Darren Elliott
This is an amazing story. My wife and I were out garage selling and came to one at Connie's and her sister Ruth's home in South Tacoma. The wife in I were in a bit of a hurry to head out and visit my father so we were going through their garage sale rather quickly. She ask me and I told her "We're heading out to Yelm to visit my father". She mentioned she also lived in Yelm when she was younger and asked my fathers name. When I told her she and Ruth got a surprise look on their faces. She asked Bobby Elliott and I said yes completely puzzled. Come to find out Connie, Ruth and I were cousins. Connie's mother ( maiden name Scollick and sister to my GGrandmother) married a man named Connica in Montana. My family John Elliott married Annie Scollick in Wisdom Montana. The Scollicks also had a ranch there and that's how our families met. I believe the Scollicks left Wisdom before my GGrand parents due to their Scollick father being killed by rustlers (or that's the story from my Scollick side). I don't know for sure when the Scollicks left Montana but my Elliott's sold their ranch in Wisdom in 1920. They then used the money from their land and bought a boarding house / saloon in a small mining town called Gilmore in Idaho near Salmon. Connie's father and mother ran the boarding house there. Later both sides of my family the Elliott's and some of the Scollicks moved to Yelm Washington in the early 1930s.
So back to the garage sale. After we found out we were related the next thing I knew was her and Ruth were showing old photos of our families. We took each others phone numbers and she was going to copy the photos for me because I had none of my Grand parents. Not long after that my mother passed and then not long after that my father then passed so i didn't try to contact her and Ruth for over a year and when I eventually did they had moved. I believe Ruth passed not long after our garage sell visit. For years I've search what happened to both the girls and a couple of years ago a cousin forwarded an obit for Connie. Anyway I really enjoyed our short visit together that day but regret that I waited too long to make contact. Both her and Ruth were very out going and fun loving girls. Darren Elliott
