In addition to working a family back through time, looking for ancestors and the sources that document relationships and biographical information, I also work forward – trying to identify descendants of each of our lines of the Robbins families – in other words, looking for all the descendants of Jacob and Mary Robbins.  Sometimes you come across a name, perhaps a child listed in a family’s census enumeration, and after being initially stymied in the research, it all opens up.  You discover what happened to them: they married, had children, and have many descendants.  Other times you come across people who are literally the last of their line.  Such is the case of Dean Livington Leete.

To tell the story of Dean Leete we need to begin with his great-grandparents, Nathan Thomas Caton and Martha Ann (Herren) Caton.  Martha was the daughter of John and Theodoshia (Robbins) Herren and was a child when the family crossed the Oregon Trail and took the ill-chosen Meek Cutoff across central Oregon.  The Herrens settled near Salem, Oregon, and there Martha met and married lawyer Nathan Thomas Caton.  Nathan was deeply involved in the early, chaotic political history of the state of Oregon.  He appears to have been a pro-Southern Democrat and served in a number of local government positions (his biography could make an entirely separate post).  Possibly because of his politics he packed up his family and moved to Silver City, Idaho, to run a local newspaper.  Before long he and his family had moved north to Washington Territory, living in Walla Walla and Davenport.  At one point Nathan was the Speaker of the Washington Territorial House of Representatives.

The Catons had four children, three of whom lived to adulthood.  Their son, Edwin Harvey Caton, is the progenitor of all the living Caton descendants today.  Another son George was married and had two children who died in infancy or childhood.  Daughter Martha Livinia Caton was the grandmother of our subject, Dean Leete.  Martha was married to Robert E. Leete in 1877 in Dayton, Washington.  We don’t know much about Robert Leete except that he was born in New York, appears to have died before 1897, and was divorced from Martha by that time.

Robert and Martha Leete had one son Claude Caton Leete.  While Martha divorced Robert and moved to British Columbia and later remarrying, Claude was close to his grandfather Nathan Caton.  It was probably Nathan who encouraged his grandson to go into local government.  Claude served as county auditor of Lincoln County, Washington for two years as well as doing other work in the local courthouse.

Claude was married to Margaret Livingstone of Kentucky.  He had met Margaret at a Christian church Sunday School convention held in Kentucky in 1909 that Claude had attended.  Their wedding, following their “romantic” courtship, was actually frontpage news in the local Stanford, Kentucky, newspaper.  The paper reported that after the wedding the couple were returning to “their far western home” while visiting Pike’s Peak and Yellowstone on the way.

Claude and Margaret returned to Washington State, where their only child, Dean Livingston Leete was born in 1914.  Sadly, Claude Leete died in 1916.  Some reports had him dying on the train while returning from visiting his wife’s family in Kentucky, while others have him taking up work in the county courthouse in Tipton, Indiana, and dying soon after.  [In three generations the family had traveled from Indiana to the Pacific Northwest and then back to Indiana!]  Whatever the details, Margaret returned to Washington (not to Kentucky where her family was living) with her son Dean.  When Dean was about fourteen years of age, his mother Margaret died in Spokane.  Again, Dean didn’t return to family in Kentucky but was taken in by an unrelated family in Washington.

My thanks to Livingston family researcher Linde Grace who in trying to find out what happened to her mother’s first cousin Dean was able to piece together much of Dean’s life.  Dean kept in touch with his mother’s family and visited back in Kentucky occasionally.

 

Dean Leete attended Washington State College in Pullman where he is found in their yearbooks in the mid-1930s.  Upon graduation he went to work for the American Tobacco Company (in the 1940 census his occupation is listed as “salesman wholesale tobacco) and at that point was living in Amarillo, Texas.  In 1942 he enlisted in the military, serving in Texas, and being honorably discharged with the rank of lieutenant.  It is believed that his nickname, “Lucky”, was given to him by his buddies in the military.

He was married briefly in the 1940s to a woman named Wilma (Pickering) Willard, before they divorced in 1948.  The couple had no children and Wilma passed away in 1966.

Dean was socially active in Amarillo, as evidenced by his many mentions in the Amarillo Globe-Times about his involvement in local theater as an actor.  In 1940 he appeared in a murder mystery titled “Through the Night” and “Flight to the West” in 1941.   He was also a Mason and a Shriner.

Dean Leete passed away in Amarillo in 1978.  When I first located a Dean Leete (not a common name) who died in Texas, I thought I had probably found the right person.  I approached the local genealogy society in Amarillo for assistance.  They were able to get a copy of his obituary for me and also visited the local funeral home which handled his burial, where they were informed that a local woman, whose name they would not disclose, made the arrangements.  His burial plot in the very large Memory Gardens Cemetery is not marked with a gravestone (my sister was visiting Amarillo and very generously stopped by the cemetery to check out Dean’s final resting place for me!).

Dean Leete led an interesting life, sad in some respects, seemingly full and happy in others.  He was the last descendant of Martha Livinia (Caton) Leete.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins-Theodoshia (Robbins) Herren-Martha Ann (Herren) Caton-Martha Livinia (Caton) Leete-Claude Caton Leete-Dean Livingston Leete)