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O.
Ellis Arnold, retired teacher from Northern Alaska, recounts many
of the memorable events which took place during his years teaching in
the Indian government schools with his wife, Dorothy Marie Macy Arnold.
*Ellis was 90 when he learned how to use a computer and wrote his
memoirs.
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Ellis
Arnold was born in Monett, Missouri of ancestors who had migrated to
Boston in 1636 from Wales. After
living in Boston for a few years, the little party of five from Wales
became dissatisfied with Boston so they moved down the coast and
established the settlement of Hartford.
In time, the young men from the original Arnold
family began to move west. Their
first move was into the state of New York and then on to the Great Lakes
area. Ellis’s grandfather
was born near East Giliad, Michigan and his father, a Free Methodist
preacher, was born in
Minnesota. Ellis, the
second child in the ninth generation, was born in Missouri.
When Ellis was nine years old, in keeping with the
westward progress of the family, he and his family moved to Washington.
After several stops they settled in a little valley close to the
Olympic Mountains whose post office was Dabob.
Ellis
completed his elementary school work in a little one-room school in the
Tarboo Valley. For his high
school work he went into Seattle. It
was during his second year in high school that he became acquainted with
Alaska. To “go north”
remained his goal throughout his four years of college.
Ellis now lives in
Stanwood, WA with his second wife, Ramona. They live in the Warm
Beach Retirement Community where Ramona serves as a nurse.
Part 1: Go North, Young Man,
is a telling of some of his experiences during his fifteen years of
service with the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs.
Part 2: South Bound
continues the story as the Arnolds come south after the
beginning of WW II made life in North Alaska difficult.
Read Go North
Young Man.
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