Stanton and Olive, About 1915
Home Stanton Ganders
Dean Ganders Family Tree
Swiss Shield
John Jacob and Leah Ganders

JJ and Leah Ganders
Gander as a Swiss name dates back in written records nearly 700 years to 1324 A.D.***

 Firm ancestral links to our family lead to Willi Gander, born in 1526. Much of the family records are recorded in German in Gsteig, a town in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, just eight miles from the French-speaking region. The name originated from the "Gands," the fertile agricultural slopes (glacial moraines) of the Bernese Oberland (The higher and southern part of the Bern "canton" or Swiss state). The Gander Family (Johann Jakob and L'ea Gander) came to Washington Territory from the Swiss-German portion of Switzerland in 1884 and we, the family descendants, still reside in what is now the state of Washington.


Sam Ganders Family

Sam and Olive Ganders
Stanton, Ruth and Dean
Upon arrival to Washington Territory, the Gander Family members spoke Swiss-German and Swiss-French. Johann Jakob was Swiss-German and L'ea was Swiss-French.

They could read English but did not speak it. Johann was a landscaper. L'ea was the daughter of Huguenot parents and grandparents. The couple came directly to the Pacific Northwest from Switzerland to homestead and were attracted by the plentiful bunchgrass, canyons full of wildflowers, distant alpine-like views of Mt. Adams and Mt Hood, a reputation for being good cattle country, and unusual geology (that many years later was confirmed to be caused by a great post-glacial flood as Johann had reasoned).


Stanton, Betty, and Larry Ganders. Circa 1958?

Betty and Stanton Ganders, & Larry
Bickleton Farmhouse (Hooker Place)
Campaign photo, About 1958
Johann (Larry's great grandfather) first made the 7,000-mile trip to the Bickleton Country alone. He sailed from Le Havre, France, on the 394-foot "Labrador" steamship.

T
he rest was a journey across the United States by train to Alkali (Arlington, Ore) and a Columbia River ferry crossing to the north bank which today is Roosevelt, Wa. He hiked about 25 miles or more from the river crossing to the Bickleton Trading Post with two bags and an alpine backpack.  It was 2,900 feet above the river crossing. Johann Gander found remaining homestead lands in 1884 unsuitable. At that trading post, he found someone named Mannheim who also spoke Swiss and advised him to purchase a nearby farm. He ended up purchasing better land elsewhere in the county, near Bickleton, WA. The property was known then as the Smith Homestead near a rural post office called "Bluelight." They raised polled (hornless) Hereford cattle and later expanded the farm for raising wheat after the land transaction was complete,




Chalet Gander
Gsteig, Switzerland
Johann's Swiss Home, 20 miles east of Lake Geneva

Photo Courtesy Danielle Tanner, Sequim, WA *
circa 1960s
To emigrate 7,000 miles from Switzerland to Bickleton, the family had to purchase steerage steamship tickets from France to the New York, cross America by a series of early railroad lines ending with a recently-completed link operated by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.

 




Labrador

Labrador
Compagnie Generale Transatlantique
(From the Wood/Vorwerk Family Project)



 Larry's Great Grandfather first made the trip from Switzerland on the French passenger ship, "Labrador."  He would later return for the rest of his family on the Normandie.

They arrived in New York on Sept. 1, 1884 and took railroad lines to Oregon.






Oregon Railway & Navigation Engine 57
Typical 4-4-0 engine of the 1880s
Heppner, Ore.
(Oregon Historical Society)

The train appears to have followed the Northern Pacific route from St. Paul, Minn., to Wallula (near Tri-Cities). At Wallula, The Ganders rode on a three-year-old rail line operated by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Co (eventually purchased by the Union Pacific.)  It dropped them off at a new railroad station at what is now called Arlington, Ore (then called Alkali.)
Ship that carried L'ea and Sam to New York in 1884

"Normandie"
Ship that carried Leah and young Sam Ganders
 from Le Havre, France, to New York
Arriving September, 1884
The last 30 miles of their trip to Washington Territory may have been the most trying. Six of the 22 pine trunks that L'ea brought with her were blown into the river during the difficult Columbia ferry crossing between Alkali, Ore., and what is now Roosevelt, Wash.

However, all of the trunks were recovered on nearby river islands.


