Adventist pioneer cht 1

FOUR GENERATIONS

ADVENTIST

PIONEER STORIES

Cutler City and Taft were on each side of the mouth of Schooner Creek, as it drained into Siletz Bay. Drift Creek was just south of Cuttler City. Both creeks as well as the Siletz River formed Siletz Bay. All of this is now called Lincoln City, in Lincoln County, a hundred miles down the coast of Oregon.

Dad was one of the first young men on Drift Creek to have a car – a Model T. It was in his second car, a 1926 Model A, while parked by Siletz Bay near Cutler City, that dad asked my mother, Doris Willis, then only sixteen, to marry him. Dad was twenty-one. Mom told him “She couldn’t marry a non-Adventist and would never marry anyone that smoked and went to movies.”

Dad was born an Adventist, but wasn’t living it. Neither was his older brother, Francis, nor his half-brothers, Raymond, Roy and Robert Ring. However, years later, Raymond did become a practicing member of the church. Dad had a choice to make, and he chose Mom. I never saw or heard that he ever broke that promise to her. If ever there was a Godly man, dad was it. He was always faithful to her and the church.

Both sides of my family were 3^rd generation Seventh-Day Adventists. My two brothers, two sisters and I and my twenty four cousins made the 4^th. It wasn’t a question. It just was. We had no say in the matter.

I don’t know when, or now both families became Seventh Day Adventist, but great grandpa George Parmeles’ brother, Rufus Parmele, was the president of the Florida Conference of SDA’s. His wife was a surgeon and helped start the Florida Adventist Hospital. Ellen White, the one most responsible for founding the Seventh Day Adventist church, was alive until 1915. They all would have known her. They may have heard her speak at camp meeting, as they nearly always went. I do know that most of the Adventist visiting preachers always stayed with the Parmeles for weekends. Elder Pickhams’ wife was a cousin to Edgar Parmeles’ wife, Ruby. He taught at Laurelwood Academy when I went there in 1954 – 1957.

George and Nannie Parmele had six children. Hoyt was born in 1878. The only daughter Myrtle was born in 1880. My dad’s father, Clarence, was born in 1881, and Edgar was born in 1885. I was told by my mother that there was a son named Seth who died of blood poisoning at the age of fifteen. I looked on the internet, and Seth L. Parmele was buried in the IOOF Cemetery, grave 8, Bay City, Tillamook County, Oregon. It didn’t mention the dates of his birth or death. My mother said he was the second boy. They all remained Adventist until their deaths.

My dad’s mother, Carrie Lockwood, was a neighbor to the Parmeles in Kansas City. Carries’ mother had died a year after her birth, and her oldest sister, Ellie, had raised her. When the Parmeles moved away, Carrie started seeing a few non-Adventist guys her sister didn’t like, and she ended up sending her to live with the Parmeles in Oregon. Carrie and Myrtle were always as close as sisters.

Because so much of ones history stems from their religious heritage, I’ll state what Adventist believe so the reader will understand better the reasons they did what they did. A good example of this is a story written in a booklet published by Lincoln county Historical Society called:

It’s the story of her sister Lucille, who came to District 61 to teach school at Devils Lake. She was to stay with a Mrs. Muir’s family near the school. She writes:

“Your school is right there, “the stage driver pointed out. “See that white schoolhouse in the Alders at the end of the lake?” Lucille craned her neck to catch a brief glimpse quickly lost. The stage squished on through a swale filled with skunk cabbages and up a wooded rise to deposit her, a mile farther on, in the yard of a farmhouse in a clearing, hidden from view until the last instant. A thin woman stood on the porch.

“Come on in,” said Mrs. Muir without cordiality. “Too bad you had to travel on the Sabbath.”

The following afternoon, having been given the schoolhouse key by John Muir, she set out alone to inspect her domain, and in part, it must be admitted, to escape the family that threatened her privacy. She had never before felt so wholly under surveillance by the salt of the earth. No, there was no Sunday school, she had been told; Sabbath school had been held the day before, as usual, at the schoolhouse. “They” would count on her attendance next week without fail. It was not an invitation, but an edict! ……..

