October 10, 1896, Ival Melville Blair (born March 10, 1870) married Grace Emma Herring(born August 4, 1880). The two of them had migrated from Nebraska to Dewey County in a multi-family wagon train. Ival was the son of Andrew Franklin Blair and Nancy Matthews McWilliams Blair. His father died when Ival was four; ten years later Nancy remarried to Jacob Linville, a widower with two children, and had three more sons.

Grace was the daughter of Walkup and Angeline Herring, one of four children. The Blairs, Linvilles and Herrings were all from Iowa by way of Nebraska, and eventually settled in Dewey County near Putnam. After marriage, Ival and Grace lived in the Putnam area, where Ival farmed. Then, in 1907, they moved to Thomas in Custer County so the children could go to school.

In Thomas Ival was engaged in the threshing machine business, both selling machines and running his own. He was selling for the Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company and did a lot of traveling for the company, so the family moved to El Reno, Oklahoma. As their daughter Mildred Blair Hunt remembered it years later, “We moved back and forth between El Reno and Thomas 2 or 3 times. Loading everything, furniture, cows, hogs, horses, in a railroad
boxcar, and away we would go.”

Ival and Grace’s six children included Florence Veda (born May 7, 1899, in Putnam); Esther Marie (born November 4, 1900, in Putnam); Leila Madge (born September 10, 1902, in Putnam); Anna Mildred (born June 17, 1904, in Putnam); Lela Vern (born April 15, 1906, in Putnam); and Clarence Ival (born January 29, 1910, in Thomas). Grace died in 1926, Ival in 1927, in Kaw City, Kay County, near where Ival had worked for some years maintaining a water pumping station for the Shidler oil field. They are buried in the Grandview Cemetery at Kaw City.

Front row: Walkup Herring, Lee Ila Herring, Angeline (Annie) Reeves Herring; Second row: Lewis Herring, Grace Herring, Arthur Herring	Back Row L to R: Robert Linville, Fred Linville, Mable Linville, George Linville, Charles Linville. Front Row L to R: Jacob Linville, Nancy Blair Linville, Ival Blair.

Linville family at Putnam

Family history provided by John Blair.  (pdf booklet)

John's family poems are at PencilStubs.