 Over a period of 15 years, they "Americanized" their Swiss-German name to "Ganders" a feeble try to avoid teasing of their children in school with rhymes like, "Goosie Goosie Gander."  Johann Jakob, who also went by Jean Jacques Gander on the ship's registry, became known simply at J.J. L'ea preferred the French Jean Jacque name. But L'ea changed the spelling of her own name to Leah..The family was one of the earliest in the area to raise wheat and was also involved in cattle ranching and Percheron horses.
Headstone of JJ Ganders, Bickleton IOOF Cemetery

Headstone of J.J. Ganders
Bickleton IOOF Cemetery (2011)
The family farm home was moved to the O'Brien homestead and soon included what was known as the "Wilber Carrell Place," homesteaded by the Carrell family in 1904.  The Ganders home was on or near that property. 

 JJ was seriously injured when his wagon went over the Spring Creek canyon wall hear his home.  The accident led to JJs death in 1901 and Leah became a single mother of a family of eight children. Leah and the children attended the church of the Brethren.**

Drawing believed to represent descriptions of the Gander Family Coat of Arms, perhaps dating back for centuries. The source was a seal used by JJs Grandfather, Christian Gander of Switzerland 1759-1836
The eldest of nine children and only Swiss-born child, Sam, at 18 years old, assumed much of the role of father. His strength and impatience were legendary. He reportedly rose from a sick bed with typhoid fever to roll six 300 pound bales of gunny sacks from a burning barn. He was said to have cured himself of a chest injury by gulping turpentine.

He managed farm operations and also worked at the "Bank of Bickleton" which was formed in 1903 and  merged with "Community State Bank" (of Mabton) in 1931. Sam was on the board of the merged bank. Sam married Olive Nye, the daughter of the owner of one of two hotels in Bickleton, the Hotel Grand. She was a graduate of what is now Central Washington University and taught elementary school at nearby Dot School. She was a descendent of the Civil War pilot who ran the blockade at Vicksburg for General U.S. Grant.
Wilbur Carroll Place

Very early photo (early 1900s?) of the Ganders farm in Bickleton.
Sam and Olive gave birth to Stanton (Larry's father), sister Ruth, and brother Dean. Dean rebuilt crashed airplanes, flew Hanford security during the Cold War, and built some of the first hangars at Vista Field in Kennewick. Ruth served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC), studied literature at Edinburg University, Scotland, and was a proofreader for a Seattle newspaper.



Original Oestrich homestead agreement, 1886


Sam purchased 480 acres from the farm of Christian & Annie Oestreich in 1916 (Originally homesteaded by Christian Oestrich and Edward Duffy in 1886 & 1888.) Sam and Olive made their home on what was called the "Oestreich Place." The farm had distinctive white buildings with green roofs, a Delco-Light electrical system that fed glass batteries and provided electricity from the pumphouse before the advent of power lines, a smoke house, a bunk house, a chicken coop, a large barn built with wooden pegs (not nails, a garage, a wagon or implement shed, and a farmhouse with a white picket fence. There was a stained glass window in the master bedroom.  The implement shed housed the family wagon and buggy until the 1970s. The barn is still located off "Gander Road" near the home of Bill and Lynn Mains.
Bickleton Carousel Museum

Horses from the Bickleton merry-go-round on display in Bickleton.
In 1929, Sam was among four Bickleton men that negotiated the purchase of a unique 1905 merry-go-round from Oaks Park in Portland that is still an operating attraction at the annual Alder Creek Pioneer Picnic near Bickleton.

 The 24-horse Armitage Herschell/Herschell-Spillman carousel was built in New York between 1890 and 1907. The technology is unique because the horses rock but there is no overhead mechanism. There are less than ten still operational in the U.S. 

Sam Ganders was also the local host for Queen Marie of Rumania when she visited Sam Hill at the castle/mansion that is now the Maryhill Museum.
Dean Ganders and Lori Ganders, Richland

Pilot Dean Ganders and his daughter, Lori, sitting on the Ganders' Volkswagen pickup truck at their home in Richland, Wash. in March 1962.  Dean flew an airplane during the Cold War to patrol the fencelines at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. (Photo courtesy of another daughter of Dean Ganders, Becky Decker.)
In 1937, Stanton purchased 480 acres from Thomas and Ada Hooker.

 The Hookers had farmed in Bickleton after homesteading in 1882. The former Hooker home on Ferguson Road became Stanton's home. It still stands today as the home of the Ron Juris family. The Hooker place also had a large red barn, a machine shed, a shop, a quonset for grain storage (now a shop), and a pig pen; The buildings, except for the barn and pig pen, still stand today. Stanton tried his hand at raising sheep but focused on raising polled herefords, wheat and barley. Today, alfalfa is raised on the land.


