John and Angeline Rayton, early Lewis County pioneers, left a legacy in the Chehalis Valley among the descendants of their 11 children. In previous columns, I’ve written about their older children — Albert Hayes, John Henry, Nellie May and Leonard Franklin. I’ll address the other children here, drawing from the fabulous family history compiled by the late June Crocker Strickland Strovas, eldest grandchild of LeRoy Rayton.
Rose “Rosy” Rayton Moon
John and Angeline’s fifth child, Rose “Rosy” Rachel, was born April 23, 1884, at Claquato. Like her siblings, she moved with the family around Lewis County and settled near Adna. On Aug. 4, 1901, in Boistfort, she married John Dossen “Doss” Moon, who was born in February 1882 in Lincoln County, Oregon. The couple lived at Lost Valley and raised a large family, although they also suffered the heartache — so common in that era — of burying young children.
Their offspring included Clara Elizabeth Moon Rose, who died at 20; Rachel A. Moon Mosch, who lived into her 90s; Alvin Emery, who was in his 70s when he died; Freeman Francis, who was only a year old when he died in 1910; Claud Dossen, who died the year he was born; Gilbert Marion, who in his early 70s when he died in 1989; Warren Edgar, a logger and real estate agent who died at 72 in 1995; and Rosalie Angeline Moon Berg, who was 76 when she died in 2004 in Centralia.
In early August 1963, about 200 friends and family of John “Doss” and Rosy Moon gathered at Alexander Park near Chehalis to celebrate the couple’s 62nd wedding anniversary with a potluck picnic and baseball game.
Doss was 81 when he died on Nov. 6, 1963, in Chehalis, and Rosy died in Pe Ell on May 7, 1971, at 87. They’re buried at Claquato Cemetery.
Andrew Otis Rayton
A year after Rosy’s arrival Angeline gave birth to Andrew Otis Rayton on Oct. 1, 1885, at Cowlitz Prairie near Toledo, four years before Washington became a state. On Dec. 6, 1908, when he was 23, he married 22-year-old Elisabeth Sarah Detering, an Indiana native. The couple lived in Wildwood Valley and raised three daughters — Helen Elizabeth, Mildred M., and Dorothy Marie.
Tragedy struck in April 1917 when their second daughter, Mildred, who had just turned 6, drowned in the South Fork of the Chehalis River.
Andrew worked as a logger with his brother-in-law, Herman Detering, Nellie’s husband, cutting cedar shakes for roofing. He did road work for the county, milked cows, raised chickens and pigs, and later worked as a lineman for the phone company.
Their eldest daughter, Helen Elizabeth Walter Reppeto, recalled moving quite a bit before the family settled on 120 acres at Wildwood. She was nine when her father broke his leg when his team of horses ran away while he loaded straw. She helped her mother with chores. While picking apples, they found a bear cub in the orchard. The dogs chased it into a tree, and her mother grabbed a rifle, shot, and killed it.
“Mom was the talk of the whole community for days,” Helen wrote.
Helen did housework in Chehalis and met Alex A. Walter, whom she married in November 1933 in Walla Walla. They lived on a farm and raised two daughters. Alex was killed in a logging accident in July 1949. In December 1951, at 42, Helen married Frederich “Dick” Reppeto, a timber faller from Ryderwood. They continued living on the farm. Dick died in December 1980, and Helen passed away just before her 88th birthday.
Dorothy graduated from Boistfort High School in 1932 and lived nearly a century on the family farm in Wildwood. She died in Centralia on Aug. 21, 2012, at 99. While working as a housekeeper in Chehalis, she met her husband, Clarence, whom she married in November 1935. They had four children, raised on 40 acres just south of her parents’ place, according to Dorothy’s daughter, Mary Elisabeth Mueller Rose. The milkhouse, built over a spring, contained a cream separator and kept milk cool until the Darigold truck arrived. Andrew and Elisabeth Rayton raised chickens and sold eggs in Ryderwood and Winlock, she said. They butchered their meat — beef, chicken, pork and lamb.
Mary Rose described the late 1940s as a difficult time when Grandma Lizzie underwent surgery and Grandpa Andy suffered his first heart attack. “They sold all their cows but one to lighten his load,” she wrote.
The winter of 1949-50 brought cold weather followed by high water that washed out the road, forcing people to cross Ryderwood hill to leave the valley.
The earthquake of April 13, 1949, cracked the Muellers’ fireplace chimney and the home burned down a few years later.
Helen’s daughter Shirley Javorsky recalled staying with her grandparents, Andy and Lizzie, playing Old Maid and Chinese Checkers, sleeping upstairs, and eating Grandma’s thin pancakes loaded with butter and syrup.
