Before Vermont native Lewis Davis settled west of Chehalis, the land known as Claquato — or high prairie — served as a burial ground for the Chehalis Tribe.
And for 170 years, the Claquato Cemetery on the prairie has served as the final resting place for many European settlers.
First among those were Lewis Hawkins and Susan (Clinger) Davis, who were married in 1829 in Indiana and raised at least seven children, five sons and two daughters. In 1851, the family traveled west on the Oregon Trail. After a year in Oregon City, they traveled north and settled at Claquato, erecting a cabin in 1852 and filing a donation land game the following year in an area referred to in his obituary as Wilderness, in present-day Lewis County. As unrest grew in the region with Native Americans, the family constructed Claquato Fort, a stockade with blockhouses where pioneer families in both Claquato and nearby Chehalis sought shelter for more than a year while still tending their farms during the Puget Sound War of 1855–56.
After constructing a combination sawmill and grist mill, the family forged nails by hand and used the first lumber to build a small nondenominational church that doubled as a schoolhouse. It was completed in 1858, the same year Lewis Davis opened a post office.
Last fall, the Claquato Cemetery purchased the historic building, the oldest standing church in Washington still on its original site.
Within a decade, the community of Claquato grew to 50 residents and featured the mill, homes, stores, hotels, stockade, the church, a livery stable, shops for a blacksmith and a carpenter, Browning’s store, and a bustling stagecoach stop. Davis also operated a ferry on the Chehalis River for a decade. Davis donated land for a cemetery in 1856 when Doctor Spinning’s little daughter Mary died of pneumonia. The 2-year-old was the first to be buried at Claquato Cemetery.
The Washington Territorial Legislature agreed to name Claquato the county seat in 1862 if Davis donated land and built a courthouse, which he did. After the Northern Pacific Railroad bypassed Claquato, the county seat shifted to Chehalis in 1873. The two-story courthouse building later served as the Claquato Academy, a grange and a cheese factory at different times.
The Davises’ second son and fourth child, Austin Lewis Davis, who was born in June 1837 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, married Abbie Paine Gates, and they had five children — three boys and two girls, according to his 1892 obituary. He primarily farmed but at one point ran a store in Napavine. And for a while, he co-owned the stage coach company built by Elkanah Mills with Charley Granger of Olympia, according to information from Curt Cunningham posted on the Historic Pacific Highway in Washington website. He also served as Lewis County treasurer and Claquato postmaster. While traveling the road toward the Big Bottom Valley, Austin Lewis Davis sat on a rock to rest while holding the reins of two horses and toppled forward, dead. He was in his 50s.
One of his daughters, Hannah May Davis, married Isaac Elmer Duncan, an Illinois native, in 1897, and gave birth to five sons and a daughter — Austin in 1898, daughter Zilpha in 1901, Lewis in 1903, Pearley in 1904, Adrian in 1906, and Hewitt in 1908 — but died in her early 30s. A year later, he married Tyndle Marie Morgan, who was nearly two decades younger than him, and they had two more sons and a daughter, Robert, Charles and Mildred. He operated the Curtis store about 1904 before taking over as clerk at the store in Klaber, after the community’s founder, Herman Klaber, drowned when the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic on the evening of April 14-15, 1912. Many of his sons also worked in the hop fields.
It was through her father, Pearley Davis Duncan, that Janice Erickson of Rochester qualified for membership in the Washington Daughters of the Pioneers.
Pearley, who always struggled with poor eyesight, grew up in the Boistfort area of West Lewis County. He graduated from Boistfort High School in the early 1920s thanks to help from his younger brother, Adrian “Jayb” Duncan, Janice Erickson said.
“He was named for her oldest uncle, Levi Adrian Davis, so his real name was Adrian,” she said. But as a child of four, he was so precocious and tuckered out everyone, so they called him “Jaybird.” “So he’s always been Uncle Jayb.”
