Grandfather’s letters spurred John Lawton to research family history, which resulted in “North Western Journeys”

John W. Lawton never knew the grandfather he was named for. The first John Willis (Will) Lawton died in 1915, 28 years before his grandson’s birth.

But after the death of Lawton’s father, Walter, in 1995, he happened upon some letters written from Will to his wife, Irene. Will was a commercial painter and had traveled from the family homestead in Fishtrap to work on the Mallory Hotel in Portland.

“The letters cover a three-month period in 1912,” said Lawton.

And those letters launched a 20-year journey in which he not only discovered his family heritage, but also uncovered priceless pieces of local history.

The result is “North Western Journeys: Spokane Pioneers and Scabland Settlers” (Arcadia Publishing, 2017).

Interestingly, as Lawton began his research, he discovered that he’d often stayed at the hotel his grandfather had painted.

“It was where I stayed when visiting my son while he attended Portland State,” he said.

Originally from Yakima, Lawton spent his career in city finance and management with positions as city manager of Great Falls and assistant administrator in Billings. He was appointed by two governors to consecutive terms on the Montana Heritage Preservation Commission. He and his wife, Carol, divide their time between their timbered acreage in Montana and visiting family in California.

His journey of discovery took him from the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to the now extinct town of Fishtrap, Washington.

“I’ve literally been coast-to-coast researching this,” Lawton said. “I just wanted to know my grandfather and my family history. I didn’t even know if I was going to publish.”

Along the way, he uncovered a trove of previously unpublished historic photos. “North Western Journeys,” features many of them, complemented by the author’s contemporary photos of those sites.

“I wanted to preserve this amazing collection of photographs,” he said.

The book features three sections; part one traces the family’s history in Spokane, part two details their homesteading venture west of the city, and part three chronicles the life of Lawton’s father, Walt, after the death of Will.

Lawton’s research revealed his grandmother’s uncle, Gile Bump, built the Bump Block in downtown Spokane with his partner Major E. A. Routh. The building is better known as the Carlyle Hotel, now the Carlyle Care Center.

Will lived and worked in Spokane, building several homes and a grocery store, Lawton Brothers and Churchill, on North Monroe. That building now houses Giant Nerd Books, where Lawton will sign copies of his book on Friday.

Will’s time in Spokane included great sorrow. His first two children died of diphtheria just days apart in 1892, and a third child died shortly after birth in 1894.The children are buried in the family plot at Greenwood Memorial Terrace.

“They had to start their family all over again,” Lawton said.

One of the most poignant places he visited during his research is an area just west of Spokane. Westbound travelers on Interstate 90 routinely zip past the Fishtrap exit sign, unaware of the history of struggle and loss that happened a century ago, just miles from the bustling corridor.

“It was a thriving community until the 1920s,” Lawton said. “Now, there’s nothing there but a few ranches.”

Hopeful homesteaders, like Will, left Spokane to stake their claims, only to watch crops wither and die along with their hopes in the rocky scabland soil.

In one letter from Portland, Will wrote, “It (the Willamette Valley) is all rolling hills and valleys covered with timber and small farms as far as the eye can reach. And the beauty of it all, is you can look as far as you can see anywhere you like and you cannot see a single rock.”

In addition to his homestead acreage, Will built the Fishtrap store and post office, all housed in the same building with the family home. After his death in 1915 the family struggled to keep the store and the farm going, but by 1920, they sold and moved on. The building was torn down in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

“These people endured such hardship, yet remained in good spirits,” Lawton said. “The most moving thing was the way my grandfather wrote about the loss of his children and decorating their graves on Decoration Day (now Memorial Day).”

Will wrote, “It just made my heart ache to see the hundreds of graves just loaded down and covered with beautiful flowers and to think there was not one poor little flower on our little ones’ graves today. I do hope that it won’t be long until we can be where we can visit their graves once in awhile.”

Thanks to the letters he wrote more than a century ago, those children are not forgotten. Each Memorial Day, the grandson he never knew travels to the cemetery and places flowers on their graves.