Obituary - Amanda J. Nelson

Area Pioneer Amanda Nelson Dies Of Infirmities At 104

Amanda Jane Elvira Nelson who came to what was then Washington Territory over the old Oregon Trail by covered wagon, died yesterday at 11:20 a.m. at Tri-State Convalescent Center of infirmities of age. She was 104.

Mrs. Nelson, who had lived in the Lewiston-Clarkston area since 1919, made her home in recent years with a daughter Mrs. Evangeline Stevens, 526 5th St., Clarkston.

She was born Feb. 5, 1869, at Bentonville, Ark., to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wimpy. The family moved to the Latah, Wash., vicinity via the Oregon Trail in 1876, when she was a child of 7.

The family settled in a log house with a fireplace for heat, and the packing boxes used in transporting the family's goods on the covered wagon became cupboards. She and her younger sister were pupils at one of the first schools on Palouse Prairie, a bedroom of her uncle's home.

The family went into hiding during the Nez Perce Indian War of 1877 until it was learned that the Nez Perces had gone to Montana.

She married Ephriam Nelson, a farmer and carpenter, at the home of her parents at Latah. They homesteaded on Nezperce Prairie in 1896, after the Nez Perce Indian Reservation had been opened to settlers.

In 1919, they sold their homestead and moved to Clarkston to operate a dairy farm. About that time, Nelson was crippled in an automobile accident, and never fully recovered. He died in 1945.

She was a member of the Clarkston First Christian Church.

Survivors include four daughters, Josephine Moore of Bend, Ore., Genevieve Duncan of Lewiston, Grace Ralstin of Craigmont and Mrs. Stevens; two sons, J. Neil Nelson of Sunnyvale, Calif., and J. Adrian Nelson of Genesee; 20 grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren.

The funeral will be conducted Monday at 2:30 p.m. at Merchant's Funeral Home with the Rev. James Farrell of the Clarkston First Christian Church officiating. Burial will follow at Normal Hill Cemetery.

Unknown newspaper, (handwritten date 1973)
Transcribed by Jill Leonard Nock