Pomeroy: A Farming Community

POMEROY––Ben Dixon and his wife Ashley are the sixth generation of Dixons in Garfield County and the fifth on Dixon Ranches in the north part of Garfield County, continuing a long and storied legacy of forbears who sailed the Atlantic Ocean from England and then crossed the fledgling United States in a train of covered wagons.

Their children, Harper, Jace and Samuel, mark the seventh generation of Dixons in Garfield County.

They run cattle, mostly Angus with some Hereford and Charolais blood, and farm wheat. They also grow barley hay. They also own and Ashley operates The Baker's Table in Pomeroy. The Dixon family has been in Garfield County since 1880, when the family patriarch Joseph Dixon came west.

According to historical records, Joseph Dixon was born near Horncastle in Lincolnshire, England, in 1833, to Joseph and Sarah Dixon. He came to the United States in 1852, on a voyage that lasted just over ten weeks. He first went to New Orleans, then to Illinois where he married Mary Ellen Hender in 1855. Mary was also born in England in 1833, in Sutton, Yorkshire, and came to the United States with her parents in the 1850s.

Five of their 11 children were born in Illinois: Nancy (1857), Francis (1859), Eleanor (1860, she died at a year old), Ellenor (1862), and Walter (1864). They moved from Illinois to Missouri, where their other six children were born: Matthew (1866), Lucretia (1867), Lillie (1870), Samuel (1873), Minnie (1876), and Freddie.

Joseph Dixon brought his wife and children, as well as his brother David, his wife Emma and children Ed, Fanny, and Josephine to Garfield County. Also coming on the trip were two of Mary Dixon's brothers and their families: James Hender, his wife and three children, Ella, Frank and Albert, and Hollingsworth Hender, his wife and children, Trum, Ida, Nettie, Emma, Rube, Stella, Mary and an infant who died on the trail.

Joseph's son-in-law, Isaac Slaybaugh, who was married to his daughter Nancy, and their children Joe, Frank and Walter also joined the train. Gene Craemer, a blacksmith named Mr. Riddle, and the Brown, Morris, Basum and Fry families also came along, and Allen Lukey, a Dixon family friend, drove a wagon. Altogether, Joseph led a train of 27 wagons from Polo, Missouri, to Walla Walla.

The journey began on a sour note. David's wife Emma and their daughter Josephine contracted measles the night before the trip started and stayed with a neighbor while David went on ahead, but the train still caught it as well. Of the 58 people on the wagon train, 37 had measles at the same time. Emma and her daughter rejoined the group three weeks later by catching a locomotive to their location. In Boise, Allen Lukey was jailed for lying about the possession of a firearm. Joseph and David paid the $10 fine, which was a considerable amount of money at the time, and Joseph arrived in Pomeroy with $1.50 to his name.

The train followed the Oregon Trail until they reached the Grande Ronde River, where they took the Lincoln Mountain Road to Walla Walla. The wagons pulled into Walla Walla on July 20, three months to the day after they left Polo.

When they reached Garfield County, Joseph and his family spent their first winter at the Summerville place on Pataha Flat. Sixteen family members shared a one-room cabin with a loft.

Joseph and his sons Walter and Matthew worked that winter at a shake mill in the Tum-A-Lum canyon. They drove through four feet of snow over the Red Hill, beyond what is now the boundary with Umatilla National Forest, and down the Tum-A-Lum. They left home in the dark and returned over the same trail after sunset every day.

In 1881, Joseph bought land in the Benjamin Gulch where his great-grandson Gordon Dixon now lives with his wife Judy. He farmed approximately 250 acres. He also bought timberland above the flat, 14 miles outside of Pomeroy.

Joseph became involved in Garfield County society, becoming a director of School District No. 12, joining the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Union Chapel Congregation. He died in February of 1918, nine months before the end of World War I. His grandson, Walter's son George Clayton Dixon, fought in the war. Joseph was buried in the Pataha Flat Cemetery.

Matthew Dixon's daughter Muriel (Dixon) Bott recalls her father telling a story of a trip he made with his father to Phoenix, Ariz. They traveled to Phoenix for health reasons and stayed from 1909 to 1911.

On the return trip their wagon was surrounded one morning by Indians who demanded food. "Daddy was scared of them," Muriel recalled. She told how Matt remembered the Indians eating biscuits until Joseph made them move on.

Another humorous family anecdote, recalled by Ben's father Pat Dixon, was Matthew's story of driving cattle down to Central Ferry, to the Dixons' winter pasture. The cattle surprised everyone as they returned to Pataha Flat three days later, traveling nearly twenty miles on their own.

After Mary's death in 1905, Joseph's son Sam bought the land from his father and his siblings. His son Carl bought land on the northern side of Garfield County at Willow and Deadman. Carl's son Sam bought the Thompson place, also in the north of Garfield County, where he farmed with his son Pat and later his grandson Ben. They have been steadily expanding their operations for the past ten years.

Ben and Ashley took charge of Dixon Ranches two years ago and combined all the separate ranches under one brand.