The Migration: Tennessee to Oregon

The beginning of the 1920's found Hervey and Sarah Ellen Crocker at the start of a migration that woul d form a distinct clan. Soon after their journey began Ellen's teenage sister, Pauline, would join them. By the time the migration was complete a decade later, Pauline would be matriarch of the clan.

The departure of Hervey and Ellen from Tennessee probably did not begin with the intent of reaching the West Coast. Their first moves were likely related to Hervey's employment with the railroad. The ministry apparently called them to Oklahoma. Personal disillusionment took him out of the ministry and back into the agriculture of his ancestors. But each move advanced them further west, as if carrots were being dangled just out of reach and luring them toward the promise of a better life. Somewhere along the way California became their goal. Its great Central Valley promised ample agricultural opportunity.

Hervey's great grandfather had led an earlier group of Crockers from South Carolina to Tennessee and had fared well. But a lot had happened since then, including the Civil War, and West Tennessee was no longer the promising new frontier it had been for his ancestors. Now any hope for prosperity lay further west for the young couple.

The birthplaces of Hervey's children highlight the route of their Grapes of Wrath-like migration. Louise's birth marks the starting point in Tennessee. Mel was born while they were in Texas and Glenn arrived in Central California. The death of Ellen in 1930, followed by the onset of the Great Depression, and promises of pears just falling off the trees in Southern Oregon lured them eventually to Medford, Oregon. Ellen's sister, Pauline, became Hervey's wife and bore Barbara there. Medford then became hometown for our clan of Crockers.

Hervey seems to have moved wherever the railroad needed him in the early days of his marriage to Ellen. Louise's birth certificate lists Hervey simply as a laborer. A son, Arleigh Coleman, lived only six months. His birth certificate indicates that he was born in Troy, Tennessee, near Obion, where the young family was living at that time. The certificate states that Hervey's occupation was railroad laborer. The 1920 census, just five months later found them in Blytheville, Arkansas where Hervey is listed as a fireman, (for the railroad?).

Louise's earliest recollections are in Arkansas when she was three and a half. They were still there when Ellen's mother died in 1921. Ellen returned to Tennessee for the funeral, leaving Lousie in Arkansas with her dad.

The death of Mattie* left Ellen's fourteen year old sister without a home. She was shuffled between relatives for about a year before she was invited to live with Hervey, Ellen and Louise. She was to become an integral part of their family and would eventually assume the role of mother to her sister's children.

Louise next remembers America, Oklahoma on the Red River in the southeast corner of the state. Hervey was a preacher there. Louise recalls that they would ride around in a horse drawn wagon picking up people to take to church.

Hervey's discouragement over his inability to achieve sinlessness caused him to leave the ministry. He believed that a true Christian could neither sin nor lose his salvation. He knew he still sinned and tried repeatedly to become truly saved. But each time he again found himself sinning. Unable to reconcile what he believed with what he knew to be true about himself, he determined that he must leave the ministry. He simply could not continue to preach hypocritically.

This decision may have prompted the next leg of their journey westward. They found themselves working their way across Texas picking cotton, working road construction and anything else that could put food on the table. In central Texas, in the late summer of 1924, Mel (Marvin Lafayette) was born. They lived for a while in the Lubbock, Texas area "up on the plain".

The small family continued to seek work across Arizona, with their car laden down with all their possessions. At the California border they had to surrender the bags they used for picking cotton to the agriculture department. After some car trouble, they passed through Tehachapi Pass a day before a major flood that claimed many lives.

Guy*, brother of Ellen and Pauline, had already settled in the Kingsburg area near Fresno, California. Hervey's family arrived sometime in 1928 and probably planned to settle there themselves. They began to sharecrop in nearby Cutler and worked in alfalfa fields, vineyards, citrus and fig orchards.

They were beginning to do quite well. But Ellen had contracted Banti's Disease about the time they arrived in California and in 1930 it progressed to the point that her doctor determined that she required surgery to have her spleen removed. She did not survive the surgery.

Hervey was distraught. He had now lost two wives. Eve, his first wife died of tuberculosis two years after their marriage. Now Ellen was gone, and the place that had so recently provided such promise now held only agony, bitterness and pain. After a brief marriage to a local woman, Hervey was convinced by Pauline that she should rear her sister's children.

In the midst of their personal loss, the Great Depression was beginning to take hold and another carrot began to dangle in front of the changed family. Word came that there were pears to be picked in Southern Oregon. In the winter of 1931-32 they arrived in the Rogue River Valley " without money or means to earn money." There they would finally settle.