Autobiographical Memorys

Lee S. Thomas spent his seventh birthday in February 5 1891 watching the Spokane Falls from the immigrant car of the trans-continental railroad. The next day his family settled in Washington State where his father worked as a schoolteacher after building the schoolhouse. In spring 1899 at the age of 15 Lee quit school and started working as a skid greaser for a logging team. After his house burned to the ground at the age of 33 he moved with his bride and two-year-old daughter to Stockton California where his mechanical skills earned him a living as a carpenter as a caterpillar driver as the pilot of a passenger ferry and a freight barge then finally for seven years as the foreman of a crew plowing and harvesting land in the swampy tule islands of the San Joaquin river Delta. In 1936 we moved to Kent near Seattle with our accumulated household stuff in an ox-car and the old Holt 75 on a flat car. This autobiography was written 1946 typed 1970 digitized 2018.