From Milking to Sheriff: Life of Carey and Investigate Bible Mysteries

By James son of Anthony

The early years of Jim Carey, Sheriff of Umatilla County. Actual criminal investigations in Umatilla County. Also how to investigate the mysteries of the Bible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490853628

James son of Anthony

James Carey has twenty three years in law enforcement, and elected to four terms as Sheriff of Umatilla County. This is a book on Carey's life story from childhood to the present time. Carey is retired and living with his wife, Jackie and two dogs in Pilot Rock, Oregon.

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Mountain man in my family’s early years

First: How did I get to be in Prineville, Oregon on, July 19, 1935? Some of the information is historical and from this I will build a hypothesis by connecting the dots between historical facts and guesses.

I am going to dwell on the CAREY branch: I suspect the inspiration for the Carey’s coming to Central Oregon should be credited to Anthony B. Webdell, a Mountain Man from Missouri who arrived in Central Oregon during the eighteen fifties.

I’ve built a conjectured profile of A.B. Webdell that I can envision for his early life. I suspect a personality somewhat like mine. He loved the outdoors, hunting and fishing ever moment he could slip away from home. Whenever he didn’t have to go to school or do chores he would get lost in the hundred square miles surrounding their home.

When confined to the school room or home he would read library books on the great frontiersmen, Daniel Boone, Davey Crocket, Kit Carson, and the list was unlimited when he threw fiction into the list.

Kit Carson left Missouri when he was 16. Kit Carson maybe of special interest because he went thru Central Oregon a few years before Webdell arrived. Perhaps there was an article on Kit Carson thanks to the explorer, John Fremont, which started Webdell to thinking about Central Oregon. The opportunities to experience the life on the frontier was open to A.B. Wendell and he went for it.

I can imagine that in his latter teens, after reading all those exciting adventures he went to Independence, Missouri and hooked up with a wagon train possibly as a hunter and started for Oregon.

The same year he arrived in the future Prineville area, so did five other men. Perhaps they all left central Missouri together. Although other frontiersmen such as the famous Kit Carson travelled through Central Oregon before Webdell, it appears the six men who arrived in 1857 probably settled there.

My dad said Webdell was able to speak the Native American language, so I surmise from the time he arrived in Central Oregon; Native Americans would have been the only other humans outside the five white men that arrived the same year.

Webdell’s niece, Sarah Webdell married Charles W. Carey in Shelby, Missouri prior to immigrating to Oregon in the 1870’s, and settled on Johnson Creek, east of the present day Prineville.

It is easy for me to conclude that June 6, 1878, Grandpa Alfred Carey was born at his parents’ house on Johnson/Ochoco Creek several miles east of Prineville. Two years after he was born the so called Range War erupted and the killing continued for over twenty five years.

It would have been difficult to believe that Grandpa Carey lived all his early years in and around Prineville without being a witness and participated in some minor way to the events swirling all over Central Oregon.

Even though the name Range War implies cattlemen and sheepherders killing each other it appears any person with a grudge felt it was open season to kill his opponent. Some of the people in the Prineville area suspected the miners in Scissorsville were stealing from them.

After several years, a gang called the vigilantes was broke up by eighty good citizens that called themselves Moonshiners. The name Moonshiners probably came more from the light of the moon rather than what they drank.

Men were being bushwhacked, dragged to death behind horses, hung from Juniper trees and under a bridge. There was a war inside a war with settlers and the powerful Wagon Road Company. I suspect my family was caught up in this Wagon Road dispute.

Dad was born in Prineville, December 7, 1903, to Alfred and Bertha Carey. The greatest single slaughter of sheep (2,400) in one shooting occurred in Central Oregon April 28, 1903, seven months before dad was born.

My dad was probable named after Anthony Webdell. Anthony B. Webdell was my dad’s great uncle, and dad was named Anthony Wayne Carey. I surmise that Webdell had an opportunity to see dad when dad was a baby. Webdell didn’t go back to Shelby, Missouri until after dad was born.

Webdell died in Shelby in 1906.

Dad had to do a man’s work even in his earliest years. When he was only thirteen, and again when he was fourteen years old he spent the summers by himself herding sheep in the high mountains. Each year in the spring Dad took a band of sheep from the Prineville area to Diamond Lake and returned with the band in the fall.

When dad was born the range war was still consuming Central Oregon in fear. Sheep by the thousands were being killed and left to rot on the range. A few herders were killed or came up missing. Dad often talked about Shorty Davis a friend of the family that came up missing and was never found.

Six years old and misplaced

My first grade-six years old: I don’t remember the womb or even the birthing room so I will revisit my first big challenge of my life that I can remember.

One winter day during early 1942, I spent my first day back in a Prineville, (the place of my birth six years earlier,) in a first grade class room. Around five years prior to this day, my folks left Prineville to live near Vale and Ontario, Oregon.

Late in the afternoon, my first grade school teacher had placed me on a school bus and gave the bus driver instructions on where I was to be let off.

