Jack Wesley Salmon

Jack Wesley Salmon, second of the two children of Irene Anne Harrington and Claude Devere Salmon, was born 10 November 1910 in Manteca, San Joaquin County, CA. His father was a native of the area, born a couple of decades after his grandfather Cutler Salmon had pioneered Manteca. Claude’s mother -- Jack’s grandmother -- Sophronia Sperry Salmon was part of the household when he was a small boy, though she passed away when he was young enough that he later would have almost no direct memory of her. By contrast he knew his maternal grandmother Nancy Anna Branson Harrington Napier quite well.

When Jack was little, his father was a farmer, working for relatives and then briefly managing some acreage himself in the vicinity of San Ramon, CA. By the time Jack was getting established in elementary school, his parents returned to Manteca. Aside from a year or two in Dent Township east of Stockton when Jack was ten to twelve years old, the Salmons remained based in Manteca until Jack was in his late teens. Jack therefore went to school with many relatives of both the Branson clan and the Salmon clan. The kinfolk classmates closest to him in age, ones whose stay at Manteca Union High School overlapped his at least to some degree, included his sister Wanda (a senior when he was a freshman), first cousins Norma Cowell and Josephine Converse (one year ahead of him), and second cousin Ruth Johnson (three years ahead). Sharing his same class year were second cousins Lloyd Johnson and Ruth Williams.

Throughout most of these school years, Jack’s father worked as a driver for Spreckels Sugar, one of the main employers of wage-earning laborers in the Manteca area -- and for that matter, a major employer for much of the entire Sacramento-San Joaquin delta region. It was this work situation that would ultimately result in Jack meeting and getting to know the woman he would marry and with whom he would share the prime chunk of his lifetime. The chain of connections is as so: A Spreckels employee named Charles Franklin Wampler worked closely with Claude Salmon. They became friends as well as colleagues. This brought Charles, his wife Katie, and adopted stepson Guy W. Wampler into the sphere of the Branson clan. A happy consequence of that familiarity was the marriage of Guy to Jack’s second cousin Ruth Martha Johnson, and the summer, 1927 birth of a daughter, Phyllis Wampler. (For more about that, see Ruth’s biography on this website.) About the time Ruth and Guy were launching that domestic adventure together, the Wamplers took in Katie’s niece Daisy Catherine Lynn, daughter of brick mason James Dallas Lynn and his first wife Effie Brown. Daisy had been born and raised in Augusta County, VA, so by coming to Manteca she was putting quite a large distance between herself and her roots, and was doing so on her own except that her uncle, aunt, and first cousin were there to provide a place for her to get her bearings. They had made the same migration in the 1910s. Born 8 May 1908, Daisy was done with high school and was in a position to embrace a big step, which worked out well for her. She was two-and-a-half years older than Jack, but given that she did not have established friends in the area, she was swept up in her cousin Guy’s circle of acquaintances and that now meant Ruth’s circle, so it was only natural that she and Jack end up getting the chance to know each other. They hit it off right away. The interest would not dim. (By contrast, Guy Wampler and Ruth Johnson only stayed together a short time, divorcing before 1930.)

Even as romance and other positive developments were beginning to unfold for Jack, the family went through some trying times. Claude Salmon’s health took a turn for the worse. Both of his brothers had died several years earlier, both having succumbed in their late forties. By the summer of 1926, Claude was in his late forties and sure enough, found himself having to cope with his own version of the family curse. On 13 August 1926, Charles Wampler discovered Claude collapsed by the side of the road at the edge of a Spreckels field. Claude was rushed to a hospital in Sacramento. He had better luck than his brothers and managed to pull through. He would go on to live another fourteen years. But he was never as robust as he had been. Changes in Claude and Irene’s lifestyle resulted from his need to slow down, and from the financial burden of the hospital bill.