Stanton continued to farm the Hooker Place, the Oestreich Place, the Wilber Carrell Place (a 1904 homestead), and other Bickleton family property farmed by his parents and grandparents. He acquired the Beckner Place, which once was the site of a dance hall and artesian well on the Mabton-Bickleton road on the Yakima County side of the Yakima-Klickitat County line. The well still exists.


1800s Buggy Owned by the Ganders Family
Bickleton Whoop 'n Holler Museum
Among other previous owners of the property farmed by the Ganders were Robert M and Almeda Graham, 1872 immigrants.

Their child was the first caucasian child born in the region. Graham, who came over the Oregon Trail with seven oxen, operated a stage between Bickleton and Mabton. John Skiller, who loaned John Bickle the resources to purchase property for a trading post that became Bickleton, was also a previous owner of Ganders lands.  Some of the lands were also part of the 1896 Land Grant to the Northern Pacific Railway Co, which never built the much-sought railroad to Bickleton.

 Additional previous owners were Joseph Anton Marschall (1887), Clovia and Eugene Plaquet, who homesteaded in 1896, Ralph Cosens, John Hager, Henry A. and Josephine Hussey (1883), Joseph A. Marshall, CL and May Weaver, and Swen K. Anderson. Some of the early deeds were notarized by Sam Flowers, original co-owner of the Flowers and Bickle trading post that became Bickleton. Flowers later became a founder of Mabton.


Wilbur Carroll Place

Stanton's Birthplace
Stanton married Elizabeth (Betty) Fraunfelder, also a Swiss-German immigrant and professional Swiss entertainer performing at a club meeting in The Dalles-Hood River area where he was campaigning for the state Senate. 

 Stanton was a state senator from a district that included Bickleton, Yakima and Tri-Cities. In about 1951, he won chair of the Senate Roads and Bridges Committee after crossing party lines to give minority Republicans control of the state Senate leadership. He was often credited with being the politician who made possible construction of the Blue Bridge between Kennewick and Pasco. Children Larry, Linda (Johnson) and Lisa (Yoshida) were born in Yakima, about 70 miles from the Bickleton farm. Stanton ran for Congress in 1958, losing a close primary election bid.  He lost again by a wide margin in 1960.


Sam Ganders
First Car
 In 1961, Stanton and Betty moved their family to Spokane where Stanton worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and managed millions of dollars in federal farm assistance as executive director of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.

They later lived in Olympia, where both are now buried. Larry lives in Olympia. Lisa and Linda live in Spokane.


Click HERE to view Ganders-Fraunfelder family tree.
Ruth Ganders, U.S. Army

Ruth Ganders
Photo courtesy Steve Ganders
Stanton Ganders and Larry, About 1958
Stanton Ganders and Larry; Bickleton wheat farm, About 1958.
Larry Ganders, 2005
Right, Larry Ganders, 2005
 Olive and Sam in Phoenix, 1948

Sam & Olive, Phoenix 1948



 


Stanton and Olive
Circa 1915
Dean, Ruth Helen and Stanton Ganders

Dean, Ruth Helen and Stanton Ganders

Bickleton Grand Hotel
Bickleton Grand Central Hotel (1909)

Owned by Wilbur C. and Emma F. Nye
(Larry's Great Grandparents)
(Courtesy Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, Catalog ID: 2012.66.1)

Nye Livery Stable, Bickleton
Nye Livery & Feed Stable, Bickleton

Owned by Wilbur C. and Emma F. Nye
(Larry's Great Grandparents)
Across from what is now the Carousel Museum

Bickleton-area Pioneer Picnic at Cleveland Park

Cleveland, Washington Picnic and Rodeo Grounds Committee, circa 1954
 
Left top row: Bud Matsen,  Chloe Walling,  Dale Johnson,  Jim Spalding, Emory Kelley, Walt Johnson, Sam Ganders (1883-1955)
Bottom Row: Francis "Dub" Naught, Orval Walling, Dick Wilson, Jack Jensen, Cecil W. Everett.

Photo courtesy of Miland Walling, Goldendale. Photo from the archives of the Goldendale Sentinel.


