Notes:
Data source is Randy Campbell. E-mail rtcampbell87@hotmail.com
Alice Sullivan Mumma - (Wenatchee World)
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Alice Sullivan Mumma, a 65-year resident of the East Wenatchee area, died Wednesday, February 6, 2008, at Wenatchee Assisted Living, at the age of 99. Alice Mumma was born February 16, 1908, in Freeport, IL, the daughter of William and Cora Bicksler Young. As an infant, her parents took her to their homestead in Cherry County, NE, where she spent her early childhood. In the 1920s, the family moved to Wood Lake, NE, where she attended local schools. She graduated from Chadron High School in Chadron, NE in 1926. She then went to Chadron Normal School for a few months. She then moved back to Woodlake, where she worked the night shift for several years as a telephone switchboard operator. Later, she worked on several different ranches as a cook/housekeeper. On March 31, 1931, Alice Young married Harry Sullivan at Ainsworth, NE. They moved to East Wenatchee, WA in 1942, where, except for two years in Oroville, she lived the remainder of her life. She worked first in the fruit and then, at Cedargreen Frozen Foods. Later, she started working at the Deaconess Hospital Laundry, retiring in 1970. Harry Sullivan died March 31, 1948. On April 5, 1951, she married Clyde Mumma in Redmond, WA. He died March 31, 1976. At the age of 81 years young, she came out of retirement to take care of her great-granddaughters, Sierra, three years, and Taylor, who was just 3 months old. While many people 20 years younger might have found this intimidating, Alice thrived on the challenge, creating a special bond between these two little girls and herself. They lovingly called her "Gaumma". Lea went to work every day knowing that her daughters were cared for by the best. She left behind a legacy of love and trust that will always endure. Although they were far away, Alice remained close to her grandson and his family. When the joyful child that is our little Gina came along, Great-Great-Grandma had another generation to love. She was proud of Daniel and Rosendo, and their service to America in the Armed Forces, as they served in Kuwait and Iraq with the Oregon National Guard. Alice loved baseball. Her favorite team was the Atlanta Braves, although she was not above watching the Mariners, if there was nothing else on. She and Clyde used to go to the Wenatchee Chiefs games and they would always bring home boxes of popcorn and Cracker Jacks for the grandkids. Thanksgiving! Always a huge feed and naps afterward, homemade pies and jello salad, turkey, dressing and candied sweet potatoes; everyone sitting around the table in her steamy kitchen, all of us happy and grateful to belong. She gave real meaning to the song, "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go…" At Christmastime, there was her famous (and fabulous) applesauce cake that five generations have now enjoyed. She baked one every year, not to mention her cereal candy, fudge and peanut brittle, right up until she was almost 99. Many dozens of her waffle cookies were happily gobbled up by the appreciative staff of the Medical/Oncology unit at Central Washington Hospital, who affectionately referred to them as "Gramma Cookies". Talk about a green thumb! The "back 40", be it half an acre of corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, or just a three foot wide strip behind the house, was a source of joy to her. In her younger years, Alice did a lot of home canning, but we all just enjoyed the fresh tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and homemade jam. Alice also enjoyed reading, especially westerns and Christian fiction. She had a strong faith in the Lord and for many years, was a member of the East Wenatchee Church of Christ. Later, she attended the First Church of God in East Wenatchee. She had many friends from both churches who will miss her greatly. She loved to help others. Being needed was her greatest joy in life. Surviving relatives include her daughter, Vada Campbell of East Wenatchee; three grandchildren, Randy Campbell and his wife, Toni, of Springfield, OR, Lea Glenn of East Wenatchee, and Andrew Campbell of Everson, WA; four great-grandchildren, Daniel and Rosendo Hernandez of Eugene, OR and Sierra and Taylor Glenn of East Wenatchee; a great-great-granddaughter, Gina Hernandez, also from Eugene; and seven nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents; brother, Robert Young; sister, Viola Borger; and son-in-law, Frank Campbell. A Celebration of her Life will be held at the First Church of God, East Wenatchee on Saturday, February 16, 2008, at 11:00 a.m., Pastor Don Hussong and Pastor Will Connor officiating. Private Burial was at Evergreen Memorial Park. Arrangements are assisted by Telford's Chapel of the Valley, East Wenatchee.>
Settling the Sandhills
by Randal R. Campbell
Alice Sullivan Remembered
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Alice Sullivan Mumma of East Wenatchee, Washington, formerly of Wood Lake, NE, died Wednesday, February 6, at the age of 99. She was born February 16, 1908 in Freeport, IL, the daughter of William and Cora Bicksler Young. The Youngs had moved to Cherry County from Freeport, IL, to homestead several years earlier.
