My Haverfield Pilgrimage
The Haverfields: Faith and Family is the result of a lifelong pilgrimage. Even though I did not live near any of my mother’s extended family, I have taken every available opportunity to get to know them from the time I was a child of twelve. This interest has only strengthened since my mother asked me to write her life story shortly before her death in 1999.
In researching the Haverfield odyssey, I’ve also come to realize the significance of my having an English degree from the University of North Dakota. At the time of my graduation in 1966, I had no idea that I had a North Dakota grandfather who had a passion for literature and collected English classics. Genes work in mysterious ways, and I know that Joseph Arthur Haverfield, my lost grandfather, influenced my love of literature from beyond the grave. A gift from Joseph to Pluma was given to me by Mother—a collection of Shakespeare’s love sonnets; I feel that it was meant for me, as I studied and taught literature all of my adult life and still participate in a very life-enriching book club with other retirees.
That I studied in Grand Forks, North Dakota, less than three hours away from where my grandma Pluma and her brother Roy were born and raised, and where Pluma met her husband Joseph Arthur, is startling to me—if my mother told me that at the time I was at UND, it didn’t register. I didn’t know this family history at the time, and my travel between North Dakota and Saskatchewan was by Greyhound bus north to Winnipeg and then west to Saskatchewan. I didn’t visit Dunseith until I started working on this family history after mother’s death.
But I grew up knowing the land and the water and the sky of the area in southern Saskatchewan where my two parents were raised as neighbors. And we had traveled to visit our Haverfield family in Oregon many times during my childhood, so these feelings of connection were always strong between my parents’ children and their extended families, both the Andersons and the Haverfields.
In researching the Haverfield odyssey, I’ve also come to realize the significance of my having an English degree from the University of North Dakota. At the time of my graduation in 1966, I had no idea that I had a North Dakota grandfather who had a passion for literature and collected English classics. Genes work in mysterious ways, and I know that Joseph Arthur Haverfield, my lost grandfather, influenced my love of literature from beyond the grave. A gift from Joseph to Pluma was given to me by Mother—a collection of Shakespeare’s love sonnets; I feel that it was meant for me, as I studied and taught literature all of my adult life and still participate in a very life-enriching book club with other retirees.
That I studied in Grand Forks, North Dakota, less than three hours away from where my grandma Pluma and her brother Roy were born and raised, and where Pluma met her husband Joseph Arthur, is startling to me—if my mother told me that at the time I was at UND, it didn’t register. I didn’t know this family history at the time, and my travel between North Dakota and Saskatchewan was by Greyhound bus north to Winnipeg and then west to Saskatchewan. I didn’t visit Dunseith until I started working on this family history after mother’s death.
But I grew up knowing the land and the water and the sky of the area in southern Saskatchewan where my two parents were raised as neighbors. And we had traveled to visit our Haverfield family in Oregon many times during my childhood, so these feelings of connection were always strong between my parents’ children and their extended families, both the Andersons and the Haverfields.
The Limbaugh family (l. to r.): Lela, Wayne, Karen, Verna (with cat), Kay, Judy, and Gary, circa 1959.
My most vivid memories of Grandpa Percy Haverfield—“Gramps”—and Grandma Pluma are from a summer when I was about twelve and I stayed with Aunt Lela and Uncle Wayne Limbaugh’s family on their acreage on the side of Ruby Mountain, a few miles southwest of the town of Enterprise in northeastern Oregon. Gramps and Grandma lived in a fir-covered wood just a five-minute walk down a dirt road.
I was always an outdoors kid and had spent summers with cousins in southern Saskatchewan living the life of a ranch kid—building forts in the coulee woods, riding horseback on the hills, feeding the bum lambs, collecting eggs. It wasn’t too different to spend most of my summer near Enterprise riding horseback with cousin Gary, helping with the hay harvest by driving a small late-1950s Ford tractor pulling a hay rack that Gary and Gramps would stack with stooks of hay, and getting up early to milk the cow, for which Gramps paid me ten cents a milking. (Those earnings bought me a white straw cowgirl hat to wear to the Chief Joseph Days parade and rodeo!)
One day, I was driving up the side of the mountain, and the load must have been too heavy as the front end of the tractor tipped up a bit off the ground. It was scary but I kept on driving, not wanting to be seen as not up to the job in front of my country cousin. Suddenly, I could hear Grandma Pluma yelling at the top of her voice, “Get that girl off the tractor!” She and Aunt Lela, in their cotton house dresses and aprons, were at the lower fence at the back of the Limbaughs’ house, waving and yelling; I could hear them even with the noise of the tractor engine, but Gramps was my boss and he didn’t pay them any mind so I kept on driving, very slowly. Gary didn’t pay them any mind either; he knew who was boss as well.
This memory stays in my mind because at the time it made me feel that Grandma and Lela cared about me but also that Gramps had confidence in me being able to handle this risky job even though I’d never done it before. What I didn’t know at the time was that Gramps was hard of hearing; he might not even have heard the yelling over the noise of the tractor, and he probably didn’t even notice that the front end of the tractor was tipping up.
At any rate, the stooks of hay got loaded onto the hayrack, driven to a neighbor who was purchasing them for winter feed for his livestock, and stacked in the neighbor’s barn. I was proud of my part in that and won the respect of both Gramps and cousin Gary. Neither Grandma Pluma nor Lela said anything about it to me, but I expect that Grandma said something to Gramps because that was the first and last time I got to drive the tractor.