After Grandfather Andy Rayton died at 63 on Aug. 29, 1949, Grandma Lizzie lived in Chehalis with two sisters, Helen and Myrtle, until moving to a small travel trailer in her daughter Helen’s front yard. She later lived with her daughter Dorothy until her death in May 1974 at the age of 87.
Daisy Dezire Rayton White
The seventh Rayton child, Daisy, was born March 10, 1887, at Cowlitz Prairie and grew up in the Chehalis River Valley near Boistfort. On Oct. 16, 1901, she married Oscar Edward White, a smart and well-read man who worked as a farmer and a logger from the age of 14. Their children included Henry E. White; Alta A. White Lancaster, who died at 30 after a five-year illness; Dorothy Dolly Ardena White, who was born Aug. 31, 1905, and died at 21 on Sept. 23, 1926; and Alfred O. White, who was born Feb. 4, 1908, and died at 18 in December 1926.
Henry’s children became double cousins with the offspring of Leonard and Anna (Black) Rayton after Daisy’s father-in-law, Francis Marion White, married Rachel Black.
Henry married Ruby Alice Anderson on Aug. 12, 1922, and she gave birth to a daughter, Catherine Mae (White) Heay, but died only months later, on Aug. 1, 1923, in Vader. Daisy raised the baby.
Four years later, on Sept. 27, 1927, Henry married Julia Rose Christin and they had three children — Alice Marie (White) Forth, Betty Louise (White) Neumeier, and David White.
Catherine Mae, who married Al Heay and had three children — Doug, JoAnne, and Vickie — died in 2007. Alice “Billie” Forth, who married Jerry Forth, taught business education at Centralia College, served as dean of students, and died June 22, 2012. Betty, who married Russell Neumeier, has a son, Jeffrey. David White, who also worked many years at Centralia College, married Mary Ann Metzger and had three children — Neil, Scott, and Wendy.
David, who shared recollections for the family history compiled by June Strovas, recalled how his father, Henry, planted a cherry tree with his grandfather, John Rayton, on a hill across from the McDonald’s restaurant in Chehalis.
He also remembered staying with his grandparents Andy and Lizzy Rayton, visits from Rayton cousins through the years, and gatherings for weddings and other events.
“Because my parents valued education so much, Betty, Alice and I all ended up with master’s degrees,” David wrote. “We all graduated from the Boistfort Schools, as did my sister, Catherine, who, while she visited us, was raised mostly by Daisy Rayton White.”
David said he retains the heart of a farmer and has raised sheep, beef, chickens, llamas, and other animals.
His grandfather, Oscar Edward White, died Feb. 7, 1947, at the age of 66. His grandmother, Daisy Desire Rayton, died Jan. 27, 1964, at 76.
Leroy Harrison Rayton
The eighth Rayton child, Leroy “Roy” Harrison, was born April 16, 1890, at Cowlitz Prairie. He wasn’t as physically strong as his older siblings and, according to family lore, his father arranged for him to train as a mortician. Instead, he left Chehalis but returned later and married Sylvia Etta Skeen on Oct 14, 1914. They had four daughters — Ruth Etta (Rayton) Graves; Ethel Bernice, who died at the age of four in 1922; Neva LaVerne (Rayton) Crocker, and Irene Marie (Crocker) Riedl Kain. Roy and Sylvia lived in a log cabin on his mother’s 240 acres near Ceres until paying her $500 for 40 acres. Meskill prisoners helped clear the land. He built a house and barn, worked on county roads, and milked cows, shipping the cans to Darigold in Chehalis by train.
In 1922, the family moved to Onalaska and later to Pe Ell, where Ruth started school while her father ran a garage with his stepbrother, Earl Adams. The family moved the next year to Chehalis and later relocated to Meskill. also worked in a mill, where he suffered a debilitating injury to his foot. Like his father, John, Roy could be moody, according to Strovas’ book, and one of his daughter’s was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which may have run in the family.
After their daughters married and left home — Neva in 1935, Ruth in 1938, and Irene in 1940 — Roy’s condition worsened, and he was sent to Western State Hospital at Steilacoom, while his wife moved to Tacoma closer to her youngest daughter.
Strovas, their eldest grandchild, was born in 1936 to Neva and Clyde Crocker of Ryderwood. Roy and Sylvia bought her flannel gowns and a basket, which Strovas kept. She spent many days with her grandparents who became her babysitters. At 15 months old, she was diagnosed with infantile paralysis, or polio, and sent to Seattle Orthopedic Hospital for treatment. Afterward, the family used the Sister Kenny rehabilitation method to straighten and strengthen her legs.
