John Martin Warner

John Martin Warner, eldest son of Eleanor Amelia Martin and John Warner, was born 26 September 1870 in Winslow, Stephenson County, IL. He was the second-born grandchild of John Warner and Marancy Alexander behind his cousin Edward Charles Warner, and was the second-born grandchild of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader behind his cousin Nathaniel M. Hodge. His nickname was Jack, but he was only rarely called that. When he did use a shortened name, it was J.M. Warner, which doubled as his business name. Only two surviving documents have been found that refer to him as Jack Warner -- he signed that version on a 1912 postcard he sent to his mother, and his brother Bert addressed him that way on the envelope of a 1941 letter. There are by contrast a great many sources that describe him as J.M. Warner.

John spent most of his childhood growing up in Martintown, Green County, WI, the village a mile north of Winslow that Nathaniel and Hannah had founded in the mid-1800s. The family farm consisted of eighty acres on the northern outskirts of the community that had been given to his mother by her father as a dowry gift in 1869 or 1870. In about 1883 the family moved to Willow Springs, MO, but they only stayed a year or so before coming back to Green County. (The photo of John shown slightly lower to the right shows him as a boy. It is a tintype photograph, made using a process that fell out of fashion by the time John was a teenager, to be replaced by film-negative photography.)

John remained a bachelor into his mid-twenties. All indications are that he stayed in the region of his birth until that he was finally ready to wrap up that portion of his life. The lone bit of evidence that places him elsewhere in any sense is the photograph you see at the upper corner of this page. The uncropped version indicates it was taken at Butler Photography in Correctionville, Woodbury County, IA. To have had such a formal photograph taken in western Iowa would suggest John spent at least a short interval as a resident. However, if he had any wanderlust in those years -- he certainly had ample wanderlust later in life -- it was not much of a driving force. In his late teens and into his early twenties, he was apparently content to assist with his father’s custom hardwood lumber business or help on the farm. In 1892, he began to ease his way into a business that reflected the new opportunities of the modern world. Steam power was rapidly transforming American society, not just in the form of the engines of steamboats and railroad locomotives, but on more personal scale. In 1892, the Warners acquired a steam tractor threshing rig. This was intended to serve far more than one farm. For the rest of the century and into the next, the grown men of the family hired out this major piece of equipment all around the nearby parts of Green County, WI and Stephenson County, IL to harvest wheat, oats, alfalfa, clover, etc. The elder John’s role was mainly financial and supervisory. It was the younger John and his brother Charley who served as the main team of operators. They called themselves the Warner Brothers. Eventually when John bowed out in favor of other pursuits, his role was taken over by much-younger brother Cullen. The work was seasonal, of course. For months at a time, the rig sat in a barn. However, good money could be made during harvest season, and John appears to have been able to save up a nice nest egg, in part because he lived at home.

In the mid-1890s, the urge to “do something about” that nest egg grew stronger as John’s little sister Belle became a wife and other members of John’s generation began making matrimony a priority. At age twenty-five, John finally took his own walk down the aisle. His bride was Anna Lueck. She was a daughter of Frederick Lueck and Willhelmina “Minnie” Mau, immigrants from Prussia who had come to the United States in the mid-1870s and had immediately put down roots in Green County. (In Prussia, the surname had been spelled Lück.) All records are consistent that Anna, whose date of birth was 18 December 1875, was born after immigration took place, but other documentation about the family makes it apparent she was almost a native of the old country, and in fact may have made the journey across the Atlantic while she was an occupant of her mother’s womb. The wedding took place in Martintown 1 January 1896, i.e. just two weeks after Anna had turned twenty. The couple went on to produce two children. Son Leslie John Warner was born in 1897. Daughter Dorothy Doris Warner followed in 1903.

John’s choice of spouse meant his connections to Green County and to Martintown were made even stronger. For another fourteen years, that bond would appear so secure most locals of that era would have wagered John would live out his entire life as a resident of Martintown. He committed himself to the village in a profound, community-leading fashion, to a degree that, when viewed through the lens of posterity, would stand unmatched by any other grandson of its founders.

The venture that caused John to reduce his role on the rig began at the turn of the century -- he became the proprietor of a general store in Martintown. The village was in its prime and was able to support two such establishments at the same time -- or at least, that was the hope. John appears to have reached the decision to devote himself to this business just as his father was choosing to get out of Martintown. For much of the 1890s John Warner, Sr. had been earning more and more of his annual income as a seller of custom lumber. His reputation had grown until buyers from many parts of the upper Midwest would place orders with him. While he concentrated on the customer-relations side of these transactions, most of the work of actually sawing the wood was handled by others, in particular his partner, Dayton Tyler, who had a small sawmill on his Green County farm, not far from Martintown. Finally the time came when there were so many orders that the elder John moved beyond his partnership with Tyler and cast his lot with a larger operation, Meyer Brothers lumber mill of Scioto Mills, Stephenson County, IL, about ten miles southeast of Martintown. In the latter half of the year 1900, John, Sr. and Nellie and the four youngest Warner boys -- in other words, all the sons of the family except John Martin Warner -- moved to a large house in Scioto Mills, saying good-by to Martintown after three decades of making it their home.