One of the immediate changes was a move away from Manteca. Three months after Claude’s collapse, Wanda Salmon married Charles Patrie. The newlyweds settled near the small community of Riverbank in Yolo County amid the Spreckels beet plantations. Claude and Irene and Jack moved as well, occupying Spreckels Company housing outside the town of Woodland, which meant like Wanda they were also denizens of Yolo County. This arrangement allowed Wanda to look in on her parents without having to schlep all the way back to Manteca. Spreckels did its part, assigning Claude to supervisory work rather than continuing to expect him to be a driver.

Jack liked the Woodland area. He would stay for the rest of his life. The one thing missing (at first) was Daisy, but he took care of that lack by marrying her. The wedding occurred during the evening of 13 May 1929 at the First Baptist church parsonage in Woodland, Reverend J.H. Howe officiating. It was a small ceremony attended by Jack’s parents and a just a few others. (In notes composed by Branson-clan genealogist Maude Branson Chamberlin in the 1940s, the wedding date was entered as 10 May 1928. This is not correct, but unfortunately that wrong date appeared here within this website biography for over seven years, until corrected in August, 2013.) Daisy had just turned twenty-one years old a few days before the vows were said. Jack was still only eighteen. However, his youth did not spoil the couple’s chances for a stable union. They were together until death. Jack might have been young, but he’d had to “grow up fast” in the previous couple of years, and he was stable and dependable. Moreover, he and Daisy did not impulsively head off and spend their newlywed phase struggling to establish a household of their own. For the first few years of the marriage, they shared the Spreckels Company house on Knights Landing Road with his parents.

Daisy was not a Margaret who had the nickname of Daisy. She really was a Daisy. (She had a sister named Margaret, though.)

Jack followed in his father’s footsteps at first and became a Spreckels employee. He was a tractor mechanic. This lasted only into the early 1930s, whereupon Jack became a farmer. At this juncture, Claude and Irene departed for Manteca, wanting to be back among the older family members and within the bevy of old friends and acquaintances. Jack and Daisy moved into a home on Highway 99 West near enough to Woodland that Woodland was their postal address, though the property appears to have been quite a ways outside of town. The 1940 census shows that the acreage was not owned by them. This in turn suggests the land was owned by Spreckels and that what Jack was growing was sugar beets. Farming was Jack’s occupation for a stretch of fifteen years.

Jack and Daisy’s transformation into independent householders was probably spurred on by their expectation of needing more room for their expanding family. Jack had become an uncle at the beginning of 1931. The time seemed right to do as his sister Wanda and brother-in-law Charles Patrie had done. Accordingly, Daisy was soon pregnant. She and Jack spent the bulk of calendar year 1931 anticipating the birth, which took place on the second of December. To their anguish, the baby was born dead. It had been a boy. Jack and Daisy had intended to give the child if male the name Wesley Devere Salmon. But they decided that if they had another son, he should bear that name. And in fact they did name their next son Wesley Devere Salmon when he was born 26 March 1935. In the meantime, their stillborn baby went to his grave at Woodland Cemetery as “Infant Salmon.”

Jack’s parents’ situation remained unsettled. Jack and Daisy, by contrast, were enjoying a stable situation -- something not to be taken for granted during the Great Depression. This had the side effect of turning their home into the place where people gathered. In approximately 1937, the young couple made room for Claude and Irene once more. Claude was still able to work -- Spreckels shifted him to being a weighmaster, which meant he did not have to drive around -- but his strength was fading. On a happier note, Jack and Daisy had a big yard and could play host to parties. One such occasion was the Fourth of July 1936 family reunion attended by a large portion of the clan of Jack’s grandmother Nan Napier and other relatives. Judging by surviving photos showing that Nan was very “dressed up,” complete with nice outfit, make-up, and a wig, she was the honoree at that gathering. Nan had just been widowed. Had she not been, there surely would have been a big party held that November to celebrate both her eightieth birthday and the fortieth wedding anniversary of her wedding to second husband John “Babe” Napier. But Babe hadn’t made it. He had perished the previous April 18th. The party was a chance to cheer Nan up, as well as an occasion to take photos of the family members who were still alive, some of whom had not gathered in large numbers in quite some time.

