Bessie Benston notes from
         Don Kelly nightwalker45acp@yahoo.com
     
 

Bessie (my grandmother) wrote a column for the Sedro-Woolley newspaper.  She
told of all the happenings in and around Hamilton.  We used to call it "The
Gossip Column" .  With the small pension she received, the money from the
paper was a real help.  by Craig Luton, November 11, 1992.  *******    In
the mid 1960's Bessie was given a raise by the paper to the sum of 10 cents
per column inch.  by Donald B. Kelly, March 03, 1998.  *******  Bess Luton
was cremated and her urn was imbedded in the headstone for Edward Luton by
Craig Edward Luton at the cemetery in Hamilton, Washington.
 

Bessie Luton  Former Town Marshal

                               by Lucile McDonald from the Skagit Valley Herald  (undated)

     Stories have a way of becoming magnified as they are handed on from
person to person -- like the tale of Skagit County's woman town marshal who
wore a six-shooter.

     Mrs. Bessie Luton, of Hamilton is the woman who once was marshal, but
the only badge of office she wore was a police star.  Yes, she was capable
of firing a revolver and owned one that had belonged to her murdered
husband, but she never carried the weapon.

     Mrs. Luton lives in the big old house she and her husband were building
when he was killed in December, 1929, by a blow on the head from an unknown
person.  He was the second town marshal to lose his life violently; an
earlier one, Jake Woodring, was beaten to death on Thanksgiving Day of 1904.

     When Ed Luton died, his widow asked for his job.  "I needed the money,"
she said.  "It paid $5.00 every Saturday night for policing the public
dance.  The depression was begining and I had just two $5.00 bills when Ed
was killed.  He was a carpenter and we had gone into debt building this
house.  One day he handed me those bills and said "Put this in your safety
deposit."  He ment the Bible."

     "I paid one $5.00 bill for digging Ed's grave and offered the other to
the minister who conducted the services, but he wouldn't take it.  A lot of
people hadn't paid my husband for work he'd done and they never did.  They
gave me the job.  I held it for three months and resigned because I was
going to have a baby in June.  I started to work taking census, too, but the
doctor was afraid I'd lose the baby and put me in the hospital."

     "My oldest boy was 16 and the oldest girl was 11.  We got by and I put
my children through school.  We had a cow and chickens and after the baby
was born, I did sewing and washing.  We also received $50 a month from my
husband's industrial insurance."

     Mrs. Luton found time to serve 30 years on the election board, 28 years
of it as a Republican committee woman.  Since 1926 she has been a
correspondent for the Sedro-Woolley Courier, sending in a weekly column.
She taught herself to type and took a mail order-course in journalism.
Nearly 80, she drives her automobile to cover news stories when the facts
are unobtainable by telephone.  Her regular column always begins with a
quotation, some composed by Mrs. Luton and others from a favorite source.
She invariably concluded her notes with a recipe from Hamilton residents.

     She has been a faithful worker in the Methodist Church and kept its
Sunday school going when the town no longer supported a minister.  In the
depression, when some persons could no longer afford to send for a minister,
they asked her to say a prayer and preside at burials.  She was a member of
the church choir and sang solos for funerals.

     Hamilton was a town of 900 inhabitants when Mrs. Luton went there first
in 1907 to visit her mother, Mrs. Emma Benston.  The town was then a logging
center and a gathering place for workers on the Upper Skagit.

     "My husband and I moved here from Sedro-Woolley in August, 1909."  She
explained, "I was born in Iowa and taught school a year before we were
married.  We moved into an old three story hospital building near the river
and a block west of my present home.  It was built by a doctor, who had
decided to rent it for apartments."

     "All of the town was closer to the river than it is now because
Hamilton had a steamboat landing.  It was a wild, wild West town and with
two groceries, a hardware store, pool hall, pharmacy, butcher shop, two
churches, two shingle mills, and thirteen salons.  The bank had failed so we
had none."

     "On Sunday, November 28, it was raining and that night a chinook wind
blew, melting snow in the mountians.  The town was warned to expect a flood.
Cattle were driven to high ground and everyone went to work putting their
belongings up on second floors.  We weren't worried because we lived so high
in the building, but Mother's was different.  We had to use tables for her
to stand on to get out of her house."