The departure of so many family members was certainly an adjustment, given how tightly knit the John Warner/Nellie Martin family was, but it was made easier by the fact that Scioto Mills was not all that far away even in those days of horse-and-buggy travel. It was so close, in fact, that one winter’s day, John’s teenaged brother Bert covered the whole distance from Martintown to the new home on ice skates on the frozen Pecatonica River. Visits by various family members were frequent. In addition, John’s two sisters, Emma and Belle and their families, continued to reside close by.

John’s store did well during his tenure, a span that stretched to just under ten years in length. Throughout that period, John was one of the leading citizens of the village. In earlier decades, when people had spoken of John Warner of Martintown, they had meant his prosperous and popular father, but now they usually meant him. It is difficult for us today to imagine just how crucial a role a general store played in the lives of denizens of the small communities of the American heartland at the turn of the 20th Century. John did not just sell food, cooking implements, minor hardware, and pharmaceuticals, but items people of the 21st Century no longer have to concern themselves with. Coal was one, a fuel in heavy demand at the time because so many devices, from stoves to generators to vehicles, depended upon steam power, and most got that steam by burning coal. He sold ice for family ice boxes -- or at least, he did so after the construction of an ice house near the store in 1906. He drew in customers with the lure of a telephone and his willingness to take messages on that phone on behalf of his regulars. Cadiz Township, the fragment of Green County local to Martintown, acquired phone service in April, 1905, with the wires reaching the village on the fifteenth. At first only storekeepers or the most high-brow of local landowners paid up and had their places connected -- two examples aside from John were hardware store merchant Gustave Schuetze and Henry Rush, the second-wealthiest resident of the area behind Nathaniel Martin. (Henry Rush, a well-liked neighbor of the Martin/Warner clan, is mentioned elsewhere on this website because from the early 1860s to the mid-1880s he was the husband of John’s great aunt Anna Catherine Strader.) The arrival of phone service was heralded as a fresh means to stay connected to the outside world. It was not a welcome development for Illinois Central Railroad, though. The existence of phone service meant less demand for telegraph service. The income derived from the depot telegraph office was one of the main justifications for maintaining a station agent in such a small village. The ICRR powers-that-be began intimating they would therefore close down the Martintown depot. Fortunately for the local population, service remained in place until much later in the century.

In addition to his retail concerns, John was still a farm owner. His acreage was mostly devoted to hay, which he would ship to such places as the feed lots of Chicago. Often, John’s associate Tom Bucher -- a brother-in-law of John’s aunt Mary Lincoln “Tinty” Martin Bucher -- helped attend to these agricultural ventures.

By 1906 the store was doing so well that the Edwards general store, his head-on competition, closed its doors -- though it must be said that this development had as much to with the fact that its proprietor, William Edwards, was in his seventies and was ready to retire. John acquired the space the Edwards store had occupied, giving him more retail elbow-room and the ability to increase his inventory and selection. It was at this point the ice house was built. Things were looking so good that in the summer of 1906, John invested in a new roof for the family home.

Downtown Martintown in about 1904 or 1905, right when John was the proprietor of his store. The store is in the photo, but it is not certain whether it is the prominent building on the left or the right side of Bridge Street. The smaller building in the foreground, running off the right edge of the image, was the coal shed. John may even be one of the men shown here.

In contrast to the economic good times, the period from 1900 to 1910 was devastating to the extended Martin and Warner clan in terms of health. A certain amount of misfortune was to be expected, as when John’s infant nephew William Nathan Spece died of whooping cough in early 1902, his aunt Tinty Bucher was struck down by an abdominal infection -- probably brought on by an ectopic pregnancy -- later that same year, and grand old patriarch Nathaniel Martin passed away at the beginning of 1905 due to advanced old age. But by the time of the latter event, a more ominous scourge was rising. It was tuberculosis. By the end of the year John’s uncle Horatio Woodman Martin would catch this disease and only manage to fight it for five months before succumbing. Various neighbors and friends were becoming victims as well. But the case that tugged at the heartstrings most of all involved Cullen Warner and his new family.

In late 1903, Cullen had married Minnie Brecklin and the following May they had become parents of a daughter, Selma. But while Selma was still an infant, Minnie caught TB, doing so even before Horatio Martin had come down with it. She died in early 1906 in Scioto Mills. By then, inevitably, Cullen had become sick as well. A TB specialist in Chicago made it clear that if Cullen were to have any sort of extended prospect for life and health, he needed to be taken to an arid climate. John, Sr. and Nellie responded proactively. Having heard from Nellie’s cousins, the Frames, of the opportunities and advantages of the San Joaquin Valley of California, they gave up their Scioto Mills home and moved at the end of 1906 to Fresno County along with Cullen and little Selma. Youngest sons Bert and Walter came along as well, though Walter was only willing to do so if his sweetheart Margaret Jane Bell agreed to come with him. The two were wed three days before the departure. Of all the Scioto Mills-based members of the family, only Charley Warner stayed put, but this was only true for the next few years, and during that time, he was often in California as part of extended visits.