This was the day I saw my first lumber carrier. I was sitting by myself next to the window watching strange country appear only to slide back out of my sight. After about a half hour we dropped back down off a hill north of the Crooked River Valley, and as if by magic there was a strange and astonishing sight; A vehicle sitting on top of tall legs with wheels. It was moving fast across a large yard and it quickly approached a neatly stacked pile of lumber, and then slowed down as it straddled the pile and came to a stop. Somehow it sucked the stack of lumber up to its belly, and drove off with it.

Before I could digest what I had seen, we were driving by a sawmill with extremely large buildings, (larger than anything I had ever imagined). And after passing clear of the buildings the bus came to a stop across from a small country store. The driver advised me I was to get off with the other kids.

After the bus drove off, the kids and I stared at each other, and I’m sure if we had been dogs, they would have been sniffing me. I surely presented a strange sight to the locals. My clothes were draped over an emaciated scare crow. I was so skinny that if I turned sideways the kids would have to look closely or lose sight of me.

Without giving me advice they turned to go to their homes that were engulfed in a haze from wood stoves. Soon there was no one in sight. Loud distressing screeches were coming from the large buildings we had just passed. This left me standing alone, wide eyed, and blinking like a frog in a hail storm.

Mom was no place to be found, and the dim sun was preparing to disappear entirely behind the distant hills. It was a bit cold, but that was one thing I was acclimated to.

That morning mom had told me a teacher would put me on the bus, and mom would meet the bus to take me to our camp. It was frightening that she was nowhere in sight. It occurred to me that the bus driver had got it wrong, and with night coming on quickly this left me stranded in a strange place. Mom would not know where to find me so it was up to me to find her.

I took a lot of time (thirty seconds, or less) to make a decision on a course of action. I drew on my vast experiences in formulating this course of action.

The night before, we arrived in Prineville by a Trail Ways bus. Sometime during the night Uncle Elton picked us up from the bus station, and took us to his home just outside of Prineville. His home was under the View Point very near the present day Les Schwab plant.

That next morning while everyone was getting ready I went outside and studied the rim rocks above Elton’s house. These rim rocks ran along Crooked River to the west of the Valley. I had never seen anything like it and I found the rim rocks fascinating. The rims seemed to go on forever.

Knowing how to walk and my superior knowledge of rim rocks was the extents of my vast experience, which I now could draw on to help me out of this predicament.

From this bus stop I could look across the Valley, and could see rim rocks that appeared very similar to the ones above Elton’s home. I studied the rims and decided the section about four or five miles (seemed like a hundred miles) from my location looked most familiar. I knew I had less than an hour of day light left, and I only had one chance to get it right.

The road I was standing on seemed to head toward the familiar rims. I casually took off toward the rims, but after hot footing it for about a half mile I soon suffered a serious disappointment. The road turned and headed off in a different direction. I thought about turning around and going back to where the driver left me, but men never turn back and never ask for directions.

With apprehension I chose the line of sight-cross country direction. I crossed a fence, then a field, another fence, and came upon a high bank where I faced a large swamp full of cattails below me. It would take too long to go around it so I started walking along the banks of the swamp trying to find a way across.

I spotted what I thought was a very old board fence, disappearing into the swamp. With a closer inspection, I discovered it was an old foot bridge (probably for sheep in the turn of century) I could only see a few feet into cattails and the swamp, but it appeared it went in the direction I wanted to go.

With trepidation, I started a slow shuffle into the unknown by hanging onto cattails for balance. Often the boards would disappear under water, but by feel, I made progress. Most of the time I could only see a few feet in front of me, and at times I saw clear deep pools.

I felt incredible relief, when after eternity, I broke out into open country. A hundred yards out of the cattails I came to a road and I could see it was going where I wanted to go.

It was getting dark when I approached the area I thought my uncle’s place was. Then I saw the first human since leaving the bus stop. I could faintly see a person come out to the road and run back out of sight. Soon I could barely see a bunch of people that were on the road looking in my direction. This turned out to be a search party mom had got together in an effort to find her missing son

Back to my crib:

The very first thing I can remember was lying in a crib that was outside on a porch. It was night and the crib was under a window to my left. There was a light inside near the window, and this soft light, illuminated the netting over the crib. It was such an incredible feeling of security that it is still strong in my memory. I’ve have seldom felt this secure feeling again, but I guess I have always been seeking it.

I probably didn’t know I was on a Porch, but I can visibly see this in my mind, and feel the emotion, and I can without a doubt recall that event today. After becoming an adult I told mom about this memory, and she surprised me by telling me that when we lived at the Mayfield place I loved to sleep outside.

She confirmed my description of the setting. I was just a few months old when this occurred. The Mayfield place was about 15 miles South of Prineville and is now under the Prineville Reservoir. We left the Mayfield place after I turned one year old. The Mayfield place was not an easy place to get to. Mom said one day while living, or staying at the Mayfield place she