     "The river roared by, carrying logs and whole trees.  The wooden
sidewalks, eight feet wide were raised up in sections and floated away.
That was the granddaddy of all the floods.  I remember it didn't begin to go
down until late Tuesday.  In the meantime we had a houseful, with relatives
sleeping on the floor.  Bridges leading to Hamilton were damaged, part of
the county road was in the river, some of the railroad track was washed out,
telephone lines were in a tangle, mud covered everything and dead salmon
were deposited here and there."

     "Workers were brought in to repair the railroad," Mrs. Luton recalled,
"and I boarded 28 of them, cooking on a four-hole iron stove.  I lasted as a
cook until Christmas day, when I went to bed, all worn out."

     Most of the excitement in Mrs. Luton's life was while her husband was
still alive.  He was marshal seven years when the town was wild.  There were
shootings, a gruesome stabbing and frequent raiding of stills during the
prohibition period.  When Mrs. Luton took over as marshal, her late
husband's friends endeavored to ease her duties.

     They'd tackle fellows entering the dance hall with bottles and say,
"Remember, Ed's widow is here."  "And I had no trouble," she said.

     "That's not true about my carrying a six-shooter.  My husband never
carried one as an officer either.  Perhaps if he had, he'd have been alive
now."
 

Source: Hamilton 100 Years   page 160-161

Compiled by Carol B. Bates and James A. Bates.
Proof reading has been done by Carol Bates and Jean Wagner.
Setting to print has been done by Jumbo Jack's Inc., Audubon, Iowa.
Binding into hard backs has been done by Classic Book Binding, Des Moines,
Iowa.
 

                                                 

Obituary for Bessie Daphne Luton

May issue of the Courier Times

Sedro-Woolley, Washington

     "Yea, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no eavil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
 
                                                                 --Psalms 23:4

     Bessie D. Luton, for over 45 years the Hamilton correspondent for this
newspaper, walked through that valley on Tuesday evening, May 5, at the
United General Hospital following a short illness.  Many friends gathered at
the Lemley Mortuary on Staurday afternoon at 1:30 to pay their finial
tribute to her.  Reverand David Sharrard of Central Methodist Church offered
the words of comfort and cremation followed at Hawthorne Lawn Crematory in
Mt. Vernon.

     Mrs. Luton was born Bessie Benston in a cabin near Conway, IA, during a
snowstorm on January 11, 1886.  She was raised in Iowa and was married to
Edward Luton there on December 31, 1905.  They came to Washington in 1907,
living in Seattle fro a short time, and arriaved in the Skagit Valley later
that year settling near Sedro-Woolley.  In 1909, the couple moved to
Hamilton where she had lived since.  Mr. Luton preceeded his wife in death
on December 15, 1929, six months prior to the birth of their youngest child.
She worked for years in the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in Hamilton,
having been one of those who helped to raise funds for the originial
building of the church, and when a minister wasn't available, served in the
capacity of a substitute, by saying the finial words of comfort over babies,
at the time of their burial.  She served as Sunday school superintendent for
many years.  Following the murder of her husband, Mrs. Luton also served as
first woman marshal in the area, taking over Mr. Luton's duties in Hamilton
for several months.

     The couple gave birth to six children, two of whom died in infancy and
the eldest son, Donald, who passed away in September, 1962.  Survivors
include one son, Bruce of Arcata, CA, two daughters, Doris Smith of Tacoma
and Mary Rea Vlahovich of Sedro-Woolley; 12 grandchildren and three
great-grandchildren, also one adopted brother, Harold Benston of Castle
Rock, and many neices and nephews.

     Also are the many young people who called Mom Luton's "home" while they
were growing up.

     For the third time, family members heard the lines of this poem which
had brought solace for them at services for their father and brother and
again they felt their comfort:

                                                      "It may be in the coming years,
                                                       Perhaps within the better land,
                                                  We'll know the meaning of our tears,
                                                  And then, ah, then, we'll understand."
____________________________________________________________________________

                      Partial excerpt from an article written by Fred
Slipper in the Courier Times newspaer located in Sedro-Woolley, Skagit
County, Washington.

     Where have all the years gone???  I remember waiting for the Courier
Times to be delivered in Hamilton when I was just old enough to remember
such things.  As I was born May 14, 1917, this more than likely was in the
mid 20's.  First place I looked was the "Hamilton Events" written by Bess
Luton.  What a thrill to see my name in print.  If mom and dad drove down to
Sedro-Woolley and I got to go with them, this was the kind of news Bess had
in her column.  (Source: The Courier Times, November 11, 1997 edition,
published in Sedro-Woolley, Washington.)