The health scares continued. In late 1908, John’s sister Belle went through a bout of lung congestion and the symptoms seemed all too much like those exhibited by others who had come down with TB. In the long run she was fine, but the worry caused her and Alie to decide to give up their Green County farm and Alie’s new cheese factory business, even though they had acquired the acreage only three years earlier and had opened the doors of the cheese factory only a matter of months earlier. In January, 1909, the Speces headed to Fresno County, getting there in February after an unavoidable delay in Wyoming. Meanwhile throughout that year, Frank Ritter, husband of John’s cousin Arley Bucher, struggled with the TB that he had developed. Even the Mayo Clinic could not give Frank any good news, and he passed away on New Year’s Day, 1910. By then, Anna Lueck Warner had become the latest member of the extended clan to manifest the disease.

In early 1910, hearts heavy, John and Anna left Martintown and their old life behind, Tinty’s widower Elwood Bucher having agreed to acquire the store and the farm. By this point, the departing couple knew the climate of California was no panacea. Cullen Warner had only survived to the spring of 1909. But John wanted his wife to have the best chance of survival, and was willing to start over again as a businessman in order to further that goal. Once in California, the pair quickly obtained a suitable living arrangement in the town of Sanger. With his father, John established a feed grain warehouse along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. The business also sold kerosene, fuel oil, and hardware. The warehouse was the largest building in the whole town, and would later be designated by local historians as the first truly urban structure in Sanger history, marking the point when the place ceased to be a village and became a real town. The business was called Warner Warehouse Company. Alie Spece, who had made do with laborer jobs for his first year as a Californian, including picking peaches, grapes, and oranges as a migrant worker up and down the valley (an occupation shared with quite a few of the Frame cousins), decided simultaneously to open a feed lot next to the warehouse. Though operation of the two businesses was kept separate in the legal ownership sense, the physical proximity meant family members could lend a hand to each other as needed, and generally help each other keep an eye on things. (The Spece feed lot is shown in this photograph taken in 1910 or about then. The warehouse is in the background on the right. The individuals shown here are Charley Warner in the tractor seat, Alie Spece standing behind the rig, and the girls are, left to right, Erma Spece and Selma Warner.)

Anna hated having to be so far from her kinfolk. Nor did the move seem to help her condition much. As winter loomed it was clear she was not going to improve. By Christmas she was seldom getting out of bed and she often coughed up blood. Early in 1911, John gave in to her desire to die “at home,” as in back where the surroundings and the people were familiar to her. So back to Green County they came -- though not to Martintown, but to Monroe, the county seat, where Anna’s parents had relocated a few years earlier. One of the benefits of their return to the area was that they could call upon the services of Walter Warner’s mother-in-law Ellen “Bird” Bell, who was a nurse specializing in the hospice phase of TB-patient care. Bird did what she could for Anna as she had in 1905 and early 1906 done what she could for Minnie Brecklin Warner. Even with that professional help, the ordeal was extremely taxing to John and his parents-in-law. John naturally was unable to directly tend to his business responsibilities back in Sanger. To resolve that problem, John and his father agreed that Bert Warner would become the warehouse manager as a salaried employee -- an arrangement that was to remain in force even assuming John eventually came back to pick up where he had left off. Bert jumped at the opportunity. The salary meant he could support a wife. He immediately proposed to his sweetheart, Grace Branson.

Even if she had stayed in Fresno County, Anna would not have been a witness to Bert and Grace’s wedding, which occurred in late May. Anna did not survive that deep into the year. Her decline was unstoppable. She passed away 7 May 1911 in Monroe. She was buried in Saucerman Cemetery (also known as Old Cadiz Cemetery) in southern Green County, eventual resting place of many of her relatives as well as many of John’s, including many decades hence, his brother Charley and sister Emma.

In 1911, John may have expected that one day he would lie beside Anna, but that was not to be. Even though John had until then spent an aggregate of less than twelve months in the West, he remained for good, a span of nearly fifty more years. Wisconsin no longer had much appeal for him, even though both of his children would choose to return once they came of age. Being back there apparently reminded John too much of Anna’s absence, and he was unable to tolerate more than visits. John now entered a prolonged phase of restlessness. Looking back at that stage from the perspective of the 21st Century, and taking into account John’s story as a whole, it is clear that he didn’t know quite what to do with himself. He had embraced the notion that it was his destiny to be the breadwinner of Anna’s household. Now he had no choice but to assemble a substitute destiny, and it took him a substantial amount of time before he found one.

In the short term, John proceeded on inertia, maintaining a version of the life situation established just prior to Anna’s final decline. At the end of May following the funeral, he and the kids boarded a train and came back to Sanger. He resumed his involvement in the feed grain warehouse. His heart wasn’t in it, though. He took leaves of absence, relying on Charley to fill in for him inasmuch as there was too much work for Bert to handle completely on his own. As their father settled into retirement, Bert acquired that share of the business. Increasingly, Warner Warehouse Company became Bert’s domain, and John, despite being the elder brother and founder, shifted to the sidelines.