Ben Flippin, 1973
Wind Ferry, Circa 1940s-1950s
1939 Sign, Library of Congress
Ben Flippin
I am sharing recently-collected photos of my Klickitat County childhood idol, Columbia River Ferry Boat Captain Ben Flippin. The ferry operated from 1943-1974. Long before I was born, Flippin began hauling passengers at his crossing between Arlington, OR. and Roosevelt, WA. There is even a photo of him with a sail-powered ferry. When I was young, his diesel tugboat-powered barge hauled our wheat truck loaded with harvested Bickleton grain to the Arlington elevator. The crossing has historic significance for the Ganders family as well. In an era when people were still settling the Oregon Territory by wagon train (e.g. the television series “1883.”), my great grandparents and grandfather traveled to Arlington (then named Alkali) in relative comfort by railroad in 1884 (Oregon Railway & Navigation Co.) Six of my great grandparents’ pine trunks brought from their previous home in Switzerland were blown from the crude ferry that took my family between Alkali and the undeveloped future site of Roosevelt. Some of the trunks and some stranded Hereford cattle that would seed our ranch stock in Bickleton were both found later on an island downstream. Flippin photo by Bruce McCurtain of The Oregonian (1973). Ferries from the Oregon State Archives, Arlington Public Library and Winifred Flippin Collection.
Estrellita
 


Henry George by Winifred Flippin, Columbia River Petroglyphs

Larry's favorite photo by Winifred Flippin. Pictured is Henry George of the Yakama Nation at Columbia River Petroglyphs.




1926 Dedication of Maryhill Museum of Art

Queen Marie of Romania Released Pigeons
Museum Project of Road Builder Sam Hill
One of the hosts of the queen was reportedly Sam Ganders, Bickleton

Queen Marie

Queen Marie of Romania

Sam Hill
Sam Hill
Sam Ganders
Sam Ganders



Goldendale, WA; Klickitat County
(Photo courtesy of the Maryhill Museum of Art)
Sam Hill invited trip also included New York ticker tape parade and White House event by President Calvin Coolidge


SpringCanyonBarn
Spring Canyon
Ganders Barn

These web pages are produced and managed by Larry Ganders
-- relying heavily on two publications:
"Pioneering Ganders" (1974)


and "Horse Heaven Hills" (1977)
Both authored by Harry S Ganders 1894-1978 (originally born Obed Ganders), Bickleton native and one of nine children of JJ and Leah Ganders;


Founding Dean of Education, and Graduate School Dean, at Syracuse University
Published by Syracuse University Printing Services and copyrighted 1974, 1977


-- Information also gleaned from the family's own records, deeds, and recollections and...


-- "The History of Klickitat County", 1982, Edited by Pete May (who was one of Larry's journalism mentors), Published by the Klickitat County Historical Society, Goldendale, WA.

--Early History of Klickitat County, Copyright 1977 by Jim Attwell.

-- Early Klickitat Valley Days, by Robert Ballou, Copyright 1928, from the library of Samuel F. Ganders

-- Special thanks to Klickitat historian Ada Ruth Whitmore and Sandra Powers, both of Bickleton, for their assistance. Additional thanks to everyone at the Eastern Klickitat County Historical Society
and the Bickleton Carousel Museum.

-- Thanks to State Archivist Steve Excell and his staff in the Washington Secretary of State's Office for assistance on the Stanton Ganders history

-- Ship registry information confirmed through Ancestry.Com, Norway Heritage.Com, and TheShipsList.Com


-- Linda and Paul Johnson of Spokane, WA provided some of the photos on this page. Linda is Stanton's eldest daughter.

* Danielle Tanner, a descendant of JJ's father, Johann Gander (1818-1897), and granddaughter of William Gander (son of David E. Gander, JJs brother) provided the 1960s-era photo of Chalet Gander, which was Johann and JJ's home in Gsteig.

** An Illustrated History of Klickitat, Yakima, and Kittitas Counties, 1904, Interstate Publishing Company

*** Historical Biographisches Lexikon der Scheweiz, vol. 3 & 5, Neuchatel 1926 & 1929, records the existance in 1324 and 1353 of Saanenland families bearing the name Gander that are very likely related to this family.  Similar names from the Cantons of Uri and UnterWalden and Southwest Germany are not likely related. Additional sources were cited by Harry Ganders in "Pioneering Ganders."
Harry Ganders
Harry S. Ganders

Oestreich Place
Sam Ganders Last Home During Renovation
 

Wilbur Nye and Percheron stallion.

Stanton's classmates


Ganders.Com is maintained by Larry Ganders
This page updated June 2024