While the school situation was developing happily for Lucille, the home atmosphere was deteriorating. She longed for privacy, to be a person instead of a teacher the clock around. She felt constrained to weigh her words at every question asked, and to shut her ears at the appraisals she had to hear of those who were not of the same religious faith as the household. It was becoming plain that between the “First day” and the ‘Seventh day” settlers a considerable cleft lay, tolerated or ignored by the one, abraded by the other. Her own religious habit as well as her promise to her mother led her to attend the Saturday service at the schoolhouse: she could hardly have acted contrary to the custom of the family, but she felt dissatisfied. She had seen Helen, her bright star of joy at school, shaking a rug on the porch of her home one Saturday as she passed with the Muirs on the way to Sabbath School, had heard Helen call a greeting, and had seen the family pass by without a glance of recognition.

I won’t be drawn into one faction or the other, thought Lucille that evening, and I won’t hurt Helen……. I don’t know how much longer I can take it. They’re good people, but I can’t take it anymore. I have to be so guarded. How can I do my washing? She won’t let me do it on Saturday, and I won’t do it on Sunday………

Are you beginning to get the picture? Seventh Day Adventist believe in the fourth commandment.

“Thou shalt do no work, neither thou nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor a stranger within thy gates.” Exodus. 20:10.

“For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death.” Ex. 35: 2.

I’ll let my Great Aunt Ruby, who married the youngest of George Parmeles’ sons, Edgar, on March 28, 1918 share her story of the Parmeles. She wrote a chapter about the Parmele history, in a booklet, shortly before her death. I’ll put my comments in italics. The book is called:

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George S. Parmele was born in Illinois in May of 1853. A year before Oregon became a State. In about 1876, George married Nammie Ball. In about 1890, they moved west from Kansas, with their family of four boys and a girl. They rented a dairy near Tillamook City for four years, milking cows, and selling the cream to the Tillamook cheese factory.

When settlers first came to the beautiful Tillamook Indian Valley, they recognized that the temperate climate and the rain were ideal for dairy farming. There was no irrigation in those days to keep the grass green. They needed the rain, which the Oregon coast provided. Because of Tillamook’s remote location, pioneer farmers needed a product that would survive the long trip to Portland, their only market. At first, butter was the choice, but in 1894, a Canadian cheese maker named Peter McIntosh brought the cheddar cheese recipe to the Tillamook valley. The new product made it possible to ship cream from up and down the Washington and Oregon coast by sea schooners to the cheese factory.

George Parmele wanted his own place and in December of 1896, he and a Charles Chatterton came to North Lincoln County, fifty miles south of Tillamook, to look for homesteads.

They found Z. M. Derrick, Lincoln County surveyor, on a place near the mouth of Drift Creek. He helped them stake out some claims. Parmele chose up Drift Creek where there wasn’t much timber because he wanted to farm. The land was sheltered from the ocean and the north wind. George wanted to live where he couldn’t hear the ocean roar. The grass looked nice and green enough for cows to live on. Chatterton went south of Siletz Bay.

George went back to Tillamook and with his sons Hoyt, Clarence and Edgar, drove the milk cows down to Drift Creek. They left the cows to fend for themselves; they were all-dry and didn’t need milking until they calved in a month or two. They all headed back to Tillamook. This time they would bring the household items. They fixed four packhorses with loads of provisions, bedding, dishes and a fair supply of food.

In April, 1897 they all started riding horse back the fifty miles south, carrying all they could, each leading a packhorse. The so-called road was little more than a trail and not to good at that. Some of the streams had to be crossed by boat, if they could find a man with a boat to ferry them across. The horses had to wade or swim. Four times a horse either fell over a bank or was washed down stream. If the Parmeles had lost one each time they wouldn’t have had any horses left.

From Slab Creek to Salmon River, only a trail climbed the hill. It was like going up stair steps; the downgrade was about the same. At Salmon River, George and the boys had to find a man with a boat to ferry them across. The packs had to be taken off the horses and the horses had to swim. This was before there were any coastal towns. The Burton family on Salmon Creek willingly invited them in to stay the night and fed them at their table.

Hoyt, leading a horse and carrying a double-bitted ax, slipped and let the ax fall on his knee, cutting a gash in it. This was a great concern as George didn’t want to lose another son.. Having no disinfectant, they “done it up” the best they could. It healed up fine.

When George and the boys got to Drift Creek, they found that some of the cows were missing; some had fallen into tide holes, and some had gotten stuck in the slough and died.

Parmeles picked a place that they thought would be easy to clear. They felled a big Cedar tree, sawed and spit some slabs and built a lean-to against the stump, using some gunnysacks for one wall. Cooking was done over a campfire. They fixed a Dutch oven, out of a five-gallon can, and learned to bake cow-feed bread in it.