“I have a vivid memory of the day the three of us walked down the Centralia street (across from the Olympic Club because my grandmother warned me that ‘nice ladies’ did not walk on that ‘other’ side),” Strovas wrote.
She said her grandparents lavished her with attention. She wore bib overalls and helped harvest fruits and vegetables and care for the animals. Her grandfather pushed her on a tire swing and made her an outdoor mud pie kitchen. When they visited town or Rainbow Falls State Park, she rode in the back seat of a Model A Ford, reading Burma Shave signs. A neighborhood family lost a child but couldn’t afford flowers, so Roy picked every pansy in his yard and wove them into a casket blanket. When a Rhode Island Red rooster attacked young June with its talons, her grandfather grabbed the bird by the neck and headed for the chopping block. They ate fried chicken that night.
She recalled riding her trike across the room, delivering sections of the paper to her grandfather who paid her with corn candy, and brushing her grandmother’s white hair. She described her grandfather, Pa, as “my constant companion and friend.”
Roy was 52 when he died on Aug. 5, 1942, at Tacoma General Hospital of complications from pneumonia. His wife, Sylvia, was 47 when she died the following year on June 15, 1943.
Lillie Myranda Rayton Watt
The ninth child born to John and Angeline, Lillie Myranda, arrived on April 10, 1892, at Cowlitz Prairie. She was almost 17 when she married William Watt on March 4, 1909, but their marriage was short-lived and marked by heartache. She gave birth to a son, Charles, in 1909, but he died the same year. Her daughter, Bessie, was born in 1911 but didn’t survive.
She gave birth to a son, Wesley William Watt, in early 1913, but two months later, her husband died in a fire at a fir door factory at McCleary, Wash. In July 1913, when fire broke out in sawdust in a boiler room, William and another man tried to douse the blaze with buckets of water. While they were dumping water, an explosion occurred. William fell into the fire. His brother retrieved his body, and he was buried at Fern Hill Cemetery. He was 31.
Lillie continued to live in Lewis County. She was 75 when she died on Aug. 15, 1967. She was buried at Claquato Cemetery. Her son, Wesley, married Olive F. Foister and they had three children — William Robert Watt, who died as a baby; Patricia, who was only 11 when she died in 1945; and James “Jim,” who died in 1999 at 60.
Wesley was 71 when he died on Nov. 28, 1984. His wife, Olive, was 83 when she died in October 1996. They are both buried at Claquato.
Violet Viola Rayton Koeber
The 10th Rayton child was Violet Viola, born March 26, 1894, on Cowlitz Prairie. She lived her entire life in the Centralia-Chehalis area.
On April 21, 1914, at the age of 20, she married George W. Koeber, who was born in Sandy, Ore., in 1888. They didn’t have any children but enjoyed time with her nieces and nephews. George Koeber was 84 when he died on Jan. 21,1973, in Centralia. Violet died five months later, on May 27, 1973, at 79, the last of the original John Rayton family. They were buried at Claquato Cemetery.
They named Violet’s niece, Dora (Rayton) Orloske, as executor of their estate.
Margaret Angeline Rayton
Angeline’s heart broke when her youngest child and namesake, Margaret Angeline, died at age 12, the first of her 11 children to pass away. Margaret was born on July 20, 1898, near Boistfort, a bright and energetic child who contracted infantile paralysis, or polio, and died on Dec. 6, 1910. She was buried at Claquato Cemetery.
A few weeks after burying her daughter, Angeline wrote to another daughter, Rosy (Rayton) Moon, expressing her grief in a letter dated Dec. 28, 1910. She spoke of how “washed out” she felt, noting that while the doctor told her to go to bed, she couldn’t.
“But Rosy, I ain’t any company for anyone, for my heart is broke and I can’t see anything but a blank,” Angeline wrote. “Life isn’t worth living without Margie. Oh, Rosy, you don’t know how I miss her. Everything in the house reminds me of her, even the pictures of her on the walls. … Oh, I know I shall go wild without her, and I never will get over it, but I have to.”
Violet was the only child remaining at home at that time, and Angline anticipated she would go to Margie after Violet married.
“For she said she wanted her ‘Mama’ and God knows I want her so bad,” Angeline wrote. “Oh, I don’t see how I can ever take up life’s work again in this world.”
Angline, who described her heart as heavy as stone, survived her youngest daughter’s death by three decades.
Although she endured grief and loss, Angeline’s legacy lives on in the grandchildren and great-grandchildren who populate Lewis County, and thanks to June Strovas, we have a chronicle of the family’s history.
Strovas died on Nov. 7, 2022, in Longview at the age of 86, but her legacy lasts in the rich family history she compiled for future generations.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
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