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J. S. Thurston married Lizzie Middleton in Wisconson. They homesteaded in Nebraska before moving to Payette. They owned and operated Thurston Drug which later became Sedelmeier Drug. My great uncle Clyde Thurston ran the drug store after his father's death, and worked there after it was sold. The drug store was located on Payette's main street. The building is still there; and the last I remember, it still had Thruston painted on the side. I'm not sure when it was closed, but I think it was in the 50's.
J.S. and Lizzie Thurston were the parentes of six children: Irwin, Clyde, Ralph, Bess, Rachel and Helen. Irwin married Ethyl Venable, who was also from a respected Payette family. Clyde never married. My grandfather Ralph Thurston married Stella Brainard in 1906. She died soon after. In 1918, Ralph married Emily Kennedy whom he had met in Brazil. He had gone there to teach in a boy's school, and to try to recover from the death of his wife. Emily was there in lieu of a trip to Europe as World War 1 made that too dangerous. Ralph was a mining engineer, and they spent about seven years in mining towns. Ralph and his wife Emily returned when my mother, Mary, was six. The family moved in with the elder Thurston's because Lizzie was dying of cancer. My grandfather, Ralph, worked in mines and came home on weekends. He also taught chemestry at Payette High School in the mid 1920's and substituted well into the 1930s. They remained in Payette until my grandfather's death in 1955. The house my great grandfather built is located on First Avenue South. It is now painted red, but was white when my grandparents lived there.
Bess, Rachel and Helen did not stay in Payette. Helen did marry Stella's brother Paul Brainard. They lived in Pasadina, California where Paul taught psychology at a university. Rachel married Henry Filer and they lived in Oakland, California. Bess married Charles Buckley and they lived in Eugene, Oregon.
Read J.S. Thurston's Obituary
Read Lizzie Thurston's Obituary
Also Visit Riverside Cemetery