Henry Edward 'Harry' Chenoweth 1883-1966
A home on Ashworth
co-authored by Jon Egge and Harry Holt Chenoweth [March 2004]

In the late twenties, H. E. Chenoweth* lived at 8246 Ashworth Avenue, six or seven blocks north of Green Lake in Seattle. He was retired from the lumber business, having worked as a tallyman in various lumber mills in the Northwest and then as a shipping clerk in a lumber yard in Seattle. He lost tips of several fingers when making molasses on a farm in Missouri. He had a shock of snow-white hair and chewed plug tobacco which he would spit into a nearby coffee tin kept by his chair for that purpose. He would always have a card table set before him where a solitaire game was always in progress. On summer days he would listen to Leo Lassen announce the current Seattle Rainier's baseball game. With the advent of TV, he would watch games, but he would always turn the volume off and list to the game as announced on the radio.

The Chenoweth home on Ashworth was a one story, 3 bedroom, white stucco house with a basement that was filled with an enormous sawdust furnace, piles of sawdust, shelves of preserves, crocks of sauerkraut, canned vegetables, and a workbench. The house was on a double lot, so the yard was large for the city. In front was a large weeping willow tree, where small family dinners of fried chicken were some times held. To the side were rows of flowerbeds. Behind was a chicken coop (the source for the dinners and breakfast eggs), a large vegetable garden with pea and raspberry patches, childhood delights. Between the coop and the raspberry patch, back along the ally was a garage, filled with little room for anything else than a deep blue '49 Ford.

Harry's wife was Minnie Jane Holt. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 16, 1963. He had married her in Seattle at the YMCA and they took their honeymoon on a boat trip down the sound to Tacoma. Harry had come out from Missouri in his late twenties, working his way across the country by working on a cattle ranch near Flagstaff, Arizona, then picking potatoes near Greeley, Colorado. Before leaving Missouri, Harry attended a small Business College for one year, then opened a café, probably in Rocky Comfort, Missouri since that is where he met Minnie. He was the manager, cook, waiter, and dishwasher.

After arriving at the lumber mill in Barnston, Washington, and getting established, he sent back home for Minnie, who took the train to marry in Seattle. A year later they were in the small town of Hobart where both their children would be born. Harry suffered from asthma and a change in climate seemed to give him some temporary relief so he relocated many times. Later they moved to Spirit Lake, Idaho, and then went to Hailey, Idaho, where they lived for some months with Minnie's sister Thet Buttram. Harry worked as a farm hand on his brother in law's large ranch and then he moved to Alpine, Washington, where he was again a tallyman at a lumber mill. In the late 20s, they came back to the city and bought their home on Ashworth. Harry worked at the Balcom Canal Lumber Mill and then for the Farrell Lumber Company located at Seventh and Westlake in downtown Seattle.

Besides baseball and solitaire, Grandpa would cook peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. He also would pop corn in a blackened kettle popper that had a knobbed stirring rod. The corn would be from garden that he had preserved. Every morning he would gather eggs and together with other garden bounty, pack them into his car and deliver them to one of the many little grocery stores that dotted the area. This would include berries, peas, vegetables, dried garlic and onions that grew in the garden.

All this was a child's paradise, picking peas and raspberries, gathering eggs from the warm nests, playing and rolling in the sawdust or watching Harry cut off a chicken's head and pluck it for the dinner that afternoon. Sometimes he would hatch baby chicks in an incubator in the basement and at other times he would buy day old chicks and raise them in the basement until they could safely be added to the regular flock. Minnie was always sewing on a quilt and we would cut out squares from various cotton patterns. There were stacks of old National Geographic Magazines and there was the reddish brown book by Cora Hiatt on the Chenoweth family, talking of lost treasures and the Baltimores.
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*H.E. Chenoweth. Almost every record I have ever found of Harry lists him as H.E. Chenoweth. He always went by Harry, but his name was Henry Edward, named for both his grandfathers, Henry S. Chenoweth and James Edward Yonce. The Harris book lists his name as Edward Henry. This is how he is listed in the WWI draft registration on Sept 18, 1918 while living in Hobart, WA, signing his name of course H.E. Chenoweth. I know his half-sister, Stella J. Pritchard, who had no children, referred to him as Henry in her will. Recently I looked at his wedding license dated June 16, 1913 in Seattle. His name was listed as Henry Edward Chenoweth, of course signed, H.E. Chenoweth. This is the only correct record of his full name I have found. I believe he started calling himself Harry when his widowed mother, Laura Yonce Chenoweth remarried to Henry Phelps Lamberson in McDonald Co., MO and settled in Rocky Comfort. The family structure became very complicated. Having already 6 half siblings from the fist marriageof his father Albert White Chenoweth to Thursey Harmon, he had one full brother, Wallace. His father, Dr. Albert Chenoweth, was shot dead by a local Pineville saloon keeper coming home in a buggy from his "doctoring" rounds two weeks before Harry was born. With his mother's remarriage to Henry Lamberson, he acquired 7 step-siblings. His mother Laura would have 3 more Lamberson children, bring the total to one brother, 9 half siblings and 7 step-siblings.

Harry was preceded in death by his father Dr. Albert White Chenoweth and mother Laura Victoria Yonce Lamberson and step father Henry Phelps Lamberson, his brother Wallace Chenoweth, half siblings Lincoln, Charles and Albert Chenoweth, Emma Price, Thursey Robinson, Stella Pritchard, Maurice and Earl Lamberson and 7 step-siblings: Barton, Daisy, Clarence, Earnest, Maud, Nellie and Attie Lamberson. He was survived by his half Brother Herbert Lamberson, his son Harry Holt (Loretta) Chenoweth and daughter Edna Louise Egge, grandchildren: Richard, Jon and Steve Egge, Janet Accargui, Mary Parsons, Nanette Eckert, Linda Cox, and Patricia Anger. Harry lived to see his first great grandchild Miranda Eckert. Yet to be born, 21 grand children: Miranda Schaible, Richard and Mark Eckert, Heidi Gottas, John Cox, Lacie Shastko, Jordan and Alden Anger, Brisa Stanton, Jordan Anderson, Amanda Lasser, Amity Egge, Ally Nelson, Brian, Mark and Rick Acarregui, Rob Parsons, Katie Adkisson, Kelsey Parsons, Ryan and Ross Egge and Rebecca Read.