April of 1899, Albert’s wife, Luella, buys the land back for $1000. During the intervening time, the Plasters did not own any land in Lincoln County and the Plaster’s address at the time was Cheney—a long way away to be taking care of horses and other livestock on the farm. John Betz is also interesting. He was a Civil war veteran from Illinois involved in the campaigns on the Mississippi River. This may have been the bond with the elder Plaster. He had several sons including two, George and John W., who farmed in the Mondovi area, Albert and Christian who farmed near Cheney, and Edward, who farmed for a while before turning to becoming the president of the National Bank of Cheney in 1908 and had an elementary school named after him in 1957. One son helped the Wolfe brothers, Garnett and Henry, found the Cheney Rod Weeder Company, a farm implement manufacturer and whose rod weeders were used throughout eastern Washington to help conserve precious moisture for wheat crops. There seems to be more to the land transactions than what is recorded with the deeds. There may have been a requirement to not own land when purchasing foreclosed property. Mr. Betz may have needed to own the land for some reason and was willing to pay a price for owning it for three months in the middle of winter. The true answer may never be known.
Over the next few years, Albert and Luella accumulated farm land for their sons, Edwin and Robert Roy. In 1900 and 1901 they bought the Sprague and Franz quarters immediately to the west and east of their homestead property. In 1905 they picked up the Rice homestead quarter just to the north. In 1914, they picked up a quarter and an eighth from Fred Mahrt to complete their Reardan area holdings. They also bought a section of land between Reardan and Davenport.
Edwin Plaster remained on the main part of the land, although he lived on the quarter just west across the road from the homestead quarter. He married Evelyn Dobler, who was the last school teacher at the Locust Grove school.
Roy Plaster married Irma Koeller, daughter of William and Mary Koeller, mentioned elsewhere in these stories. After their marriage in 1915 they lived in the house on the Rice quarter, while a new home was built on the Fred Mahrt homestead quarter. This home was completed in 1917.
This article is part of a series. To find other articles, see Some South Reardan Homesteads.
