The History of the Yakima Valley, Washington, Comprising Yakima, Kittitas and
Benton Counties, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1919, Volume II, page 574
A portrait of Ira Livengood and family appears in this publication.

IRA LIVENGOOD.

Ira Livengood is numbered among the pioneer settlers of Yakima county whose
memory bears the impress of many events which have shaped the history of the
northwest, marking the development and progress of the region. He was born in
Decatur county, Iowa, May 23, 1850, a son of Christopher and Catherine (Haynes)
Livengood, both of whom were natives of Indiana and became pioneer settlers of
Iowa. In 1871 they removed westward to Oregon, casting in their lot with the
early settlers of that state, and both passed away within its borders. The
father was a Civil war veteran, having staunchly defended the Union cause during
the progress of the struggle between the north and the south. He became a
rancher in the northwest and was also later proprietor of a livery stable at
Beaverton, Oregon.

His son, Ira Livengood, acquired a public school education and engaged in
farming in Iowa until 1871, when he accompanied his parents to Oregon. In the
spring of 1872 he removed to Klickitat county, Washington, and took up a
homestead upon which he resided until 1874 and then removed to Yakima county. He
was employed for wages in the city of Yakima and also on the Indian reservation
and later he secured a preemption in Wide Hollow, holding that place until 1876,
when he sold his property and took up government land on the Cowiche. He also
bought railway land, becoming owner of one hundred and twenty acres in all. Of
this he afterward sold twenty-five acres. He built a nice home upon his place
and throughout the intervening years has continued the work of general
development and improvement. He was one of the first in the Cowiche valley to
engage in the live stock business and he is still raising stock and also
devoting his attention to the raising of hay and grain and to the conduct of a
dairy business.

On the 28th of June, 1874, Mr. Livengood was united in marriage to Miss Letitia
Chambers, a daughter of Thomas J. and America R. (McAllister) Chambers. The
father, a native of Ohio, was a son of Thomas Chambers, who was born in Ireland.
In the year 1845 Captain Thomas Chambers crossed the plains, arriving at The
Dalles, Oregon, on the 27th of October of that year. He found two Methodist
missionaries there, Mr. Brewer and Mr. Woller, from whom the party purchased
wheat at two dollars per bushel, also paying them fifty dollars for a
fifty-pound sack of flour. They lived mostly on boiled wheat. They built a boat
from whipsawed lumber with pegs, having no iron. It carried fifteen wagons and
five families, together with all their goods, and thus they proceeded down the
Columbia river on the boat, driving the stock along the bank. At the Cascades
they made portage around and let the boat go over, which it safely did. They
located at first a half mile from Oregon City and in 1848 they removed to a
point six miles from Olympia, to what is now known as Chambers Prairie. The
father of Mrs. Livengood was the first white man to drive a wagon into Olympia
and the family was connected in many ways with the "first things" in this
section of the state. In 1854 they planted an orchard, carrying the trees into
the country on horseback. The grandparents of Mrs. Livengood both died on
Chambers Prairie. The grandfather had one of the first grist mills at Fort
Steilacoom and was one of the earliest of the pioneers in that region. The
father of Mrs. Livengood removed from Chambers Prairie to Yakima county in 1867
and located on the Ahtanum, where he spent one winter. In the next spring he
removed to Columbus, Washington, on the Columbia river, and became a large stock
grower in that locality. About 1870, however, he returned to Yakima county and
purchased land three miles south of North Yakima, where he lived until his
death, which occurred December 23, 1911, when he was eighty-eight years of age.
His mother was a cousin of Andrew Jackson. Mr. Chambers had gone to California
with the "forty-niners." There was no phase of pioneer life on the Pacific coast
with which he was not familiar and he was personally known to nearly all of the
early settlers of the region. The mother of Mrs. Livengood was a daughter of
James McAllister, who was killed on Puget Sound in 1856 during the Indian wars.

To Mr. and Mrs. Livengood have been born seven children: Annie, the deceased
wife of Jay Elliot, by whom she had three children; May, the wife of R. O.
Smith, a rancher of Wide Hollow, and the mother of seven children; Clarence, a
rancher of the Cowiche, who is married and has one child; Harvey, a rancher of
Wide Hollow, who has a wife and one child; Emma. the wife of Harry Graham, who
is engaged in ranching on the Cowiche and by whom she has one child: Katie, the
wife of Ralph Chambers and the mother of three children, their home being also
on a ranch on the Cowiche; and Christopher, a rancher of the same neighborhood,
who is married and has one child. There are seventeen grandchildren in all.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Livengood are representatives of early pioneer families of the
northwest and there is no phase of the development and upbuilding of this
region with which they are not familiar from hearsay or from actual experience.
Mr. Livengood now ranks with the successful farmers of the district and his
record shows what can be accomplished through individual effort when there is a
will to dare and to do.

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Submitted to the Washington Bios Project in December 2007 by Jeffrey L. Elmer.
Submitter has no additional information about the subject of this article.