The following is a biography written by Della Mae (Barr) Evans. Martha Jane Jeremiah - This so well loved and lovely lady was called Mattie. She was born in Missouri ahead of the Civil War. Her family was a religious family. We find in our research of Missouri at that time there were schools nearby so assume Mattie attended those local schools. She was not the oldest, but it seemed she was the one the whole family turned to.
Mattie married Billy Harvey in 1880 there in Missouri. The family never mentioned it or perhaps they never knew, but Mattie and Billy lost a baby there in Missouri. We came across this in our research. That baby is buried at Rich Hill, Missouri.
Shortly after that Billy and Mattie joined with all the other members of her family and moved west. The group included not only her immediate family but also her cousins. We're not sure just when they made the trip, but we know they were in Idaho by 1890 when their daughter, Susie, was born. They settled close to Princeton, Idaho where five of their six children were born. They had another son after they moved to homestead in Whitman County, Washington.
Mattie's life of cooking and raising her children on the homestead places they occupied was a full time occupation. They always had to pack all their water, the laundry was done by hand, and they cooked on wood cook stoves as was done in the early 1900s. Mattie was the one who was always called for any sickness or birthing that had to be tended in the whole area. Many of the medicines that she used were made from plants growing there on those Snake River hills. Even though the entire family was dead set against liquor, Mattie always kept whiskey for medicinal purposes. One day the youngest son chopped off his big toe - they picked it up, poured whiskey over it, bound it back to his foot and he still had it when he died seventy-five years later.
Mattie loved flowers and would either pack water from the springs or send the children to water her roses. Her desire for a little cheerfulness there in those dry hills was evident in those flowers. I still have a rose that came from her.
The dear lady developed breast cancer, and if only we could document the treatment, or rather the mistreatment, of how they tried to treat it - salves, poultices, injections and all kinds of external care. Doctors in San Francisco felt they had a sure cure, but to no avail. The family brought her back to Walla Walla where she died in 1919.31