William received his 640-acre ranch in Cherry County from the Government because of his military service during the Spanish-American War in 1898, and was endeavoring to raise sheep. Cora, her mother, returned to Freeport to the home they still owned at that time to give birth to Alice, her third child, as she had her son Robert two years earlier. Viola, the oldest child, eight years older than Robert and ten years older than Alice, was also born in Freeport and lived with their father's sister and mother in Freeport to go to school, but spent her summers on the ranch.
The Young home consisted of two rooms: a kitchen/living area, and a bedroom. The home was built of lumber, though due to the scarcity of trees, a few people in the region still lived in sod houses. The ranch occupied 640 acres on the west end of Mule Lake, and is now part of the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge.
In Dewey Lake Precinct, where their ranch was located, only 10 other ranchers were listed on the 1910 census, most of them too far away to be seen from their house. The homestead was 40 miles from the nearest town, a two-day journey that Cora Young made twice a year by wagon to do shopping. She ordered clothing and other needed items from a catalogue, but most of the necessities were homegrown or homemade. Because neighbors were so distant, there were times during their childhood when Alice's only playmate was her brother Robert.
One of the many things Cora Young made at home was soap. According to Alice, her mother used residue left over from rendering the lard, and she would put lye in that. It was a messy procedure to make soap because it had to be cooked, and it smelled terrible. Some people would put perfume in the mixture to make the soap smell better.
In those days, meat had to be cured in some way because there was no way to keep it, and they did not have refrigeration or ice. Meat was usually cured by salting or smoking. The Youngs butchered their own hogs and sheep, but beef was a rare commodity that her dad would get from elsewhere. The liver and similar parts were eaten right away, and were considered a delicacy. Sausage was made into patties and put down in the lard, and the lard was rendered off and used for shortening. To the end, Alice maintained that the best pie crusts were made from lard.
With no means for refrigeration, the Young family used a cellar to store canned goods, perishable foods such as butter, and extra produce from the garden, such as carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and onions. Unlike most cellars today, theirs was not under the house, but was a hole in the ground a little distance away.
It was accessible by a ladder, and one of the kids would go down and fetch whatever their mother needed. The entrance had a wooden cover to prevent anyone from falling in. It also provided protection for the family's stored food in the wintertime. "It needed a good cover," Alice stated, "because it would get to 30 degrees below zero in that area—it was cold! If there was snow on the lid, we moved the lid as carefully as we could, and when we put it back, the snow was still on it to provide insulatio
By digging below the ground freeze line, and by insulating the lid with snow, the cave kept the canned goods from freezing. Even in the summertime, it was nice and cool in the cave, thus helping to preserve their food.
While the Young family did not have an icehouse, a few of their neighbors did. These were small outbuildings built partly in the ground and partly out of the ground. In the wintertime, people with icehouses would go out to the lake, cut ice, and put it in the icehouse. They would then pack it with sawdust to keep it from melting as much as possible through the rest of the year.
The isolated location of the Young ranch meant that the nearest doctor was also 40 miles away, necessitating many home remedies and doctoring. Alice told about a time during her childhood when she fell while climbing a fence and broke her arm. It was a greenstick fracture, where the bone bends, rather than breaking. Since there was no medical assistance available, one of the neighbor men simply put her arm over his knee and straightened it himself. The pain was incredible, as one might well imagine, but there were no ill effects afterward, or loss of function, although Alice said her arm was always a little crooked after that.
Their home on the ranch was sparsely furnished, due to the difficulty of transporting furniture to such a remote area. Her parents eventually sold their home and furniture in Freeport, and her father made most of the furniture they had on the ranch. He built a cupboard in the kitchen and her mother put a curtain over it, and that is where she kept her dishes. Alice remembered her parents having some plates that were real thick and "really, really heavy."
Her father also made the kitchen table, which her mother covered with a tablecloth. Meals were cooked on a cast-iron cook stove, which also provided warmth in the winter. Her mother washed dishes in a dishpan, setting the pan on the table after putting down something to protect it.
The bedroom contained beds for the entire family. These beds had two sides that had spaces that enabled them to fold up in the daytime so the family could have more room, and let down at night for sleeping. There was also a handmade closet with a curtain in front of it that the family used to store their clothes.
