Stranahan, Clinton T.

The following data is extracted from Illustrated History of the State of Idaho.

Important official work has been done in Nez Perces County by Clinton T. Stranahan, now filling the office of United States Indian agent at Spaulding, and it was because of his faithfulness in smaller things that he was entrusted with these broader responsibilities, which he is discharging in a truly patriotic spirit.

Clinton T. Stranahan was born in Clayton, Contra Costa County, California, in March 1859, and is descended from Irish ancestry. His forefathers settled early in the state of New York, and there his father, Ebenezer Stranahan, was born. In 1852 Ebenezer Stranahan went to California. He engaged in mining in Tuolumne County and met with much success. In 1858 he went back to New York and married Miss Ellen Terry. He returned to California with his wife and settled in Contra Costa County, where he died as the result of an accident, in the forty-fourth year of his age. His wife survives him, aged sixty. She is a devout member of the Presbyterian Church, with which her husband was connected during his life.

Ebenezer and Ellen (Terry) Stranahan had six children, of whom Clinton T. was the first-born, and four of whom are living. Clinton T. Stranahan was educated in the public schools of Oakland, California, and came to Moscow, Idaho, in the spring of 1878. He took up and improved one hundred and sixty acres of government land near where the city of Juliaetta has since grown up. Later he acquired a forty-acre fruit farm just at the border of the city of Lewiston, which he has planted and cultivated with such care and skill that it is universally conceded to be one of the best fruit farms in the state. On this property Mr. Stranahan has built and furnished a delightful home, which is admired by all who see it and in which a hearty hospitality abounds. Mrs. Stranahan was Miss May Bostwick, and is a native of Gallatin valley, Montana. They were married December 23, 1884, and have a son named Clyde and a daughter named Thora. Mrs. Stranahan is a communicant of the Episcopal Church.

Politically Mr. Stranahan has always been an active and influential Republican. He has worked ardently for the success of the principles that party advocates. He has looked after the local advancement of Republican interests and has attended the state and county conventions of his party. He has done this from principle and with a desire to do his full duty as a citizen. He has not been an office-seeker, and if he has held official positions it has been because he was the man for them, logically and by reason of his manifest fitness for them, and because he was urged to accept them by others, who desired to see them administered honestly and economically. He was deputy assessor of Nez Perces county four years, was under sheriff two years, was United States deputy marshal, under United States Marshal Joseph Pinkham, four years, has served as chairman of the Republican central committee of Nez Perces county, and was appointed United States Indian agent by President McKinley, in June, 1899, and given charge of the Nez Perces agency at Spaulding, Idaho. To the duties of this office and to his personal affairs, he gives his whole attention; and whatever gratification other successes may have brought him, his chief pride is in the knowledge that he has brought a valuable and beautiful agricultural property out of a wilderness of sagebrush, and has been potent in demonstrating the capabilities of this part of the state for profitable cultivation and its advantages for labor and investment.

Source: Illustrated History of the State of Idaho

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