Ella Cecilia Lybecker

1883-1962

Ella Cecilia Lybecker was the firstborn of Charles and Ella Lybecker in 1883. She and her brother, Charles (Chet) were born in Sutter, California. When she and Chet were just a baby and toddler, her parents moved to Washington. Their family grew to have 9 children which were a very deeply religious family and very musical.

In 1902, Ella and Alvin Olson were married. She was 19 years old and he was 25 years old. Together, they had six children, three of whom reached adulthood.

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Alvin Emel Olson (also known as Birger Emel Alvin Olsson in Sweden) was born in 1877 in Malmö, Sweden, and emigrated to the United States in 1883. He became naturalized in 1892. He lived on his father's farm near Harrington, Washington, for some years before acquiring a farm of his own in Whitman County near Pullman in 1908.

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Ella and Alvin had two children in Pullman, Washington, the firstborn did not live. Then they moved to Idaho where they had four more children, two of which were a set of twins in 1921. They moved back when the twins were little. They had an hired servant to help in the house. In 1925, their oldest son, LaVerne had meningitis of which he died at the age of 18 years old. Four years later, her little “Bobby” had appendicitis and died at 11 ½ years old.

When their daughter, Cecelia married Howard, they lived next door.

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​Ella’s husband, Alvin, was well-known and very well liked. Elected to the Washington State House of Representatives in 1923, Olson served as chairman of the Educational Institutions Committee, and was a member of the Banks and Banking, Dairy and Livestock, Public Morals, and Roads and Bridges committees. During his approximately twelve years in the Legislature he was noted for supporting the interests of Washington State University.​

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In addition to farming and holding public office, Olson was also a director and later vice president of the First National Bank of Pullman. He served as a lobbyist in the Legislature for the Washington State Cooperative Council in the 1940s, at which time he was also president of Pullman Grain Growers, Inc.

When Ella and Alvin moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the 1940s, their son, James Forrest, assumed management of the farm.

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Ella’s husband, Alvin E. Olson died in New Mexico on 19 January 1950. Ella moved back to Washington and died there in 1962.

Alvin had bought a family plot in the Pullman City Cemetery so the family could be buried together. They were buried there, but Hollis was the exception. She and her husband,  Miles, were cremated, and Hollis had requested that her ashes were spread over the spring wheat on the Pullman Wheat Farm where she was raised.