Nora's Childhood Homes

Nora's Childhood Homes

“I lived in Jameston all my life,” Nora wrote, “but in seven different homes.  When I was a toddler, we moved from Uncle Nelson's house, where I was born, to a house on the corner of what is now 1063 East 1200 North in Jameston. My brother Don later built his house on that site after tearing down the old one. 

Nora's mother, Nellie Cox, "loved that place" when they lived there.  She described it this way:  “it had beautiful yards, fruit trees and currant bushes. I never was happier about anything. The log house was small, with two rooms, a small clothes closet and pantry plus a lean-to on the back that never was finished.  Most often than not that was the biggest most of our homes were.  We all slept in one bedroom and didn't worry about more space.  The other room was the kitchen-dining room and often we had a couch there to make it a living room as well."

 

Nora, age two with her Aunt Ellen Miller's china doll.  She later
inherited the doll, then gave it to Marcene a month before she died.

Nora’s brothers, Clint (Clinton Harrison) and Perc (Percy Miller) were born there. She said, “Clint was born 25 March 1912, when I was two and a half years old.  I don’t remember Clint’s birth, but I do remember the night Perc was born on 25 September 1913.  I was four years old.  I stayed with the neighbors, the Longhursts, who lived in the old log house behind the folks.  Mrs. Longhurst  made me a bed on the floor by the sewing machine.  

Clint, Nora’s brother, told the story of when “we were living near Sand Creek in the little log house, and the creek flooded the place in the spring of the year.  I was young, but I remember that Dad pulled the buggy up to the steps of the house and Mother loaded us in.

He took us up to Grandmother Elnora Cox's and we stayed there.  I was little, just two or three years old.”  

We Bought and Moved to the Twenty-five Acres

“We moved from that house to a log house on the corner west of the "home place", known to the family as the 25 acres”, Nora’s mother continued.  “We lived in a three room house where Don was born 6 April 1916 when Nora was six years old.  There were two big orchards on the acreage; one by the house where we lived and one about halfway up the road leading south towards the Idaho Canal.”

Nora remembers that home as “old and cold”.  Her mother agreed: “In the winter, you could be up until eleven or twelve o’clock and have a good hot fire and be as cozy as could be, then freeze by morning when the fire was out.  Nora’s dad, Harrison had commented, “the water would be boiling when we went to bed and frozen when we got up in the morning.”  However, he would always get up first and build a good big fire for Nellie, Nora and the two babies, Clint and Perce.

This two bedroom log home represents
the log homes that Nora lived in.  
(Located in St. Anthony Idaho)

From Nora: “Every year when the spring run-off came from the nearby foothills, the house on the corner of 25 acres would be surrounded by water.  Dad built the new house, or home place, in the fields east toward the foothills and it was located high enough that it didn’t get flooded."