Beulah Rose Martin

Beulah Rose Martin, daughter of Clark Fuller Martin and Belva Walbridge Swift, was born 12 October 1927 in Colfax, Whitman County, WA. She was known as Bea. She was the first of her parents’ four daughters. Next in the sequence was Laura, who died at not quite three years of age, and then Helen and Annette. In part because their father was the youngest of the grandchildren of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader, together these sisters belonged to a generation that had otherwise been been established from 1869 to 1917, which is to say, within Hannah’s lifetime. Not surprising, eventually there came a point when Bea, Helen, and Annette had outlived every one of their Martin-Strader first and second cousins.

(Bea is nineteen in the photo at left. This snapshot was sent when it was new to one of her father’s relatives back in northern Illinois.)

Bea’s family remained based in Colfax -- her mother’s hometown -- until adolescence. At that point, her father finally stopped working at Jersey Creamery and obtained an “outdoor” job with the U.S. Forest Service, followed a few years later by a lengthy career as a Washington State Fish & Game warden. This change of occupation prompted a relocation to Ritzville, Adams County, WA. As a result, Bea spent her high school years there, graduating from Ritzville High School as part of the Class of 1945. That same year she married one of her classmates, Ernest William Von Olnhausen, Jr., son of Ernest (aka Ernst), Sr. and May Lydia Gessner.

Ernest, born 31 May 1923 in Ritzville, was the son of a flour miller, which gave him something in common with Bea, whose father had worked at the Martin family flour mill as a youth, and whose grandfather Horatio Martin and great-grandfather Nathaniel Martin had spent the bulk of their working lives managing a flour mill. Ernest was four years older than Bea, meaning that he had almost inevitably been swept up in World War II. He served in the U.S. Army. Before his military career was over he would achieve the rank of Tech Sgt. 5. Bea would go on to have other connections to the military life, even though she herself did not join.

Together Bea and Ernest had four children, born in a rapid sequence in the late 1940s into the early 1950s. This includes second-born child David Ernest Von Olnhausen, born in Ritzville 1 January 1948. He was in fact the very first baby of 1948 born in Adams County. Unfortunately an illness claimed his life at only six weeks of age. He perished 15 February 1948.

Bea divorced Ernest in the mid-1950s. He went on to marry at least two more times. He perished 12 May 2001 in Ritzville.

Given that Ernest remained in Ritzville, Bea was motivated to head elsewhere. She proceeded to get a job at Larson Air Force Base at Moses Lake, WA. There she met Keith Earl Cahill, son of Joseph Earl Cahill and Alice Boers. Born 7 October 1930 in Ziebach County, SD, Keith was also divorced, with two sons from his previous marriage to Elizabeth Frey. He and Bea wed 12 October 1962 at Moses Lake, just as he was wrapping up eleven years in the Air Force. Nine months later Bea gave birth. This was to be her last biological child, and the only one she had with Keith.

Bea would go on to retain a lifelong bond with the elder of her Cahill stepsons, but she and Keith parted ways in the 1970s. He went back to South Dakota. He married a third time but that marriage did not last. He died 12 May 2002 at Fort Meade, SD.

By the beginning of the 1970s Bea was already a grandmother four times over, but was still in her prime as far as employment potential. She went to work as a billing clerk and operator at St. Luke’s Hospital in Spokane, WA. There she met Dale Orson West, son of Wheeler and Cecilia West. They wed 23 February 1980 in Spokane. Born 4 September 1916 in Wisconsin, Dale was easily the eldest of Bea’s husbands, a full eleven years her senior. Nevertheless she would spend more time as his wife than she had as a wife of either Ernest or Keith -- a full quarter of a century -- and the union would end only as a result of his death. Dale came to the relationship as a widower. His previous wife, Genevieve Ardys Thurber, had died in 1971. Given the disparity in age between Bea and Dale, she did not raise the four new stepchildren she acquired, but they became part of her life.

Dale had been raised in various parts of Wisconsin, and had begun his life with Genevieve in Loyal, siring the first of his kids in the late 1930s. The couple had eventually moved to the Spokane area.

Together Bea and Dale farmed in eastern Washington. Bea loved driving a tractor. However, given that Dale had already been in his mid-sixties when they got hitched, this phase of life did not endure. Together she and Dale retired to Tumtum, WA. Dale passed away 15 April 2005.

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Nathaniel and Hannah are noteworthy for the number of the group that surpassed ninety years of age. Bea was almost part of that club. She “hung in there for a while” at Royal Park Health and Rehab in Spokane, and died 13 June 2017, having made it to just four months short of the mark.

Bea’s descendants include five biological children and a matching number of stepchildren, twelve grandchildren, and numerous great-grandchildren. As mentioned above, her son David Von Olnhausen died in infancy. Also deceased is her stepson William (“Bill”) Dale West (1938-1997).

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