As a widower of means and position, John was now, alas, a bit too obviously a prize to be won. In early 1913, during the months when customers didn’t need much hay and the warehouse workload was light, John took a vacation. He chose to go to San Diego. There he met Grace Annetta Walker. To the astonishment of his family members back home, he came back to Sanger married to her. It was an impulsive development, to say the least -- so impulsive, in fact, that the pair may not even have waited long enough to obtain a normal marriage license. The official date of the wedding, as written down in family records by Belle Spece, was 18 March 1913, but no record has ever turned up in public-source databases that would confirm that. It seems likely the couple skipped across the border and took care of the matter in Tijuana, Mexico.

John would pay the price for proceeding in such a precipitous fashion. His motive seems to have been pure infatuation. It was not as though he would have had trouble attracting the interest of other, more suitable women vetted by his mother and sisters. Such matchmaking was no doubt on the horizon, now that an appropriate mourning period was winding up. Nor did John have to worry about Leslie and Dorothy. The Warners were such a supportive clan that the two kids always had food to eat, clothes on their backs, clean beds to sleep in, help with schoolwork -- all the things Anna would have seen to if she had still been there to take care of them. What no one had counted on was the sudden appearance of a woman ready to pounce the way Grace must have.

That said, Grace wasn’t some twenty-two-year-old floozy from a chorus line. She was on the surface a reasonable match for John, especially in the sense that she was already old enough that she was at the end of her potential childbearing years, and John would not be faced with the prospect of Leslie and Dorothy ever having to question that they were still his number one son and number one daughter in his heart. And indeed, Grace never did present John with offspring, not even in the sense of stepchildren. Her story in brief: Youngest of the nine children of Irish immigrants Dominick Martin and Mary Carroll, Grace was a native of Chicago, IL, born 25 April 1872 -- meaning she was only nineteen months younger than John. Raised partly in Chicago and partly in Belvidere (only some sixty miles from Martintown), she had as a single woman come out to San Diego at the Turn of the Century. She had been briefly the wife of Lewis Harrison Walker, a butcher from Maine, but that union had collapsed by 1905 or early 1906. Over the subsequent half a dozen or so years until she met John, Grace had supported herself as a restaurant cashier and then as a bookkeeper for a large bakery.

Grace was met with ambivalence. In years to come, no one in the Warner clan would save pictures of her. No one would compose fond reminiscences. But most important, Dorothy did not like her. It is easy to imagine that a girl reaching puberty would detest almost any new wife her father brought home, but it wasn’t typical Warner or Martin clan behavior to keep up a frosty attitude. Dorothy however never warmed up to Grace. Presumably the feeling was mutual.

In early 1916, John’s father passed away. Just as Anna’s death had thrown him for a loop, John was once again deeply affected. He may have become burdened with the knowledge that life was short, and that if he were ever to see the world and live a more varied existence, he needed to begin doing so. Like all the Warner children, he had lived in the shade of his parents, and even in the shade of his Martin grandparents. It had not been their shadow, but their shade, i.e. he had been nestled within the womb of their love and protection, and he had treasured being nurtured in that way, but now he was driven to exert his independence. He began by divesting himself of his interest in the warehouse. Alie Spece had managed to put together a viable grocery business in Sanger over the previous couple of years. In June, 1916, he and John made a trade. John became the owner of the grocery enterprise while Alie became Bert’s partner in Warner Warehouse Company.

Being a grocer was not unlike his days as a general store clerk, but John was not fulfilled by the role, and he sold the business within two years of acquiring it. He and Grace moved to a home on Woodward Avenue in the Kearney Park borough of the city of Fresno, in the same neighborhood where Leslie, now a grown man, was now living. This was only a few miles from Sanger, close enough that Dorothy had the choice to go to Sanger High School if she wanted. But in fact, a completely different arrangement was made for Dorothy. She moved in with her Lueck grandparents back in Monroe, WI, and went on to graduate from Monroe High School. It was a telling indication of how little she wanted to share a house with her stepmother.

(Shown at left -- John is in the center front, posing in profile with his mustache dangling, in this 1918 photograph, which was possibly taken at Kearney Park near his residence. From left to right, the group consists of Erma Alice Spece (the adolescent with her hair tied up), Emma Warner Hastings, Nellie Martin Warner, John Martin Warner, Charles Elias Warner (in back), Cora Belle Warner Spece, and on the far right, Gladys Beryl Spece.)

Upon leaving Sanger, John became a travelling salesman. That was a bad sign. While married to Anna, he never would have contemplated an occupation that kept him away from home overnight. One reason he could make such a choice is that Leslie and Dorothy were now independent. John was leaving no one behind other than Grace, and he apparently was okay with that.

