Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker
Delany family history, page 192
Sarah Jane Delany, eighth child of William and Catherine (Sell) Delany was born August 11, 1870 at Quakertown, Pennsylvania. She died September 16, 1932 from cancer and is buried in Saltese Cemetery, 15 miles from Spokane, Washington. She married Frank Daniel Walker who was born July 8, 1868 at Beloit, Wisconsin. He was killed by a car hitting him while walking on a road Labor Day in September of 1942 at Yakima, Washington. He is buried beside his wife Sarah in the Saltese Cemetery.
The following information was told by Vera Buckley and contributed for the family history by Margie Hinkle.
My mother, Sarah, with her parents and family came west in a wagon train. They had a cow, chickens, and horses. The oldest of the children homesteaded in South Dakota and Nebraska. Sarah and her sister, Kate, taught school. There were 12 living children in her parents, William and Catharine (Sell) Delany’s family at that time, three children had passed away. There were nine boys and three girls.
Frank Daniel Walker, my Dad, was one of a family of eight full brothers and sisters, and we know of four half brothers and sisters. My dad’s mother died when he was seven or eight years old. When granddad Jonathan Walker married the hired girl, the oldest children left home.
When dad was in his twenties he came west on the railroad train from Beloit, Wisconsin with supplies for the settlers. He stayed, homesteaded and married Sarah. They had a store and post office at Baker, Nebraska. Later they moved to a farm two and one-half miles north of Herrick, South Dakota. Here they had a dairy and sold bottled milk in town, also had a large herd of sheep and other cattle, hogs and grain.
In about 1912 Dad went to Canada. He landed in Pontiex, Saskatchewan, that was at the end of the railway. He leased a large Hudson Bay lease for one hundred years, thirty miles south of Pontiex, Coriander and also filed for a homestead on land joining the lease. We still have the lease, Betty Virginia (Walker) Grant has it now in 1981.
Dad came back to South Dakota and bought up good mares and other work and saddle horses to ship to Saskatchewan. They were still using oxen up there then. He kept some mares and raised some beautiful horses, both work and saddle stock, also grew grain and sheep, cattle and hogs.
There was no way to keep meat, so they would butcher a beef each week and go the rounds, each settler getting fresh meat. Also they put up ice in a shed filled with straw, so we had ice most of the summer. The older boys had homesteads. Ray went back with his father when they delivered the horses. He was about eighteen years old and Ural the second boy went a year later because he had rheumatic fever when Ray left. The rest of us went up on the train.
They never owned anything in Pontiex. We were there one winter going to school and lived in a rented house. They had supplies laid in for the winter. All had just got new clothes, not even worn, the store house was filled with flour, sugar and canned goods. It was a very cold day in January when the house caught on fire and burned to the ground in short time, there was only time to get out. The kids upstairs had to go through the fire, Audley’s hair was on fire but Dad put a blanket over his head to put it out. The closest place to their home was a Catholic Convent, where we walked in just what clothes we could get out. I was home from school as my hands and ears were frozen from the day before, only Richard and Frank Jr. were at school. We were all nearly froze by the time we got to the Convent. We stayed there until Dad could get us clothes from the catalog. Then he and the boys went back to Coriander and mother and all the rest went to South Dakota. Della and I (Vera) stayed at Uncle Emmet Hull’s so we could go to school. Mother and the younger kids stayed at Uncle Orlando Delany’s until school was out, then Della and I stayed there too.
Later after Ray was married things got bad in Coriander, there was no rain so there was no crops. Dad went north and bought some and rented some land right on Lake Jansen. He shipped his cattle up there and sold them at a good price, so he went back to Coriander and bought a neighbors herd, but it was too late in the fall. They couldn’t take the cold weather, got sick and they lost almost all of the herd. It really almost broke Dad.