Eventually, the community erected a one-room schoolhouse to educate the area children, and all grades attended it. Cora Young would take her son Robert to school by wagon, and because of the distance from her home, she would usually wait in the wagon, or in inclement weather, inside the schoolhouse, to take him home. She had to take Alice with her as well, since there was no one to leave her with, and Alice recalled being annoyed because she was too young to be allowed in with the other kids. Rules, after all, were rules. Eventually she too attended the one-room schoolhouse for a time during her primary grades.
The schoolhouse served as the cultural center of the community, and many social activities were held there. The schoolhouse was the spiritual center of the community as well. Opportunities for church attendance in that remote area were limited. A circuit rider met the spiritual needs of area residents by holding services at the schoolhouse once a month. Alice remembers going to the services with her family, but did not recall the denomination with which the pastor was affiliated. She did say that it was generally the same pastor who came each time.
William Young found it difficult to turn a profit with the sheep ranch due to the sandy soil and inclement winter weather. Much of the time, William Young worked for the Daniels Ranch in his neighborhood. Alice and her Aunt Margaret Young, who had a homestead immediately to the East, used to speak of the severe blizzard about 1913 or 1914 that killed 75 sheep. The drifting snow enabled the sheep to leave the safety of the fold, and were buried in the snow. Her parents and aunt found and rescued some of the sheep, Alice stated, because there were holes in the snow caused by their breathing, but many simply were unable to breathe under the snow and suffocated.
On May 13, 1915, William Young, who had been ailing for some time, died at the age of 50. Alice recalled that the first automobile she had ever seen was the hearse that came to pick up her father's body from the house. "It was noisy and belched smoke," she said, "and Robert and I were so scared that we went and hid until it went away." William Young was shipped home to his native Illinois, and buried in the family plot at the Cedarville, IL, cemetery. Their mother, then 45 years of age, raised the children to maturity by herself.
During the summer, Cora Young would work at a resort on one of the nearby lakes as a cook. People would come to fish, swim, and otherwise enjoy the lake. Since she had no one to take care of the children, Alice and her brother Robert went with their mother to work. One year, there was a man who brought his mother out to the resort for a vacation. That Christmas he sent them a wooden box. On one side, he had scarves and caps for Alice and Robert, and he had filled the other side with hard candy. "He was really a nice man who had never been married and had taken a liking to us kids," Alice said.
Eventually, Robert and Alice needed higher schooling than the local one-room school could provide, and their mother sold the ranch and moved the family to the village of Wood Lake. There the children went to school. Robert graduated from High School at Wood Lake; Alice went to high school in Chadron, where she graduated in 1926 after putting herself through school as a restaurant worker.
For several years, Alice Young lived with her mother in Wood Lake and worked as the night telephone operator there. On March 31, 1931, at the age of 23, she married Harry Sullivan at the Methodist Parsonage in Ainsworth. Their only child, daughter Vada Corine Sullivan, was born in Wood Lake in 1932. The Sullivans worked for the next eleven years on various ranches, Harry as a ranch hand, and Alice as a cook and housekeeper. Their daughter Vada attended elementary schools at Wood Lake and Brownlee. Vada recalls living on the Bernie McGuire ranch for two years in a one-room "shotgun style" house while her parents worked there.
In 1942, the Sullivans moved to East Wenatchee, where they lived the remainder of their lives. Alice worked first in the fruit, and then at Cedargreen Frozen Foods. Later, she started working at the Deaconess Hospital Laundry, retiring in 1970. About that same time, her mother, Cora Young, moved to Rockford, Illinois to live near relatives, and she died in 1949.
Harry Sullivan died December 31, 1948. On April 5, 1951, she married Clyde Mumma in Redmond, WA. He died March 31, 1976.
Her interests include gardening, reading, baseball, cooking, and baking, especially making various kinds of cookies and candy. She was well known for her cookies, peanut brittle, and applesauce cake. Her family remembers her wonderful cooking and great thanksgiving dinners. She also made many sequined calendars for friends and family. She especially enjoyed being a grandmother and great-grandmother.
For many years, she was a member of the East Wenatchee Church of Christ, and after that church closed, she attended First Church of God in East Wenatchee.
Alice never lost interest in the events of Wood Lake and Cherry County after her move. She maintained correspondence with several friends in the area, and took The Valentine Newspaper for more than 40 years after her move to keep up with life in her home county.