Marion Painter’s Story

As told to Donna at Tamarin Square, Durango, Colorado

Provided by Melinda Painter

Subject: Marion Cranston Painter
Parents: Christopher and Elizabeth Cranston
Born: Harding County, South Dakota
Recorded: Tamarin Square, Durango, Colorado — 1983 or later
Recorded by: Donna

Marion Cranston Painter told her life to a woman named Donna at Tamarin Square, the residence in Durango, Colorado where she lived after 1983. What follows is her account, reproduced as she gave it.

The Story

I was born in Harding County, South Dakota, right on the border between North and South Dakota. My parents were Christopher and Elizabeth Cranston. I had two brothers and one sister. One of my brothers is deceased. My parents were homesteaders and, if I wasn’t born in a log cabin, it was a snug “soddy” – built into the side of a hill. I remember it’s warmth and coziness.

I attended grade school in Scranton, North Dakota. When I was about ten years old my mother and father were divorced. My father wanted to move to Illinois, where he had relatives, and my mother couldn’t agree to move. She didn’t like to leave her parents.
Eventually my mother remarried – Ole Melby, a Norwegian. He was a very good man and a kind stepfather. My first two years in Scranton, a very small High School – enrollment about 30 students. My stepfather felt they couldn’t afford to put us all through High School. I wrote my father and it was arranged that my brother would stay with him in Maquon, Illinois and my sister and I would stay with a cousin, Pearl, and her husband, the Swansons. They lived in La Grange, Ill. And that’s where we (Marion and Helen) finished our education. Cousin Pearle had one son, and she said that it would be good for him to have the company of sisters.

Those two years were very enjoyable. I graduated in 1928. After graduation we went back to South Dakota. I then went to Black Hills State Teachers College at Spearfish, S.D. I taught in the rural schools of Harding County. I met my future husband, Preston Painter. He was a rancher and also on the school board.

We were married in 1934. We lived on the ranch. My husband was a wonderful man, such fine qualities. We raised nine children. Our first son died at birth, we would have had five girls and five boys.

In 1961 we moved just south of Lead, in the Black Hills area. Lead had been found in “Lead,” also the biggest gold mine – The Homestake. The Hearst family were a prominent family in Lead and were very influential in all of its affairs. We lived in this area for nine years.

In 1970 we moved to Crawford, Nebraska. My husband found another ranch – he was always trying to make things better for us. My husband died in 1975. I stayed on the ranch with our son, Ned, and his wife and family. All of our children had gone to college but two. They are all doing well and helped, by working, to get their education. Two of my daughters, Carol and Mary, had gone to Fort Lewis College. My daughter Catherine Dodd, works in the First National Bank in Durango. Mary also lives here and has 3 children.

I have had a rich and fulfilling life with a wonderful husband and children. I can truly say that raising a family of nine is no harder than raising a family of three. I have 25 living grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. I moved to Durango in 1983 to be near some of my family and am now a resident at Tamarin Square.

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Transcription Notes

The text above is reproduced exactly as it appears in the document Melinda Painter supplied. Marion’s spelling, punctuation, and sentence construction have been left alone, including I remember it’s warmth and coziness and the incomplete sentence beginning My first two years in Scranton. Nothing has been corrected, smoothed, or added.
— “Lead had been found in ‘Lead’” stands as written. The town of Lead, South Dakota takes its name from the mining term for an ore vein. Whether Marion said lead or gold cannot be settled from the page.
— “Donna” is given without a surname. [GAP]
— The date of the telling is not stated. Marion says she moved to Durango in 1983 and is now a resident at Tamarin Square, which places the account in 1983 or after.
— Nine children raised, ten born. Marion counts nine children raised and says the first son died at birth — we would have had five girls and five boys.

What This Document Adds

Marion’s account establishes several things in the Cranston record in her own voice: that Christopher and Elizabeth Cranston homesteaded in Harding County; that the family lived in a soddy built into a hillside; that the marriage ended in divorce when Marion was about ten, over her father’s wish to move to Illinois and her mother’s refusal to leave her own parents; and that Elizabeth then married Ole Melby, whom Marion describes without qualification as a good man and a kind stepfather.

It also records the family’s dispersal for schooling — a brother to their father in Maquon, Illinois, Marion and her sister Helen to cousin Pearle Swanson in La Grange — and the reason given for it: a stepfather who could not afford to put them all through high school. Marion graduated in 1928, trained at Black Hills State Teachers College, taught in the rural schools of Harding County, and met Preston Painter there, on the school board.

The Melby marriage is the connection point between this account and the Melby material already in the archive.

Supplied by Melinda Painter. Transcribed and formatted for thecranstonline.com.