When Francis Linwood of Toledo married Jerry Grove, she joined a family with a long history in Lewis County, one that started with Laura Omeg, who traveled by wagon in 1889 from Needy, Oregon, near Woodburn with her eight children to settle on Layton Prairie east of Toledo.
The family crossed Pumphrey Mountain in Cowlitz County on a steep and nearly impassable road but managed to arrive safely to join her relatives, George and Ollie Miller, who had settled in the Cedar Creek district, according to “The Toledo Community Story.”
Laura’s 16-year-old son, Lawrence, found work hauling shingles with a team and wagon from a nearby mill to Winlock. The younger children attended school on Layton Prairie.
Only three years after arriving, Laura Omeg died at 44, leaving behind her remaining children: Audrey, Lawrence, Lulu, Nellie, Lester, Ed, Ethel and Walter. She was buried at Lone Hill Cemetery.
Her husband, Henry Franklin Omeg, a German native and retired farmer, committed suicide on Jan. 7, 1911, in Spokane, where the 68-year-old man crawled onto a coal bin in the basement and shot himself in the head with a revolver. A boarder at his home seeking coal to cook breakfast found the body and notified her husband who summoned the coroner, according to The Spokane Chronicle. The article noted he owned farms at Knab and Farmer, Washington.
Half of the Omeg children moved away from Lewis County as they grew older. However, in 1917, Lawrence returned to Toledo and operated a service station from 1922 until his death in 1940. Their sister Ethel was only 17 when she died in 1904 in Reardan, Washington.
Lucinda May “Lulu” Omeg married Emmanuel Layton of Layton Prairie, where her husband farmed, sold shingle bolts and logs, and at one time operated a store. They had 10 children — Eva (Layton) Kirkendoll, Paul Layton, Oren Layton, Mabel (Layton) Hurley, Glady (Layton) Latunnen, Edna (Layton) Edmonds, Verna (Layton) Ryckman, Laura (Layton) Conrad, and a daughter who died as an infant. Lulu and Emmanuel celebrated their golden anniversary in 1943.
Nellie married John Taylor, and they had 11 children, including one who died in infancy. Their children were Cassie Smith; Lena Layton; Rose Blair; Birdie Allie; Charley; Robert; Ben; Mae; Andrew; and Victor.
And it was through Ed Omeg that Fran’s husband, Gerald “Jerry” Grove, was descended. Ed married Mary Schnurstein, one of eight children who arrived with her family in the Toledo area in 1886 and settled on a timber claim 15 miles east of Toledo in the Salmon Creek area.
The Omegs made their home on Layton Prairie, where they raised five children — Inez, who married Chester Martin Grove; Harvey “Pete,” who married Lucille Wheeler and lived at Skykomish; Hubert “Hoot,” who married and raised his son at Granite Falls; Viola McKague who raised a daughter in Hoquiam; and Hazel, who married Emery Wickert and raised four sons in Winlock.
Inez Bertha (Omeg) Grove, who was nearly 88 when she was honored as Toledo’s Big Cheese in 1994, spoke about her life on Layton Prairie. She was born on Aug. 2, 1906, and attended the one-room Knab school until after her freshman year in 1919, when Knab consolidated with the Toledo School District. She attended Toledo High School through the 10th grade and played basketball on a championship girls’ team that included Gladys, Verna, Edith and Edna Layton.
“I can remember an overnight trip that Mrs. Jacoby, our teacher, provided for her students,” Inez recalled. “We went in her Ford car on a muddy, single-lane road that took us to the campground at Spirit Lake, from where we could see Mount St. Helens.”
On May 26, 1923, in Chehalis, she married Chester Martin Grove, who was born at Winlock on Jan. 12, 1902, to Albert Clinton and Edith (Lenz) Grove. His mother was a native of Germany, while his father was born in Illinois. Martin grew up with two brothers, Franklin Clinton and Perry E. Grove, in Mabton, where they lived until 1914. Their infant sister died in 1910.
