Grams story, Part 1

It was Kansas in the late 1800’s and there
were corn fields to tend, laundry tubs to empty,
pigs to butcher, and a baby in the chute. Always babies.

John Dodd, a stubborn Welshman, was determined to head west. Oregon? Washington? – he wasn’t sure. He just knew that the Northwest was his destiny.

As the wagon rolled across the prairie, his beautiful wife Alice, three daughters and two sons waved until their friends and extended family disappeared in the distance.

The years rolled, too, -- the twentieth century arrived.

In August 1902, another girl was born.
She weighed 7 ¼ lbs on an old farm scale in a tent in Milton, Oregon.

Her
mother
chose
the
name

Jennie,

after her great grandmother.

It was not long after that the family began to homestead on what would become the family wheat ranch in Touchet, WA.

The small house their dad built sat on the south side of a hill that sloped down to an old rambling dirt road. It lead to the bustling little town of Touchet (pronounced Two She) where the Dodd’s shopped, socialized, and sent their kids to school.

Jennie said she “didn’t really like school.”
Staying home wasn’t any easier, though.
She had her share of work to do and she always “did as I was told.”

Her father taught her to value the rights of others,
to tell the truth, and never to talk back.

She would later remember how her mother made her dresses and how much she loved her little ones.

Not long after Jennie’s ninth birthday her mother gave birth to child number nine. Mother lived only a few days and the baby boy went to live with a family in a distant town.

“I can’t remember too much,” Jennie wrote about losing her mother. “Except that I missed her terribly.”