AKA: Billy
The following is William Zane Harvey's biography as written by Della Mae Evans, the daughter of Lenora Harvey, William's daughter.
This ancestor was born in the west-central area of Missouri in a rural farming area. The year, 1860, when William was born, was a very troubled time in Missouri. All the factions and factors that brought about the Civil War were being fought out there in those western counties in Missouri. Long before the Civil War broke out in the east, fighting was taking place in Missouri and Kansas. Although a very young boy, William's life was no doubt affected by all the unrest. Families would move to Kansas so they could vote either pro or con for Kansas being admitted as a slavery state.
Missourians never were people to set idly by in any controversy, so your Missouri ancestors were also probably involved. Well-versed in religion, their very lives centered around their religious beliefs. We have been told that William's (or Billy as he was called) family was poor. But our research shows that they were as well off as their neighbors. Times were simply not favorable in Missouri, especially in those years following the Civil Was.
In January of 1880, William married Martha Jane Jeremiah at the town of Johnstown, Missouri which does not exist now. This connection with the Jeremiah family changed his life as his father-in-law soon gathered the entire family to move them west.
The railroad lines had crossed the country by then, but you can be sure it was a very primitive trip this group took. By 1890 they all had settled close to Princeton, Idaho where Billy farmed in that area.
At the turn of the century more homestead land became available in the lower end of Whitman County in Washington. Again, with all his in-laws, Billy moved his family.
The Harveys proved up on his homestead and along with his brother-in-laws bought a threshing outfit. As you contemplate history and the changes that history brings, there may be no other as fascinating as agricultural history. The threshing equipment alone is a complete study. Billy Harvey had one of these large threshing outfits with which they not only harvested for themselves, but custom cut for others. Sometimes they never finished threshing until November.
Billy continued farming land that is now part of the Snake River Ranches. When his wife became seriously ill, he rented the land that he owned to his sons and lived for awhile at Walla Walla. After she died, he moved to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho where he lived out the rest of his life.
There he pursued his life-long wish of studying the Bible. He became an active lay minister; gave all his worldly goods to his beloved church and raised a big garden which also fed his parishioners. He married twice more, the last time when he was eighty-one years old.
He was a short, rotund man who always wore a mustache. Even though he never had a formal education he was certainly a scholar of the Bible and could quote verse after verse.31