C. Martin and Inez Grove first lived on Sareault Road and then in Toledo, where they had no inside plumbing, running water or electricity. They moved to Layton Prairie in 1926 and purchased a farm on Hurst Road east of Toledo in 1935. They lived in an old shack until 1940, when they moved to Concrete, where her husband logged and she worked in a restaurant. They saved their money, returned to Toledo in 1946, and built a new house. Martin later worked for the Lewis County Road Department.
They raised three children — Gerald, Maybelle and Marvin — and Inez lived on a farm even in her later years. She and Martin were caretakers of the Lone Hill Cemetery for 18 years, walking miles as they mowed by hand. Their son, Marvin, who had married Carole Deaver and fathered three sons and a daughter, died in 1960 at 31. He was buried there.
“We had an eerie experience on the cemetery job,” Inez recalled in her Toledo Big Cheese interview. “One day, on our way home, we saw a strange car in the cemetery, so we stopped by to see who it was. We couldn’t find anybody until we opened the truck top and found this dead man inside. He had committed suicide, using the carbon monoxide from his car’s exhaust. He left the car running until it ran out of gas.”
They learned that he was a Fort Lewis soldier and father of four children who became despondent after his wife divorced him. Fort Lewis retrieved his body.
Martin and Inez celebrated their 50th anniversary in May 1973 with a reception at Lone Yew Grange south of Toledo. Six years later, Martin died on Dec. 18, 1979, at 78. He was buried at Lone Hill Cemetery.
Inez, an avid gardener and great cook who enjoyed crocheting and doing other crafts, attended the Toledo Senior Center and Toledo First Baptist Church (where the women’s group made baby quilts for mothers-to-be), the Good Idea Club (which she joined in the 1930s), and the Share and Care Club.
Even in her 90s, she made jam and worked the farm.
“Inez is a constant reminder of our early Toledo pioneers whose ‘work was never done’ and is the epitome of a truly remarkable ’90s gal — infused with the pioneer spirit — living each day to the fullest,” Jeanette Ward wrote in the 1994 Big Cheese booklet.
Inez died on Dec. 9, 2003, at Providence Hospital in Centralia at the age of 97. Her daughter, Maybelle, who married Charles McCash and later Harry Basham and then Eugene Dambley, also preceded her in death. She was survived by Jerry, six grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and many great-great-grandchildren.
Like his mother, Jerry also attended the one-room Knab School on Layton Prairie. He was born on March 21, 1924, and graduated from Toledo High School in 1942. He served with the Army’s 41st Infantry Division during World War II. After returning home, he worked for Weyerhaeuser Timber Co.
That’s what he was doing when he met Frances Linwood, who was waiting tables at a downtown Toledo restaurant and later worked at a grocery store. His family lived across the Cowlitz River from the Linwoods.
“We said we should have a boat dock so we could just go across the river to visit, because it would be a lot closer than going around,” Fran said.
After they married in 1951, Jerry and Fran traveled to jobs in her parents’ trailer, the same one in which she grew up.
They followed the logging jobs and, for about a year, rented a duplex in an old two-story house at Tillamook on the Oregon Coast while another couple — friends of theirs with a son — lived in the other half. “You could see the beach from upstairs,” she recalled.
“So Muriel and I would go down to the beach and pick up driftwood and bring it back because we had a fireplace.”
When Jerry had good steady employment as a logger, they decided to start a family. She became pregnant, but the backer of the job pulled out, which was a bit scary.
“But we did fine,” she said.
They returned to Lewis County by 1953 when she was preparing to give birth. The doctor delivered a daughter followed immediately by a son. She had no idea she carried twins, but they did run in her family. Her father had twin sisters, and an aunt on her mother’s side had twin boys.
“I was pretty big,” she said. “They were good babies.”
Everybody was excited. They named the twins Sherry and Larry.
As new lives begin, others end. A few years later, Fran’s grandmother Clara Webb Smith left Portland after 65 years and moved to Winlock where her four daughters resided. She died in Chehalis on June 22, 1957, at the age of 78, according to her obituary in The Sunday Oregonian. She was buried at Claquato Cemetery. Her two sons, Alfred and Henry, lived in Concord, Calif.
She was also survived by 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Next week I’ll share how Frances Grove decided to return to college after raising her children.
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