They even fenced off a spot and planted a small garden so they would have food to eat when they returned in fall. When they thought they had the camp fixed so the two younger boys could stay there and care for the garden and the cows, George and Hoyt took the horses and headed back, the fifty miles north, to Tillamook to get Mrs. Parmele and to move the rest of their things.

They rigged up a wagon and a hack and loaded them. George took the wagon and Mrs. Parmele took the hack. Hoyt was to drive a herd of heifers down the coast trail. The parents had to go inland to Grand Ronde with their heavier loads. At Dave Lenos’ place, they headed down the Salmon River. They had a difficult trip; the road was bad because of stumps and the mud holes. The wagon would go down into a hole on one side and the chairs on that side would strike a tree, then down the other side and another chair was broken. On Dave Leno Hill, near Grand Ronde, the horses couldn’t pull the wagon up the hill. Mr. Parmele had to unload half the load and take it to the top, unload it and return to the bottom of the hill. He would load the other half and take it to the top and reload all the stuff again for the ride down the other side.

This happened more than once. The mud was so deep it made the pulling twice as hard. One of the wheels on the hack collapsed beyond repair. George and Nammie had just rearranged the loads by piling more on the wagon and making packs for the hack horses when their three sons appeared.

After a month or more, Clarence age 14, Edger age 11, had begun to worry! Their cow-feed, for baking bread, was gone. They had a lot of milk, as one of the cows had calved and was milking. All other food was gone. It was starting to rain a lot, as it does on the coast. The roof of their small shelter was leaking badly. Their bedding and clothes where getting wet and muddy. They could bath and wash their clothes in Drift Creek, but it was getting cold. They began going down to check the bay a lot to see if their parents where coming.

The salmon were running up Drift Creek, and deer were everywhere, but the boys had no gun or fishing poles. They probably ate lots of salmon berries, a salmon colored berry, which grows all along the Oregon coast. Salmon berries are about the size and shape of a wild blackberry, which also were in abundance. They’re very tasty! Also, there were many red huckleberry bushes growing on stumps and dead logs. But, the season for berries was gone. The garden wasn’t ready yet. They needed food.

About this time an old Indian, named Coquelle Jim, found them and took mercy on them. He began bringing them brook trout and smoked salmon, along with deer jerky. The Siletz Indians were friendly, and the old Indian became a great family friend, the boys no doubt never forgot his kindness, and loved to see him stop by.

I know he would have loved my great grandma’s “Cow-Feed” whole grain bread, I did. The Siletz Indian tribe was placed on a reservation up the Siletz River, about twenty miles inland. Their 4 million acres, of the original treaty, had been reduced to 3500 acres! The towns, the white men were going to build would soon take over Siletz Bay, and the whole coastline of Oregon for that matter. The Indians had never owned land individually. The thought of owning land was very strange to them. They wouldn’t have known what 4 million acres were. If it was time to fish for salmon, they moved to where the salmon were. If they needed more meat, they went where the deer, elk, and buffalo were. So as long as they could still hunt there, the land meant nothing to them.

They never built houses; they lived in mobile tepees‘. They never farmed the land. All the Indians wanted to do was hunt and fish and pick berries etc. It was never a question who owned the land, they all did. As long as they could fish and hunt, the Indian didn’t care who owned it.

It wasn’t until the white man began fencing in the land and building cities, roads and railways that they began to realize what they had given up. The white man began hunting and fishing too, only they made a business out of it. They used big boats with motors and nets. They built dams and covered up the fishing sites, like Selilo Falls on the Columbia River, where the Indians had fished off the rocks for thousands of years. The fish cannery at Kernville was putting nets clear across the Siletz River. They were putting their salmon in cans and sending it all over the world. True, they still had the right to fish and hunt anywhere, but the fish and wildlife were fast disappearing!

Nearly everyday now the boys would wade across Schooner Creek, and run down to see if the folks were coming. Hoyt drove the cattle all night the last night and made it to the campsite by morning. The boys were so glad to see him. The boys told him about their new friend Jim Coquelle the Indian. Hoyt asked, if they thought he would loan them a couple horses. So, off the boys went to find out, while Hoyt got some sleep. The boys came back with two horses and harness. When the horses were ready, the boys woke up Hoyt and they struck out to meet mom and dad. They found them about 20 miles inland on the Salmon River. Helping them with the load at last the family made it to their new home. The boys once again ate their mothers cooking. No more Indians food.