From there Dad went to a little real frontier town and started a restaurant and butcher shop and had a couple beds for salesmen-to-let, also sold Mobil gas. This town was called Bogend, now called LeRoy Saskatchewan. Dad went back to Coriander, Ural and Frank Jr. had already gone back. Later I went back with Ural when he came for a visit. The next year Frank Jr. went up to visit. He came back with May and Audley (this was on the train. A funny story happened, they were to be woke up early in the morning by a Chinese friend, but he almost forgot – now the famous line “Hully! Hully! Lain, Already Leave!” but they just made it, (this story was remembered by May and Margie).
The next year Ray’s were to visit and the rest came down with him, Richard, Mother, Della, and Viola. We lived there for a few years and Dad, Della, Audley and May went to Spokane. Later the next fall Dad came back to Coriander and then I went to Spokane with him. In the winter Mother, Viola and Dorothy, Ray’s second girl came to Spokane. Dad and son, Audley, had fruit, garden stuff, chickens, they sold at Farmer’s Market in Spokane. This was at Mead, later they moved to Greenacres, where they lived when mother (Sarah) died of cancer. She had cancer of the breast while they lived in Coriander, Canada, she went to Rochester, Minnesota and Dr. Will of the Mayo Clinic removed her left breast. This was before Viola was born. Mother died when she was sixty-five years old, Viola was just over sixteen years old, it was in 1932.
In 1942 Dad was living in Selah, Washington about five miles from Yakima, Washington. He was totally deaf and was walking along the road when he was hit by a car, this was on Labor Day. The car was driven by a nineteen year old man from California. Dad was 76 years old, living alone. He made his own living for there wasn’t any Social Security then. He sold garden stuff, rabbits and chickens. He was buried besides mother, Frank Jr. is buried in the same plot in the Saltese Cemetery, near Spokane.
There is no record of Ray’s death, he just disappeared. There was an article in the paper of a car wreck that killed Alfred Erickson who was with Ray. They said there was another man killed, but no name given. Ray was with Alfred the last time I saw him.
My brother Frank Jr. had a bad heart, also had a bad wreck a short time before his death. He was out marking timber to cut the day before he died. He was going to San Francisco the next day. He was found dead on his bed, sitting on the side and just fell back. He had just bathed and had his pants on and it looked as if he was putting on his socks at the time.
Della died when she was forty-two, she found out she had cancer of the cervix (womb) while she was doing missionary work in El Salvador. We sent her money to fly home. She is buried in Forest Lawn, Yuma, Arizona.
Audley and his wife, Julie, and his daughter, Margie, were on their way to visit in Yakima and Montana when both were killed in a horrible wreck. It’s only a miracle that Margie is alive and no worse than she is after such a shock! They are buried in Willows, California.
Viola Forrester died a month after Audley got killed. She had cancer, she had been sick for seven or eight years with it. She died from cancer of the lung and more.
Sarah and Frank had ten children. Ray married Gladys and they had five children. Ural married Gladys and they had a daughter. Viva died when she was about two years old from pneumonia. Richard never married until he was over seventy, then he married Margaret Miller, a real dear. Her first husband had died six years before she married Richard. She is two years older then him. They had a big dairy which she sold before she came to Yakima from Oregon.
Frank Jr. was never married and died in his 40’s. I (Vera) married Coral Buckley in 1933, their son Ben was born in 1934. She still runs the family ranch of cherries and apples. Ben never married, but lives with his mother. They have a home in California where they both go for the winter.
May married Vic Brown, a full time Jehovah’s Witness. They both served as special traveling witnesses for twenty-five years all over the U.S. They never had any children. They take care of my house in California, they have a nice large trailer home on the back of the lot. They live in the house when the Buckley’s are in Yakima. The next part of Vera’s information she gives little on the Walker background.
When we lived in Herrick, South Dakota, Dad had a Baldwin piano that he used to play most every night. One favorite was, The Blue Danube Waltz, and My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean. He played by ear and could play almost anything he knew. In Canada he always had an organ. When May would be sick at night he would get up and play until she was asleep. May and Audley were the only ones that knew anything about music. Audley used to sing a lot at school. One Christmas he sang Noel all by himself and he did a very good job. I can see him still, there was a large crowd, and they really clapped for him.