The year 1918 brought happy developments. On St. Patrick’s Day, Leslie married Olga Barsetti, a young lady he had met after moving to the Kearney Park neighborhood. The prospect of John becoming a grandfather was looming, and he was buoyant. Then in August, John’s sister Emma and brother-in-law Fred Hastings were finally willing to say farewell to Green County. They found temporarily housing just a few steps away from the Sanger homes of Belle and Alie Spece and Walter and Margaret Warner, and began the process of transforming themselves into Californians. At last the whole clan of John and Nellie Warner was living in close geographical proximity, aside from the recently-departed Dorothy, but at that point Dorothy was not expected to stay in Wisconsin, but come back after her graduation. If only the luck could have held. Alas, Olga was a victim of the great flu epidemic, and passed away in early November -- the tragedy quite possibly also claiming the life of an unborn child. Leslie was staggered by the loss. One of the side effects was that he gave up his independent living and moved back in with his father. Here we have the one clear indication that Grace was not wholly on the outs with John’s relatives. She was there being supportive as Leslie went through his period of mourning. In fact, given that John was in and out of the house in order to do his job, it was Grace who was the mainstay figure. Leslie would continue to be part of the household for over a year.

Leslie left in 1920. Just as his father had not wanted to linger in Wisconsin after becoming a widower, Leslie did not linger in California. He went back to Wisconsin. John and Grace were now a set of only two. This led to a much-delayed step, namely finding a piece of property and establishing themselves in a way that could potentially be permanent. They were attracted to a new San Joaquin Valley property development in Madera County near the boundary with Merced County. The venture was known as Chowchilla Colonies. It was located to the along the main traffic corridor, which at that time was the Southern Pacific Rail line, but corresponds in modern times to Highway 99. Eventually the development would evolve into an actual town, which would be called Chowchilla. Even now in the 21st Century Chowchilla is not much of a place, but back then, John and Grace had cause to see potential. Before the end of 1920, they purchased a house and parcel from George and Letitia Brownell, a couple who had decided to move to Newport Beach.

Apparently John and Grace thought better of their choice as soon as they moved in. In January, 1921, they paid a visit to Newport Beach to sweet-talk the Brownells into letting them back out of the purchase of the Chowchilla Colonies property. (As was common in that era, the Brownells had done the financing themselves rather than get a bank involved and lose out on the mortgage interest they could earn over the years to come.) Having freed up their funds, John and Grace bought a ten-acre apple ranch just west of Yucaipa, San Bernardino County, CA.

Unfortunately, apple farming did not suit John. He had grown up as part of a generation to whom farming was second nature, but by the early 1920s, he was far removed from the agricultural lifestyle. He was his father’s son and thrived best with occupations that centered around interaction with people. In the winter of 1923-24, John persuaded his brother Charley to move down from Sanger to take over management of the Yucaipa ranch. Nellie Martin Warner was part of Charley’s household in that era, so she came along. Charley may have purchased a minority stake in the property, but if so, primary ownership remained in John’s hands. Rather than crowd into a shared set of living quarters, John and Grace vacated. Emma and Fred Hastings had recently acquired a house at 2251 Olive Avenue in the city of Fresno. The place next door at 2253 became available. John and Grace moved in. They were however renters, not homeowners.

John went back to being a retail clerk, perhaps doing so in Sanger as his little brother Bert’s employee, but only until something else came along. That “something else” turned out to be an occupation that was both an echo of his past life, and yet different from anything John had done before. He went to work for Routt Lumber Company, a large Fresno County-based lumber products enterprise of the 1920s founded and co-owned by Vergil Routt. The unprecedented aspect is that John was not involved in the milling or the sales side of the business. Instead, he was a truck driver. Even so, his experience with lumber as a commodity undoubtedly was a factor in winning him the job.

John’s restless phase reached its fifteen-year mark in 1926. He was now in his mid-fifties. He could no longer put off the crafting of an existence he could invest his soul in, and he knew it. It gave him the courage to do what he needed to do. The first step in his process was to pick a spot on the map where he could stand to live long-term. Apparently Fresno County, which was so agreeable to other members of his family, would not do. Likewise he does not seem to have been tempted to head back to Wisconsin or northern Illinois to live near his kids. He wanted a true change of pace. His answer was to aim for the southwestern corner of Oregon.

Why there? At the time, there was one family connection. His niece Selma and her husband Bill Mead had become based in Josephine County in the early 1920s, and would remain there until the early 1930s before moving back to the San Joaquin Valley. However, in most respects it is a mystery how John acquired such a fondness for the region that it caused him to put down roots far away from nearly everyone he had ever known. It could be that his job hauling lumber took him up that way so often the scenery and climate and other virtues seduced him. However, it’s also germane that deciding to make such a move at that particular point allowed him to force an issue that had been plaguing him -- what to do about Grace. The pair simply were no longer getting along. He must have been aware she had no desire to leave California. When he said he was going to Oregon no matter what, it was a test to see how committed she was to the relationship. The answer? She refused to accompany him. Turning point reached. John did not initiate the actual divorce until 1931, but he and Grace probably never laid eyes on one another again after 1926. Grace moved to Los Angeles, settling in the Echo Park neighborhood. She remained for good, never marrying again, supported at first by the stipend John provided, and later by the generous divorce settlement. She died in L.A. 22 May 1943 of complications caused by diabetes.