(Shown below is one of the photos taken at the reunion. The names were not written on the back, but most individuals have been positively identified through other means. Daisy and Jack are the couple standing in the back row second and third from the left. Wanda Salmon Patrie is the woman on the far left, standing next to them. The names of all identified individuals can be found the version of the image that appears at the bottom of Nan’s biography elsewhere on this website. That version is cropped to show the people closer up. This one has been left uncropped to better show the house and yard.)

Claude Salmon perished in the summer of 1940 at age sixty-two. This was not a lengthy life compared to some, but he substantially out-lived his siblings. Jack seems to have been spared from the worst effects of the heredity tendency for bad health, though it is fair to say he would not enjoy extreme longevity. He would, though, definitely experience better health in middle age than had his father.

Soon after being widowed, Irene moved in with her sister Josephine in Alameda and later with her sister Wanda in Santa Cruz. She would late in life be looked-after by Jack and Daisy (and by Wanda), but in the meantime Irene apparently did not want to inadvertently be a busy-body mother-in-law to Daisy as as she reared her son. This was a choice that may have backfired. Wesley ended up being an only child and was perhaps overly indulged. Irene, who had grown up in insecure circumstances and knew the importance of hard work, might have made him tow the line a bit more.

Jack stayed out of World War II. Heads of farm households could claim a draft exemption because the growing of food was considered vital to the war effort. But after the war, given that Wesley was now well past his little-kid phase and was spending a lot of time in school, Jack joined the U.S. Navy. He enlisted 27 June 1946. As far as can be determined, he served only one hitch. He is known to have been stationed in the Pacific in 1947. Daisy and Wesley remained in Woodland. Jack returned to them in due course.

The military service suggests 1946 was the point when Jack ceased being a farmer. Whether he ever returned to that occupation has yet to be determined. A daughter-in-law (one of a number of wives Wesley had) recalls that Jack was employed in the 1960s driving a water truck for a construction company.

Daisy passed away 16 January 1973. The house was left profoundly empty in the wake of that event. Moreover, Jack had never gone through a bachelor-on-his-own period in his youth and was not well equipped to deal with cooking, housekeeping, laundry, et al. The solution to grief, loneliness, and the logistics of maintaining a home was remarriage, of course. Chances are Daisy had recommended Jack find a new wife sooner rather than later. She may even have pointed Jack toward a particular friend of theirs. That friend was a widow, Lovina Abelone Marks. But regardless of the particulars of the courtship, Jack and Lovina did become husband and wife. The wedding took place in Solano County, CA 22 August 1973 -- just seven months after Daisy had perished.

Lovina, a daughter of Alfred Theodore Lien and Gina (Overbo) Larson, the latter an immigrant from Norway, had been born 30 December 1910 in Windsor Township, Dane County, WI. Lovina had been raised on farms in Wisconsin and, from about age five onward, Grant County, ND. In her childbearing years she had lived in Minnesota, where she and first husband James Wesley Marks had produced four children. After World War II, she and her husband had relocated to California. He died in 1949. In the 1950s, Lovina had become established in Woodland. By the time she wed Jack she had been a widow for nearly a quarter of a century. With their union, Jack became a stepfather. He was not called upon to help raise the kids because they were all in their thirties in 1973; however, he did have the pleasure of serving as a grandfather figure to Lovina’s Woodland-based grandchildren, who were about the same age as Wesley’s son.

Jack, remembered as “a great guy,” passed away away 13 March 1979. His ashes were placed in the last of four sequential Salmon-family niches at the mausoleum at Woodland Cemetery, the other three occupied by the ashes of his parents and his wife Daisy. Lovina continued to reside in Woodland after his death, surviving him by nearly sixteen years. She expired 28 January 1995. Her grave, like that of first husband James Marks, is at Woodland Cemetery, though not in the mausoleum.

Descendants of Jack Wesley Salmon with Daisy Catherine Lynn

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