I’m not so sure that the young boys had eaten any meat before. A lot of Adventist were vegetarians. Their prophet and the main founder of the faith, Ellen G. White, had her Health Reform vision in June of 1863. She wrote, about it; in the vision, it was made quite plain that one’s salvation depends on abstaining from meat.

“Many who are now only half converted on the question of meat eating will go from God’s people to walk no more with them”. CDF. pg. 382

This was a very serious statement considering most Adventist had grown up eating meat, now they had to give it up, or they would become like the animals they ate. She wrote:

“A diet of flesh meat tends to develop animalism….. Rendering the mind incapable of understanding the truth.” Counsels on Health, pg. 576.

Many years later, she toned her stance down a little, because only about half the Adventist even tried to stop eating meat. Years later, it was found in some of Mrs. White’s personal letters, to her daughter in law, that she herself had been having a hard time not eating meat.

“Mary, if you can get me a good box of herrings -fresh ones- Please do so. These last ones that Willie got are bitter and old. If you can buy cans, say a half dozen of good tomatoes, please do so. We shall need them. If you can get a few cans of good oysters, get them. (Letter in 1882 to Mary Kelsey White) also found in Manuscript Release MR852.

It must have been hard for a dairyman not to use, butter, milk, and cheese, which she also saw as harmful. She wrote:

“You place upon your table’s butter, eggs, and meat and then your children partake of them. They are fed with the very things that will excite their animal passions, and then you come to meeting and ask God to bless and save your children. How high do your prayers go?” 2T. pg.362

A lot of Adventist were dairymen in those days. Only fruits, nuts and vegetables, were cleared by her to be eaten. So they ate lots of “Parmele Beans“! The Parmeles’ were famous for their beans. The bean was a historic horticultural shell bean of some type. Enough beans were always dried and saved for the next years planting, year after year. There was always corn, potatoes, carrots, and beans. Rutabagas were shared with the cows. They planted nearly all their food. The climate was fairly good for almost anything a person would want in a garden.

Mrs. Parmele was so glad to see the garden. The boys had done a good job. She would have to can it over the wood cook stove, soon as she had a kitchen. They had left the wagon at the beach the night before, and had slept there. With no roads, they had to boat things up Drift Creek. It took a few trips. The wagon was brought up with the horses later. No one had to worry in those days about leaving a wagon, nothing was stolen or molested. While returning with the empty wagon Edgar got stuck. He got off the wagon and said, “Here I am stuck with nothing to unload!”

Years later his son would use that story to explain, how he felt the day they elected him president of Parent Teacher Ass. At Laurelwood. He went up front and told the same story saying; “Well, I guess I too am stuck with nothing to unload!” He did well at that job. I know I was there.

As soon as Parmeles could split the remainder of the Cedar tree, into boards and shakes, they began building a one-room cabin with cloth over the windows. They spent the whole winter in that cabin. They took the lid off the cook stove for light at night. Evenings they sang and told stories until bedtime.

They had to milk the cows in makeshift stanchions. They made a lean-to to cover up the stanchions and one in front of the stanchions to cover the hay. They made it through the winter okay. They needed a sawmill to cut their own lumber. That would come later.

Myrtle Parmele had stayed in Tillamook working, for her board and room, while she studied for a teacher’s certificate. George felt that what she was doing was too hard for her; and sent Edgar, then only 12, to travel the fifty miles with two horses to get her. It was more important that she help her mother with canning.

I’m sure that George, believed that Christ second coming was so close why waste your time on an education. To under-stand his thinking, the church believed Ellen White was as ”Inspired” as any other bible writer, which they still teach today. Ellen White had said, at a church conference, in May 27, 1856, at Battle Creek, Michigan.

“I was shown the company present at the conference. Said the angel; ‘Some food for worms, some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus. (1T. pg.131, 132.)

The church had been keeping a list of the names of those present at that conference. It was published in 1910, by Mrs. Evelyn Lewis-Reavis. She listed twenty-four living, out of the sixty-seven that attended the conference. I have a copy of that list. Ellen white said, when asked about it, that it was the churches fault that Jesus hadn’t come yet. The members hadn’t spread the “The three Angels Message” to the whole world fast enough! The three angel’s message is mostly that the, Pope is the Anti-Christ, Saturday is the Sabbath and judgment is coming! Better, get ready fast, Sunday laws are on the way, followed by the death decree. She claimed:

“Sabbath keepers will face a death decree if they don’t give up the Sabbath and start keeping Sunday. (EW. pg. 282.)