Notwithstanding John’s focus upon Oregon, he did actually spend intervals during the late 1920s at the Yucaipa ranch, helping Charley to make a go of apple production. However, once the Great Depression came along, and given that Nellie Martin Warner had just turned eighty and was in a downward spiral, Charley decided to give up. He took Nellie back to Fresno County, where she passed away in early 1930. John had no wish to carry on as the main, full-time farmer. He put the ten acres up for sale and arranged to be on-site each Sunday until he found a buyer. Given the grim economic environment, he was fortunate to succeed. Chances are he had to accept a sub-standard price, and it may have taken months to accomplish. With the proceeds, he purchased a small inn on the Rogue River along the Pacific Highway in Grants Pass, OR. It was at a spot very near Savage Rapids Dam, which means it was almost straddling the boundary of Jackson County and Josephine County. The same harsh economic conditions that hampered him in Yucaipa favored him in Oregon, allowing him to make his acquisition at a bargain price. The business was named Inn Under the Pines -- perhaps a name that John originated.

John needed staff. Chances are that is how he met the woman who became his third wife. In an attempt to get the best housekeeper and/or cook possible, he must have placed an advertisement in the Portland Oregonian. That being a publication with widespread regional circulation, even readers based in the Columbia River area were able to spot the listing. One of them was Martha Ellen Andes, a widow then living in La Center, Clark County, WA. She decided the job was worth moving all the way down to Grants Pass. Or at least, that is a scenario that would explain how The Widow Mrs. Andes entered the orbit of John Martin Warner. Not enough documentation has turned up to confirm whether she was ever John’s employee. It could be she came to Grants Pass for some other reason, and met him through some other means. What is certain is that the two met during his tenure as owner of Inn Under the Pines, and by the spring of 1932, they were completely smitten with one another. She embraced her new role as the woman in his life so completely she even transformed her identity to a degree. Until becoming the new Mrs. Warner, she had almost always gone by Ella. Now she became known as Ellen. It was probably the version of her name that John liked, and she genially made the adjustment.

Ellen would go on to become a popular in-law to John’s siblings and to his kids. That said, they didn’t see much of her due to living elsewhere in the nation. That factor, along with her late appearance in John’s life, inadvertently resulted in the particulars of her genealogical origins failing to be included in any of the source material used for this website. For various other reasons, it became impossible to reconstruct those particulars until 2017, a dozen years after the first draft of this biography was placed on-line. Finally in the spring of 2017, a vital clue surfaced, and Ellen’s story has been discovered. It goes like so:

Ellen was born Martha Ellen Boroughs 2 September 1879 on a farm near Harrisonville, Cass County, MO. She was a middle child among the eight children of Henry Milton Boroughs, originally from Randolph County, NC, and Nancy Eleanor Warren, a native of Cass County. Her original nickname may have been Mattie, but by adulthood her middle name had become dominant, and as mentioned above, the form it usually took was Ella. She wed Charles Calvin Andes 13 March 1898 in Harrisonville, her parents having continued to be based in Cass County throughout her childhood. That longterm presence soon came to an end, however. Over the next few years, the entire Boroughs-Warren family moved to Colorado. The exodus was led by the kids who had grown up, married, and were seeking “a place to make their fortunes.” Soon even the older couple would follow, bringing along the youngsters who were still part of their immediate household. Ellen and Charles were among the first to depart, probably in tandem with her sister Ada and brother-in-law Emerson Perkins. The latter couple are known to have spent the tail end of the 1890s in Creede, Mineral County, CO, so that was probably where Ellen and Charles began the Colorado chapter of their lives. However, early in the year 1900 both couples relocated to Monte Vista, Rio Grande County, CO, arriving just prior to the birth (in late March) of John Henry Andes, the first of Ellen and Charles’s children.

Some of Ellen’s family members would remain in other parts of Colorado for quite some time, or even for good. But Ellen and Charles, along with Ada and Emerson and also with bachelor younger brother Warren Boroughs, treated it as a whistlestop on a journey that brought them to Alberta, Canada. Ellen and Charles made the move in 1902 just after the birth of their daughter Eleanor Eileen “Linnie” Andes. They became homesteaders. Judging by the available records, they struggled, the climate of the Great Plains above the 49th Parallel being somewhat unforgiving. But Cass County, MO had its tornadoes, and the high mountain valley in which Monte Vista sits presented its own challenges, so Ellen and Charles stuck by their choice to come north. At first they developed a homestead in the general vicinity of Medicine Hat, then in the 1910s they were willing to start over again on a fresh chunk of acreage near Michichi. Neither of these endeavors made them wealthy, but one way or another they kept it together, for example by earning some extra income boarding a school teacher or two. Ultimately the couple succeeded in raising their son and daughter to adulthood as a ranching family of southern Alberta.