Pearley’s older brother, Lewis E. Duncan, graduated from Oregon State College and worked as superintendent of the Mossyrock School District from 1929 until his sudden death over Christmas vacation in 1952, according to Buddy Rose with the Mossyrock Historical Society. He was only 50. In February of that year, 200 Mossyrock residents turned out to honor him with a surprise party for his 26 years as superintendent. He also served on the first Mossyrock Town Council after the community, originally known as Klickitat Prairie, incorporated on Jan. 2, 1948, according to HistoryLink.org. The town had been platted in 1891 by Joseph Mitchell, who donated land for the community he called Mossy Rock. The name switched from two words to one in 1895 after appointment of George W. Jerrells as postmaster. The first official town council meeting took place on Jan. 19, 1948, in the superintendent’s office at Mossyrock High School.
“He started delivering school supplies to one-room schools on horseback, and then he built the brick school that they still use,” Janice said, noting she has a newspaper clipping that described Mossyrock as the best school in the state while her uncle as in charge. “He was a very compassionate person. At his funeral, the minister said that he should have been a minister.”
Tragedy struck when Pearley’s father died unexpectedly at 55 in the summer of 1928 at a Portland hospital after thyroid surgery. He was a life member of the Chehalis Elks Lodge and, after moving to Klaber, “he kept a neighborhood store and acceptably filled the office of postmaster for many years until failing health made it necessary for him to retire from business,” his obituary said. He was survived by his second wife, Tyndle, seven sons, and two daughters.
Although Pearley Duncan and Mabel Carlson met each other at high school in Boistfort, they postponed marrying for nine years while he worked on the Lost Valley Road ranch and raised his stepsiblings until they graduated from high school.
“He thought his father would want him to help raise his younger brothers and sisters,” Janice said. “He had three step younger brothers and sisters who were still in grade school and high school.”
Mabel, a native of Crookston, Minnesota, born in the summer of 1907, was the third of Charles J. and Christine (Matson) Carlson’s 10 children with a rich family history of her own. Her father, Charles, was 21 when he emigrated from Sweden in March 1893, going from England to Halifax, Canada, before traveling by train to Minnesota, where he met Christine Matson.
Her parents — Charles and Ingeborg Matson — emigrated from Sweden and Norway, respectively, according to findagrave.com. Ingeborg’s brother, Bjug Aanodson (or Aanondsdatter) Harstad, founder of Pacific Lutheran University, wrote letters encouraging his sister to travel west.
Ingeborg and Bjug had grown up near Harstad in Norway in a poor family of 10 children. After the family immigrated to the United States in 1861, Bjug studied at Luther College and, at the urging of the college president, changed his last name to Harstad, according to the PLU website. After completing studies at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, he founded 17 congregations and three academies in Minnesota and North Dakota before arriving in Seattle. He worked with other Scandinavian Lutherans in the Puget Sound area to purchase the land in 1890 where PLU sits today in Parkland, Wash. He was founder and first president of the private university, which opened for classes Oct. 25, 1894. He wrote to his sister and brother-in-law in Minnesota, describing the mild climate in Western Washington.
“They were happy to give up blizzards in the winter and hot summers,” said Janice Erickson, Christine’s granddaughter. The Matsons moved to Parkland in about 1912.
Their daughter, Christine, who had married Charles Carlson in 1902, followed her parents west in 1919. Their daughter Mabel was 13 at the time. Her father purchased land for a farm on Moon Road at Curtis. He eventually ran the Curtis store for a while about 1920 before moving to Vancouver, Wash., to operate a prune orchard and a gas station. While living in Vancouver, their daughter, Mabel, sang in the choir and served in the Sunday school department of St. Paul’s English Lutheran Church.
The Carlsons then moved to a farm near Toledo before settling in Centralia, where the Rev. Fred Lucas finally married Pearley Davis Duncan and Mabel in the Carlson home on March 15, 1933.
Just as his parents and grandparents had done, Pearley passed on the Davis name to his son, Richard Davis Duncan, who named one of his sons Stephen Davis, who named his son Kevin Davis whose son is named is Davis Duncan.
While Janice didn’t carry on the Davis family name, she kept alive the family legacy.
But that’s a story for next week.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
