ETTA MAE RUSSELL

1871-1939

 

From narratives of Rainous Todd, edited and updated by JoAnne Leppo

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Etta Mae Russell was the first child of A. P. and Harriet Russell. She had three older half siblings who were born to her mother’s sister, Sarah. Sarah had died and A.P. married Harriet. Even though they were half siblings, they never thought of themselves this way and were all very close. The family had come via wagon to a narrow valley in the Cascades east of Yoncalla and Drain because of Mr. Russell’s, Ella’s father, ill health.

 

 

In Oregon, they met the Todd family who had crossed the plains by oxen and wagon and had taken out a "Donation Land Claim" near Roseburg, Oregon. The Todds were a large family.  Abbott Levi Todd was a Circuit Rider preacher, having a large scattered parish.  Mr. Todd was a potter by trade having learned the trade when a youth.  Etta Russell and Abbott’s son, Levi James Todd, became acquainted.

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Levi spent his childhood on a small diversified farm. He got his early schooling in a one-room clapboard school house and later received the equivalent of two years of high school near Drain, Oregon.

 

It was in this neighborhood, near Lookingglass, he met Etta May Russell and fell in love. With money he had saved and with help from his family, he went to Chicago to study medicine. He earned his degree at 31 years of age, and then returned and married Etta Mae in 1890. They were married in the home of the bride's parents (A. P. and Harriet Russell) at Elkhead, Oregon. They rode horseback to Empire City, some seventy miles over on the coast for their honeymoon.  (For a time the Todd home served as the Elkhead post office) ​Levi practiced medicine for a short time

in Coos Bay, Oregon; and then in Drain and Yoncalla.

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It was in Fallbrook, California, Etta and Levi’s first son, Leo Russell, was born in 1894. Their second son, Aubry Levi, was born on or near the Lucky Baldwin Ranch in 1897. A year later, their third son, Emery Sumner, (later changed to Phillip) was born at Sierra Madre. (all three were born in San Diego county)

 

Levi’s hearing began to fail him. He was considering giving up his medical practice because of this. His older brother, Aurelious, enticed him to come to Sierra Madre, California, to help him work a mining claim. Levi was a resident physician for a mining corporation. He practiced some medicine there, but mostly, he prospected for gold.

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Aurelius, Levi’s brother, then went to Cuba and saw great opportunity there in a manganese mining company. Levi went down and a few months later, sent for his family in 1900. This was right after the Spanish American War and where he practiced medicine.

 

After two years, the manganese mine folded and his son Aubrey died, so he sent Etta and two surviving sons home to her parents in Oregon. Then, Levi was stricken with yellow fever, which left him totally deaf and a semi-invalid. In 1904, he returned to Sutter, California, bringing the body of his son, Aubrey, which he interred in his wife’s family plot in Sutter.

 

After returning from Cuba, Levi sent for his family in Oregon. He and Etta lived in Scio, Oregon for a time; later moving to Sutter City, Calif. He tried to get his medical license renewed, but found his medical school was no longer recognized. The Willamette Valley climate did not agree with Etta. She suffered from hay fever and an asthmatic condition whenever r eturning to the Valley. They bought property in Sutter City and also rented farm land. Etta and Levi moved onto a dairy ranch and milked for eight years. During these years, two more sons were born: Rainous Trevor in 1906, and Abbott Augustus in 1910.

 

Rainous Todd: “Times were hard.  There were no levee systems so they were put up by the farmers as groups to keep the flood water from coming up on the ranches. But many times they broke down, and we were being surrounded by water in the winter time lots of times. I can remember Mother struggling trying to get in fruit trees and get them growing. I helped pack water to them all summer, hoed them… quite a life for a boy in those days. Hard work all the time. We had to pump water by hand for all the stock, pump water for the house, cut wood for the house wood to cook with and heat with. Always hard work. Always a struggle to keep up with everything.”

 

“Along with the hard times, I can remember the pleasant evenings around the wood heating stove, a couple of kerosene lamps for light. Mother reading to us, or we reading by ourselves. She would play the piano and we would sing. These were the golden hours between the hard work. One thing we had as we grew up was good music and singing due to Mother and especially brother Emery. Oh how he loved the classics of the day and good music.”

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Frustrated by his loss of hearing and medical license, Levi became withdrawn and studied deep into religious work. Etta divorced him in 1915, so he started up a homestead half way up South Butte in the Sutter Buttes, the last homestead available in Sutter County. There Levi established a small house, a herd of goats and a large garden. 

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It soon became apparent that he had built his house in or close to a den of Rattlesnakes.  The snakes seemed to make their home in the rocks and the big cliff near his house.  Imagine a person who could not hear but having to depend entirely on his eyes to detect the snakes.  But he never was bitten in all the years he lived there.  He had a shoe box almost full of rattlers, he had taken from the snakes he had killed. Here, he lived a semi-recluse life, reading, studying and writing, until his failing health forced him to accept the assistance of his eldest son, Leo, who cared for him. Levi’s health slowly and steadily got worse and he died in 1924 and is buried in the Sutter Cemetery.

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At the time that Etta and Levi divorced, her youngest son was only five years old. Her oldest son, Leo, was 20 years old. Leo had to quit school and start working the ranch full time to support the family. Their second son, Emery was old enough so he worked out milking cows for R.L. Morehead.

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Emery didn’t work much at the ranch while Leo was running it.  Emery seemed to be working at R.L. Moreheads and going to school until he joined the army for the First World War.  He was under age but by fibbing somewhat and making it stick, he was taken into the Army.” When Emery came home from the Army and Leo got married, then Emery took over the ranch and farmed it.

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Leo’s first wife died, leaving him with a son, Leo Jr. Leo Jr lived with his Grandma Etta for a while with all the family looking after him until Leo could get established.

 

To help with support after the boys left, Etta rented out a room. Leo and Emery worked on setting up the back room for her to rent out. Eventually, Etta sold the farm and moved into town.

 

In 1939, Etta developed diabetes which affected her heart and she died in Sutter City at the age of sixty-eight.

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