Their daughter, alas, was a big part of why Ellen became a widow. Linnie ended up married sooner than she wanted -- a shotgun wedding occurring in early 1920 when she was only eighteen, followed a matter of weeks later by the birth of a son. Her husband was Hiram Haliburton “Hallie” McLeod, a man nearly fifteen years her senior who expected her to be content with housework and childcare and give up her habit of attending festive gatherings in town. Linnie was too much of a social butterfly to comply. When he grew insistent, she moved back in with her parents rather than put up with his edict. Hallie became so enraged he decided to murder her. During the evening of 13 January 1922, he approached the house on the homestead of his parents-in-law and waited outside a window with a gun. Seeing a figure moving behind the curtains, he decided it was Linnie, and discharged his weapon. However, Linnie was not the person behind the drapes. Linnie was not even there at the time. She and her mother were attending a social function in town. The victim was Charles Andes, who had remained at home and was babysitting his twenty-one-month-old grandson, Charles Burton McLeod. When Hallie realized what he had done, he was so distraught he turned the gun on himself. Ellen was deprived of a husband and a son-in-law within the span of a few minutes.

The incident must have amounted to the most crushing emotional blow Ellen ever experienced, but she was the one who had to be strong, and she seems to have risen to this role. It was Ellen who made sure her young grandson was cared for while Linnie dealt with her grief, guilt, and shock. This Resolute Grandma phase extended into the second half of the 1920s. Finally Linnie remarried and began carrying the load. That was of course a welcome development, but it did have the downside of leaving Ellen with the quandary of what to do with herself. She had come to the half-century mark of her existence and obviously was not in a position to found another family from scratch. However, there was one prominent desire she could assuage now that she did not have to funnel so much energy in her daughter’s direction. She could renew her bond with her son. John Andes had moved back to the U.S. and become a housepainter in Portland, OR. Ellen followed. She may even have lived with her son for a while inasmuch as he was a bachelor and she would therefore have had a natural domestic role to fill as a member of his household. However, in the spring of 1930 he married a divorcée who already had a couple of kids. Ellen’s presence would have been a complication to the new couple’s nesting-in period, so Ellen moved to La Center, where she made her living keeping house for a widower mailman. At some point in the next two years, she relocated to Grants Pass. It may have been later in that two-year interval than sooner. John’s pattern, as shown in San Diego, was to succumb to love at first sight. He may not have laid eyes upon Ellen until some time in the first half of 1932, and the courtship happened in whirlwind mode.

Ellen’s kids and John’s kids were all grown. They had all found spouses and made homes for themselves. All of those homes were far from Grants Pass. So while it is a fact that Ellen now became a stepmother and John a stepfather, it had minimal effect on their daily existence. The newlyweds were able to focus thoroughly upon each other. Ellen would be John’s “better half” for more years than either Anna Lueck or Grace Martin. The union was profoundly successful. John at last had a spouse with the warmth of Anna, and he was grateful. He also had a spouse who would be his partner in his business ventures, a new thing for him. This dynamic came into play at once. John was ready to put innkeeping in his rear view mirror. He sold Inn Under the Pines in June, 1932 to Everett and Margaret Hoagland, who traded their ten-acre place in rural Grants Pass and added another $10,000 to sweeten the deal. John and Ellen had the option of moving into the former Hoagland house as soon as it was vacated, but they did not do so. They signed a contract to serve as resident caretakers of a private preserve high in the mountains west of Klamath Falls, OR. This 2200-acre piece of property was owned by William Bechtel Chandlee, a wealthy Portland-based chiropractric physician who used the land to raise fur animals -- primarily fox and muskrat -- for his LaPines Fur Company.

John and Ellen were so determined to begin their life together they refused to be thwarted when a stumbling block appeared in the road. Apparently there was some detail about the split from Grace that had not been fully dealt with. John had sued for divorce in June, 1931, having already worked out a settlement, but perhaps Grace had not signed in front of a witness or a notary or an attorney, and so a clerk must have refused to grant the license to John and Ellen. As a result, the actual legal marriage did not take place until 9 January 1933 at the courthouse in Klamath Falls. In the meantime, John and Ellen carried on as if they were already hitched. Due to report to their new employer on the first of August, the couple went ahead with plans to spend most of July enjoying a big road trip back to Martintown and Winslow so that Ellen could meet the relatives there and see where John had grown up. She was presented not as his fiancée, but as his bride. (She is even described in that fashion in the 21 July 1932 edition of the Winslow Register in its coverage of the celebratory picnic luncheon thrown four days earlier by Emma and Fred Hastings on their Green County farm, to which the couple had returned in the winter of 1927-28, leaving the Olive Avenue home to their son John Warner Hastings.) The subterfuge was easy to pull off. The happy couple had never intended to have a big ceremony in front of lots of kinfolk. They had always meant their formal joining to be a case of a quick trip to the county clerk’s office, as indeed it was when the event actually took place.