I was always an outdoors kid and had spent summers with cousins in southern Saskatchewan living the life of a ranch kid—building forts in the coulee woods, riding horseback on the hills, feeding the bum lambs, collecting eggs. It wasn’t too different to spend most of my summer near Enterprise riding horseback with cousin Gary, helping with the hay harvest by driving a small late-1950s Ford tractor pulling a hay rack that Gary and Gramps would stack with stooks of hay, and getting up early to milk the cow, for which Gramps paid me ten cents a milking. (Those earnings bought me a white straw cowgirl hat to wear to the Chief Joseph Days parade and rodeo!)
One day, I was driving up the side of the mountain, and the load must have been too heavy as the front end of the tractor tipped up a bit off the ground. It was scary but I kept on driving, not wanting to be seen as not up to the job in front of my country cousin. Suddenly, I could hear Grandma Pluma yelling at the top of her voice, “Get that girl off the tractor!” She and Aunt Lela, in their cotton house dresses and aprons, were at the lower fence at the back of the Limbaughs’ house, waving and yelling; I could hear them even with the noise of the tractor engine, but Gramps was my boss and he didn’t pay them any mind so I kept on driving, very slowly. Gary didn’t pay them any mind either; he knew who was boss as well.
This memory stays in my mind because at the time it made me feel that Grandma and Lela cared about me but also that Gramps had confidence in me being able to handle this risky job even though I’d never done it before. What I didn’t know at the time was that Gramps was hard of hearing; he might not even have heard the yelling over the noise of the tractor, and he probably didn’t even notice that the front end of the tractor was tipping up.
At any rate, the stooks of hay got loaded onto the hayrack, driven to a neighbor who was purchasing them for winter feed for his livestock, and stacked in the neighbor’s barn. I was proud of my part in that and won the respect of both Gramps and cousin Gary. Neither Grandma Pluma nor Lela said anything about it to me, but I expect that Grandma said something to Gramps because that was the first and last time I got to drive the tractor.
The Goodrich family at their home in Williston, North Dakota, 1955. Rear, l. to r., Ruth Haverfield (Goodrich), daughter Marcie, son Ronnie, and husband Nathan Goodrich; foreground, son Dennis.
I also spent a couple of summers with mother’s older sister, Aunt Ruth, and her husband Nathan Goodrich, in Williston, North Dakota. I was there to babysit their youngest child, Dennis, as their two older children, Ronnie and Marcie, were no longer living at home, and Ruth was a nurse who worked a full shift most days. Nathan worked for an electricity company.
During my growing-up years, we visited Mother’s family, but only if Dad made the effort to drive us to see them. I don’t think that any of her siblings came to visit us, except that Ruth came once on the special occasion of bringing Grandma Pluma and her long-lost sister Lucretia up from Williston, North Dakota, to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to see Mother.
But in our adult years there were several Haverfield family reunions. Lela and her family organized a few of them at her Oregon home or at nearby Wallowa Lake. On my mother’s 80th birthday, I invited all of her living siblings to stay at a cottage at Leavenworth, Washington, to help her celebrate; it turned out to be her brother Bob and his wife Bea’s 50th wedding anniversary, so we celebrated their marriage as well. There was also a Haverfield reunion in High River, Alberta, Percy’s last home where he lived with his second wife Mary; another at the home of one of Mother’s cousins (Donald Haverfield, son of Ralph Haverfield) near Kalispell, Montana; and one to celebrate Percy’s brother Burton’s 90th birthday in Madras, Oregon, in 2007. All of these gatherings made it possible for us Haverfields to get to know the family that Percy and Pluma raised, and to get to know their spouses and some of their children a bit too.
But it was my childhood memories and later visits on Ruby Mountain where I had long talks with Lela that taught me about family connections and prepared me to agree to write my mother’s story when she asked me to take this on. I was interested for my own sense of belonging in the world, and for my children’s, and I hoped that other descendants of Pluma and Joseph Arthur and of Pluma and Percy would share that interest. Those who have include Ruth’s daughter Marcie; Edna Fern’s children Karlene, Dalton, and Cheryl; Bob’s children Kathleen and Bob Junior; and Lela’s daughters Judy and Karen. All have been very helpful in the collection of information about their parents’ lives, and their interest in the project encouraged me to carry on.
During my growing-up years, we visited Mother’s family, but only if Dad made the effort to drive us to see them. I don’t think that any of her siblings came to visit us, except that Ruth came once on the special occasion of bringing Grandma Pluma and her long-lost sister Lucretia up from Williston, North Dakota, to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to see Mother.
But in our adult years there were several Haverfield family reunions. Lela and her family organized a few of them at her Oregon home or at nearby Wallowa Lake. On my mother’s 80th birthday, I invited all of her living siblings to stay at a cottage at Leavenworth, Washington, to help her celebrate; it turned out to be her brother Bob and his wife Bea’s 50th wedding anniversary, so we celebrated their marriage as well. There was also a Haverfield reunion in High River, Alberta, Percy’s last home where he lived with his second wife Mary; another at the home of one of Mother’s cousins (Donald Haverfield, son of Ralph Haverfield) near Kalispell, Montana; and one to celebrate Percy’s brother Burton’s 90th birthday in Madras, Oregon, in 2007. All of these gatherings made it possible for us Haverfields to get to know the family that Percy and Pluma raised, and to get to know their spouses and some of their children a bit too.
But it was my childhood memories and later visits on Ruby Mountain where I had long talks with Lela that taught me about family connections and prepared me to agree to write my mother’s story when she asked me to take this on. I was interested for my own sense of belonging in the world, and for my children’s, and I hoped that other descendants of Pluma and Joseph Arthur and of Pluma and Percy would share that interest. Those who have include Ruth’s daughter Marcie; Edna Fern’s children Karlene, Dalton, and Cheryl; Bob’s children Kathleen and Bob Junior; and Lela’s daughters Judy and Karen. All have been very helpful in the collection of information about their parents’ lives, and their interest in the project encouraged me to carry on.