Mama said that we moved 20 times in the 19 years that she and daddy were married. So I'm going to answer this questions based on my original take on it- "how did you come to live there" meaning the area- not the house!
My parents ,20 year old Jack Williams and 19 year old Emma Gilmore Williams , married January 1948 and I was born that December. They were both born and raised in Ferry and Steven County. My mother's father was born in Idaho in 1890, but the rest of the grandparent were born on the other side of the Rockies. My dad's mother was born in Pike County, Kentucky. His father was born in Missouri. Mama's mother was born in Michigan.
My father's family - mother (Rebecca Ramey Dobson Williams) and father (Arthur Justus Williams) had property on the Columbia River just north of the falls (The Kettle Falls) (and near present day twin bridges.
The south end of their property was adjacent to the salmon fishing grounds. Dad used to play with the Indian children who camped out with their families next to the river during salmon season.
His family lived in other places in the area, including Laurier- on the Canadian border- where his mom was post mistress. And he also lived in Colville in a big house up on the hill behind town. His dad was a logger. His grandfather, Fredrick Williams was a carpenter and traveled out to Washington state from Kansas with his wife and children.
My mom's mother (Esther May Riley Gilmore) and father ( Arthur Francis Gilmore ) lived in a house that belonged to Esther May's father, Ed Riley. My grandfather was 21 years older than grandma and for much of my childhood, he was an old man trapped in deafness and daydreams. He used to stand at the living room window- and peer through hanging begonias and ferns and palms, two parakeet cages and a couple of cages full of canaries and gaze at a world outside the window where more was going on than I could ever see.