The contract with William Chandlee had a three-year term. John and Ellen may have eventually agreed to stay on for another year or two. That they made it through is a testament to how thoroughly compatible they were. Because the coldest part of the year was when the pelts were at their best, Chandlee wanted a set of caretakers to tough it out on-site during that very season, not only to keep watch against poachers, but so that the couple could provide food and shelter to the trappers he sent up. In addition, Chandlee and his wife would sometimes show up in person. When those visitors were present, John and Ellen played a role not unlike they had as innkeepers. Often, though, no one else was up there. John and Ellen were obliged to go through stretches that lasted weeks and sometimes months when they were both alone, and snowbound. No cabin could have been big enough to keep the peace had the couple been at odds with one another. But there was no problem. John and Ellen got along. They treated the isolation and enforced togetherness as a kind of extended honeymooon.

Along with being caretakers, John and Ellen maintained a trading post near Aspen Lake during the summer season. These were John’s last gigs. Like the rest of his family, John believed in enjoying his retirement and in not waiting too long to start it. By 1937 or so, he was good and done, knowing his savings, assets, and investments were sufficient to carry him through. One of those assets was the ten acres he had acquired in the trade with the Hoaglands. John sold this to his brother Charley, who moved up from Fresno County and began living on the parcel.

Having endured so many cold February and March nights up at the Chandlee cabin, John and Ellen took advantage of their freedom in 1938 to escape down to the mildness and warmth of Santa Cruz, CA, a city that had recently become home to Belle and Alie Spece, and earlier in the 1930s had become home to Ellen’s eldest brother, Baptist minister George Lee Boroughs, whose final ministry was as pastor of the church in the Twin Lakes neighborhood of the city. George and his wife Ida were pleased with Santa Cruz and had chosen to remain even in his retirement. Ida’s spinster sister Clara Guisinger shared their household. George and Ida’s daughter Mary Eleanor Poulsen and family were also based in Santa Cruz. Ellen therefore had a full rack of relatives to include her in their social circle, which was a treat for her after the long backwoods exile. John meanwhile enjoyed the chance to see his family more often, which took the form not only of rendezouses in Santa Cruz, but jaunts over to Sanger and other parts of the San Joaquin Valley.

In the second half of 1940, Charley Warner decided Oregon wasn’t quite right for him. At long last, he went home to northern Illinois and to Martintown. John probably could have reacquired the ten acres, but he and Ellen were more comfortable having “downsized” their affairs. They rented a place -- perhaps a series of places -- in rural Grants Pass, and lived out a pleasant and uncomplicated retirement. Once in a while they took a trip to see her son in Portland, or to see Linnie, who had established herself in Victoria, British Columbia. Sometimes they went down to Sanger or even all the way back to Martintown and Winslow. The latter became a regular practice of the remaining Warner siblings in the 1950s -- they were all elderly but healthy and it translated to an attitude of making such trips while they still could. But most journeys were far less ambitious -- just out to the coast. John and Ellen acquired -- perhaps by lease rather than mortgage -- a vacation home in Coos Bay. Judging by surviving correspondence, the latter domicile was where they could be found as much as half the year, though not all in one continuous stay.

(Above at right is a photograph taken near the very end of John’s life. The place is not identified on the print but it would seem to be John and Ellen’s home in Coos Bay. The younger couple are Rolland and Ruth Parsons. Ruth was a daughter of John’s first cousin Lena Brown Hastings. Ruth’s brother Leland “Hap” Hastings had been one of the proprietors who operated the general store in Martintown not long after John’s tenure. Ruth and Rolland were apparently in the midst of a trip to the west coast from their home in a suburb of Boston, MA. Higher up at left is a photo of John and Ellen from the 1940s, taken either at their home outside Grants Pass, or on the Green County, WI farm of his sister Emma. The affectionate pose is typical of the surviving snapshots of John and Ellen.)

John’s father and his father’s siblings had not enjoyed long lives, and even his mother had only made it to eighty. John was more fortunate, demonstrating the sort of longevity one would expect of a grandchild of Nathaniel and Hannah Martin. He finally passed away 17 January 1958, probably in a Grants Pass hospital. (The 13 January 1958 entry in his sister Emma’s diary reports having heard by way of her niece Dorothy that John “was worse again” and had been hospitalized.) His body was interred on the 21st in plot 5-118-6 at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Grants Pass, Reverend Harold A. Anderson officiating. All four of John’s surviving siblings attended the services, even Emma and Charley, who had to come out all the way from their homes near Martintown.

Ellen survived her husband by just over half a decade. As you can see in the photo above, the wear and tear of her life had caught up with her by the second half of the 1950s, and she did not attempt to forge on alone in Grants Pass. She joined Linnie in Victoria and spent her final few years there. Her grave is in Victoria. As a consequence, John’s grave at Hillcrest Memorial Park is a solo one.

Children of John Martin Warner with Anna Lueck

Leslie John Warner

Dorothy Doris Warner

To go back one generation to John’s mother’s biography, click here. To go back one generation to his father’s biography, click here. To return to the Martin/Strader Family main page, click here. To return to the Warner/Alexander Family main page, click here.