Sad to say, some Adventist believe you are saved by the day you worship. Ellen White had said;

“The Sabbath was the dividing line between the pagans and the true Israel of God.” EW. pg. 85

The “True Israel of God”, were the Adventist of course. In 1920, there were less than 100,000 members worldwide. The worlds population was about 1 ¾ billion then. Now, in 2006, they claim 12 million members worldwide. The world population now is 6 ½ billion.

There are about 800,000 Adventist’s in the United States today in 2007. Only, half attend church on a regular basis. From 2001 to 2006 over 1 ½ million, world wide, have left the church, still they grow. However, someone figured out that if they had just kept their own children in the church, today there would be 10 million just in the United States. “In the front door, and out the back door“, as they find out the truth about Ellen White. Now the church has many schools, nearly every conference office building is new. They are building like there is no tomorrow! Why? I guess they have given up on Jesus coming soon.

Think about sending a 12-year-old boy fifty miles alone, through wilderness, crossing rivers sleeping at night under the stars, or in the rain. I doubt he even had a gun.

He told Myrtle, “Dad wants you home.” She gave up school and headed home with Edgar. She was 17 years old at the time. She always obeyed her father. All the kids did! Well mostly. Myrtle and Edgar came through a storm on their way back. The tide was too high at Salmon River and they had to wait nearly all day to get across. It was nearly dark when they got to Indian Morris’ place, but no one was home. They slept in his barn. When they got to Siletz bay, the tide was again too high and they could not cross Schooner Creek. They were glad to find the Reed Family and Ralph Winter camped there to fish. The Salmon were running up Schooner creek. Myrtle and Edgar were given something to eat and then ferried across Schooner Creek. The horses had swum it and ran for home, leaving them to walk home. Everyone was home at last. Myrtle helped her mother with the canning, for the winter food supply. She was glad to be home. They lived in that homestead shack for eight months before Mrs. Parmele saw another white woman.

By the next winter George and the boys had built the main part of the house using the cabin for the kitchen --- two rooms down stairs and two up stairs. A large fireplace made of a few rocks at the bottom and cedar shake smoke stack forced them to keep water handy in case it should catch on fire. They used the cook stove to heat with at night. The fireplace was used more for light in the evening. They made small indoors campfires only. They had to close off the wooden smoke stack in the winter to keep the heat in.

Flour was hard to get but Nammie learned to make nourishing bread from middling’s (a stock feed) and milk. I am sure she had a small hand grain grinder, as any cow feed I ever ate was pretty coarse and full of sheaf. It was no doubt sifted out. It was good old “Parmele Bread“. I loved it! Twenty years ago, I was at church potluck meal, after church, and I saw some bread that looked like Parmele bread. I took some and it was! I looked around wondering who had made it. It was Jane Strode, daughter of Ruby Parmele. Jane died in 2004 at the age of 85, leaving her husband Earl Strode and a daughter Linda Rhodes. It was good to talk to her. I had not seen her in 20 years. I see her brother Earl Parmele some. Earl Parmele lives in Mapine, Oregon. He married Eola Stephens they had one girl, Earlene, and three boys, Gary, Joe and Tom. Tom died in 2004, he left a wife Ruby, a daughter Magen, and a son Trevor, they live in Canada.

One of Parmeles calves died. They thought they should save the hide, and Clarence went down to the tideland to skin it, taking their little dog with him. As Clarence was returning with the hide, a cougar started following him. Repeatedly the little dog nipped the cougars heels, the cougar jumped toward Clarence. Clarence would not give up the hide. Clarence started yelling! The family all came running to see what the trouble was. When the cougar saw he was out numbered he took to the brush. The cougar ate the remains of the calf that night. His tracks measured eight inches across. He must have been eight feet from the tip of his tail to his nose.

Clarence, Myrtle and Edgar went sixteen miles up the Siletz River and over the hill to visit a family who wanted a beehive from Parmeles. Starting early in the morning the two boys rowed and Myrtle sat in the back and guided the boat.

The tide turned before they got halfway; rowing became like up hill pulling. Afternoon came before they reached the boat landing. Clarence agreed to take the hive of bees on his back to the people and then come right back. Myrtle and Edgar waited at the boat landing.

A bachelor lived across the river, and Edgar went to visit him. The man fixed sandwiches for Edgar to take back, but Myrtle would not eat hers. It may have had meat in it. So, Edgar ate hers too.