WILLIAM LAMBIE.
William Lambie, prominent as a horse breeder and farmer of Garfield county, living on section 31, township 14 north, range 43 east, was born near Glasgow, Scotland, March 13, 1846, a son of John and Margaret (Bryson) Lambie, both of whom were born in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where they spent their entire lives, the father devoting his time and attention to the occupation of farming in order to provide for his family. His son, William Lambie, was reared under the parental roof and acquired a public school education. On attaining his twenty-first year he bade adieu to the land of hills and heather and made his way to New Zealand, where he spent four years. He then came to the United States, making his way to the Hawaiian Islands and thence to San Francisco. He spent a short time in the Sacramento valley of California, after which he removed from San Francisco to Portland, making the trip by steamer. He spent one month in the harvest fields of the Willamette valley and then came by steamer up the Columbia river to Wallula and thence by wagon to Walla Walla, Washington. This was in the summer of 1871. When he saw the Blue mountains and the Walla Walla valley he said to himself that he would travel no farther. During that fall and the succeeding winter he was employed by James Foster, located at the foot of the mountain and the following spring he started out to find land for himself. He assisted a party with cattle upon the Palouse river below Colfax and slept on the floor in his own blanket in the only house in sight in Colfax at that time. He then journeyed northward in search of land near the much-talked-of route of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which at that time, however, had not been surveyed. He pushed on to the neighborhood of Medical Lake, where he located on a beautiful prairie sloping toward the south. He then returned to Walla Walla for a team and wagon, and when he again traveled over the route he brought back with him some garden seed and grain and planted ten acres of his land that first season. In the summer he worked for a stock man upon the present site of the town of Sprague, putting up hay. In August he returned to his own place to look after his crop, but found that his potatoes had been frosted and he, therefore, abandoned his claim. That fall he started down the creek with his team and located in a big meadow on Cow creek, where he cut and sold hay, the purchaser being Thomas Durry, a sheep man. In this business he engaged for four years and afterward sold the ranch to Mr. Durry for eight hundred dollars. He then went to Lower Crab creek and bought mares with his money and began the breeding of horses. In the fall of 1877 he took up his abode upon what has since been his home farm and in the fall of that year he did the first plowing done on the bench land in the north half of Garfield county. He first preempted one hundred and sixty acres and at the same time took up a timber claim, while three years later he purchased one hundred and sixty acres of railroad land. This constituted the nucleus of his present extensive possessions and gave him his start toward his later success. From time to time he has bought adjoining land until his present holdings comprise something more than twenty-one hundred acres and he operates under lease four hundred and eighty acres in addition, which he has cultivated for more than a quarter of a century. He has been one of the foremost breeders of thoroughbred draft horses in southeastern Washington and for the first fifteen years he specialized in the breeding of Clydesdales, for which breed he has gained a wide reputation. For the last ten or twelve years he has given his attention largely to the breeding of black Percheron horses and has gained an enviable reputation in this respect throughout the entire northwest. He is regarded as one of the foremost breeders and one of the most reliable judges of good horses in Washington. In connection with his extensive operations as a breeder Mr. Lambie farms eight hundred acres to wheat and has one hundred and ten acres planted to alfalfa and annually he produces splendid crops because his methods are practical and progressive.
WILLIAM LAMBIE
In 1880 Mr. Lambie was united in marriage to Miss Emma Clark, of Fresno, California, by whom he had two children, one of whom survives, John Hazen, who is a resident of Longbeach, California. Mrs. Lambie has a home at Longbeach, California, where she spends much of her time, and Mr. Lambie there passes the winter months, while in the summer seasons he remains in Washington to superintend his business interests.
He is a member of the Farmers Union and he does everything in his power to promote the interests of the agriculturist and develop the farming possibilities of the state. He holds membership in the Unitarian church and is a man of genuine personal worth, progressive and reliable in business, patriotic in citizenship and at all times guiding his life by high and honorable principles. He has never had occasion to regret his determination to leave the land of his fathers and seek a home in the new world, for here he has found good opportunities and in their utilization has worked his way steadily upward until he is now numbered among the prosperous residents of Garfield county.
H. A. TRIPPEER, M. D. V.