Myrtle was a baby, just a year old, when the family moved from Iowa to Port Orchard, Washington. The William Lansings and Frank Wilsons came west together in 1899 on the emigrant train; the Lansings to Salem, the Wilsons to Port Orchard. The story is told that Myrtle was very fussy on the trip and Nettie held her all the way; no one else could hold her.
Her sister, Mabel, remembered Myrtle as "self centered, never liked it because Fred always had his own room and she was stuck with all the girls; When she was very small she didn't want any man to touch her (not even her Dad); she loved to hunt, fish, travel, do her own thing."
At Salem, Oregon on March 20,1918 she married Roscoe Clarke by whom both of her children were born. Ross ran a farm and fruit growing operation in the Popcorn comunity, near the Wilsons. Myrtle and Roscoe were both strong willed, independent individuals and after 17 years of marriage they divorced.
Myrtle married a second time, to Carroll Harlow at Eugene, Oregon. |