When Dad came west on the train with supplies, he came to the Delany farm, mother (Sarah) was hoeing potatoes in the garden. Orlando and two other boys were there too, when they saw him coming, mother sat down as she was barefooted. She tried to get Orlando to take him away, but he loved to tease her. Dad (Frank) had on a Caddy hat with a round hard top. He wore gloves, spats and carried a cane, a real Dude in their eyes. They would always tease her about him when he came to see her. They made fun of his hat and cane. He was dressed like city folks, her brothers called her Sally and Sadie. Orlando and mother (Sarah) were very close. When she was in the hospital in Rochester at the Mayo Clinic he came from South Dakota to visit her. Audly, mother’s brother and Philip both died in Alaska. Philip died in a hospital, but Audly had dog teams for freighting between towns. He left for one town and was never seen again.
Before Dad was married he said Granddad William Delany was always talking to him about the Bible. Everyone thought he had odd ideas on the Bible. Later when Dad really got into the Bible he understood what granddad was telling him. He had the right idea all the time, way back then and he wasn’t a church goer, but read the Bible a lot. Mother said it was true, no one agreed with him on the Bible. Dad said he was a wonderful man and did what was right and fair. He respected him. Granddad died before any of the children except Ray and Ural knew him.
Living on the prairie in Coriander was a real experience. In the summer we would only use cow chips for fire and would pick up lots of them in gunny sacks and store them for winter. As town was thirty miles away, each time they took in a load of grain they would bring back coal, for use in the cold weather in the heater. It was a three day trip even with good horses. We hauled water in barrels from a spring. The water was so clear you could see frozen frogs down in the ice, they would come to life in the springtime. There were times you couldn’t get to the spring, so we melted snow. In the winter there were times you couldn’t get to the barn to feed the stock unless you had fence and rope put up from the house to the barn to follow so you didn’t get lost in a blizzard. Your eyes would get frozen shut if you were facing the wind in a blizzard. A whole book could be written on blizzards. Sometimes the house would be completely snowed in, no light at all and even very hard to get the door open so you could get outside. If you would throw out water it would be ice when it hit the ground.
Sarah was a small gentle and kind lady and had many friends. Frank wasn’t able to hear well and could play beautiful music on the piano. Their ten children are:
Ray Jonathan Walker was born June 17, 1894 at Baker, Nebraska in Boyd County. His death is unknown, but believed to have died in 1955. He is the oldest child of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker. Ray was married February 11, 1918 at Hozenmoore, Saskatchewan, Canada to Gladys Gunn who was born June 14, 1900 at West Bridgeford Notingham, Notingham Shire, England. In 1977, she lives at St. Ignatius, Montana.
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Ten Children of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker:
1.
Ray Jonathan Walker was born June 17, 1894 at Baker, Nebraska in Boyd County. His death is unknown, but believed to have died in 1955. He is the oldest child of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker.
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2.
Ural William Walker, second son of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker, was born December 3, 1896 at Baker, Nebraska.
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3.
Vivian (Viva) Walker, third child of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker, was born in 1898 at Baker, Nebraska, Boyd County.
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4.
Richard Philip Walker, son of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker, was born August 11, 1900 at Baker, Nebraska, in Boyd County.
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5.
Frank Chauncy Walker Jr. was born March 18, 1902 at Baker, Nebraska, in Boyd County. His parents are Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker.
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6.
Veronica Muse (Vera) Walker, daughter of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker, was born October 26, 1904 at Baker, Nebraska in Boyd County.
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7.
Della Louise Walker was born September 19,1906 at Herrick, South Dakota. Her parents are Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker
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8.
May Constance Walker was born June 6, 1910 at Herrick, South Dakota. She was the daughter of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker.
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9.
Audley Emmett Walker was born June 26, 1912 in Herrick, South Dakota. He was the ninth of ten children born to Frank Daniel and Sarah Jane (Delany) Walker.
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10.
Viola Helen Walker, youngest child of Frank and Sarah (Delany) Walker, was born January 26, 1915 at Coriander, Saskatchewan, Canada.
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